We find Plato commending such persons, and saying that, in |F| their deliverance of crisp, terse, and compact utterances, they resemble a skilful javelineer. Lycurgus, again, forced his fellow-citizens to acquire this gift of compression and solidity by applying the pressure of silence from their earliest childhood.
The Celtiberians produce steel from iron by first burying it in the ground and then clearing away the earthy surplusage. So is it with Lacedaemonian speech. It has no surplusage, but is steadily hardened down to absolute effectiveness by the removal of everything unessential. And this knack of theirs of saying a pithy thing, or making a keen and nimble retort, is the result of a great habit of silence.
|511| We must not omit to give our chatterer examples of such brevities, in order to show how pretty and effective they are. For instance:
The Lacedaemonians to Philip: Dionysius at Corinth;
and, again, when Philip wrote to them ‘If I enter Laconia, I will turn you out‘, they wrote back, ‘If.’ When King Demetrius shouted in his indignation, ‘Have the Lacedaemonians sent only one envoy to me?‘, the envoy replied undismayed, ‘One to one.’ Among our ancient worthies also we admire |B| the men of few words. It was not the Iliad or the Odyssey or the paeans of Pindar that the Amphictyons inscribed upon the temple of the Pythian Apollo, but the maxims Know Thyself: Nothing in Excess: Give pledge, and Mischief is nigh, which they admired for their simple and compact expression, with its closely-hammered thought in small compass. And does not the god himself show a love of conciseness and brevity in his oracles, deriving his name of ‘Loxias’ from the fact that he would rather be obscure than garrulous?
Do we not also particularly praise and admire those who can say, by means of a symbol and without speaking a word, all that |C| is necessary? For instance, when his fellow-citizens insisted upon Heracleitus proposing some measure for the promotion of concord, he mounted the platform, took a cup of cold water, sprinkled it with barley-meal, stirred it with a slip of pennyroyal, drank it off, and went home. This was his way of intimating that to be satisfied with the commonest things, and to have no expensive wants, is the way to maintain a community in peace and concord. Another case is that of Scilurus, the Scythian king, who left behind him eighty sons. When he was dying, he called for a bundle of small spears, and bade them take and break it in pieces, tied together as it was, and in the mass. When they gave up the task, he himself drew the spears out one by one and snapped them all with ease, thereby demonstrating |D| how invincible was their strength if harmoniously united, how weak and short-lived if they did not hold together.
Any one, I believe, who constantly recalls these and the like examples, will cease to take a pleasure in chattering. But—speaking for myself—there is a story of a certain slave which greatly discourages me, when I reflect how hard it is to be so careful of our words as to make sure of our purpose. The orator Pupius Piso, not wishing to be troubled, ordered his slaves to talk only in answer to questions, and not a word more. Subsequently, being anxious to welcome Clodius in his official position, he gave orders for him to be invited to dinner, and prepared what was, of course, a splendid banquet. When the hour arrived, the other guests were all present and waiting for |E| Clodius. The slave who regularly carried the invitations was repeatedly sent out to see whether he was on his way. When evening came and he was given up in despair, Piso said to the slave, ‘Of course you took him the invitation?’ ‘I did,’ he answered. ‘Then why has he not appeared?’ ‘Because he refused.’ ‘Then why did you not tell me so at once?’ ‘Because you did not ask me that question.’
So much for the slave at Rome, whereas at Athens he will tell his master while digging
What terms are named i’ the treaty,
so great in all things is the force of habituation. To habituation let us now turn.