6
I propose that we too execute in his spirit a portrait of Slander and her surroundings; and to avoid vagueness let us start with a definition or outline. Slahder, we will say, is an undefended indictment, concealed from its object, and owing its success to one-sided half-informed procedure. Now we have something to go upon. Further, our actors, as in comedy'Cratinus was the first to limit the number of actors to three... There were no further innovations, and the number of the actors in comedy was permanently fixed at three.’ Haigh’s Attic Theatre., are three— the slanderer, the slandered, and the recipient of the slander; let us take each in turn and see how his case works out.
7
And first for our chief character, the manufacturer of the slander, That he is not a good man needs no proof; no good man will injure his neighbour; good men’s reputation, and their credit for kindness, is based on the benefits they confer upon their friends, not on unfounded disparagement of others and the ousting of them from their friends’ affections.
