_Foolish art thou, Menelaus Zeus-foster’d: no time is this present For folly like thine._ There are also times when he makes the deed accompany the word, like Menedemus, when he taught the prodigal and dissolute son of his friend Asclepiades a wholesome lesson by shutting the door in his face and refusing to speak to him. Similarly Arcesilaus forbade Bato the lecture-room for having attacked Cleanthes in a verse of a comedy. He was reconciled to him, however, when he repented and made his peace with Cleanthes. For though one must give a friend pain when it does him good, one must not, while giving the pain, make an end of the friendship. The sting should be used only as a medicine, for the care and salvation of the patient. A friend is therefore [Sidenote: D] like a musician. In converting us to right and salutary courses he will sometimes loosen and sometimes tighten the strings. Pleasure you will get from him often, profit always. On the other hand, the time-server, who harps in a single key and is accustomed to strike no note but that of your pleasure and gratification, has no notion of any action to check you or word to pain you. He merely plays the accompaniment to your wishes, with which both his time and his words are invariably in accord. Xenophon says of Agesilaus that he welcomed praise from those who were no less ready to blame. So we should regard that which gives pleasure and gratification as in the category of ‘friend’, if it can also on occasion oppose us and give us pain. But a companionship which is uniformly pleasurable and maintains [Sidenote: E] a perpetual graciousness unqualified by any sting, calls for suspicion. We ought, in fact, to be ready to ask, like the Laconian on hearing praise of King Charillus, ‘How can a man be honest, when he cannot be angry even with a rascal?’ It is close to the ear, we are told, that the gadfly gets into a bull and the tick into a dog. In the case of a man of ambition, the time-server with his flatteries takes hold of his ears and sticks so fast that it is hard to rub him off. Particularly, therefore, in such circumstances must we keep our judgement vigilant. It must be on the alert to see whether the praise is given to the [Sidenote: F] thing or to the man. It is given to the thing when men praise us in our absence more than in our presence; when they wish and strive for the same objects themselves, and praise not only us but every one else who does the like; when we do not find them doing and saying first one thing and then the opposite; and—most important of all—when our sense does not tell us that we are repenting or ashamed of the things for which we are praised, or wishing that we had rather done and said the [Sidenote: 56] contrary. This inward judgement, which testifies against a flattery and refuses to accept it, is immune from contamination, and proof against the time-server.