26
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!
27
“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.
28
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 heOdysseus 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.
