Plutarch's Morals
"Though in his heart he pitied her sad grief,
His eyes like horn or steel impassive stood
Within their lids, and craft his tears repressed."[566]
So great control had he over all his body, and so much were all his
members under the sway and rule of reason, that he commanded his eyes
not to weep, his tongue not to speak, and his heart not to tremble or
quake.[567]
"So calm and passive did his heart remain,"[568]
reason penetrating even to the irrational instincts, and making spirit
and blood obedient and docile to it. Such also were most of his
companions, for though they were dashed to the ground and dragged along
by the Cyclops, they said not a word about Odysseus, nor did they show
the stake of wood that had been put into the fire and prepared to put
out Polyphemus' eye, but they would rather have been eaten alive than
divulge secrets, such wonderful self-control and fidelity had they.[569]
And so it was not amiss of Pittacus, when the king of Egypt sent him a
victim, and bade him take from it the best and worst piece of it, to
pull out the tongue and send that to the king, as being the instrument
of the greatest blessings and withal the greatest mischiefs.
Sec. IX. So Ino in Euripides, speaking plainly about herself, says she
knows "how to be silent when she should, and to speak when speech is
safe."[570] For those who have enjoyed a truly noble and royal education
learn first to be silent and then to speak. So the famous king
Antigonus, when his son asked him, "When are we going to shift our
quarters?" answered, "Are you afraid that you only will not hear the
trumpet?" Was he afraid then to entrust a secret to him, to whom he
intended one day to leave his kingdom? Nay rather, it was to teach him
to be close and guarded on such matters. Metellus[571] also, the
well-known veteran, when questioned somewhat similarly about an
expedition, said, "If I thought my coat knew the secret, I would strip
it off and throw it into the fire." And Eumenes, when he heard that
Craterus was marching against him, told none of his friends, but
pretended that it was Neoptolemus; for his soldiers despised
Neoptolemus, but they admired the glory and loved the virtue of
Craterus; and no one but Eumenes knew the truth, and they engaged and
were victorious, and unwittingly killed Craterus, and only recognized
his dead body. So great a part did silence play in the battle,
concealing the name of the enemy's general: so that Eumenes' friends
marvelled more than found fault at his not having told them the truth.
And if anyone should receive blame in such a case, it is better to be
censured when one has done well by keeping one's counsel, rather than to
have to accuse others through having come to grief by trusting them.
Sec. X. But, generally speaking, who has the right to blame the person who
has not kept his secret? For if it was not to be known, it was not well
to tell another person of it at all, and if you divulged your secret
yourself and expected another person to keep it, you had more faith in
another than in yourself. And so should he be such another as yourself
you are deservedly undone, and should he be a better man than yourself,
your safety is more than you could have reckoned on, as it involved
finding a man more to be trusted than yourself. But you will say, He is
my friend. Yes, but he has another friend, whom he reposes confidence in
as much as you do in your friend, and that other friend has one of his
own, and so on, so that the secret spreads in many quarters from
inability to keep it close in one. For as the unit never deviates from
its orbit, but (as its name signifies) always remains one, but the
number two contains within it the seeds of infinity, for when it departs
from itself it becomes plurality at once by doubling, so speech confined
in one person's breast is truly secret, but if it be communicated to
another it soon gets noised abroad. And so Homer calls words "winged,"
for as he that lets a bird go from his hands cannot easily get it back
again, so he that lets a word go from his mouth cannot catch or stop it,
but it is borne along "whirling on swift wings," and dispersed from one
person to another. When a ship scuds before the gale the mariners can
stop it, or at least check its course with cables and anchors, but when
the spoken word once sails out of harbour, so to speak, there is no
roadstead or anchorage for it, but borne along with much noise and echo
it dashes its utterer on the rocks, and brings him into imminent danger
of shipwreck,
"As one might set on fire Ida's woods
With a small torch, so what one tells one person
Is soon the property of all the citizens."[572]
Sec. XI. The Roman Senate had been discussing for several days a secret
matter, and there was much doubt and suspicion about it. And one of the
senator's wives, discreet in other matters but a very woman in
curiosity, pressed her husband close, and entreated him to tell her what
the secret was; she vowed and swore she would not divulge it, and did
not refrain from shedding tears at her not being trusted. And he,
nothing loth to convince her of her folly, said, "Your importunity,
wife, has prevailed, listen to a dreadful and portentous matter. It has
been told us by the priests that a lark has been seen flying in the air
with a golden helmet and spear: it is this portent that we are
considering and discussing with the augurs, as to whether it be a good
or bad omen. But say nothing about it." Having said these words he went
into the Forum. But his wife seized on the very first of her maids that
entered the room, and smote her breast, and tore her hair, and said,
"Alas! for my husband and country! What will become of us?" wishing and
teaching her maid to say, "Whatever's up?" So when she inquired she told
her all about it, adding that refrain common to all praters, "Tell no
one a word about it." The maid however had scarce left her mistress when
she told one of her fellow-servants who was doing little or nothing, and
she told her lover who happened to call at that moment. So the news
spread to the Forum so quickly that it got the start of its original
author, and one of his friends meeting him said, "Have you only just
left your house?" "Only just," he replied. "Didn't you hear the news?"
