in consequence of questions put to us to draw us. And the best caution
and security against this is to pay attention to others who praise
themselves, and to consider how disagreeable and objectionable the
practice is to everybody, and that no other conversation is so offensive
and tiring. For though we cannot say that we suffer any other evil at
the hands of those who praise themselves, yet being naturally bored by
the practice, and avoiding it, we are anxious to get rid of them and
breathe again; insomuch that even the flatterer and parasite and needy
person in his distress finds the rich man or satrap or king praising
himself hard to bear and wellnigh intolerable; and they say that having
to listen to all this is paying a very large shot to their
entertainment, like the fellow in Menander;

"To hear their foolish[803] saws, and soldier talk,
Such as this cursed braggart bellows forth,
Kills me; I get lean even at their feasts."

For as we may use this language not only about soldiers or men who have
newly become rich,[804] who spin us a long yarn of their great and grand
doings, being puffed up with pride and talking big about themselves; if
we remember that the censure of others always follows our self-praise,
and that the end of this vain-glory is a bad repute, and that, as
Demosthenes says,[805] the result will be that we shall only tire our
hearers, and not be thought what we profess ourselves to be, we shall
cease talking about ourselves, unless by so doing we can bestow great
benefit on ourselves or our hearers.

[768] Pindar, "Olymp." ix. 57, 58.

[769] Mentioned by Pausanias, iii. 12; viii. 50.

[770] "Memorabilia," ii. l. 31.

[771] Reading as Wyttenbach suggests, [Greek: malista de
hotan legetai ta allo pepragmena] _sq._

[772] Thucydides, ii. 60.

[773] See Pausanias, ix. 14, 15.

[774] Homer, "Iliad," iv. 405.

[775] Homer, "Iliad," iv. 370, 371.

[776] Diomede.

[777] Sophocles, "Trachiniae," 442.

[778] Homer, "Iliad," xvi. 847, 848. Plutarch only
quotes the first line. I have added the second for the
English reader, as necessary for the sense.

[779] Homer, "Iliad," i. 128, 129.

[780] "Iliad," ix. 328.

[781] "Iliad," xvi. 70, 71. [782] So Wyttenbach.

[783] Demosthenes, "De Corona," p. 260.

[784] "De Corona," p. 307.

[785] After Wyttenbach.

[786] After Wyttenbach.

[787] Th