Maxims of Theognis: Never make the mean man

Never make the mean man friend and comrade, but ever fly from him as a bad harbour. Many, look you, are companions in drinking and eating, but fewer in a serious matter. And nought is harder to discern than a friend of-base-alloy, O Cyrnus, or of more value than caution. The loss of alloyed gold or silver is to-be-borne, and it is easy for a shrewd man to detect: but if the mind of a friend within his breast is untrue without-your-knowledge, and he has a treacherous heart within him, this is the falsest thing that God hath made for man, this the most distressing of all to discern. For you cannot know man’s mind nor woman’s, before you have proved it, like as of a beast-of-burden. Nor could you guess it, as if at any time you had gone to a ware exposed for sale, for oftentimes appearances deceive the judgment.