§ 1. Laws were treated in the preceding book, and their necessity, utility, and force were explained; but without an eminent magistrate the support furnished by laws is weak. Laws are inanimate instruments of peace and happiness; magistrates are living instruments, which administer the state by the use and application of the laws, protect the good, and correct the bad. But those who cannot be corrected, in whom there is nothing capable of good hope, they remove from the midst of mortals—persons who would do worse things than those which occur—so that, in the one way in which they can, they may cease to be bad. Without a magistrate, therefore, laws have no efficacy and inspire no fear; good laws prudently administered by a good magistrate make a state most happy.
For this reason I undertake to set forth the magistrate’s dignity, authority, and office. Here I see the rock upon which many political writers have struck—namely, the desire to flatter. For they have wished either to please some king or to commend themselves to the leading men, and they have written things which are accustomed to delight kings and princes more than to instruct and improve them. “In their malice they gladden the king, and in their lies the princes.” Many exalt the magistrate’s power beyond truth and beyond measure; others even praise vices extravagantly. The slanderer says that good is evil; the lover delights in the vices themselves. Both evils are in the flatterer, whose error is therefore most difficult to cure because it is akin to truth: for since flatterers are the worst of enemies, they seem to be the most benevolent of friends; certainly they are the most agreeable. Flattery not only imitates friendship but conquers and surpasses it: it is received by open and favorably disposed ears and descends into the deepest recesses of the heart, pleasing by the very thing by which it harms.
§ 2. At the outset, therefore, I have resolved to walk upon the straightest road and to offer nothing to the ears of kings and princes except what is true and salutary, altogether unconcerned about how each thing is received. For to put anything into the ears of powerful men profits neither those who are led astray by deceptive praise nor him who, a fawning enemy in place of a friend, makes human beings—weak in judgment by nature—still more foolish.
§ 3. Nothing is more hostile to pontiffs, kings, and powerful men than flattery. For as rust is the peculiar defect of iron, the woodworm of wood, sourness of wine, and mold of bread, so flattery is the peculiar vice of courts. Hence even its name has been taken, so that adulatores are called, as it were, adaulatores—court-attendants—who overthrow the resources of kings more by sycophancy than enemies do by the sword. This poison is powerful and effective because it is admitted most eagerly into the heart and feeds upon its innermost parts. It also inflates minds and distends them with windy swelling, so that they commonly depart from themselves. Hence the most shameful of human beings wished themselves to be believed gods, as did Alexander the Great and the Roman emperors. Flattery made others savage, as Constantius, whom sycophants made cruel. It makes others foolish in great fortune, as Valens, when they repeatedly called his rustic expressions “Ciceronian flowerets.” Finally, it makes everyone inhuman, morose, irascible, and eager for vengeance.
Rome flattered Caligula servilely. By blandishments they wished to please a stupid and cruel prince, but the result was that he learned to despise flatteries and, when he interpreted them otherwise, punished them with death. Dio relates in his Caligula: “But when at one time the people shouted, ‘Young Augustus,’ he thought an injury had been inflicted upon him and ordered very many to be killed. Some of them he ordered to be dragged away from the spectacles and others to be seized as they left the theater, for he was often accustomed to do this.” The prince’s ears had thus grown accustomed to the most pleasing things, so that pleasing words were received as harsh ones. By the same plague they destroyed Vitellius. “The most intimate of Vitellius’s friends,” says Tacitus, “kept away those who would have given good counsel, the prince’s ears having been so formed that he received harsh things that were useful, and nothing except what was pleasing and would harm him.”
§ 4. Nor do flatterers obtain lasting fruit from sycophancy, because, since no one is content with one flatterer, his favor must flourish for only a short time. New men entice minds to themselves by more exquisite blandishment, and swift disgust follows things which have greatly delighted them. Then the nature of dissimulation is ἐφήμερος, “for a day”; but flattery is the most destructive of dissimulations. Nor has anyone thus far been a flatterer of such talent that it did not readily become apparent that he was mocking powerful men. For if they commend things that are not praiseworthy or magnify middling things, they cannot remain hidden for long from the prince unless he is a beast. And although human beings readily allow themselves to be deceived by these men, nevertheless, once flattery has been discovered, they hate it. Elagabalus moved the whole empire to laughter when he smothered parasites with roses or bound them to a waterwheel, so that through pleasures he might kill those who assailed the lives of princes through luxuries.
But if a prince is nevertheless so dull and so much a lover of himself that he cannot recognize those συγκατανευσιφάγους, “fellow-feeders by assent,” and ψωμοκόλακας, “bread-flatterers,” who for their belly’s sake assent to everything, their colleagues and fellow-parasites will nevertheless easily expose them. For nowhere is flattery more recognized and ridiculed than in courts, where witty men also complain that people sin against an eleventh commandment of the Decalogue: “Thou shalt not flatter.”
