Part 43

So bitter-sweet and uncontrollable is the itch of curiosity, like a sore, shedding its blood when lanced. But he that is free from this disease, and calm by nature, being ignorant of many unpleasant things, may say,

"Holy oblivion of all human ills, What wisdom dost thou bring!"

Sec. XV. We ought therefore also to accustom ourselves, when we receive a letter, not to be in a tremendous hurry about breaking the seal, as most people are, even tearing it open with their teeth if their hands are slow; nor to rise from our seat and run up to meet him, if a messenger comes; and if a friend says, "I have some news to tell you," we ought to say, "I had rather you had something useful or advantageous to tell me." When I was on one occasion lecturing at Rome, one of my audience was the well-known Rusticus, whom the Emperor Domitian afterwards had put to death through envy of his glory, and a soldier came in in the middle and brought him a letter from the Emperor, and silence ensuing, and I stopping that he might have time to read his letter, he would not, and did not open it till I had finished my lecture, and the audience had dispersed; so that everybody marvelled at his self-control. But whenever anyone who has power feeds his curiosity till it is strong and vehement, he can no longer easily control it, when it hurries him on to illicit acts, from force of habit; and such people open their friends' letters, thrust themselves in at private meetings, become spectators of rites they ought not to witness, enter holy grounds they ought not to, and pry into the lives and conversations of kings.

Sec. XVI. Indeed tyrants themselves, who must know all things, are made unpopular by no class more than by their spies and talebearers. Darius in his youth, when he mistrusted his own powers, and suspected and feared everybody, was the first who employed spies; and the Dionysiuses introduced them at Syracuse: but in a revolution they were the first that the Syracusans took and tortured to death. Indeed informers are of the same tribe and family as curious people. However informers only investigate wicked acts or plots, but curious people pry into and publish abroad the involuntary misfortunes of their neighbours. And it is said that impious people first got their name from curiosity, for it seems there was a mighty famine at Athens, and those people that had wheat not producing it, but grinding it stealthily by night in their houses, some of their neighbours went about and noticed the noise of the mills grinding, and so they got their name. This also is the origin of the well-known Greek word for informer, (Sycophant, quasi Fig-informer), for when the people were forbidden to export figs, those who informed against those who did were called Fig-informers. It is well worth the while of curious people to give their attention to this, that they may be ashamed of having any similarity or connection in habit with a class of people so universally hated and disliked as informers.

Jeremy Taylor has largely borrowed from this Treatise in his "Holy Living," chap. ii. Sec. v. Of Modesty.

Chaeronea in Boeotia.

Lines from some comic poet, no doubt.

"Oeconomicus," cap. viii.

The mother of Oedipus, better known as "Jocasta."

Homer, "Odyssey," xi. 278. Epicaste hung herself.

"[Greek: oikisko] corrigit Valekenarius ad Herodot. p. 557."--Wyttenbach.

Aristophanes, "Equites," 79.

Sophocles, Fragm. 713. The lines are quoted more fully by our author in his "Lives," p. 911. There are there four preceding lines that compare human life to the moon's changes.

AEschylus, "Supplices," 937.

All three being eminent doctors.

"Intelligo Charondam."--Xylander.

Plutarch wants to show that curiosity and adultery are really the same vice in principle. Hence his imagery here. Jeremy Taylor has very beautifully dealt with this passage, "Holy Living," chap. ii. Sec. v. I cannot pretend to his felicity of language. Thus Plutarch makes adultery mere curiosity, and curiosity a sort of adultery in regard to secrets. A profoundly ethical and moral view. Compare Sec. ix.

Compare Lucian's [Greek: echeglottia], after [Greek: echecheiria] (armistice), Lexiph. 9.

See the story in Homer, "Iliad," vi. 155 sq.

Or self-control.

Literally, some woman shut up, or enclosed.

See also our author's "On those who are punished by the Deity late," Sec. xi.

See Euripides, Fragm., 389. Also Plutarch's "Theseus," cap. xv.

Plutarch rather reminds one, in his evident contempt for Epitaphs, of the cynic who asked, "Where are all the bad people buried?" Where indeed?

Sophocles, "Electra," 724, 725.

euphrone, a stock phrase for night, is here defined.

"Historia exstat initio libri quinti Cyropaediae."--Reiske.

Literally, "slippery and prone to." For the metaphor of "slippery" compare Horace, "Odes," i. 19-8, "Et vultus nimium lubricus adspici."