It is really a terrible thing, is ignorance, a cause of many woes to humanity; for it envelops things in a fog, so to speak, and obscures the truth and overshadows each man’s life. Truly, we all resemble people lost in the dark—nay, we are even like blind men. Now we stumble inexcusably, now we lift our feet when there is no need of it; and we do not see what is near and right before us, but fear what is far away and extremely remote as if it blocked our path. In short, in everything we do we are always making plenty of missteps. For this redson the writers of tragedy have found in this universal truth many and many a motive for their dramas—take for example, the house of Labdacus, King of Thebes, father of Laius. the house of Pelops and their like. Indeed, most of the troubles that.are put on the stage are supplied to the poets, you will find, by ignorance, as though it were a sort of tragic divinity. What I have in mind more than anything else is slanderous lying about acquaintances and friends, through which families have been rooted out, cities have utterly perished, fathers have been driven mad against their children, brothers against own brothers, children against their parents and lovers against those they love. Many a friendship, too, has. been parted and many an oath broken through belief in slander.

In order, then, that we may as far as possible avoid being involved in it, I wish to show in words, as if in a painting, what sort of thing slander is, how it begins and what it does.

I should say, however, that Apelles of Ephesus long ago preempted this subject for a picture ; and with good reason, for he himself had been slandered to Ptolemy on the ground that he had taken part with Theodotas in the conspiracy in Tyre, although Apelles had never set eyes on Tyre and did not know who Theodotas was, beyond having heard that he was one of Ptolemy’s governors, in charge of affairs in Phoenicia. The story is apocryphal, as Apelles must have been in his grave nearly a hundred years when Theodotus (not Theodotas) betrayed Ptolemy Philopator (219 3.c.). Nevertheless, one of his rivals named Antiphilus, through envy of his favour at court and professional jealousy, maligned him by telling Ptolemy that he had taken part in the whole enterprise, and that someone had seen him dining with Theodotas in Phoenicia and whispering into his ear all through the meal; and in the end he declared that the revolt of Tyre and the capture of Pelusium had taken place on the advice of Apelles.

Ptolemy, who in general was not particularly sound of judgment, but had been brought up in the midst of courtly flattery, was so inflamed and upset by this surprising charge that he did not take into account any of the probabilities, not considering either that the accuser was a rival or that a painter was too insignificant a person for so great a piece of treason— a painter, too, who had been well treated by him and honoured above any of his fellow-craftsmen. Indeed, he did not even enquire whether Apelles had gone to Tyre at all. On the contrary, he at once began to rave and filled the palace with noise, shouting “The ingrate,” “The plotter,’ and “The conspirator.”’ And if one of his fellow-prisoners, who was indignant at the impudence of-Antiphilus and felt sorry for poor Apelles, had not said that the man had not taken any part whatever in the affair, he would have had his head cut off, and so would have shared the consequences of the troubles in Tyre without being himself to blame for them in any way.

Ptolemy is said to have been so ashamed of the affair that he presented Apelles with a hundred talents and gave him Antiphilus for his slave. Apelles, for his part, mindful of the risk that he had run, hit back at slander in a painting.

On the right of it sits a man with very large ears, almost like those of Midas, extending his hand to Slander while she is still at some distance from him. Near him, on one side, stand two women—Ignorance, I think, and Suspicion. On the other side, Slander is coming up, a woman beautiful beyond measure, but full of passion and excitement, evincing as she does fury and wrath by carrying in her left hand a blazing torch and with the other dragging by the hair a young man who stretches out his hands to heaven and calls the gods to witness his innocence, She is © conducted by a pale ugly man who has a piercing eye and looks as if he had wasted away in long illness; he may be supposed to be Envy. Besides, there are two women in attendance on Slander, egging her on, tiring her and tricking her out. According to the interpretation of them given me by the guide to the picture, one was Treachery and the other Deceit. They were followed by a woman dressed in deep mourning, with black clothes all in tatters—Repentance, I think, her name was. At all events, she was turning back with tears in her eyes and casting a stealthy glance, full of shame, at Truth, who was approaching.

That is the way in which Apelles represented in the painting his own hairbreadth escape.

Come, suppose we too, if you like, following the lead of the Ephesian artist, portray the characteristics of slander, after first sketching it in outline: for in that way our picture will perhaps come out more clearly. Slander, then, is a clandestine accusation, made without the cognizance of the accused and _ sustained by the uncontradicted assertion of one side. This is the subject of my lecture, and since there are three leading characters in slander as in comedy—the slanderér, the slandered person, and the hearer of the slander,—let us consider what is ukely to happen in the case of each of them. This partition, derived from Herodotus (7, 10), is not at all strictly followed by Lucian in developing his theme.

