EPISTLE XVIII.
TO LOLLIUS.
He treats at large upon the cultivation of the favor of great men; and concludes with a few words concerning the acquirement of peace of mind.
If I rightly know your temper, most ingenuous Lollius, you will beware of imitating a flatterer, while you profess yourself a friend. As a matron is unlike and of a different aspect from a strumpet, so will a true friend differ from the toad-eater. There is an opposite vice to this, rather the greater [of the two]; a clownish, inelegant, and disagreeable bluntness, which would recommend itself by an unshaven face and black teeth; while it desires to be termed pure freedom and true sincerity. Virtue is the medium of the two vices; and equally remote from either. The one is over-prone to complaisance, and a jester of the lowest, couch, he so reverences the rich man’s nod, so repeats his speeches, and catches up his falling words; that you would take him for a school-boy saying his lesson to a rigid master, or a player acting an underpart; another often wrangles about a goat’s hair, and armed engages for any trifle: “That I, truly, should not have the first credit; and that I should not boldly speak aloud, what is my real sentiment—[upon such terms], another life would be of no value.” But what is the subject of this controversy? Why, whether [the gladiator] Castor or Dolichos be the cleverer fellow; whether the Minucian, or the Appian, be the better road to Brundusium.
