It was, again, the talkativeness of one man that prevented Rome from obtaining its freedom by the removal of Nero. All preparations had been made, and only a single night was left before the despot was to perish. It happened, however, that the man who was to perform the assassination, when on his way to the theatre, saw a prisoner at the palace doors on the point of being brought before Nero. As he was bewailing his fate, our friend came up close and whispered to him, ‘My good |D| man, only pray that to-day may pass, and to-morrow you will be offering me thanks.’ The prisoner grasped the meaning of the hint, and reflecting, I suppose, that
’Tis a fool who forgoes what he holds, to pursue what is out of his keeping,
chose the surer rather than the more righteous way of saving himself. That is to say, he informed Nero of the expression used. The man was thereupon promptly seized, and underwent rack, fire, and lash while denying, in the face of constraint, what he had betrayed without any constraint.
The philosopher Zeno, for fear that bodily suffering might force him to reveal some secret in spite of himself, bit through his tongue and spat it out at the despot. Leaena, again, has been gloriously rewarded for her self-command. She was the |E| mistress of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and she shared in their plot against the despots—to the best of her hopes, which was all a woman could do. For she also was inspired with the bacchic frenzy of that glorious ‘bowl of love‘, and the God had caused her also to be initiated into the secret. Well, after they had failed and met their death, she was put to the question and ordered to inform against those who still escaped detection. She refused, and the firmness with which she bore her sufferings |F| proved that, in the love of those heroes for such a woman, there was nothing unworthy of themselves. The Athenians therefore had a bronze lioness made without a tongue, and set it up in the gates of the Acropolis, that courageous animal representing her indomitable firmness, and the absence of a tongue her power of silence in keeping a solemn secret.
No uttered word has ever done such service as many which have been unuttered. You may some day utter what you have kept silent, but you cannot unsay what has been said; it has been poured out, and has run abroad. Hence, I take it, we have mankind to teach us how to speak, but gods to teach us how to keep silent, our lesson in that art being received at initiatory |506| rites and mysteries. Odysseus, who possessed most eloquence, the poet has made most reticent; he has done the same with his son, his wife, and his nurse. You hear how she says:
Like stubborn oak or like iron will I hold your secret and keep it.
In the case of Odysseus himself, as he sat beside Penelope,
Though in his heart he pitied his wife, and was sore at her weeping,
Steady within their lids stood his eyes as horn or as iron.
|B| So full of self-command was his body in every part, under such perfect discipline and control did reason hold it, that it forbade the eyes to shed a tear, the tongue to utter a sound, the heart to tremble or cry out with rage;