In the first place, if you like, let us bring on the star of the play, I mean the author of the slander. That he is not a good man admits of no doubt, I am sure, because no good man would make trouble for his neighbour. On the contrary, it is characteristic of good men to win renown and gain a reputation for kind-heartedness by doing good to their friends, not by accusing others wrongfully and getting them hated.

Furthermore, that such a man is unjust, lawless, impious and harmful to his associates is easy to see. Who will not admit that fairness in everything and unselfishness are due to justice, unfairness and: selfishness to injustice? But when a man plies slander in secret against people who are absent, is he not selfish, inasmuch as he completely appropriates his hearer by getting his ear first, stopping it up and making it altogether impervious to the defence because it has been previously filled with slander? Such conduct is indeed the height of injustice, and the best of the lawgivers, Solon and Draco, for example, would say so, too; for they put the jurors on oath to hear both sides alike and to divide their goodwill equally between the litigants until such time as the plea of the defendant, after comparison with the other, shall disclose itself to be better or worse. To pass judgment betore weighing the defence against the complaint would, they thought, be altogether impious and irreligious. In truth, we may say that the very gods would be angry if we should permit the plaintiff to say his say unhampered, but should stop our ears to the defendant or silence him,The Greek is here corrupt. The translation merely gives the probable sense of the passage. and then condemn him, conquered by the'first plea. It may be said, then, that slander does not accord with what is just and legal, and what the jurors swear to do. But. if anybody thinks that the lawgivers, who regommend that verdicts be so just and impartial, are not good authority, I shall cite the best of poets in support of my contention. He makes a very admirable pronouncement — indeed, lays down a law—on this point, saying : Though this verse was frequently quoted in antiquity, its authorship was unknown even then, and it was variously, attributed to Phocylides, Hesiod, and Pittheus. See Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii, p. 93. Nor give your verdict ere both sides you hear. He knew, I suppose, like everyone else, that though there are many unjust things in the world, nothing worse or more unjust can be found than for men to have been condemned untried and unheard. But this is just what the slanderer tries his best to accomplish, exposing the slandered person untried to the anger of the hearer and precluding defence by the secrecy of his accusation.

Of course, all such men are also disingenuous and cowardly ; they do nothing in the open, but shoot from some hiding-place or, other, like soldiers in ambush, so that it is impossible either to face them or to fight them, but a man must let himself be slain in helplessness and in ignorance of the character of the war. And this is the surest proof that there is no truth in the stories of slanderers; for if a man is conscious that he is making a true charge, that man, I take it, accuses the other in public, brings him to book and pits himself against him in argument. No soldier who can win in fair fight makes use of ambushes and tricks against the enemy.

For the most part, such men may be seen enjoying high favour in the courts of kings and among the friends of governors and princes, where envy is great, suspicions are countless, and occasions for flattery and slander are frequent. For where hope runs ever high, there envy is more bitter, hate more dangerous, and rivalry more cunning. All eye one another sharply and keep watch like gladiators to detect some part of the body exposed. Everyone, wishing to be first himself, shoves or elbows his neighbour out of his way and, if he can, slyly pulls down or trips up the man ahead. In this way a good man is simply upset and thrown at the start, and finally thrust off the course in disgrace, while one who is better versed in flattery and cleverer at such unfair practices wins. In a word, it is “devil take the hindmost !” ; for they quite confirm Homer’s saying: Impartial war adds slayer to the slain.Iliad 18, 309. So, as their conflict is for no small stake, they think out all sorts of ways to get at each other, of which the quickest, though most perilous, road is slander, which has a hopeful beginning in envy or hatred, but leads to a sorry, tragic ending, beset with many accidents.

Yet this is not an insignificant or a simple thing, as one might suppose; it requires much skill, no little shrewdness, and some degree of close study. For slander would not do so much harm if it were not set afoot in a plausible way, and it would not prevail over truth, that is stronger than all else, if it did not assume a high degree of attractiveness and plausibility and a thousand things beside to disarm its hearers.

Generally speaking, slander is most often directed against a man who is in favour and on this account is viewed with envy by those he has put behind him. They all direct their shafts at him, regarding him as a hindrance and a stumbling-block, and each one expects to be first himself when he has routed his chief and ousted him from favour. Something of the same sort happens in the athletic games, in footraces. A good runner fram the moment that the barrier falls Races were started in antiquity by the dropping of a rope or bar. thinks only of getting forward, sets his mind on the finish and counts on his legs to win for him; he therefore does not molest the man next to him in any way or trouble himself at ail about the contestants. But an inferior, unsportsmanlike competitor, abandoning all hope based on his speed, resorts to crooked work, and the only thing in the world he thinks of is cutting off the runner by holding or tripping him, with the idea that if he should fail in this he would never be able to win. So it is with the friendships of the mighty. The man in the lead is forthwith the object of plots, and if caught off.his guard in the midst of his foes, he is made away with, while-they are cherished and are thought friendly because of the harm they appeared to be doing to others.

