In Praise of FlatteryWhere would we be without flattery? Hobbes deemed it an honorable duty and Meredith called it the finest of the arts. Alexander the Great applied it as imperial policy; Caesar and Cleopatra were masters of it; and Napoleon devoured it like candy. But flattery also has influential enemies. Cicero called flattery the handmaid of vice and Tacitus compared it to poison. In a work as erudite as it is entertaining, Willis Goth Regier looks into flattery as