Slander: on not Being Quick to Put Faith in it (26-30)

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,

“Yes,” somebody will say, “but now and then the man who brings a personal charge deserves credence, because he seems to be just in all other matters and sensible also, and one would have to heed him, as he would never do such a scoundrelly thing as that.” Well, is there anyone more just than Aristides? But even he conspired against Themistocles and had a hand in stirring up the people against him, because, they say, he was secretly pricked by the same political ambition as Themistocles. Aristides was indeed just, in comparison with the rest of the world; but he was a man like anyone else and had spleen and not only loved but hated on occasion.

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[*]; 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

“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.