only make a bad business worse.

And now that you have delivered yourself of this strain, said Dionysodorus,
will you inform me whether Iolaus was the nephew of Heracles any more than
he is yours?

I suppose that I had best answer you, Dionysodorus, I said, for you will
insist on asking--that I pretty well know--out of envy, in order to prevent
me from learning the wisdom of Euthydemus.

Then answer me, he said.

Well then, I said, I can only reply that Iolaus was not my nephew at all,
but the nephew of Heracles; and his father was not my brother Patrocles,
but Iphicles, who has a name rather like his, and was the brother of
Heracles.

And is Patrocles, he said, your brother?

Yes, I said, he is my half-brother, the son of my mother, but not of my
father.

Then he is and is not your brother.

Not by the same father, my good man, I said, for Chaeredemus was his
father, and mine was Sophroniscus.

And was Sophroniscus a father, and Chaeredemus also?

Yes, I said; the former was my father, and the latter his.