14
Sometimes, however, the hint is taken from the hearer’s own nature; the villains succeed by using a bait that will tempt him, They know he is jealous, and they tell him: ‘He beckoned to your wife at dinner, and sighed as he gazed at her; and Stratonice—well, did not seem offended.’ Or he writes poetry, and piques himself upon it; then, ‘Philoxenus had great sport pulling your poem to pieces—said the metre was faulty and the composition vile.' A devout religious person is told that his friend is an atheist and a blasphemer, rejects belief and denies Providence. That is quite enough; the venom has entered at the ear and inflamed the brain; the man does not wait for confirmation, but abandons his friend.
15
In a word, they invent and say the kind of thing that they know will be most irritating to their hearer, and having a full knowledge of his vulnerable point, concentrate their fire upon it; he is to be too much flustered by rage to have time for investigation; the very surprise of what he is told is to be so convincing to him that he will not hear, even if his friend is willing to plead.
16
That slander, indeed, is especially effective which is unwelcome; Demetrius the Platonic was reported to Ptolemy Dionysus for a water drinker, and for the only man who had declined to put on female attire at the Dionysia. He was summoned next morning, and had to drink in public, dress up in gauze, clash and dance to the cymbals, or he would have been put to death for disapproving the King’s life, and setting up for a critic of his luxurious ways.
