Plutarch Maxime Cum Principibus Viris Philosopho Esse Disserendum 3

[3] if this speaker was not merely a lover of agriculture but also a lover of his fellow men, he would find more pleasure in sowing the field which could feed so many men than in sowing that little plot of Antisthenes’ ² which would hardly have been big enough for Autolycus to wrestle in; but if [he meant]: I sow all this in order that I may subjugate the whole inhabited world, I deprecate the sentiment. ³ And yet Epicurus, who places happiness in the deepest quiet, as in a sheltered and landlocked harbour, says that it is not only nobler, but also pleasanter, to confer than to receive benefits. Surely he was wise who gave the Graces the names Aglaïa (Splendour), Euphrosynê (Gladness), and Thalia (Good-cheer); for the delight and joy are greater and purer for him who does the gracious act. And therefore people are often ashamed to receive benefits, but are always delighted to confer them; and they who make those men good upon whom many depend confer benefits upon many; and, on the contrary, the slanderers, backbiters, and flatterers who constantly corrupt rulers or kings or tyrants, are driven away and punished by everyone, as if they were putting deadly poison, not into a single cup, but into the public fountain which, as they see, everyone uses. Therefore, just as people laugh when the flatterers of Callias are ridiculed in comedy, those flatterers of whom Eupolis says ⁵ but the friends and intimates of the tyrant Apollodorus, of Phalaris, and of Dionysius ⁶ they bastinadoed, tortured, and burned, and made them for ever polluted and accursed, since the former had done harm to one man, but the latter through one, the ruler, to many. So the philosophers who associate with persons in private station make those individuals inoffensive, harmless, and gentle towards themselves, but he who removes evil from the character of a ruler, or directs his mind towards what is right, philosophizes, as it were, in the public interest and corrects the general power by which all are governed. States pay reverence and honour to their priests because they ask blessings from the gods, not for themselves, their friends, and their families alone, but for all the citizens in common; and yet the priests do not make the gods givers of blessings, for they are such by nature; the priests merely invoke them. But philosophers who associate with rulers do make them more just, more moderate, and more eager to do good, so that it is very likely that they are also happier.