Although that vice is most shameful in every class of human beings, it is truly monstrous in priests, whom the sacred canons teach that it is much better to suffer punishment for truth than to receive a benefice for flattery: cause 11, question 3, Nemo peritorum. St. Gregory attacks flatterers most gravely in book 18 of the Moralia, part 4, chapter 3: “There are some” (distinction 46) “who, while they extol the misdeeds of human beings with praises, increase the things which they ought to have rebuked. Hence it is said through the Prophet: ‘Woe to those who sew little cushions under every elbow of the hand and make pillows under the head of every age.’ A little cushion is placed for this purpose, that one may rest more softly. Therefore, whoever flatters those who act badly places a cushion under the head or elbow of one who lies down, so that he who ought to have been rebuked for his fault may, supported by praises in that very fault, rest softly. Hence it is written again: ‘He was building the wall, but they were coating it.’ By the name of a wall the hardness of sin is designated. To build a wall, therefore, is for someone to construct against himself the obstacles of sin. But those who flatter the perpetrators of sins coat the wall, so that the thing which the former, by acting perversely, build, the latter, by flattering, may render as it were shining. But the holy man, just as he does not think evil concerning the good, so refuses to judge good concerning the evil, saying, ‘Far be it from me that I should judge you righteous; until I fail, I shall not depart from my innocence.’”
The Fourth Council of Carthage, canon 56, joins flattering clerics with traitors: “A cleric who is discovered to devote himself to flatteries and betrayals shall be degraded from office.”
§ 5. Remedies must always be ready at hand for magistrates, and defenses against the flattering doctrines of political writers. For unless they perceive this danger, they will turn away even the counsels of good men; for good counsels are not easily given to a foolish prince or one ensnared by flatteries. The first remedy, therefore, is to be unwilling to be praised. Pescennius Niger said, not altogether imprudently, that while alive he wished to please, but when dead to be praised. The second is this: if this vice has not yet been shaken from the mind, the prince should nevertheless strive to advance so that he willingly hears truths and indicates that he understands and detests mocking encomia. He will recognize clearly that he is being ridiculed if they praise evil things, if they disguise vices under the name of virtues, and if they admire the prince’s error. Was he drunk? They raise his affability to heaven. Did he grow angry? They proclaim his magnanimity and his clemency because he did not rage. Did he deceive someone? They cry out that it was prudence. Believe that the man who is a zealous praiser of your offenses will dare great crimes together with you.
Who would not marvel at the folly of Dionysius of Syracuse, a most cunning man, from whom flatterers were called κόλακες? When the flatterers saw that he was growing blind, they too pretended to be blind: they struck against doorposts and walls and eagerly wished to be led by the hand by him to their couches. Wretched were those upon whom tyranny imposed the necessity of such foul flattery; most wretched was the man himself who wished to be mocked in this way.
Next, he will recognize mockery in praises if they pursue true goods with an encomium greater than they deserve; if they make a god from a human being. Such was that flatterer who said:
All night it rains; the spectacles return in the morning: Caesar holds an empire divided with Jupiter.
Third, if they offer an occasion for sinning. Alexander the Great lived in such a way that he was held most shameful by all. Yet Eudaemonicus, his sycophant, in order to show him ἀναμάρτητον, free from sin and altogether immune from every fault, was accustomed to admonish him that at last he should commit some evil. Behold how monstrous is the desire to flatter. The flattery of Anaxarchus belongs here, when he said that whatever the king did was right and lawful. Laertius, book 9, chapter 10. The man who advises these things is a traitor; the man who instills in a prince confidence in evils wishes to harm him.
Fourth, when they praise and ask; for that is accustomed to be the aim of court dogs, who flatter with the tail while you throw out a morsel, but when you have given it they go away; if you ask it back, they snarl. You will never give when flattery precedes, for he will think that you have given to your pride, not to him, since you had to be made senseless before you gave. But if he speaks more humanely about you because of his own art, he will give thanks to his art, not to your munificence.
§ 6. Another remedy is that you show openly that these men are hateful to you. And so they must be assailed with words, as Alexander Severus wished them to be cast aside and received with a guffaw. More high-spiritedly, Ladislaus, king of Poland, caressed them with slaps, with the excellent saying, “I strike back those who strike me.” Vitellius also furnished a remarkable example. After Galba had been killed, Vitellius later found more than one hundred and twenty petitions from men demanding rewards for some notable service on that day. Behold flattery offering itself for sale to the new prince. But what did Vitellius do? He ordered all of them to be sought out and killed—not from regard for Galba, but according to the traditional custom of princes: protection for the present, vengeance for the future. Therefore, O prince, I wish a great and constant hatred of these men to be impressed upon you, and I desire your palace to be purged of them as of mice.
Never believe that those will be faithful to you who either praise your sin or are ready to sin for your sake, who accommodate philosophy, politics, jurisprudence, and theology to your will. Accustom yourself, O prince, to hearing truths, and store these things, such as they are, in your mind. He who willingly hears truths offers great hope of right deeds. For τὸ κατόρθωμα ἐστὶν ἀληθείας ἔγγονον. Every duty arises from truth.