There are people who, even if they afterwards learn that their friends have been unjustly accused to them, nevertheless, because they are ashamed of their own credulity, no longer can endure to receive them or look at them, as though they themselves had been wronged merely by finding out that the others were doing no wrong at all!

It follows, then, that life has been filled with troubles in abundance through the slanderous stories that have been believed so readily and so unquestioningly. Anteia says: Die, Proetus, or despatch Bellerophon,Who offered me his love, by me unsought,Homer, Iliad 6, 164. when she herself had made the first move and had been scorned. So the young man came near getting killed in the encounter with the Chimaera, and was rewarded for his continence and his respect for his host by being plotted against by a wanton. As for Phaedra, she too made a similar charge against her stepson and so brought it about that Hippolytus was cursed by his father Theseus: the story is told in the Hippolytus of Euripides. when he had done nothing impious—good Heavens, nothing!