the lie as shameful, since he shuns it simply because it is a lie."[5]
And, again, "Falsehood abstractly is bad and blamable, and truth
honorable and praiseworthy; and thus the truthful man being in
the mean is praiseworthy, while the false [in either extreme,
of overstating or of understating] are both blamable, but the
exaggerating man more so than the other."[6]

[Footnote 1: Mahaffy's _Social Life in Greece_, pp. 27, 123. See also
Fowler's _Principles of Morals_, II., 219-221.]

[Footnote 2: _Hist_., Bk. I., §139.]

[Footnote 3: Professor Fowler seems to be quite forgetful of this
fact. He speaks of Ulysses as if he had precedence of Achilles in the
esteem of the Greeks. See his _Principles of Morals_, II., 219.]

[Footnote 4: Plato's _Republic_, II., 382, a, b.]

[Footnote 5: Aristotle's _Eth. Nic_., IV., 13, 1127, a, b.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., IV.]

Theognis recognizes this high ideal of the duty and the beauty of
truthfulness, when he says: "At first there is a small attractiveness
about a lie, but in the end the gain it brings is both shameful and
harmful. That man has no fair glory, in whose heart dwells a lie, and
from whose mouth it has once issued."[1]

[Footnote 1: Theognis, 607.]