Next after this comes the decision to be made
concerning friends, and here we approve neither the
idea of Themistocles nor that of Cleon. For Cleon,
when he first decided to take up political life, brought
his friends together and renounced his friendship
with them as something which ofter weakens and
perverts the right and just choice of policy in political
life. But he would have done better if he had cast
out from his soul avarice and love of strife and had
cleansed himself of envy and malice ; for the State
needs, not men who have no friends or comrades,
but good and self-controlled men. As it was, he
drove away his friends,
But a hundred heads of cursed flatterers circling fawned1
about him, as the comic poets say ; and being rough
and harsh to the better classes he in turn subjected
himself to the multitude in order to win its favour,
Its old age tending, dosing it with pay,2
and making the basest and most unsound element
of the people his associates against ;he best. But
Themistocles on the other hand, when someone said
that he would govern well if he showed himself
equally impartial to all, replied : ‘May I never
[p. 205]
take my seat on such a throne that my friends shall
not have more from me than those who are not my
friends !’ He also was wrong; for he put the government under pledge to his friendship, subordinating
the affairs of the community and the public to private
favours and interests. And yet when Simonides
asked for something that was not just, he said to
him : ‘Neither is he a good poet who sings contrary to metre, nor is he an equitable ruler who
grants favours contrary to law.’ For truly it is an
outrageous and abominable thing if a pilot selects
sailors and a ship-captain selects a pilot
Well knowing how at the stern to hold steady the tiller and
also
How to stretch taut the yard ropes when rises the onrushing
tempest,3
and an architect chooses subordinates and handicraftsmen who will not spoil his work but will co-operate to perfect it, whereas the statesman, who is,
as Pindar says,
4 the best of craftsmen and the maker
of lawfulness and justice, does not immediately
choose friends whose convictions are I ke his own,
who will aid him and share his enthusiasm for what
is noble, but rather those who are always wrongfully
and by violent means trying to divert him to various
other uses. Such a statesman will be found to be
no better than a builder or a carpenter who through
ignorance and error makes use of such squares and
rulers and levels as are sure to make his work crooked.
For friends are the living and thinking tools of the
statesman, and he ought not to slip with them when
they go wrong, but he must be on the watch that
[p. 207]
they do not err even through ignorance. In fact,
it was this that disgraced Solon and brought him
into disrepute among the citizens ; for when he
made up his mind to lighten debts and to introduce
the Seisachtheia
5 (that was the nickname for the
cancellation of debts), he told his friends about
it, and they did a very wrong thing ; they secretly
borrowed a great deal of money before the law was
published, and a little later, after its publication,
they were found to have bought splendid houses
and much land with the money they had borrowed,
and Solon, who was wronged, was accused of sharing
in their wrongdoing. Agesilaüs, too, showed himself very weak and poor-spirited in dealing with his
friends' solicitations and, like Pegasus in Euripides'
drama,
Crouched down and yielded more if more he wished,6
and by too great eagerness in aiding them when in
misfortunes he made himself seem like them in wrongdoing ; for example, when Phoebidas was on trial
for seizing the Cadmeia without orders, he got him off
by saying that such things were bound to happen of
their own accord ; and when Sphodrias was being
tried for an illegal and frightful act (for he had invaded Attica when the Athenians were friends and
allies), he brought about his acquittal, being softened
by the amorous pleadings of his son. And a note of
his to a certain ruler is quoted as follows : ‘If Nicias
is innocent, let him go ; if he is guilty, let him go for
my sake; anyway, let him go.’
7 But Phocion did
[p. 209]
not even appear in support of his son-in-law Charicles
when he was accused in connexion with the Harpalus
affair ; he merely said : ‘I made you my son-in-law
for nothing but what is right’ and went away. And
Timoleon of Corinth,
8 when he was unable either by
instruction or by entreaty to make his brother give up
his tyranny, joined with those who destroyed him. For
a statesman ought, by stopping short of being a party
to perjury, not to be a ‘friend as far as the altar,’
9
as Pericles once said, but only so far as conforms to any
law, equity, or advantage the neglect of which leads
to great public injury, as did the failure to punish
Sphodrias and Phoebidas, for they did a great deal to
make Sparta enter into the Leuctrian war. For the
principles that govern a statesman's conduct do not
force him to act with severity against the moderate
errors of his friends ; on the contrary, they make it
possible for him, after he has once made the chief
public interests safe, out of his abundant resources to
assist his friends, take his stand beside them, and help
them out of their troubles. And there are also favours
which arouse no ill-will, such as aiding a friend to
gain an office, putting into his hands some honourable
administrative function or some friendly foreign
mission, for example one which includes honours to a
ruler or negotiations with a State concerning friendship and concord ; and if some public activity be
laborious, but conspicuous and important, the statesman can first appoint himself to the post and then
choose his friend as assistant, just as Diomedes
did :
[p. 211]
So if you tell me myself to choose another as comrade,
How in that case could I e'er be forgetful of godlike
Odysseus?10
And Odysseus again fittingly returns the compliment:
Now these horses, old sir, these new ones, of which thou
inquirest,
Thracian they are, but their master was slain by the brave
Diomedes,
Slain and beside him his comrades, twelve comrades and
all of the noblest.11
For such concession to one's friends adorns those
who give praise no less than those who receive it;
but self-conceit, says Plato,
12 dwells with loneliness.
Then, besides, a man ought to ascribe to his friends a
share in his own good and kindly acts of favour ; he
should tell those who have been benefited to praise and
show them affection as the originators and advisers of
the favours. But base and absurd requests he should
reject, not harshly but gently, informing the askers
by way of consolation that the requests are not in
accord with their own excellence and reputation.
Epameinondas exemplifies this most admirably: after
refusing to let the pedlar out of prison at Pelopidas's
request and then letting him out a little later when
his mistress asked it, he said, ‘Favours of that sort,
Pelopidas, are fit for courtesans to receive, but not
for generals.’ But Cato acted harshly and arbitrarily
when he was quaestor, and Catulus the censor, one of
his most intimate friends, asked for the acquittal of a
man who was being tried, by saying : ‘It is a disgrace that you, whose duty it is to train us young
men to honourable conduct, have to be thrown out
by our servants.’ For he might, while refusing the
[p. 213]
favour in fact, have avoided harshness and bitterness of speech, by producing the impression that
the offensive quality of his action was not due to
his own will, but was forced upon him by law and
justice. There ai'e also in public life ways which
are not dishonourable of helping friends who need
money to acquire it; as, for example, when after
the battle Themistocles saw a corpse wearing a
golden bracelet and necklace, he himself passed
it by, but turned to his friend and said, ‘Take
these things, for you are not, as I am, Themistocles.’
For the administration of affairs frequently gives the
man in public life this sort of chance to help his
friends ; for not every man is a Menemachus.
13 Hand
over to one friend a case at law which will bring in
a good fee as advocate in a just cause, to another
introduce a rich man who needs legal oversight and
protection, and help another to get some profitable
contract or lease. Epameinondas even told a friend
to go to a certain rich man and ask for a talent,
saying that it was he who bade him give it; and when
the man who had been asked for it came and asked
him the reason, he replied : ‘Because this man is a
good man and poor, but you are rich since you have
appropriated much of the State's wealth.’ And
Xenophon
14 says that Agesilaiis delighted in enriching
his friends, he being himself above money.
