Plutarch's Morals Part 22

[510] Pindar, "Fragm." 253.

[511] Demosthenes, "De Falsa Legatione," p. 406.

[512] Euripides, "Orestes," 251.

[513] A line from Euripides. Quoted also "De Adulatore et Amico," -- x.x.xii.

[514] Compare "De Audiendo," --vi. See also Horace, "Satires," i, 4. 136, 137.

[515] The story is somewhat differently told, "Quaest.

Conviv.," Lib. ii. -- ix.

[516] From a lost play of Euripides.

[517] In some lost play. Compare Hesiod, "Works and Days," 719-721; Terence, "Andria," 920.

[518] The sentiment is a.s.signed to Diogenes twice elsewhere by our author, namely, "How One may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," -- xi., and "How One may discern a Flatterer from a Friend," -- x.x.xvi.

[519] See Propertius, ii. 1. 63, 64; Ovid, "Metamorphoses," xii. 112; xiii. 171; "Tristia," v. 2.

15, 16; "Remedia Amoris," 47, 48; Erasmus, "Adagia," p.

221.

[520] "Jason Pheraeus cognomine Prometheus dictus est.

Vide Ciceronem, 'Nat. Deor.' iii. 29; Plinium, vii. 51; Valerium Maximum, i. 8, Extem. 6."--_Wytttenbach._

[521] She was a Vestal Virgin. See Livy, iv. 44.

[522] See Thucydides, i. 135, 136.

[523] From a lost play of Euripides. Compare the proverb, [Greek: pathemata mathemata].

[524] "Laws," v. p. 731 E.

[525] Told again "Reg. et Imperator. Apophthegm.," p.

175 B.

[526] A favourite image of Homer, employed "Iliad," iv.

350; xiv. 83; "Odyssey," i. 64; xxiii. 70.

[527] "Laws," xi. p. 935 A. Quoted again "On Talkativeness," -- vii.

[528] See Pausanias, v. 14.

[529] From a Fragment of Pindar.

[530] See Suetonius, "Divus Julius," 75: "Sed et statuas L. Sullae atque Pompeii a plebe disjectas reposuit."

[531] Compare our author, "Quaestiones Convivalium,"

viii. p. 729 E.

[532] No doubt in the interest of the defendant. See our author, "Cato Minor," p. 769 B.

[533] A Greek proverb, see Erasmus, "Adagia," p. 921.

[534] So Cicero, "Nat. Deor." ii. 56: "In aedibus architecti avertunt ab oculis naribusque dominorum ea quae profluentia necessario taetri essent aliquid habitura."

[535] "Works and Days," 23-26. Our "Two of a trade seldom agree."

[536] Compare "How One may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," -- xiv.

[537] For as the English proverb says, "Hatred is blind as well as love."

[538] "Laws," v. p. 728 A.

[539] Quoted more fully "How One may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," -- vi.

[540] "Laws," v. p. 731 E. See also above, -- vii.

ON TALKATIVENESS.[541]

-- I. Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear n.o.body, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen. It is a self-chosen deafness of people who, I take it, blame nature for giving us one tongue and two ears. If then the following advice of Euripides to a foolish hearer was good,

"I cannot fill one that can nought retain, Pumping up wise words for an unwise man;"

one might more justly say to a talkative man, or rather about a talkative man,

"I cannot fill one that will nothing take, Pumping up wise words for an unwise man;"

or rather deluging with words one that talks to those who don't listen, and listens not to those who talk. Even if he does listen for a short time, talkativeness hurries off what is said like the retiring sea, and anon brings it up again multiplied with the approaching tide. The portico at Olympia that returns many echoes to one utterance is called seven-voiced,[542] and if the slightest utterance catches the ear of talkativeness, it at once echoes it all round,

"Moving the mind's chords all unmoved before."[543]

For their ears can certainly have no pa.s.sages leading to the brain but only to the tongue. And so while other people retain what they hear, talkative people lose it altogether, and, being empty-headed, they resemble empty vessels, and go about making much noise.[544]

-- II. If however it seems that no attempt at cure has been left untried, let us say to the talkative person,

"Be silent, boy; silence has great advantages;"

two of the first and foremost of which are hearing and being heard, neither of which can happen to talkative people, for however they desire either so unhappy are they that they must desist from it. For in all other diseases of the soul, as love of money, love of glory, or love of pleasure, people at any rate attain the desired object: but it is the cruel fate of talkative people to desire hearers but not to get them, for everyone flees from them with headlong speed; and if people are sitting or walking about in any public place,[545] and see one coming they quickly pa.s.s the word to one another to s.h.i.+ft quarters. And as when there is dead silence in any a.s.sembly they say Hermes has joined the company, so when any prater joins some drinking party or social gathering of friends, all are silent, not wis.h.i.+ng to give him a chance to break in, and if he uninvited begin to open his mouth, they all, "like before a storm at sea, when Boreas is blowing a gale round some headland," foreseeing tossing about and nausea, disperse. And so it is their destiny to find neither willing table-companions, nor messmates when they are travelling by land or by sea, but only such as cannot help themselves; for such a fellow is always at you, plucking hold of your clothes or chin, or giving you a dig in the ribs with his elbow. "Most valuable are the feet in such a conjuncture," according to Archilochus, nay according to the wise Aristotle himself. For he being bothered with a talkative fellow, and wearied out with his absurd tales, and his frequent question, "Is not this wonderful, Aristotle?" "Not at all,"

said he, "but it is wonderful that anyone with a pair of legs stops here to listen to you." And to another such fellow, who said after a long rigmarole, "Did I weary you, philosopher, by my chatter?" "Not you, by Zeus," said he, "for I paid no attention to you." For even if talkative people force you to listen,[546] the mind can give them only its outward ears to deluge, while it unfolds and pursues some other thoughts within; so they find neither hearers to attend to them, nor credit them. They say those that are p.r.o.ne to Venus are commonly barren: so the prating of talkative people is ineffectual and fruitless.

-- III. And yet nature has fenced and barricaded in us nothing so much as the tongue, having put the teeth before it as a barrier, so that if, when reason holds tight her "glossy reins,"[547] it hearken not, nor keep within bounds, we may check its intemperance, biting it till the blood comes. For Euripides tells us that, not from unbolted houses or store-rooms, but "from unbridled mouths the end is misfortune."[548] But those persons who think that houses without doors and open purses are no good to their possessors, and yet keep their mouths open and unshut, and allow their speech to flow continually like the waves of the Euxine,[549] seem to regard speech as of less value than anything. And so they never get believed, though credit is the aim of every speech; for to inspire belief in one's hearers is the proper end of speech, but praters are disbelieved even when they tell the truth. For as corn stowed away in a granary is found to be larger in quant.i.ty but inferior in quality, so the speech of a talkative man is increased by a large addition of falsehood, which destroys his credit.

-- IV. Then again every man of modesty and propriety would avoid drunkenness, for anger is next door neighbour to madness as some think,[550] but drunkenness lives in the same house: or rather drunkenness is madness, more short-lived indeed, but more potent also through volition, for it is self-chosen. Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.