Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. I.

by Plutarch

Of many shapes are means divine,

and this negative class of praise requires to be countered with some craftiness. The way to confute it is by deliberately offering counsel and suggestion which are nonsensical, and making corrections |B| which are absurd. If your man objects to nothing, says ‘Yes’ to everything, and exclaims ‘Good!’ ‘Capital!’ at every item, he exposes himself as one who

The watchword asks, while other are his aims,

—those aims being to encourage your self-conceit with his laudations.

Take another case. Painting has been styled ‘silent poetry’. So there is a way of praising by silent flattery. The sportsman’s purpose is better concealed from the game when he pretends to be upon other business—walking, tending cattle, or tilling the soil. In the same way a toady drives home his eulogies most effectively when the eulogy is disguised under some different form of action. It may be by giving up his seat, or his place |C| at table, when you appear upon the scene. Or if he is addressing the Assembly or Council, and notices that some wealthy man desires to speak, he may stop his speech and yield him the platform. His silence indicates more clearly than the loudest acclamation that he regards the person in question as a better man and his intellectual superior. Such persons may therefore be seen taking possession of the front seats at an entertainment or in the meeting-hall, not because they claim any right to them, but in order that they may play the toady by giving up their places to rich people. Or you may see them begin the discussion at a congress or a board-meeting, and subsequently give way to ‘superior argument’ and shift round with the |D| greatest readiness to the opposite view, if their opponent is a person of influence, wealth, or note. The clearest exposure of such complaisances and concessions is to be sought in the fact that it is not to knowledge or high abilities or age that the deference is paid, but to riches and reputations. When Megabyzus took a seat at Apelles’ side and wanted to prate to him about ‘line’ and ‘shading’, the painter remarked, ‘Do you see those boys yonder grinding my mixing-earth? When you were silent, they were all eyes of admiration for your purple and your jewels. But now that you have begun to talk about things |E| you do not understand, they are laughing at you.’ Similarly Solon, when Croesus questioned him about ‘happiness’, declared that Tellus, an Athenian of humble rank, as well as Cleobis and Biton, were more favoured by fortune. A flatterer, on the contrary, not only avers that a king, a rich man, or a man in power, is prosperous and fortunate; he also declares that he is pre-eminent in wisdom, art, and every form of excellence. Hence while there are persons who have no patience to listen when the Stoics describe the sage as at the same time ‘rich, beautiful, noble, and king’, a toady will make out that the rich man is at the same time an orator, a poet, and—if he so wishes—a painter and a musician. He makes him out swift of foot and |F| strong of thew by letting himself be thrown in wrestling and outstripped in running, as Criso of Himera did in a race against Alexander—much to Alexander’s disgust when he detected it. Carneades used to say that the only thing that kings’ and rich men’s sons understand is how to ride; they receive no proper instruction in anything else. For their teacher flatters them in school with his praises, and their antagonists in the wrestling-ring by courting defeat; whereas a horse, who neither knows nor cares whether you are in or out of office, poor or rich, pitches you head first if you cannot keep your seat. It was therefore a silly and stupid thing for Bion to say: ‘If by |59| eulogizing a field we could make it bear a prolific crop, would it not be a mistake for a man to go digging and moiling instead? Neither, then, is it irrational for you to praise a human being, if your praise is productive of good fruit.’ A field suffers no injury from being praised, whereas insincere and undeserved compliment puffs a man up and ruins him.

On this point we have said enough. The next consideration is that of candour.

|B| When Patroclus, on going out to fight, dressed himself in Achilles’ armour and drove his team, the one thing he let alone and did not venture to touch was the Pelian spear. So it might have been expected of the flatterer that, when dressing himself up carefully for the part of ‘friend’, with its proper tokens and badges, the one thing he would leave untouched and uncopied would be plain-speaking—a special attribute,

Heavy and huge and stubborn,

to be wielded only by friendship. But in his fear that laughter, strong drink, jest, and fun may mean his betrayal, we find him |C| putting a solemn face on the business, flattering with a frown and administering dashes of blame and admonition. Here again, therefore, we must apply our tests. In a comedy of Menander, the Mock-Hercules comes in carrying a club which has no strength or solidity, but is merely a hollow sham. So, I take it, with the flatterer’s plain-speaking. On trial you will find that it is soft and without weight or vigour; that it behaves like a woman’s cushion, which, while seeming to offer a firm support to the head, actually yields it more of its own way. |D| This spurious candour, with its hollow fullness, its false and superficial puffiness, is merely meant to shrink and collapse, so as to induce the person who leans upon it to make himself more comfortable. The genuine candour of a friend attacks only our misdeeds; it hurts only out of care and protection; like honey, it merely stings our sores in cleansing them, its general uses being grateful and sweet. This, however, is a theme for special discussion.

With the flatterer it is different. In the first place, when he displays sharpness or heat or inflexibility, it is in dealing with others than yourself. He is severe upon his own servants; he is terribly hard upon the misdeeds of his own relations; he shows no admiration or respect for a stranger, but treats |E| him with contempt; his scandalizing is merciless when exacerbating other people. His object is to make it appear that he detests low practices, and that he would not consent to abate a jot of his candour in your behalf, or to do or say anything to curry favour. In the next place, when there is something really and seriously wrong, he pretends to be completely ignorant and unconscious of it, while he will pounce upon some little immaterial shortcoming and take it rigorously and vehemently to task—if, for instance, he sees an implement carelessly placed, or a fault of domestic management, or negligence in the cut of your hair or the wearing of your clothes, or lack of |F| proper attention to a dog or a horse. But should you slight your parents, neglect your children, humiliate your wife, despise your relatives, and waste your money, it becomes no business of his. In such circumstances not a word does he venture to utter, but he is like a trainer who permits an athlete to get drunk and dissipated, while he is severe upon him in the matter of an oil-flask or a scraping-iron; or like a grammar-master who scolds a boy for the state of his slate and pencil, but pretends not to hear his slips of grammar and expression. The toady is the kind of man who, in dealing with a ridiculously incompetent public speaker, has nothing to say about his matter, but finds fault with his voice-production, and blames him severely for spoiling |60| his larynx by drinking cold drinks; or who, when requested to peruse some miserable composition, finds fault with the roughness of the paper and calls the copyist a slovenly wretch. It was so in the case of Ptolemy, when he made pretence to literary tastes. They would fight with him about some out-of-the-way word or bit of a verse or point of information, and would keep it up till midnight. But to his indulgence in cruelty and outrage, to his tambourine-playing and initiating, not one of |B| all their number offered any opposition. Imagine a man suffering with tumours and abscesses, and some one taking a surgeon’s knife and cutting—his hair or his nails! That is what the flatterer does. He employs his candour upon those parts which feel no pain or soreness.