Warned by this lesson, often examine yourself.
A certain Man had a very ugly Daughter, and also a Son, remarkable for his handsome features. These, diverting themselves, as children do, chanced to look into a mirror, as it lay upon their mother’s chair.[III.23] He praises his own good looks; she is vexed, and cannot endure the raillery of her boasting brother, construing everything (and how could she do otherwise?) as a reproach against herself. Accordingly, off she runs to her Father, to be avenged on him in her turn, and with great rancour, makes a charge against the Son, how that he, though a male, has been meddling with a thing that belongs to the women. Embracing them both, kissing them, and dividing his tender affection between the two, he said: “I wish you both to use the mirror every day: you, that you may not spoil your beauty by vicious conduct; you, that you may make amends by your virtues for your looks.”
[ Fable IX.]
SOCRATES TO HIS FRIENDS.
The name of a friend is common; but fidelity is rarely found.
Socrates having laid for himself the foundation of a small house (a man, whose death I would not decline, if I could acquire similar fame, and like him I could yield to envy, if I might be but acquitted[III.24] when ashes); one of the people, no matter who, amongst such passing remarks as are usual in these cases, asked: “Why do you, so famed as you are, build so small a house?”
“I only wish,” he replied, “I could fill it with real friends.”
[ Fable X.]
THE POET, ON BELIEVING, AND NOT BELIEVING.
It is dangerous alike to believe or to disbelieve. Of either fact, I will briefly lay before you an instance.
Hippolytus met his death,[III.25] because his step-mother was believed: because Cassandra was not believed, Troy fell. Therefore, we ought to examine strictly into the truth of a matter, rather than suffer an erroneous impression to pervert our judgment. But, that I may not weaken this truth by referring to fabulous antiquity, I will relate to you a thing that happened within my own memory.
A certain married Man, who was very fond of his Wife, having now provided the white toga[III.26] for his Son, was privately taken aside by his Freedman, who hoped that he should be substituted as his next heir, and who, after telling many lies about the youth, and still more about the misconduct of the chaste Wife, added, what he knew would especially grieve one so fond, that a gallant was in the habit of paying her visits, and that the honor of his house was stained with base adultery. Enraged at the supposed guilt of his Wife, the husband pretended a journey to his country-house, and privately stayed behind in town; then at night he suddenly entered at the door, making straight to his Wife’s apartment, in which the mother had ordered her son to sleep, keeping a strict eye over his ripening years. While they are seeking for a light, while the servants are hurrying to and fro, unable to restrain the violence of his raging passion, he approaches the bed, and feels a head in the dark. When he finds the hair cut close,[III.27] he plunges his sword into the sleeper’s breast, caring for nothing, so he but avenge his injury. A light being brought, at the same instant he beholds his son, and his chaste wife sleeping in her apartment; who, fast locked in her first sleep, had heard nothing: on the spot he inflicted punishment on himself for his guilt, and fell upon the sword which a too easy belief had unsheathed. The accusers indicted the woman, and dragged her to Rome, before the Centumviri.[III.28] Innocent as she was, dark suspicion weighed heavily against her, because she had become possessor of his property: her patrons stand[III.29] and boldly plead the cause of the guiltless woman. The judges then besought the Emperor Augustus that he would aid them in the discharge of their oath, as the intricacy of the case had embarrassed them. After he had dispelled the clouds raised by calumny, and had discovered a sure source of truth[III.30]: “Let the Freedman,” said he, “the cause of the mischief, suffer punishment; but as for her, at the same instant bereft of a son, and deprived of a husband, I deem her to be pitied rather than condemned. If the father of the family had thoroughly enquired into the charge preferred, and had shrewdly sifted the lying accusations, he would not, by a dismal crime, have ruined his house from the very foundation.”