representations, the truth only needs to be made plain and clear in
order for it to prevail, what ought to be the case in friendship, which
is entirely dependent for its value on truth,--in which unless, as the
phrase is, you see an open bosom and show your own, you can have nothing
worthy of confidence, nothing of which you can feel certain, not even
the fact of your loving or being loved, since you are ignorant of what
either really is? Yet this flattery of which I have spoken, harmful as
it is, can injure only him who takes it in and is delighted with it.
Thus it is the case that he is most ready to open his ear to flattery,
who flatters himself and finds supreme delight in himself. Virtue indeed
loves itself; for it has thorough knowledge of itself, and understands
how worthy of love it is. But it is reputed, not real, virtue of which I
am now speaking; for there are not so many possessed of virtue as there
are that desire to seem virtuous. These last are delighted with
flattery, and when false statements are framed purposely to satisfy and
please them, they take the falsehood as valid testimony to their merit.
That, however, is no friendship, in which one of the (so-called) friends
does not want to hear the truth, and the other is ready to lie. The
flattery of parasites on the stage would not seem amusing, were there
not in the play braggart soldiers [Footnote: Latin, _milites gloriosi.
Miles Gloriosus_ is the title of one of the comedies of Plautus; and one
of the stock characters of the ancient comedy is a conceited,
swaggering, brainless soldier, who is perpetually boasting of his own
valor and exploits, and who takes the most fulsome and ridiculous
flattery as the due recognition of his transcendent merit. The verse
here quoted is from Terence's _Eunuchus_. Thraso, a _miles gloriosus_
(from whom is derived our adjective _thrasonical_), asks this question
of Gnatho, the parasite, one of whose speeches is quoted in S 25.
_Magnus_ is the word in the question; _ingentes_, in the answer.] to be
flattered.