Note how you may train yourself for other virtues. To learn justice you should sometimes forgo an honest gain, and so accustom yourself to keep aloof from dishonest ones. Similarly, to learn continence, you should sometimes hold aloof from your own wife, and so secure yourself against temptation from another’s. Apply this habit to inquisitiveness. Endeavour occasionally to miss hearing or seeing things which concern yourself. When something happens at home, and a person wishes to tell you of it, put the matter off; and when things have been said which appear to affect yourself, refuse to hear them. Remember how Oedipus was brought into the direst disasters by over-curiosity. Finding he was no Corinthian, but an alien, he set to work |C| to discover who he was, and so he met with Laius. He killed him, married his own mother, with the throne for dowry, and then, while apparently blessed by fortune, began his search once more. The endeavours of his wife to prevent him only made him question still more closely, and in the most peremptory way, the old man who was in the secret. And at last, when circumstances are already bringing him to suspect, and the old man cries:
Alas! I stand on the dread brink of speech!
he is nevertheless in such a blaze or spasm of passion that he replies:
And I of hearing; and yet hear I must.
|D| So bitter-sweet, so uncontrollable, is the excitement of curiosity—like the tickling of a wound, at which one tears till he makes it bleed. Meanwhile if we are free from that malady, and mild by nature, we shall ignore a disagreeable thing and say:
Sovran Oblivion, how wise art thou!
We must therefore train ourselves to this end. If a letter is brought to us, we must not show all that hurry and eagerness to open it which most people display, when they bite the fastenings through with their teeth, if their hands are too slow. When a messenger arrives from somewhere or other, we must not run to meet him, nor get up from our seats. If a friend |E| says, ‘I have something new to tell you,’ let us reply: ‘Better, if you have something useful or profitable.’ When I was once lecturing at Rome, the famous Rusticus—who was afterwards put to death by Domitian out of jealousy at his reputation—was among my hearers. A soldier came through the audience and handed him a note from the emperor. There was a hush, and I made a pause, to allow of his reading the letter. This, however, he refused to do, nor would he open it, until I had finished my discourse and the audience broke up. The incident caused universal admiration at his dignified behaviour.
But when one feeds his inquisitiveness upon permissible material until he makes it robust and headstrong, he no longer |F| finds it easy to master, when force of habit urges it towards forbidden ground. Such persons will stealthily open their friends’ missives, will push their way into a confidential meeting, will get a view of rites which it is an impiety to see, will tread in hallowed places, and will pry into the doings and sayings of a king.
Now with a despot—who is compelled to know everything—there is nothing that makes him so detested as the crew known as his ‘ears’ and ‘jackals’. ‘Listeners’ were first instituted by Darius the Younger, who had no confidence in himself and looked upon every one with fear and suspicion. ‘Jackals’ were |523| the creation of the Dionysii, who distributed them among the people of Syracuse. Naturally, when the revolution came, these were the first to be seized and cudgelled to death by the Syracusans.
Blackmailers and informers are a breed belonging to the Busybody clan; they are members of the family. But, whereas the informer looks to see if his neighbours have done or plotted any mischief, the busybody brings to book and drags into public even the misfortunes for which they are not responsible. It is said that the outcast derived his name of aliterios in the first instance from being a busybody. It appears that when a severe famine once occurred at Athens, and when those who were in possession of wheat, instead of bringing it in to the public |B| stock, used to grind it (alein) secretly by night in their houses, certain persons, who went round watching for the noise of the mills, were in consequence called aliterioi. It was in the same way, we are told, that the informer won his name of sukophantes. The export of figs (suka) being prohibited, those who gave information (phainein) and impeached the offenders were called sukophantai. Busybodies would do well to reflect upon this fact. It may make them ashamed of the family likeness between their own practices and those of a class which is a special object of loathing and anger.