As for the verisimilitude of their slander, calum- niators are not careless in thinking out that point; all their work centres on it, for they are afraid to put in anything discordant or even irrelevant. For example, they generally make their charges credible by distorting the real attributes of the man they are slandering. Thus they insinuate that a doctor is a poisoner, that a rich man is a would-be monarch, or that a courtier is a traitor.

Sometimes, however, the hearer himself suggests the starting-point for slander, and the knaves attain their end by adapting themselves to his disposition. If they see that he is jealous, they say: “He signed to your wife during dinner and gazed at her and sighed, and Stratonice was not very displeased withhim.” In short, the charges they make to him are . based on passion and illicit love. If he has a bent for poetry and prides himself on it, they say : “No, indeed! Philoxenus made fun of your verses, pulled them to pieces and said that they wouldn’t scan and were wretchedly composed.” Toa pious, godly man the charge is made that his friend is godless and impious, that he rejects God and denies Providence. Thereupon the man, stung in the ear, so to speak, by a gadfly, gets thoroughly angry, as is natural, and turns his back on his friend without awaiting definite proof.

In short, they think out and say the sort of thing that they know to be best adapted to provoke the hearer to anger, and as they know the place where each can be wounded, they shoot their arrows and throw their spears at it, so that their hearer, thrown off his balance by sudden anger, will not thereafter be free to get at the truth; indeed, however much a slandered man may want to defend himself, he will not let him do so, because he is prejudiced by the surprising nature of what he has’ heard, just as if that made it true.

A very effective form of slander is the one that is based on opposition to the hearer’s tastes. For instance, in the court of the Ptolemy who was called DionysusProbably Ptolemy Auletes, father of Cleopatra, who styled himself "the new Dionysus.” there was once a man who accused Demetrius, the Platonic philosopher, of drinking nothing but water and of being the only person who did not wear women’s clothes during the feast of Dionysus. If Demetrius, on being sent for early the next morning, had ‘not drunk wine in view of everybody and had not put on a thin gown and played the cymbals and danced, he would have been put to death for not liking the king’ s mode of life, and being a critic and an opponent of Ptolemy’s luxury.

In the court of Alexander it was once the greatest of all slanderous charges to say that a man did not worship Hephaestion or even make obeisance to him —for after the death of Hephaestion, Alexander for the love he bore him determined to add to his other great feats that of appointing the dead man a god. So the cities at once erected temples; plots of ground - were consecrated ; altars, sacrifices and feasts were established in honour of this new god, and everybody’s strongest oath was “By Hephaestion.” If anyone smiled at what went on or failed to'seem quite reverent, the penalty prescribed was death. The flatterers, taking hold of this childish passion of Alexander’s, at once began to feed it and fan it into flame by telling about dreams of Hephaestion, in that way ascribing to him visitations and cures and accrediting him with prophecies; and at last they began to sacrifice to him as “‘ Coadjutor” and "Saviour.”In this way they made him out the associate of Apollo. Alexander liked to hear all this, and at length believed it, and was very proud of himself for being, as he thought, not only the son of a god but also able to make gods. Well, how many of Alexander's friends, do you suppose, reaped the results of Hephaestion’s divinity during that period, through being accused of not honouring the universal god, and consequently being banished and deprived of the king’s favour?

It was then that Agathocles of Samos, one of Alexander’s captains whom he esteemed highly, came near being shut up in a lion’s den because he was charged with having wept as he went by the tomb of Hephaestion. But Perdiccas is said to have come to his rescue, swearing by all the gods and by Hephaestion to boot that while he was hunting the god had appeared to him in the flesh and had bidden him tell Alexander to spare Agathocles, saying that he had not wept from want of faith or because he thought Hephaestion dead, but only because he had been put in mind of their old-time friendship.

As you see, flattery and slander were most likely to find an opening when they were framed with reference to Alexander's weak point. In a siege the enemy do not attack the high, sheer and secure parts of the wall, but wherever they notice that any portion is unguarded, unsound or low, they move all their forces against that place because they can very easily get in there and take the city. Just so with slanderers: they assail whatever part of the soul they perceive to be weak, unsound and easy of access, bringing their siege-engines to bear on it and finally capturing it, as no one opposes them or notices their assault. Then, when they are once within the walls, they fire everything and smite and slay and banish ; for all these things are likely to happen when the soul is captured and put in bondage.

The engines that they use against the hearer are deceit, lying, perjury, insistence, impudence, and a thousand other unprincipled means; but the most important of all is flattery, a bosom friend, yes, an own sister to slander. Nobody is so high-minded and has a soul so well protected by walls of adamant that he cannot succumb to the assaults of flattery, especially when he is being undermined and his foundations sapped by slander.