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Consider it equally disgraceful to be outdone by your enemies in doing injury and to be surpassed by your friends in doing kindness.1 Admit to your companionship, not those alone who show distress at your reverses, but those also who show no envy at your good fortune; for there are many who sympathize with their friends in adversity, but envy them in prosperity.2 Mention your absent friends to those who are with you, so that they may think you do not forget them, in their turn, when they are absent.
1 The “get even” standard of honor in popular thought. Cf. Theog. 869-72: ἔν μοι ἔπειτα πέσοι μέγας οὐρανὸς εὐρὺς ὕπερθεν χάλκεος, ἀνθρώπων δεῖμα χαμαιγενέων, εἰ μὴ ἐγὼ τοῖσιν μὲν ἐπαρκέσω οἵ με φιλοῦσιν, τοῖς δ᾽ ἐχθροῖς ἀνίν καὶ μέγα πῆμ᾽ ἔσομαι. Even Socrates reflects this standard in Xen. Mem. 2.6.35. Not so Socrates in Plato: see Plat. Rep. 335a.
2 See Socrates' analysis of envy in Xen. Mem. 3.9.8.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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