Slander: on not Being Quick to Put Faith in it (11-15)

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 [*] 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