But Phylarchus says, that those Athenians who settled in Lemnos were great flatterers, mentioning them as such in the thirteenth book of his History. For that they, wishing to display their gratitude to the descendants of Seleucus and Antiochus, because Seleucus not only delivered them when they were severely oppressed by Lysimachus, but also restored both their cities to them,—they, I say, the Athenians in Lemnos, not only erected temples to Seleucus, but also to his son Antiochus; and they have given to the cup, which at their feasts is offered at the end of the banquet, the name of the cup of Seleucus the Saviour. Now some people, perverting the proper name, call this flattery ἀρέσκεια, complaisance; as Anaxandrides does in his Samian, where he says—
For flattery is now complaisance call'd.But those who devote themselves to flattery are not aware that that art is one which flourishes only a short time. Accordingly, Alexis says in his Liar—
A flatterer's life but a brief space endures,[p. 401] And Clearchus the Solensian, in the first book of his Amatory treatises, says—“No flatterer is constant in his friendship. For time destroys the falsehood of his pretences, and a lover is only a flatterer and a pretended friend on account of youth or beauty.” One of the flatterers of Demetrius the king was Adeimantus of Lampsacus, who having built a temple in Thriæ, and placed statues in it, called it the temple of Phila Venus, and called the place itself Philæum, from Phila the mother of Demetrius; as we are told by Dionysius the son of Tryphon, in the tenth book of his treatise on Names.
For no one likes a hoary parasite.
