The corn-stalks brake not 'neath his airy tread.

He will not be frightened of 'whirlwind-footed steeds.' If his
theme is a noble house, with everything handsome about it,

Zeus on Olympus dwells in such a home,

we shall be told. But your flatterer would use that line about the
swineherd's hovel, if he saw a chance of getting anything out of
the swineherd. Demetrius Poliorcetes had a flatterer called
Cynaethus who, when he was gravelled for lack of matter, found some
in a cough that troubled his patron--he cleared his throat so
musically!

There you have one criterion: flatterers do not draw the line at a
lie if it will please their patrons; panegyrists aim merely at
bringing into relief what really exists. But there is another great
difference: the flatterers exaggerate as much as ever they can; the
panegyrists in the midst of exaggeration observe the limitations of
decency. And now that you have one or two of the many tests for
flattery and panegyric proper, I hope you will not treat all praise
as suspect, but make distinctions and assign each specimen to its
true class.

By your leave I will proceed to apply the two definitions to what I
wrote; which of them fits it? If it had been an ugly woman that I
likened to the Cnidian statue, I should deserve to be thought a
toady, further gone in flattery than Cynaethus. But as it was one
for whose charms I can call all men to witness, my shot was not so
far out.