Plutarch's Morals
they quickly pass the word to one another to shift quarters. And as when
there is dead silence in any assembly they say Hermes has joined the
company, so when any prater joins some drinking party or social
gathering of friends, all are silent, not wishing 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 prone to Venus are commonly barren: so the prating of
talkative people is ineffectual and fruitless.
Sec. 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 quantity but inferior
in quality, so the speech of a talkative man is increased by a large
addition of falsehood, which destroys his credit.
Sec. 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.
"Wine makes a prudent man begin to sing,
And gently laugh, and even makes him dance."[551]
And yet there is no harm in all this, in singing and laughing and
dancing. But the poet adds--
"And it compels to say what's best unsaid."[552]
This is indeed dreadful and dangerous. And perhaps the poet in this
passage has solved that problem of the philosophers, and stated the
difference between being under the influence of wine and being drunk,
mirth being the condition of the former, foolish talk of the latter. For
as the proverb tells us, "What is in the heart of the sober is on the
tongue of the drunken."[553] And so Bias, being silent at a drinking
bout, and jeered at by some young man in the company as stupid, replied,
"What fool could hold his tongue in liquor?" And at Athens a certain
person gave an entertainment to the king's ambassadors, and at their
desire contrived to get the philosophers there too, and as they were all
talking together and comparing ideas, and Zeno alone was silent, the
strangers greeted him and pledged him, and said, "What are we to tell
the king about you, Zeno?" And he replied, "Nothing, but that there is
an old man at Athens that can hold his tongue at a drinking bout." So
profound and mysterious and sober is silence, while drunkenness is
talkative: for it is void of sense and understanding, and so is
loquacious. And so the philosophers define drunkenness to be silly talk
in wine. Drinking therefore is not censured, if silence go with it, but
foolish prating turns being under the influence of wine into
drunkenness. And the drunken man prates only in his cups; but the
talkative man prates everywhere, in the market-place, in the theatre,
out walking, by night and by day. If he is your doctor, he is more
trouble to you than your disease: if he is on board ship with you, he
disgusts you more than sea-sickness; if he praises you, he is more
fulsome than blame. It is more pleasure associating with bad men who
have tact than with good men who prate. Nestor indeed in Sophocles'
Play, trying by his words to soothe exasperated Ajax, said to him
mildly,
"I blame you not, for though your words are bad,
Your acts are good:"
but we cannot feel so to the talkative man, for his want of tact in
words destroys and undoes all the grace of his actions.
Sec. V. Lysias wrote a defence for some accused person, and gave it him,
and he read it several times, and came to Lysias in great dejection and
said, "When I first perused this defence, it seemed to me wonderful, but
when I read it a second and third time, it seemed altogether dull and
ineffective. Then Lysias laughed, and said, "What then? Are you going to
read it more than once to the jury?" And yet do but consider the
persuasiveness and grace of Lysias' style;[554] for he "I say was a
great favourite with the dark-haired Muses."[555] And of the things
which have been said of Homer the truest is that he alone of all poets
has survived the fastidiousness of mankind, as being ever new and still
at his acme as regards giving pleasure, and yet saying and proclaiming
about himself, "I hate to spin out a plain tale over and over
again,"[556] he avoids and fears that satiety which lies in ambush for
every narrative, and takes the hearer from one subject to another, and
relieves by novelty the possibility of being surfeited. But the
talkative worry one's ears to death with their tautologies, as people
scribble the same things over and over again on palimpsests.[557]
Sec. VI. Let us remind them then first of this, that just as in the case of
wine, which was intended for pleasure and mirth, those who compel people
to drink it neat and in large quantities bring some into a disgusting
condition of drunkenness, so with speech, which is the pleasantest
social tie amongst mankind, those who make a bad and ill-advised use of
it render it unpleasing and unfit for company, paining those whom they
think to gratify, and become a laughing-stock to those who they think
admire them, and objectionable to those who they think love them. As
then he cannot be a favourite of the goddess who with Aphrodite's
charmed girdle[558] repels and drives away those who associate with him,
so he who with his speech bores and disgusts one is without either taste
or refinement.
