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How One Can Praise Oneself Without Exciting Envy
by
“‘How did you get this wound?’ ‘Sir, by a javelin.’
‘How in the name of Heaven?’ ‘I was on
A scaling ladder fastened to a wall.’
I show my wound to them in serious earnest,
But they for their part only mock at me.”
Sec. XXII. As regards all these points then we must be on our guard as much as possible not to launch out into praise of ourselves, or yield to it in consequence of questions put to us to draw us. And the best caution and security against this is to pay attention to others who praise themselves, and to consider how disagreeable and objectionable the practice is to everybody, and that no other conversation is so offensive and tiring. For though we cannot say that we suffer any other evil at the hands of those who praise themselves, yet being naturally bored by the practice, and avoiding it, we are anxious to get rid of them and breathe again; insomuch that even the flatterer and parasite and needy person in his distress finds the rich man or satrap or king praising himself hard to bear and wellnigh intolerable; and they say that having to listen to all this is paying a very large shot to their entertainment, like the fellow in Menander;
“To hear their foolish[803] saws, and soldier talk,
Such as this cursed braggart bellows forth,
Kills me; I get lean even at their feasts.”
For as we may use this language not only about soldiers or men who have newly become rich,[804] who spin us a long yarn of their great and grand doings, being puffed up with pride and talking big about themselves; if we remember that the censure of others always follows our self-praise, and that the end of this vain-glory is a bad repute, and that, as Demosthenes says,[805] the result will be that we shall only tire our hearers, and not be thought what we profess ourselves to be, we shall cease talking about ourselves, unless by so doing we can bestow great benefit on ourselves or our hearers.
Footnotes:
[768] Pindar, “Olymp.” ix. 57, 58.
[769] Mentioned by Pausanias, iii. 12; viii. 50.
[770] “Memorabilia,” ii. l. 31.
[771] Reading as Wyttenbach suggests, [Greek: malista de hotan legetai ta allo pepragmena] sq.
[772] Thucydides, ii. 60.
[773] See Pausanias, ix. 14, 15.
[774] Homer, “Iliad,” iv. 405.
[775] Homer, “Iliad,” iv. 370, 371.
[776] Diomede.
[777] Sophocles, “Trachiniae,” 442.
[778] Homer, “Iliad,” xvi. 847, 848. Plutarch only quotes the first line. I have added the second for the English reader, as necessary for the sense.
[779] Homer, “Iliad,” i. 128, 129.
[780] “Iliad,” ix. 328.
[781] “Iliad,” xvi. 70, 71. [782] So Wyttenbach.
[783] Demosthenes, “De Corona,” p. 260.
[784] “De Corona,” p. 307.
[785] After Wyttenbach.
[786] After Wyttenbach.
[787] That is, laughing-stock. A play on the word Gelon.
[788] Homer, “Iliad,” xxii. 379. He speaks of Hector.
[789] Others take it “as fortune’s favourite.”
[790] Words of Demosthenes, “De Corona,” p. 325. Plutarch condenses them.
[791] Homer, “Odyssey,” xvi. 187.
[792] Titles of the Ptolemies, Philadelphus Philometor, Euergetes.
[793] Homer, “Iliad,” xxiii. 673.
[794] Ibid. 670.
[795] Homer, “Odyssey,” xii. 192-194.
[796] Ibid. ix. 228, 229.
[797] Fragments from the “Philoctetes” of Euripides.
[798] Homer, “Iliad,” i. 260, 261.
[799] Homer, “Iliad,” vi. 127.
[800] Homer, “Odyssey,” xii. 209-212.
[801] An allusion to Homer, “Iliad,” xix. 302.
[802] Adopting the reading of Duebner.
[803] Adopting the reading of Salmasius.
[804] Nouveaux riches, novi homines.
[805] Demosthenes, “De Corona,” p. 270.