ot be easy to enumerate how many this vice has ruined.
When Creon said to Medea,

"Lady, 'tis better now to earn your hate,
Than through my softness afterwards to groan,"[646]

he uttered a pregnant maxim for others; for he himself was overcome by
his bashfulness, and granted her one day more, and so was the undoing of
his family. And some, when they suspected murder or poison, have failed
through it to take precautions for their safety. Thus perished Dion, not
ignorant that Callippus was plotting against him, but ashamed to be on
his guard against a friend and host. So Antipater, the son of Cassander,
having invited Demetrius to supper, and being invited back by him for
the next day, was ashamed to doubt another as he had been trusted
himself, and went, and got his throat cut after supper. And Polysperchon
promised Cassander for a hundred talents to murder Hercules, the son of
Alexander by Barsine, and invited him to supper, and, as the stripling
suspected and feared the invitation, and pleaded as an excuse that he
was not very well, Polysperchon called on him, and addressed him as
follows, "Imitate, my lad, your father's good-nature and kindness to his
friends, unless indeed you fear us as plotting against you." The young
man was ashamed to refuse any longer, so he went with him, and some of
those at the supper-party strangled him. And so that line of
Hesiod,[647]

"Invite your friend to supper, not your enemy,"

is not ridiculous, as some say, or stupid advice, but wise. Show no
bashfulness in regard to an enemy, and do not suppose him trustworthy,
though he may seem so.[648] For if you invite you will be invited back,
and if you entertain others you will be entertained back to your hurt,
if you let the temper as it were of your caution be weakened by shame.

Sec. V. As then this disease is the cause of much mischief, we must try and
exterminate it by assiduous effort, beginning first, as people are wont
to do in other matters, with small and easy things. For example, if
anyone pledge you to drink with him at a dinner when you have had
enough, do not be bashful, or do violence to nature, but put the cup
down without drinking. Again, if somebody else challenge you to play at
dice with him in your cups, be not bashful or afraid of ridicule, but
imitate Xenophanes, who, when Lasus of Hermione called him coward
because he would not play at dice with him, admitted that he was a great
coward and had no courage