Plutarch Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat 5

[5] We must not neglect, either, the means for rectifying a statement which are afforded by the words that lie near, or by the context; but just as physicians, in spite of the fact that the blister-fly is deadly, think that its feet and wings are helpful to counteract its potent effect, so in poetry if a noun or adjective or a verb by its position next to another word blunts the point which the passage, in its worse interpretation, would have, we should seize upon it and add explanation, as some do in the case of the following: and For he did not say that absolutely and to all mankind a grievous life has been allotted by the gods, but to the silly and foolish, whom, since they are wretched and pitiable on account of wickedness, he is wont to call by the name of unhappy and miserable.

[5] Nor are we to omit in our reading those hints which, from some other words or phrases bordering on those that offend us, may help to rectify our apprehensions. But as physicians use cantharides, believing that, though their bodies be deadly poison, yet their feet and wings are medicinal and can even kill the poison of the flies themselves, so must we deal with poems. If any noun or verb near at hand may assist to the correction of any such saying, and preserve us from putting a bad construction upon it, we should take hold of it and employ it to assist a more favorable interpretation. As some do in reference to those verses of Homer,— For, they say, he says not of men simply, or of all men, that the Gods weave for them the fatal web of a sorrowful life; but he affirms it only of foolish and imprudent men, whom, because their vices make them such, he therefore calls wretched and miserable.