pain and rage if reproached before those with whom they desire to be held in good repute. And I think it was not so much wine that exasperated Alexander with Clitus, as his seeming to put him down in the presence of many people. And Aristomenes, the tutor of Ptolemy,101 because he went up to the king and woke him as he was asleep in an audience of some ambassadors, gave a handle to the king's flatterers who professed to be indignant on his behalf, and said, "If after your immense state-labours and many vigils you have been overpowered by sleep, he ought to have rebuked you privately, and not put his hands upon you before so many people." And Ptolemy sent for a cup of poison and ordered the poor man to drink it up. And Aristophanes said Cleon blamed him for "railing against the state when strangers were present,"102 and so irritating the Athenians. We ought therefore to be very much on our guard in relation to this point too as well as others, if we wish not to make a display and catch the public ear, but to use our freedom of speech for beneficial purposes and to cure vice. Moreover, what Thucydides has represented the Corinthians saying of themselves, that "they had a right to blame their neighbours,"103 is not a bad precept for those to remember who intend to use freedom of speech. Lysander, it seems, on one occasion said to a Megarian, who was speaking somewhat boldly on behalf of Greece among the allies, "Your words require a state to back them":104 similarly every man's freedom of speech requires character behind it, and especially true is this in regard to those who censure and correct others. Thus Plato said that his life was a tacit rebuke to Speusippus: and doubtless Xenocrates by his mere presence in the schools, and by his earnest look at Polemo, made a changed man of him. Whereas a man of levity and bad character, if he ventures to rebuke anybody, is likely to hear the line,
§ xxxiii. Yet since circumstances frequently call on people who are bad themselves in association with other such to reprove them, the most convenient mode of reproof will be that which contrives to include the reprover in the same indictment as the reproved, as in the case of the line,