On Listening to Lectures (15)

Then also the terms used in commendations must not be indiscriminate. For Epicurus [*] himself is displeasing when he says of his friends’ letters that they give rise to hullabaloos. And those persons who nowadays introduce into our lecturerooms outlandish expressions, who are wont to exclaim over a lecture Divine, and Inspired, and Unapproachable, as though it were no longer enough to say Hear, Hear! and Good! and Right! as Plato and Socrates and Hypereides and their friends used to do to show their commendation,

behave in a most unseemly manner, and traduce the speakers, as though these desired such high-flown and excessive commendations. Exceedingly displeasing also are those who use an oath in testifying to their approval of the speakers as though in a law court. No less so are those who fail to respect the quality of persons, and cry aloud to a philosopher Smart! or to an aged man Clever! or Flowery!, thus transferring to the philosophers the expressions of those who make a sport and an opportunity to show off out of their scholastic exercises, and applying meretricious commendation to sober discourse, as though they should put on an athlete’s head a crown of lilies or roses instead of laurel or wild olive! Once when Euripides the poet was going over for the members of his chorus a lyric passage set to music one of them burst out laughing; whereat Euripides remarked, If you were not so stupid and ignorant, you would not have laughed while I was singing in most solemn measure. [*] And so, as I think, one who is a philosopher and statesman might repress the exuberance of a graceless hearer by saying, You seem to me to be an ill-bred fool; else, while I am giving instruction or admonition, or discoursing upon the gods or the State or its government, you would not be whistling and dancing a jig to my words. Just consider what it really means, if, when a philosopher is speaking, the people outside, by reason of the clamour and shouting of those within, are unable to make out whether the applause is for some flute-player, or harper, or dancer.