Deipnosophistae

But Theopompus, in the eighteenth book of his Histories, speaking of Nicostratus the Argive, and saying

Cavarus the Gaul, who was in other respects a good man, was depraved by Sostratus the flatterer, who was a Chalcedonian by birth.

Nicolaus, in the hundred and fourteenth book of his Histories, says that Andromachus of Carrhæ was a flatterer of Licinius Crassus, who commanded the expedition against the Parthians; and that Crassus communicated all his designs to him, and was, in consequence, betrayed to the Parthians by him, and so destroyed. But Andromachus was not allowed by the deity to escape unpunished. For having obtained, as the reward of his conduct, the sovereignty over his native place Carrhæ, he behaved with such cruelty and violence that he was burnt with his whole family by the Carrhans. And Posidonius the Apamean, who was afterwards surnamed Rhodius, in the fourth book of his Histories, says that Hierax of Antioch, who used formerly to accompany the

The whole populace of the Athenians, too, was very notorious for the height to which it pushed its flattery; accordingly, Demochares the cousin of Demosthenes the orator, in the twentieth book of his Histories, speaking of the flattery practised by the Athenians towards Demetrius Poliorcetes, and saying that he himself did not at all like it, writes as follows—

And some of these things annoyed him greatly, as they well might. And, indeed, other parts of their conduct were utterly mean and disgraceful. They consecrated temples to Leæna Venus and Lamia Venus, and they erected altars and shrines as if to heroes, and instituted libations in honour of Burichus, and Adeimantus, and Oxythemis, his flatterers. And poems were sung in honour of all these people, so that even Demetrius himself was astonished at what they did, and said that in his time there was not one Athenian of a great or vigorous mind.

Accordingly Demochares, in the twenty-first book of his Histories, says—

And the Athenians received Demetrius when he came from Leucadia and Corcyra to Athens, not only with frankincense, and crowns, and libations of wine, but they even went out to meet him with hymns, and choruses, and ithyphalli, and dancing and singing, and they stood in front of him in multitudes, dancing and singing, and saying that he was the only true god, and that all the rest of the gods were either asleep, or gone away to a distance, or were no god at

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all. And they called him the son of Neptune and Venus, for he was eminent for beauty, and affable to all men with a natural courtesy and gentleness of manner. And they fell at his feet and addressed supplications and prayers to him.

Demochares, then, has said all this about the adulatory spirit and conduct of the Athenians. And Duris the Samian, in the twenty-second book of his Histories, has given the very ithyphallic hymn which they addressed to him—

1. Behold the greatest of the gods and dearest
2. Are come to this city,
3. For here Demeter[*](Demeter, δημήτηρ, or as it is written in the text δημήτρα. Ceres, the mother of Proserpine.) and Demetrius are
4. Present in season.
5. She indeed comes to duly celebrate
6. The sacred mysteries
7. Of her most holy daughter—he is present
8. Joyful and beautiful,
9. As a god ought to be, with smiling face
10. Showering his blessings round.
11. How noble doth he look! his friends around,
12. Himself the centre.
13. His friends resemble the bright lesser stars,
14. Himself is Phœbus.
15. Hail, ever-mighty Neptune's mightier son;
16. Hail, son of Venus.
17. For other gods do at a distance keep,
18. Or have no ears,
19. Or no existence; and they heed not us—
20. But you are present,
21. Not made of wood or stone, a genuine god.
22. We pray to thee.
23. First of all give us peace, O dearest god—
24. For you are lord of peace—
25. And crush for us yourself, for you've the power,
26. 'This odious Sphinx;
27. Which now destroys not Thebes alone, but Greece—
28. The whole of Greece—
29. I mean th' Aetolian, who, like her of old,
30. Sits on a rock,
31. And tears and crushes all our wretched bodies.
32. Nor can we him resist.
33. For all th' Aetolians plunder all their neighbours;
34. And now they stretch afar
35. Their lion hands; but crush them, mighty lord,
36. Or send some Œdipus
37. Who shall this Sphinx hurl down from off his precipice,
38. Or starve him justly.

This is what was sung by the nation which once fought at Marathon, and they sang it not only in public, but in their private houses-men who had once put a man to death for offering adoration to the king of Persia, ad who had slain countless myriads of barbarians. Therefore, Alexis, in his Apothecary or Cratevas, introduces a person pledging one of the guests in a cup of wine, and represents him as saying—

1. Boy, give a larger cup, and pour therein
2. Four cyathi of strong and friendly drink,
3. In honour of all present. Then you shall add
4. Three more for love; one for the victory,
5. The glorious victory of King Antigonus,
6. Another for the young Demetrius.

