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 !
 

“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 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




 

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.