HKB
Their faults give them no pain, they take it hard that they are reproved,--while they ought, on the contrary, to be grieved for their wrong-doing, to rejoice in their correction.
25 As, then, it belongs to friendship both to admonish and to be admonished, and to do the former freely, yet not harshly, to receive the latter patiently not resentfully, so it is to be maintained that friendship has no greater pest than adulation, flattery, subserviency, for under its many names [Footnote: Latin multis nominibus, which some commentators render "on many accounts" with reference to matters of purchase and sale, debit and credit. But I think that Cicero brings in adulatio, blanditia, and assentatio, as so many synonyms of obsequtum, intending to comprehend in his indictment whatever alias the one vice may assume.] a brand should be put on this vice of fickle and deceitful men, who say everything with the view of giving pleasure, without any reference to the truth. While simulation is bad on every account, inasmuch as it renders the discernment of the truth which it defaces impossible, it is most of all inimical to friendship; for it is fatal to sincerity, without which the name of friendship ceases to have any meaning. For since the essence of friendship consists in this, that one mind is, as it were, made out of several, how can this be, if in one of the several there shall be not always one and the same mind, but a mind varying, changeful, manifold? And what can be so flexible, so far out of its rightful course, as the mind of him who adapts himself, not only to the feelings and wishes, but een to the look and gesture, of another?
"Does one say No or Yes? I say so too My rule is to assent to everything,"
as Terence, whom I have just quoted, says, but he says it in the person of Gnatho,[Footnote: A parasite in Terence's play of Eunuchus, from which these verses are quoted.]--a sort of friend which only a frivolous mind can tolerate. But as there are many like Gnatho, who stand higher than he did in place, fortune, and reputation, then subserviency is the more offensive, because then position gives weight to their falsehood.