1. Bring a third cup in honour now of Venus,
2. The lovely Venus. Hail, my friends and guests;
3. I drink this cup to the success of all of you.

Such were the Athenians at that time, after flattery, that worst of wild beasts, had inspired their city with frenzy, that city which once the Pythia entitled the Hearth of Greece, and which Theopompus, who hated them, called the Prytaneum of Greece; he who said in other places that Athens was full of drunken flatterers, and sailors, and pickpockets, and also of false witnesses, sycophants, and false accusers. And it is my opinion that it was they who introduced all the flattery which we have been speaking of, like a storm, or other infliction, sent on men by the gods; concerning which Diogenes said, very elegantly—

That it was much better to go ἐς κόρακας than ἐς κόλακας, who eat up all the good men while they are still alive;

1. The flatterers are worms which prey upon
2. All who have money; for they make an entrance
3. Into the heart of a good guileless man,
4. And take their seat there, and devour it,
5. Till they have drain'd it like the husk of wheat,
6. And leave the shell; and then attack some other.

Nature has mingled some pleasure which is not entirely inelegant in its character of a flatterer, though he is an odious beast, and a great injury to a state.

1. A flatterer destroys
2. By his pernicious speeches
3. Both general and prince,
4. Both private friends and states;
5. He pleases for a while,
6. But causes lasting ruin.
7. And now this evil habit
8. Has spread among the people,
9. Our courts are all diseased,
10. And all is done by favour.

But Phylarchus says, that those Athenians who settled in Lemnos were great flatterers, mentioning them as such in the thirteenth book of his History. For that they, wishing to display their gratitude to the descendants of Seleucus and Antiochus, because Seleucus not only delivered them when they were severely oppressed by Lysimachus, but also restored both their cities to them,—they, I say, the Athenians in Lemnos, not only erected temples to Seleucus, but also to his son Antiochus; and they have given to the cup, which at their feasts is offered at the end of the banquet, the name of the cup of Seleucus the Saviour.

Now some people, perverting the proper name, call this flattery ἀρέσκεια, complaisance; as Anaxandrides does in his Samian, where he says—

1. For flattery is now complaisance call'd.

1. A flatterer's life but a brief space endures,
2. For no one likes a hoary parasite.

No flatterer is constant in his friendship. For time destroys the falsehood of his pretences, and a lover is only a flatterer and a pretended friend on account of youth or beauty.

But Clearchus the Solensian, in his book which is inscribed Gergithius, tells us whence the origin of the name flatterer is derived; and mentioning Gergithius himself, from whom the treatise has its name, he says that he was one of Alexander's flatterers; and he tells the story thus—

That flattery debases the characters of the flatterers, making them apt to despise whoever they associate with; and a proof of this is, that they endure everything, well knowing what they dare do. And those who are flattered by them, being puffed up by their adulation, they make foolish and empty-headed, and cause them to believe that they, and everything belonging to them, are of a higher order than other people.

"And all the monarchs who have at any time reigned in Cyprus have encouraged a race of nobly-born flatterers as useful to them; for they are a possession very appropriate to tyrants. And no one ever knows them (any more the they do the judges of the Areopagus), either how many they are, or who they are, except that perhaps some of the most

There were also in this country, in the time of Glutus the Carian, women attaching themselves to the Queens, who were called flatterers; and a few of them who were left crossed the sea, and were sent for to the wives of Artabazus and Mentor, and instead of κολακίδες were called κλιμακίδες from this circumstance. By way of making themselves agreeable to those who had sent for them, they made a ladder (κλίμακια) of themselves, in such a manner that there was a way of ascending over their backs, and also a way of descending, for their mistresses when they drove out in chariots: to such a

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pitch of luxury, not to say of miserable helplessness, did they bring those silly women by their contrivance therefore, they themselves, when they were compelled by fortune to quit that very luxurious way of living, lived with great hardship in their old age. And the others who had received these habits from us, when they were deprived of their authority came to Macedonia; and the customs which they taught to the wives and princesses of the great men in that country by their association with them, it is not decent even to mention farther than this, that practising magic arts themselves, and being the objects of them when practised by others, they did not spare even the places of the greatest resort, but they became complete vagabonds, and the very scum of the streets, polluted with all sorts of abominations. Such and so great are the evils which seem to be engendered by flattery in the case of all people who admit from their own inclination and predisposition to be flattered.