said his friend. "What news?" said he. "Why, that a lark has been seen
flying in the air with a golden helmet and spear, and the Senate are met
to discuss the portent." And he smiled and said to himself, "You are
quick, wife, for the tale to get before me to the Forum!" Then meeting
some of the Senators he disabused them of their panic. But to punish his
wife, he said when he got home, "You have undone me, wife: for the
secret has got abroad from my house, so that I must be an exile from my
country for your inability to keep a secret." And on her trying to deny
it, and saying, "Were there not three hundred Senators that heard of it
as well as you? Might not one of them have divulged it?" he replied,
"Stuff o' your three hundred! It was at your importunity that I invented
the story, to put you to the test!" This fellow tested his wife warily
and cunningly, as one pours water, and not wine or oil, into a leaky
vessel. And Fabius,[573] the friend of Augustus, hearing the Emperor in
his old age mourning over the extinction of his family, how two of his
daughter Julia's sons were dead, and how Posthumus Agrippa, the only
remaining one, was in exile through false accusation,[574] and how he
was compelled to put his wife's son[575] into the succession to the
Empire, though he pitied Agrippa and had half a mind to recall him from
banishment, repeated the Emperor's words to his wife, and she to
Livia.[576] And Livia bitterly upbraided Augustus, if he meant recalling
his grandson, for not having done so long ago, instead of bringing her
into hatred and hostility with the heir to the Empire. When Fabius came
in the morning as usual into the Emperor's presence, and said, "Hail,
Caesar!" the Emperor replied, "Farewell,[577] Fabius." And he
understanding the meaning of this straightway went home, and sent for
his wife, and said, "The Emperor knows that I have not kept his secret,
so I shall kill myself." And his wife replied, "You have deserved your
fate, since having been married to me so long you did not remember and
guard against my incontinence of speech, but suffer me to kill myself
first." So saying she took his sword, and slew herself first.
Sec. XII. That was a good answer therefore that the comic poet Philippides
made to king Lysimachus, who greeted him kindly, and said to him,[578]
"What shall I give you of all my possessions?" "Whatever you like, O
king, except your secrets." And talkativeness has another plague
attached to it, even curiosity: for praters wish to hear much that they
may have much to say, and most of all do they gad about to investigate
and pry into secrets and hidden things, providing as it were an
antiquated stock of rubbish[579] for their twaddle, in fine like
children who cannot[580] hold ice in their hands, and yet are unwilling
to let it go,[581] or rather taking secrets to their bosoms and
embracing them as if they were so many serpents, that they cannot
control, but are sure to be gnawed to death by. They say that garfish
and vipers burst in giving life to their young, so secrets by coming out
ruin and destroy those who cannot keep them. Seleucus Callinicus having
lost his army and all his forces in a battle against the Galati, threw
off his diadem, and fled on a swift horse with an escort of three or
four of his men a long day's journey by bypaths and out-of-the-way
tracks, till faint and famishing for want of food he drew rein at a
small farmhouse, where by chance he found the master at home, and asked
for some bread and water. And he supplied him liberally and courteously
not only with what he asked for but with whatever else was on the farm,
and recognized the king, and being very joyful at this opportunity of
ministering to the king's necessities, he could not contain himself, nor
dissemble like the king who wished to be incognito, but he accompanied
him to the road, and on parting from him, said, "Farewell, king
Seleucus." And he stretching out his right hand, and drawing the man to
him as if he was going to kiss him, gave a sign to one of his escort to
draw his sword and cut the man's head off;
"And at his word the head roll'd in the dust."[582]
Whereas if he had been silent then, and kept his counsel for a time, as
the king afterwards became prosperous and great, he would have received,
I take it, greater favour for his silence than for his hospitality. And
yet he had I admit some excuse for his want of reticence, namely hope
and joy.
Sec. XIII. But most talkative people have no excuse for ruining themselves.
As for example in a barber's shop one day there was some conversation
about the tyranny of Dionysius, that it was as hard as adamant and
invincible, and the barber laughed and said, "Fancy your saying this to
me, who have my razor at his throat most days!" And Dionysius hearing
this had him crucified. Barbers indeed are generally a talkative race,
for people fond of prating flock to them and sit in their shops, so that
they pick up the habit from their customers. It was a witty answer
therefore of king Archelaus,[583] when a talkative barber put the towel
round his neck, and asked him, "How shall I shave you, O king?"
"Silently," said the monarch. It was a barber that first spread the news
of the great reverse of the Athenians in Sicily, having heard of it at
the Piraeus from a slave that had escaped from the island. He at once
left his shop, and ran into the city at full speed, "that no one else
should reap the fame, and he come in the second,"[584] of carrying the