1But if on the stage, that is, in the assembly, where there is the greatest room for fictions and semblances, truth still prevails, provided only that it is laid open and brought to light, what ought to happen in friendship, which is weighed entirely by truth? 1In friendship, unless, as the saying goes, you see an open heart and show your own, you can have nothing trustworthy, nothing certain, not even loving or being loved, since you do not know how truly it is done. 1And yet this flattery, however pernicious it may be, can harm no one except the man who welcomes it and takes delight in it. 1So it comes about that the man who opens his ears widest to flatterers is the one who flatters himself and is most delighted with himself.
98Virtue, certainly, loves itself; 98for it knows itself best and understands how lovable it is: but I am not speaking now of virtue, but of a reputation for virtue. 98For not so many wish to be endowed with virtue itself as wish to seem so. 98These men flattery delights; when talk shaped to their own wishes is offered them, they think that empty speech a testimony to their merits. 98This, then, is no friendship, when one will not hear the truth and the other is ready to lie. 98Nor would the flattery of parasites in comedies seem witty to us, if there were no boastful soldiers. 98'Did Thais really give me great thanks?' 98It would have been enough to answer, 'Great.' 98'Enormous,' he says. The flatterer always magnifies what the man to whose wishes he speaks wants to be great.
99Wherefore, though that coaxing emptiness has power with those who themselves court and invite it, yet even weightier and steadier men must be warned to take care that they are not caught by cunning flattery. 99For everyone sees an open flatterer, unless he is quite witless: we must take careful precautions that the cunning, hidden one does not worm his way in. 99For he is not very easily recognised, since he often flatters even by opposing, and pretending to quarrel he fawns, and at the end gives in and lets himself be beaten, so that the man who has been fooled may seem to have seen further. 99And what is more disgraceful than to be fooled?
99We must take all the more care that this does not happen: 'How you have tricked me today and fooled me most splendidly, beyond all the foolish old men of comedy!' 99For even in plays the most foolish character is that of improvident and credulous old men. 100But somehow our talk has drifted down from the friendships of perfect men, that is, of the wise (I mean the wisdom that seems able to fall to a human being), to fickle friendships. 100Wherefore let us return to those first points and at last bring them to a close.