Concerning Talkativeness (4-7)

Again, every self-respecting and orderly man would, I think, avoid drunkenness. For while, according to some, anger lives next door to madness,[*] drunkenness lives in the same house with it; or rather, drunkenness is madness, shorter in duration, but more culpable, because the will also is involved in it.[*] And there is no fault so generally ascribed to drunkenness as that of intemperate and unlimited speech. For wine, says the Poet,[*]

Urges a man to sing, though he be wise,

And stirs to merry laughter and the dance.

But it lets slip some word better unsaid[*]:

Thus silence is something profound and awesome and sober, but drunkenness is a babbler, for it is foolish and witless, and therefore loquacious also. And the philosophers[*] even in their very definition of drunkenness say that it is intoxicated and foolish talking; thus drinking is not blamed if silence attends the drinking, but it is foolish talk which converts the influence of wine into drunkenness. While it is true that the drunken man talks foolishness in his cups, the chatterer talks foolishness on all occasions, in the market-place, in the theatre, out walking, drunk or sober, by day, by night. As your physician, he is worse than the disease; as your ship-mate, more unpleasant than sea-sickness; his praises are more annoying than another’s blame: we certainly have greater pleasure in company with clever rascals than with honest chatterboxes. In Sophocles,[*] when Ajax

I blame you not: ill your words, but good your deeds.

Lysias once composed a speech for a litigant and gave it to him. The man read it through a number of times and came to Lysias in despair and said that the first time he read it the speech seemed to him wonderfully good, but on taking it up a second and third time it appeared completely dull and ineffectual. Well, said Lysias laughing, isn’t it only once that you are going to speak it before the jurors? And consider the persuasiveness and charm of Lysias! For he is one who, for my part,

I say has a fair portion in the violet-tressed Muses.[*]

I scorn to tell

A tale again that’s once been clearly told[*];

Let this, then, be the first thing of which we remind them - that just as wine, discovered for the promotion of pleasure and good fellowship, is sometimes misused to produce discomfort and intoxication by those[*] who compel others to drink it undiluted in large quantities, so speech, which is the most pleasant and human of social ties, is made inhuman and unsocial by those who use it badly and wantonly, because they offend those whom they think they please, are ridiculed for their attempts at gaining admiration, and are disliked because of the very means they employ to gain affection. As, then, he can have no share in Aphrodite who uses her girdle to drive away and alienate those who seek his company, so he who arouses annoyance and hostility with his speech is no friend of the Muses and a stranger to art.

Now of the other affections and maladies some are dangerous, some detestable, some ridiculous; but garrulousness has all these qualities at once; for babblers are derided for telling what everyone knows, they are hated for bearing bad news, they run into danger since they cannot refrain from revealing secrets. So it is that Anacharsis,[*] when he had been entertained and feasted at Solons house and lay down to sleep, was seen to have his left hand placed

Since other labour was pressing,[*]

Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled with meal[*];

The loquacity of one man, again, prevented Rome from becoming free by the removal of Nero.[*] For but one night remained, after which the tyrant was to die, and all preparations had been made; but the man[*] who was to kill him saw at the palace gates when on his way to the theatre a prisoner about to be led before Nero and lamenting his evil fortune. He approached the prisoner and whispered to him, Only pray, my good man, that to-day may pass by and to-morrow you will be thankful to me. So the prisoner grasped the intended meaning, and reflecting, I suppose, that

He is a fool who leaves things close at hand

To follow what is out of reach,[*]