Plutarch, Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur
Frank Cole Babbitt, Ed.

There is still another class of persons, even more unscrupulous than these, who employ this frankness of speech and reprehension of theirs in order to give pleasure. For example, Agis, the Argive, on an occasion when Alexander gave great gifts to a jester, in his jealousy and chagrin shouted out, ‘Heavens, what gross absurdity !’ The king turned upon him angrily and said, ‘What's that you say ?’ Whereupon he replied, ‘I confess that I feel troubled and indignant at seeing that all you sons of Zeus alike show favour to flatterers and ridiculous persons. For Heracles had pleasure in [p. 323] certain Cercopes, and Dionysus in Sileni, and one can see that such persons are in good repute with you.’ And once, when Tiberius Caesar had come into the Senate, one of the flatterers arose and said that they ought, being free men, to speak frankly, and not to dissemble or refrain from discussing anything that might be for the general good. Having thus aroused general attention, in the ensuing silence, as Tiberius gave ear, he said, ‘ Listen, Caesar, to the charges which we are all making against you, but which no one dares to speak out. You do not take proper care of yourself, you are prodigal of your bodily strength, you are continually wearing it out in your anxieties and labours in our behalf, you give yourself no respite either by day or by night.’ As he drew out a long string of such phrases, they say that the orator Cassius Severus remarked, ‘Such frankness as this will be the death of this man ! ’