Calumniae non temere credundum

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.