Calumniae non temere credundum

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:

1. Impartial war adds slayer to the slain.

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.

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-

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

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 Dionysus[*](Probably 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

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

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.