What I am going to tell you may sound incredible, yet it is the simple truth. Every man is most open to danger on the side on which he is 5 attacked. Perhaps, indeed, that is the very reason why he is attacked on that side. You must, therefore, lay your account to recognise that, do what you will, you cannot manage to be impervious to adulation. When you have closed every loophole, it will still wound you through your harness. One assailant will employ his flattery secretly and sparingly; another, above board, openly, with an affectation of honest sincerity, as if it were straightforward bluntness, not device. Plancus, the greatest adept in the art before Vitellius’ time, used to say that secret, dissembled flattery was not to be employed. Advances, quoth he, are lost if they are not recognised. The flatterer makes most headway 6 when he is detected; still more, in fact, if an open rebuke brings the blush to his cheek. You must assume that a public character like you will encounter many Plancuses. It is no remedy against the inveterate plague to refuse to be praised. I never knew a man more shrewd in every practical matter than Crispus Passienus, and especially in diagnosing and treating faults of character. He often used to say that we only put-to the door against flattery, and do not shut it, much in the same way as in the face of a mistress. If she gives it a shove, we are pleased, still more so if she forces it open. I remember hearing that 7 distinguished man, Demetrius, remark to a certain powerful freedman that he, too, had an easy road to riches on the day that he made up his mind to renounce all virtuous resolutions. Nor will I grudge any of you, said he, the knowledge of the art, but I will teach those who regard gain as the one thing needful how they may attain their object. They need not follow the doubtful fortune of the sea, nor the competition of buying and selling: they need not place their faith in the fickle proceeds of the ground, nor the still more fickle fortunes of the exchange. I will teach them a means of making money not merely easy, but positively so merry that the victims whom they fleece will share the fun. Flattery shall be the means. If you have the stature 8 of the pigmy Thracian matched against Thracian in the arena, I will swear that you are taller than Fidus Annaeus or Apollonius Pycta. I will say that no fellow could be more liberal than you, nor shall I lie, since you may be considered to have bestowed upon all whatever you have not robbed them of.