Flattery and the Desire to Please

Abstract On Flattery is, in all probability, the opening treatise of Philodemus' composition On Vices and the Opposite Virtues and the People in whom they occur and the Situations in which they are found. Its subject is developed in two books, passages of which are found in several papyri. This chapter attempts to piece together the extant remains of On Flattery and provide a sense of what Philodemus' arguments might be. It appears that Philodemus' treatment of flattery is incisive and in places original, and emphasizes aspects of flattery not always found in the relevant literature. These include, for instance, the conceptual relations between flattery and cognate traits, the interactions between flatterers and their victims, and the reinterpretation of literary figures in the light of the hypothesis that they act as flatterers or as people susceptible to the flatterers' arts.