But there are many people like Gnatho, and it is when they are superior either in position or fortune or reputation that their flatteries become mischievous, the weight of their position making up for the lightness of their character.
Cicero warns that the flattery of those in positions of power or wealth is particularly dangerous because their status lends undue credibility to their insincere words.
Share
More from Cicero
But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I am glad to be wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure to be wrested from me as long as I live.
Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?
But had it not been the case that souls were immortal, it would not have been the souls of all the best men that made the greatest efforts after an immortality of fame.
But my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever fixed its eyes upon future ages, as though from a conviction that it would begin to live only when it had left the body.
Other voices in this conversation
