Plutarch's Morals
[554] Cf. Quintilian, x. 1, 78: "His aetate Lysias major,
subtilis atque elegans et quo nihil, si oratori satis
est docere, quaeras perfectius. Nihil enim est inane,
nihil arcessitum; puro tamen fonti quam magno flumini
propior." Cf. ix. 4, 17.
[555] Somewhat like Pindar, "Pyth." i. 1. 1, 2.
[556] "Odyssey," xii. 452, 453.
[557] See Cicero, "Ad Fam." vii. 18; Catullus, xxii. 5,
6.
[558] See "Iliad," xiv. 214-217.
[559] "Allusio ad Homericum [Greek: epei ponos allos
epeigei.]"--_Xylander._
[560] "Laws," xi. p. 935 A.
[561] So true are the words of AEschylus, [Greek: glosse
mataia zemia prostribetai].--"Prom." 329.
[562] Our "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
[563] "Non Citticus, sed Eleates. v. Cic. Tuscul. ii.
22, et Nat. Deor. 3, 33."--_Reiske._
[564] See Pausanias, i. 23. Leaena means "lioness." On
the conspiracy see Thucydides, vi. 54-59.
[565] Homer, "Odyssey," xix. 494. Plutarch quotes from
memory. The nurse's name was Euryclea.
[566] Odyssey," xix. 210-212. Quoted again "On Moral
Virtue," Sec. iv.
[567] Literally _bark_. See "Odyssey," xx. 13, 16.
[568] "Odyssey," xx. 23.
[569] See "Odyssey," ix. [Greek: Kyklopeia].
[570] Euripides, "Ino." Fragment, 416.
[571] "Significat Q. Caecilium Metellum, de quo Liv. xl.
45, 46."--_Reiske._
[572] Euripides, "Ino." Fragm. 415. Compare St. James,
iii. 5, 6.
[573] Fabius Maximus. So Tacitus, "Annals," i. 5, who
relates this story somewhat differently.
[574] See Tacitus, "Annals," i. 3. As to his fate, see
"Annals," i. 6.
[575] Tiberius Nero, who actually did succeed Augustus.
[576] The Emperor's wife.
[577] So it is in Sec. xii. But perhaps here it means, "I
wish you had more sense, Fabius!"
[578] Adopting the reading of Reiske.
[579] Reading [Greek: phorutou] or [Greek: phoryton], as
Wyttenbach.
[580] Reading [Greek: katechein dynantai] with Reiske.
[581] See Sophocles, Fragm. 162.
[582] Homer, "Iliad," x. 457.
[583] Compare "Moralia," p. 177 A; Horace, "Satires," i.
7. 3: "Omnibus et lippis notum et tonsoribus."
[584] Homer, "Iliad," xxii. 207.
[585] Sophocles, "Antigone," 317-319.
[586] See Pausanias, iii. 17; iv. 15; x. 5.
[587] Compare the idea of the people of Melita, Acts
xxviii. 4.
[588] An Allusion to Dolon in Homer, "Iliad," x., 374,
sq. according to Xylander.
[589] Quoted again by our author in his "Publicola," p.
105 B., and assigned to Epicharmus.
[590] So Shakspere has taught us, "Brevity is the soul
of wit."--_Hamlet_, Act ii Sc. 2.
[591] "In Protagora."--_Xylander._
[592] That is, is all kernel. See passim our author's
"Apophthegmata Laconica."
[593] Or, _apophthegmatic nature_.
[594] Dionysius the younger, tyrant of Syracuse, was
expelled, and afterwards kept a school at Corinth. That
is the allusion. It would be like saying "Remember
Napoleon at St. Helena."
[595] See Pausanias, x. 24.
[596] See Plato, "Charmides," 165 A.
[597] A title applied to Apollo first by Herodotus, i.
91, from his ambiguous ([Greek: loxa]) oracles.
[598] Part of the words of an oracle of the Pythian
Priestess, slightly changed. The whole oracle may be
seen in Herodotus, i. 47.
[599] Proverb of cross purposes.
[600] Reading [Greek: exerasthai] with Duebner.
[601] Catullus calls him "tumidus," _i.e._ long-winded,
95, 10. See also Propertius, iii. 34-32. He was a Greek
poet, a contemporary of Socrates and Plato, and author
of a Thebaid. Pausanias mentions him, viii. 25; ix. 35.
[602] The mediaeval proverb, _Ubi dolor ibi digitus_.
[603] A proverbial expression for having no judgment.
See Sophocles, Fragm. 307; Plato, "Charmides," 154 B;
Erasmus, "Adagia." So we say a person's mind is a blank
sheet on a subject he knows nothing about.
[604] Euripides, Fragm. 202. Quoted also by Plato,
"Gorgias," 484 E.
[605] Reading with Reiske, [Greek: misthon auto dounai
to mikron siopesai me dynamenos].
[606] A celebrated Greek historian, and pupil of
Isocrates. See Cicero, "De Oratore," ii. 13.
[607] Of Tarsus. See Cicero, "De Officiis," iii. 12.
