Of Garrulity, or Talkativeness (9-10)

Ino therefore, in Euripides, frankly extolling herself, says:

I know both when and where my tongue to hold,

And when with safety to be freely bold.

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For they that are brought up under a truly generous and royal education learn first to be silent, and then to talk. And therefore King Antigonus, when his son asked him when they should discamp, replied, What! art thou afraid of being the only man that shall not hear the trumpet? So loath was he to trust him with a secret, to whom he was to leave his kingdom; teaching him thereby, when he came to command another day, to be no less wary and sparing of his speech. Metellus also, that old soldier, being asked some such question about the intended march of his army, If I thought, said he, that my shirt were privy to this secret, I would pull it off and throw it into the fire. Eumenes also, when he heard that Craterus was marching with his forces against him, said not a word of it to his best friend, but gave out all along that it was Neoptolemus; for him his soldiers contemned, but they admired Craterus’s fame and virtue; but nobody knew the truth but Eumenes himself. Thereupon joining battle, the victory fell to their side, and they slew Craterus, not knowing whom he was till they found him among the slain. So cunningly did taciturnity manage this combat, and conceal so great an adversary; so that the friends of Eumenes admired rather than reproved him for not telling them beforehand. For indeed, should a man be blamed in such a case, it is better for him to be accused after victory obtained by his distrust, than to be obliged to blame others after an overthrow because he has been too easy to impart his secrets.

Nay, what man is he that dares take upon him the freedom to blame another for not keeping the secret which he himself has revealed to him? For if the secret ought not to have been divulged, it was ill done to break it to another; but if, after thou hast let it go from thyself, thou wouldst have another keep it in, surely it is a great argument that thou hast more confidence in another than in thyself; for, if he be like thyself, thou art deservedly lost; if better, then thou art miraculously saved, as having met with a person more faithful to thee than thou art to thy own interest. But thou wilt say, he is my friend. Very good: yet this friend of mine had another, in whom he might confide as much as I did in him; and in like manner his friend another, to the end of the chapter.

And thus the secret gains ground, and spreads itself by multiplication of babbling. For as a unit never exceeds its bounds, but always remains one, and is therefore called a unit; but the next is two, which contains the unlimited principle of diversity,—for it straightway departs from out of itself (as it were) and by doubling turns to a plurality,—so speech abiding in the first person’s thoughts may truly be called a secret; but being communicated to another, it presently changes its name into common rumor. This is the reason that Homer gives to words the epithet of winged; for he that lets a bird go out of his hand does not easily catch her again; neither is it possible for a man to recall and cage again in his breast a word let slip from his mouth;[*] for with light wings it fetches many a compass, and flutters about from one quarter to another in a moment. The course of a ship may well be stayed by cables and anchors, which else would spoon away before a fresh gale of wind; but there is no fist riding or anchor-hold for speech, when once let loose as from a harbor; but being whirled away with a sonorous noise and loud echo, it carries off and plunges the unwary babbler into some fatal danger.

For soon a little spark of fire, let fly,

May kindle Ida’s wool, so thick and high

What one man to his seeming fiend lets go,

Whole cities may with ease enquire and know.

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