42. And yet why do I contest this point, when it is quite possible for me to gain my cause, even though beaten here? For if he that trusted is blameworthy, what must the person trusted be, compared with him? And if the not discovering, beforehand, a man's disposition is to be censured, how low must we place that badness of disposition itself? But in truth wickedness is a thing that defies all calculation, and there is no means whereby one can make the bad better; when this person, by the very things through which he justly ought to have been rendered better disposed, and if he still harboured any spark of ill feeling, to have extinguished it altogether, was kindled, by these very favours, into yet more bitter enmity, and sought out for the means to revenge himself upon his benefactor.

ΜΒʹ. Καίτοι τί τοῦτο ἀγωνίζομαι, σφόδρα ἐνὸν κρατεῖν καὶ ἡττημένον; Εἰ γὰρ ὁ πιστεύσας κακὸς, τί ποτ' ἂν εἴη παρ' ἐκεῖνον ὁ πιστευθείς; Καὶ εἰ τὸ μὴ προϊδέσθαι τὸν τρόπον ὑπαίτιον, αὐτήν γε τὴν κακίαν ποῦ θήσομεν; Ἀλλ' ὄντως ἀσυλλόγιστόν τι πρᾶγμα ἡ πονηρία: καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ᾧ τοὺς μοχθηροὺς ἄν τις βελτίους ποιήσειεν: ὁπότε κἀκεῖνος ἐξ ὧν εὐνούστερος φανῆναι δίκαιος ἦν, καὶ εἴ τι κακίας εἶχεν ἐμπύρευμα τοῦτ' ἀνελεῖν, ἐκ τούτων εἰς μεῖζον ἀνήφθη μῖσος, καὶ ὅπως ἂν ἀμύνηται τὸν εὐεργέτην ἐσκόπει.