Sec. VII. Of all other passions and disorders some are dangerous, some
hateful, some ridiculous, but in talkativeness all these elements are
combined. For praters are jeered at for their commonplaces, and hated
when they bring bad news, and run into danger when they reveal secrets.
And so Anacharsis, when he was feasted by Solon and lay down to sleep,
and was observed with his left hand on his private parts, and his right
hand on his mouth, for he thought his tongue needed the stronger
restraint, was right in his opinion. For it would be difficult to find
as many men who have been ruined by venereal excesses as cities and
leading states that have been undone by the utterance of a secret. When
Sulla was besieging Athens, and had no time to waste there, "for he had
other fish to fry,"[559] as Mithridates was ravaging Asia, and the party
of Marius was again in power at Rome, some old men in a barber's shop
happened to observe to one another that the Heptachalcon was not well
guarded, and that their city ran a great risk of being captured at that
point, and some spies who overheard this conversation reported it to
Sulla. And he at once marched up his forces, and about midnight entered
the city with his army, and all but rased it to the ground, and filled
it with slaughter and dead bodies, insomuch that the Ceramicus ran with
blood: and he was thus savage against the Athenians for their words
rather than their deeds, for they had spoken ill of him and his wife
Metella, jumping on to the walls and calling out in a jeering way,
"Sulla is a mulberry bestrewn with barley meal,"
and much similar banter. Thus they drew down upon themselves for words,
which, as Plato[560] says, are a very small matter, a very heavy
punishment.[561] The prating of one man also prevented Rome from
becoming free by the removal of Nero. For it was only the night before
the tyrant was to be murdered, and all preparations had been made, when
he that was to do the deed going to the theatre, and seeing someone in
chains near the doors who was about to be taken before Nero, and was
bewailing his sad fortune, went up close to him and whispered, "Pray
only, good sir, that to-day may pass by, to-morrow you will owe me many
thanks." He guessing the meaning of the riddle, and thinking, I take it,
"he is a fool who gives up what is in his hand for a remote
contingency,"[562] preferred certain to honourable safety. For he
informed Nero of what the man had said, and he was immediately arrested,
and torture, and fire, and scourging were applied to him, who denied now
in his necessity what before he had divulged without necessity.
Sec. VIII. Zeno the philosopher,[563] that he might not against his will
divulge any secrets when put to the torture, bit off his tongue, and
spit it at the tyrant. Famous also was the reward which Leaena had for
her taciturnity.[564] She was the mistress of Harmodius and Aristogiton,
and, although a woman, participated in their hopes of success in the
conspiracy against the tyrants: for she had revelled in the glorious cup
of love, and had been initiated in their secrets through the god. When
then they had failed in their attempt and been put to death, and she was
examined and bidden to reveal the names of the other conspirators, she
refused to do so, and held out to the end, showing that those famous men
in loving such a one as her had done nothing unworthy of them. And the
Athenians erected to her memory a bronze lioness without a tongue, and
placed it near the entrance to the Acropolis, signifying her dauntless
courage by the nobleness of that animal, and by its being without a
tongue her silence and fidelity. For no spoken word has done as much
good as many unspoken ones. For at some future day we can give utterance
if we like to what has been not said, but a word once spoken cannot be
recalled, but flies about and runs all round the world. And this is the
reason, I take it, why men teach us to speak, but the gods teach us to
be silent, silence being enjoined on us in the mysteries and in all
religious rites. Thus Homer has described the most eloquent Odysseus,
and Telemachus, and Penelope, and the nurse, as all remarkable for their
taciturnity. You remember the nurse saying,
"I'll keep it close as heart of oak or steel."[565]
And Odysseus sitting by Penelope,