A married woman wants a man who will not have her, and when he refuses she turns her desire into his death-warrant. In Apollodorus's Library — a Greek mythography of the 1st or 2nd century CE — Stheneboea, wife of Proetus, "fell in love with" the young exile Bellerophon and "sent him proposals for a" meeting; "when he rejected them", she told her husband that Bellerophon had sent her "a vicious pro-"posal instead. "Proetus believed her", and handed the innocent man a sealed letter to carry to Iobates, in which it was written that its bearer "was to kill Bellerophon" — the lie folded into a page the victim ferries to his own execution.

The pattern repeats across the world with uncanny fidelity. In Myths & Legends of China, E. T. C. Werner's 1922 compilation, the tyrant Chou's favorite concubine Ta Chi "conceived a passion for" the prince Po I-k'ao and "had recourse to all sorts of ruses to catch him in her net"; but "his conduct was throughout" irreproachable. Vexed by his indifference, "she tried slander in order / to bring about his ruin." When a stolen chance arrives, "Ta Chi accused Po" I-k'ao of plotting the king's death, and the spurned overture ripens into a crucifixion.

Both witnesses hang the whole tragedy on the same hinge: a refusal reread as an assault. The Greek keeps it courtly and lethal — a letter, a monster to be fought, a hero who survives by accident of his own valor. The Chinese lets the accusation run its full course to the scaffold. Neither woman is believed at first for lack of proof; each is believed at last for want of doubt. Both the Greek and the Chinese shelves are wired to served text today. Why is the accuser's word, in these tellings, worth more than the accused man's blameless life?