Slander: on not Being Quick to Put Faith in it (24)

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 says[*] 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.