Plutarch Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur 11

[11] Since, however, as has been said before, the element of pleasure is common to both (for the good man takes no less delight in his friends than the bad man in his flatterers), let us now, if you will, draw the distinction between them in this respect. The distinction lies in referring the pleasure to its end. Look at it in this way: There is a pleasant odour in a perfume, there is a pleasant odour in a medicine. But the difference is that the former has been created for pleasure and for nothing else, while in the latter the purgative, stimulative, or tissue-building principle that gives it value is only incidentally sweet-smelling. Then again, painters mix bright colours and pigments, and there are also some physicians’ drugs that are bright in appearance, and have a colour that is not repellent. What, then, is the difference? Is it not plain that we shall distinguish them by the end for which they are employed? So, in a similar way, the graciousness of friends, in addition to goodness and profit, possesses also the power of giving pleasure as a sort of efflorescence, and there are times when friends enjoy together jest and food and wine, and indeed even mirth and nonsense, as a sort of spice for noble and serious things. To this purport it has been said: and But the whole work and final aim of the flatterer is always to be serving up some spicy and highlyseasoned jest or prank or story, incited by pleasure and to incite pleasure. ³ To put it in few words, the flatterer thinks he ought to do anything to be agreeable, while the friend, by doing always what he ought to do, is oftentimes agreeable and oftentimes disagreeable, not from any desire to be disagreeable, and yet not attempting to avoid even this if it be better. For he is like a physician, who, if it be for the good of the patient, administers saffron or spikenard, and indeed oftentimes prescribes a grateful bath or generous diet, but there are cases where he lets all these go and drops in a dose of castor, or else of or he compounds some hellebore and makes a man drink it down, setting neither in this case the disagreeable nor in the other the agreeable as his final aim, but endeavouring through either course to bring his patient to one state—that which is for his good. So it is with the friend; sometimes by constantly exalting and gladdening another with praise and graciousness he leads him on toward that which is honourable, as did he who said and Or again, when there is need of reprehension, he assails with stinging words and all the frankness of a guardian: Foolish you are, Menelaus, cherished by Zeus; nor is needed Any such folly as this. ⁷ There are times, too, when he combines deeds with words, as did Menedemus, who chastened the profligate and disorderly son of his friend Asclepiades by shutting the door upon him and not speaking to him; and Arcesilaus forbade Baton his lecture-room when the latter had composed a comic line on Cleanthes, and it was only when Baton had placated Cleanthes and was repentant that Arcesilaus became reconciled with him. For one ought to hurt a friend only to help him; and ought not by hurting him to kill friendship, but to use the stinging word as a medicine which restores and preserves health in that to which it is applied. Wherefore a friend, like a skilled musician, in effecting a transition to what is noble and beneficial, now relaxes and now tightens a string, and so is often pleasant and always profitable; but the flatterer, being accustomed to play his accompaniment of pleasantness and graciousness in one key only, knows nothing either of acts of resistance or of words that hurt, but is guided by the other’s wish only, and makes every note and utterance to accord with him. As Xenophon ⁸ says of Agesilaus, that he was glad to be commended by those who were willing to blame him also, so we must regard that which gives delight and joy as true to friendship, if at times it is able also to hurt our feelings and to resist our desires; but we must be suspicious of an association that is confined to pleasures, one whose complaisance is unmixed and without a sting; and we ought in fact to keep in mind the saying of the Spartan, ⁹ who, when Charillus the king was commended, said, How can he be a good man, who is not harsh even with rascals?