Sec. XVII. We ought, at all hazards, to keep our boys also from association with bad men, for they will catch some of their villany. This was the meaning of Pythagoras' enigmatical precepts, which I shall quote and explain, as they give no slight momentum towards the acquisition of virtue: as, _Do not touch black tails_: that is, do not associate with bad men.[36] _Do not go beyond the balance_: that is, we must pay the greatest attention to justice and not go beyond it. _Do not sit on a measure_: that is, do not be lazy, but earn tomorrow's bread as well as to-day's. _Do not give everyone your right hand_: that is, do not be too ready to strike up a friendship. _Do not wear a tight ring_: that is, let your life be free, do not bind yourself by a chain. _Do not poke the fire with a sword_: that is, do not provoke an angry person, but yield to such. _Do not eat the heart_: do not wear away the heart by anxiety. _Abstain from beans_: that is, do not meddle in state affairs, for the voting for offices was formerly taken by beans. _Do not put your food in the chamber-pot_: that is, do not throw your pearls before swine, for words are the food of the mind, and the villany of men twist them to a corrupt meaning. _When you have come to the end of a journey do not look back_: that is, when people are going to die and see that their end is near, they ought to take it easily and not be dejected. But I will return from my digression. We must keep our boys, as I said, from association with all bad men, but especially from flatterers. For, as I have often said to parents, and still say, and will constantly affirm, there is no race more pestilential, nor more sure to ruin youths swiftly, than the race of flatterers, who destroy both parents and sons root and branch, making the old age of the one and the youth of the others miserable, holding out pleasure as a sure bait. The sons of the rich are by their fathers urged to be sober, but by them to be drunk; by their fathers to be chaste, by them to wax wanton; by their fathers to save, by them to spend; by their fathers to be industrious, by them to be lazy. For they say, "'Our life's but a span;'[37] we can only live once; why should you heed your father's threats? he's an old twaddler, he has one foot in the grave; we shall soon hoist him up and carry him off to burial." Some even pimp for them and supply them with prostitutes or even married women, and cut huge slices off the father's savings for old age, if they don't run off with them altogether. An accursed tribe, feigning friendship, knowing nothing of real freedom, flatterers of the rich, despisers of the poor, drawn to young men by a sort of natural logic,[38] showing their teeth and grinning all over when their patrons laugh,[39] misbegotten brats of fortune and bastard elements in life, living according to the nod of the rich, free in their circumstances, but slaves by inclination, when they are not insulted thinking