In this case, it is true, the man’s hopes and kindly feeling formed some excuse for his lack of self-command. Most babblers, however, have no excuse at all for their own undoing. For example, people were once talking in a barber’s shop about the despotism of Dionysius, and saying how firmly established it was against all assault. At this the barber remarked laughingly, ‘How can you say that, when every few days I have my |509| razor at his throat?’ No sooner did Dionysius hear of this speech than he impaled the barber.
Barbers, by the way, are generally a garrulous crew. Their chairs being the resort of the greatest chatterers, they catch the bad habit themselves. It was a neat quip that Archelaus once gave to a loquacious barber. After putting the towel round him, the man asked, ‘How shall I cut your hair, Sire?’ ‘In silence,’ he replied. It was a barber also who reported the great disaster of the Athenians in Sicily, he having been the first to hear it at the Peiraeus from a slave, who had run away |B| from the spot. Abandoning his shop, he hurried at full speed to town,
Lest another the glory might win
by imparting the news to the capital,
while he might come but the second.
A panic naturally ensued, and the people were gathered to an assembly, where they set to work to trace the rumour to its source. When, however, the barber was brought forward and questioned, he did not even know the name of his informant, but could only give as his authority a person unnamed and unknown. Thereupon the audience shouted in anger: ‘To the rack and the wheel with the wretch! The thing is a pure concoction! Who else has heard it? Who believes it?’ The wheel |C| had been brought, and the man had been stretched upon it, when there appeared upon the scene the bearers of the disastrous news, who had escaped from the very midst of the action. At this they all dispersed, to occupy themselves with their private griefs, leaving the poor wretch bound upon the wheel. When at a late hour towards evening he was set free, he proceeded to ask the executioner ‘whether they had also heard in what manner Nicias, the commander, had met his death’. Such a hopeless and incorrigible failing does garrulity become through force of habit.
After drinking a bitter and evil-smelling medicine, we are disgusted with the cup as well. In the same way, if you are the bearer of bad news, you are regarded with disgust and hatred by those who hear it. Hence a pretty discussion in Sophocles: |D|
A. Is it in ear or heart that thou art stung?
B. Why seek thus to define where lies my pain?
A. ’Tis the doer grieves thine heart, I but thine ears.