All this is on the outside, while on the inside there are many traitors who help the enemy, holding out their hands to him, opening the gates, and in every way furthering the capture of the hearer. First there is fondness for novelty, which is by nature common to all mankind, and ennui also; and secondly, a tendency to be attracted by startling rumours. Somehow or other we all like to hear stories that are slyly whispered in our ear, and are packed with innuendo: indeed, I know men who get as much pleasure from having their ears titillated with slander as some do from being tickled with feathers.

Therefore, when the enemy falls on with all these forces in league with him, he takes the fort by storm, I suppose, and his victory cannot even prove difficult, since nobody mans the walls or tries to repel his attacks. No, the hearer surrenders of his own accord, and the slandered person is not aware of the design upon him: slandered men are murdered in their sleep, just as when a city is captured in the night.

The saddest thing of all is that the slandered man, unaware of all that has taken place, meets his friend cheerfully, not being conscious of any misdeed, and speaks and acts in his usual manner, when he is beset on every side, poor fellow, with lurking foes. The other, if he is noble, gentlemanly, and outspoken, at once lets his anger burst out and vents his wrath, and then at last, on permitting a defence to be made, finds out that he was incensed at_ his friend for nothing.

But if he is ignoble and mean he welcomes him and smiles at him out of the corner of his mouth, while all the time he hates him and secretly grinds his teeth and broods, as the poet saysHomer; the word is frequent in the Odyssey (e.g. 9, 316 ; 17, 66). on his anger. Yet nothing, I think, is more unjust or more contemptible than to bite your lips and nurse your bitterness, to lock your hatred up within yourself and nourish it, thinking one thing in the depths of your heart and saying another, and acting a very eventful tragedy, full of lamentation, with a jovial comedy face.

Men are more liable to act in this way when the slanderer has long seemed to be a friend of the person slandered, and yet does what he does. In that case they are no longer willing even to hear the voice of the men slandered or of those who speak in their behalf, for they assume in advance that the accusation can be relied on because of the apparent friendship of long standing, without even reflecting that many reasons for hatred . often arise between the closest friends, of which the rest of the world knows nothing. Now and then, too, a man makes haste to accuse his neighbour of something that he is himself to blame for, trying in this way to escape accusation himself. And in general, nobody would venture to slander an enemy, for in that case his accusation would not inspire belief, as its motive would be patent. No, they attack those men who seem to be their best friends, aiming to show their good will toward their hearers by sacrificing even their nearest and dearest to help them.

There are people who, even if they afterwards learn that their friends have been unjustly accused to them, nevertheless, because they are ashamed of their own credulity, no longer can endure to receive them or look at them, as though they themselves had been wronged merely by finding out that the others were doing no wrong at all!

It follows, then, that life has been filled with troubles in abundance through the slanderous stories that have been believed so readily and so unquestioningly. Anteia says: Die, Proetus, or despatch Bellerophon,Who offered me his love, by me unsought,Homer, Iliad 6, 164. when she herself had made the first move and had been scorned. So the young man came near getting killed in the encounter with the Chimaera, and was rewarded for his continence and his respect for his host by being plotted against by a wanton. As for Phaedra, she too made a similar charge against her stepson and so brought it about that Hippolytus was cursed by his father Theseus: the story is told in the Hippolytus of Euripides. when he had done nothing impious—good Heavens, nothing !

“Yes,” somebody will say, “but now and then the man who brings a personal charge deserves credence, because he seems to be just in all other matters and sensible also, and one would have to heed him, as he would never do such a scoundrelly thing as that.” Well, is there anyone more just than Aristides? But even he conspired against Themistocles and had a hand in stirring up the people against him, because, they say, he was secretly pricked by the same political ambition as Themistocles. Aristides was indeed just, in comparison with the rest of the world; but he was a man like anyone else and had spleen and not only loved but hated on occasion.

And if the story of Palamedes is true, the most sensible of the Greeks and the best of them in other ways stands convicted of having, through envy, framed a plot and an ambush to trap a kinsman and a friend, who had sailed away from home to front the same peril as heOdysseus trapped Palamedes by getting a forged letter from Priam hidden in his tent and then pretending to discover it.; so true is it that to err in this direction is inborn in all mankind.

Why should I mention Socrates, who was unjustly slandered to the Athenians as an irreligious man and a traitor? or Themistocles and Miltiades, both of whom, after all their victories, came to be suspected of treason against Greece? The instances are countless, and are already for the most part well known.

“Then what should a man do, if he has sense and lays claim to probity or truthfulness?.” In my opinion he should do what Homer suggested in his parable of the Sirens. He bids us to sail past these deadly allurements and to stop our ears ; not to hold them wide open to men prejudiced by passion, but, setting Reason as a strict doorkeeper over all that is said, to welcome and admit what deserves it, but shut out and drive off what is bad. For surely, it would be ridiculous to have doorkeepers to guard your house, but to leave your ears and your mind wide open.

Therefore, when a man comes and tells you a thing of this sort, you must investigate the matter on its own merits, without regarding the years of the speaker or his standing, or his carefulness in what he says; for the more plausible a man is, the closer your investigation should be. You should not, then, put faith in another's judgment, or rather (as you would be doing), in the accuser’s want of judgment, Literally, "in the accuser’s hatred.” To secure something like the word-play in the Greek, the sense had to suffer slightly. but should reserve to yourself the province of investigating the truth, accrediting the slanderer with his envy and conducting an open examination into the sentiments of both men; and you should only hate or love a man after you have put him to the proof. To do so before that time, influenced by the first breath of slander—Heavens! how childish, how base and, beyond everything, how unjust! But the cause of this and all the rest of it, as I said in the beginning, is ignorance, and the fact that the real character of each of us is shrouded in darkness. Hence, if some oné of the gods would only unveil our lives, Slander would vanish away to limbo, having no place left, since everything would be illumined by Truth.