Boothby: On Credulity

'Tis wrong, I here an instance give,
Too much or little to believe.
Hippolytus is doom'd to die,
By Theseus's credulity.
Cassandra's warning all despise,
And lofty Troy in ashes lies.
A groundless judgment to avoid,
Weigh all things well e'er you decide.
But not to rest on ancient story,
A recent fact I lay before ye.
One had a wife he lov'd, and son
Just ready for the manly gown.
A wicked slave, who had his ear,
Hoping the inheritance to share,
Tells of the youth a hundred lies,
And loads the wife with calumnies:
Said, "An adulterer often came,
The story was a public shame."
The credulous man a journey feign'd;
At night by stealth his house regain'd,
To his wife's bed-chamber he goes,
Where she had made her son repose,
With care maternal. While a light
Was looking for, grown frantic quite,
Approaching in the dark a bed,
He of a man perceiv'd the head:
With rage that jealous pangs impart,
He struck a dagger to his heart.
Lights brought, he saw what he had done;
His sleeping wife, his murder'd son,
From the youth's breast the weapon drawn,
He plung'd incessant in his own.
The wife, because she was his heir,
The shafts of envy did not spare.
Accus'd, the hapless wretch appear'd
To the Centumviri, who heard
The proofs and pleadings on each side;
And to Augustus then applied,
Their sentence to direct, they said,
Lest they in error should be led.
The mists of calumny dispell'd,
Cesar at last this judgment held:
"The slave alone I guilty find:
To the sad widow, left behind,
Bereft of child and husband too,
Compassion and not blame is due.
Had but the father wiser been,
And with less blindfold passion seen,
He and his house had stood entire,
Not perish'd by a fate so dire."
Hear all; but do not sentence give
Too soon; for those we most believe,
Are sometimes false; and the sincere
Sometimes suspiciously appear:
Not too much confidence to show,
The simplest sense from this may know,
That men are by their passions guided,
By hate or favour oft decided:
Of that we can be sure alone,
Which we ourselves have seen and known.
This story is for you intended,
Who with my shortness are offended.

Source: Boothby - Phaedrus 3.9

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(not in Mille) Perry501