Calumniae non temere credundum

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 1. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913.

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 he[*](Odysseus 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

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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

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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.