Life & Wisdom Quote by Phaedrus

A two-part sting: he can swindle strangers, but his own circle refuses to grant him the dignity of being taken seriously. In Phaedrus, that split matters. As a poet of fables writing under early Imperial Rome, he’s obsessed with social asymmetry - who has power, who performs it, who gets punished for believing in appearances. The line works because it turns “success” into a narrow, brittle thing. The con artist’s triumph over strangers is real only at a distance; intimacy collapses the illusion.

The verb choice is key. “Gulls” suggests not just tricking but making someone look foolish, a public diminishment. Then the second clause flips the humiliation back onto the trickster. Friends “make fun” of him: ridicule as social correction, the group’s way of saying, We know your game, and we won’t reward it with admiration. There’s a moral economy here that feels very Roman: reputation isn’t built on what you can extract from outsiders, but on how you’re ranked by the people who can verify you.

Subtext: charisma is portable, credibility isn’t. Strangers encounter the performance; friends have receipts. Phaedrus is also quietly tracing a class dynamic: strangers are easier prey because they lack networks; friends are dangerous because they share information. The line lands like an epigram because it refuses comfort. It doesn’t promise justice, only exposure - the closest thing to justice many people actually get.