_Or polium foul of odor, that men e’en shudder to smell it._
[Sidenote: B] Or he will pound a dose of hellebore and make you drink it off. Neither the unpleasantness in the one case nor the pleasantness in the other is the end in his mind, but in both cases he has only one object in view for the patient, and that object is his good. In the same way there are times when a friend will lead you in the path of duty by inspiriting you with praise or gratifying you with courtesies, as the speaker does in
_Teucer, Telamon’s son, dear prince of a warrior people, Shoot as now thou dost_,
_How then should I, if ’tis so, be forgetful of godlike Odysseus?_
But when, on the contrary, you need calling to attention, he will upbraid you in biting terms and with the plain-speaking of a guardian: [Sidenote: C]
_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?’