"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.
§ 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]
§ 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.
§ 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,