ON CURIOSITY.[608]
Sec. I. If a house is dark, or has little air, is in an exposed position,
or unhealthy, the best thing will probably be to leave it; but if one is
attached to it from long residence in it, one can improve it and make it
more light and airy and healthy by altering the position of the windows
and stairs, and by throwing open new doors and shutting up old ones. So
some towns have been altered for the better, as my native place,[609]
which did lie to the west and received the rays of the setting sun from
Parnassus, was they say turned to the east by Chaeron. And Empedocles the
naturalist is supposed to have driven away the pestilence from that
district, by having closed up a mountain gorge that was prejudicial to
health by admitting the south wind to the plains. Similarly, as there
are certain diseases of the soul that are injurious and harmful and
bring storm and darkness to it, the best thing will be to eject them and
lay them low by giving them open sky, pure air and light, or, if that
cannot be, to change and improve them some way or other. One such mental
disease, that immediately suggests itself to one, is curiosity, the
desire to know other people's troubles, a disease that seems neither
free from envy nor malignity.
"Malignant wretch, why art so keen to mark
Thy neighbour's fault, and seest not thine own?"[610]
Shift your view, and turn your curiosity so as to look inwards: if you
delight to study the history of evils, you have copious material at
home, "as much as there is water in the Alizon, or leaves on the oak,"
such a quantity of faults will you find in your own life, and passions
in your soul, and shortcomings in your duty. For as Xenophon says[611]
good managers have one place for the vessels they use in sacrificing,
and another for those they use at meals, one place for their farm
instruments, and another for their weapons of war, so your faults arise
from different causes, some from envy, some from jealousy, some from
cowardice, some from meanness. Review these, consider these; bar up the
curiosity that pries into your neighbours' windows and passages, and
open it on the men's apartments, and women's apartments, and servant's
attics, in your own house. There this inquisitiveness and curiosity will
find full vent, in inquiries that will not be useless or malicious, but
advantageous and serviceable, each one saying to himself,
"What have I done amiss? What have I done?
What that I ought to have done left undone?"
Sec. II. And now, as they say of Lamia that she is blind when she sleeps at
home, for she puts her eyes on her dressing-table, but when she goes out
she puts her eyes on again, and has good sight, so each of us turns,
like an eye, our malicious curiosity out of doors and on others, while
we are frequently blind and ignorant about our own faults and vices, not
applying to them our eyes and light. So that the curious man is more use
to his enemies than to himself, for he finds fault with and exposes
their shortcomings, and shows them what they ought to avoid and correct,
while he neglects most of his affairs at home, owing to his excitement
about things abroad. Odysseus indeed would not converse with his mother
till he had learnt from the seer Tiresias what he went to Hades to
learn; and after receiving that information, then he turned to her, and
asked questions about the other women, who Tyro was, and who the fair
Chloris, and why Epicaste[612] had died, "having fastened a noose with a
long drop to the lofty beam."[613] But we, while very remiss and
ignorant and careless about ourselves, know all about the pedigrees of
other people, that our neighbour's grandfather was a Syrian, and his
grandmother a Thracian woman, and that such a one owes three talents,
and has not paid the interest. We even inquire into such trifling
matters as where somebody's wife has been, and what those two are
talking in the corner about. But Socrates used to busy himself in
examining the secret of Pythagoras' persuasive oratory, and Aristippus,
meeting Ischomachus at the Olympian games, asked him how Socrates
conversed so as to have so much influence over the young men, and having
received from him a few scraps and samples of his style, was so
enthusiastic about it that he wasted away, and became quite pale and
lean, thirsty and parched, till he sailed to Athens and drew from the
fountain-head, and knew the wonderful man himself and his speeches and
philosophy, the object of which was that men should recognize their
faults and so get rid of them.
Sec. III. But some men cannot bear to look upon their own life, so unlovely
a spectacle is it, nor to throw and flash on themselves, like a lantern,
the reflection of reason; but their soul being burdened with all manner
of vices, and dreading and shuddering at its own interior, sallies forth
and wanders abroad, feeding and fattening its malignity there. For as a
hen, when its food stands near its coop,[614] will frequently slip off
into a corner and scratch up,
"Where I ween some poor little grain appears on the dunghill,"
so curious people neglecting conversation or inquiry about common
matters, such as no one would try and prevent or be indignant at their
prying into, pick out the secret and hidden troubles of every family.
And yet that was a witty answer of the Egyptian, to the person who asked
him, "What he was carrying wrapped up;" "It was wrapped up on purpose
that you should not know." And you too, Sir, I would say to a curious
person, why do you pry into what is hidden? If it were not something bad
it would not be hidden. Indeed it is not usual to go into a strange
house without knocking at the door, and nowadays there are porters, but
in old times there were knockers on doors to let the people inside know
when anyone called, that a stranger might not find the mistress or
daughter of the house _en deshabille_, or one of the slaves being
corrected, or the maids bawling out. But the curious person intrudes on
all such occasions as these, although he would be unwilling to be a
spectator, even if invited, of a well-ordered family: but the things for
which bars and bolts and doors are required, these he reveals and
divulges openly to others. Those are the most troublesome winds, as
Aristo says, that blow up our clothes: but the curious person not only
strips off the garments and clothes of his neighbours, but breaks
through their walls, opens their doors, and like the wanton wind, that
insinuates itself into maidenly reserve, he pries into and calumniates
dances and routs and revels.
Sec. IV. And as Cleon is satirized in the play[615] as having "his hands
among the AEtolians, but his soul in Peculation-town," so the soul of the
curious man is at once in the mansions of the rich, and the cottages of
the poor, and the courts of kings, and the bridal chambers of the newly
married; he pries into everything, the affairs of foreigners, the
affairs of princes, and sometimes not without danger. For just as if one
were to taste aconite to investigate its properties, and kill oneself
before one had discovered them, so those that pry into the troubles of
great people ruin themselves before they get the knowledge they desire;
even as those become blind who, neglecting the wide and general