On Being a Busybody (intro-4)

This essay, which was apparently written only a short time before De Garrulitate,[*] has much the same interest and charm as that pleasant work. The essays are akin in many ways; portions of the later treatise are merely a reshaping of ideas and commonplaces which the earlier had adumbrated.

The source of much of this work has been traced to Ariston of Chios by O. Hense (Rhein. Mus.,x Iv. 541 if.); and F. Krauss[*] has shown with some success the relation to diatribe literature.

The essay was already known to Aulus Gellius (xi. 16), who speaks with feeling of the difficulty of rendering πολυπραγμοσύνη in Latin[*]; nor has it been unknown to English moralists. Jeremy Taylor has again borrowed largely from it in his Holy Living, ii. 5.

In the translation of this and the preceding essay I am greatly indebted to Mr. Tucker’s[*] spirited version, from which I have taken numerous phrases and sometimes whole sentences.

The work is No. 97 in the Lamprias catalogue.

It is perhaps best to avoid a house which has no ventilation, or is gloomy, or cold in winter, or unhealthy; yet if familiarity has made you fond of the place, it is possible to make it brighter, better ventilated, and healthier by altering the lights, shifting the stairs, and opening some doors and closing others. Even some cities have gained by such changes. So in the case of my own town,[*] which used to face the west and receive the full force of the sun in the late afternoon from Parnassus, they say that it was turned by Chaeron to face the east. And Empedocles,[*] the natural philosopher, by blocking up a certain mountain gorge, which permitted the south wind to blow a dire and pestilential draught down upon the plains, was thought to have shut plague out of his country.

Since, then, there are certain unhealthy and injurious states of mind which allow winter and darkness to enter the soul, it is better to thrust these out and to make a clean sweep to the foundations, thus giving to ourselves a clear sky and light and pure air; but if that is impossible, it is best at least to interchange and readjust them in some way or other, turning or shifting them about.

Such a malady of the mind, to take the first instance, is curiosity, which is a desire to learn the troubles of others,[*] a disease which is thought to be free from neither envy nor malice:

Why do you look so sharp on others’ ills,

Malignant man, yet overlook your own?[*]

Shift your curiosity from things without and turn it inwards; if you enjoy dealing with the recital of troubles, you have much occupation at home:

Great as the water flowing down Alizon,

Many as the leaves around the oak,[*]

so great a quantity of transgressions will you find in your own life, of afflictions in your own soul, of oversights in the performance of your own obligations.

For as Xenophon[*] says that good householders have a special place for sacrificial utensils, and a special place for dinner-ware, and that farming implements should be stored elsewhere, and apart from them the weapons of war; even so in your own case you have one store of faults arising from envy, another from jealousy, another from cowardice, another from pettiness. Assault these, examine these! Block up the windows and the side-doors of your curiosity that open on your neighbours’ property, and open up others leading to your own-to the men’s quarters, to the women’s quarters, to the living-rooms of your servants! Here this curiosity and meddlesomeness of yours will have an occupation not unhelpful or

malicious, but useful and salutary if each one will but say to himself,

Where did I err? And what deed have I done? What duty neglected?[*]

But as it is, like the Lamia in the fable, who, they say, when at home sleeps in blindness with her eyes stored away in a jar, but when she goes abroad puts in her eyes and can see, so each one of us, in our dealings with others abroad, puts his meddlesomeness, like an eye, into his maliciousness; but we are often tripped up by our own faults and vices by reason of our ignorance of them, since we provide ourselves with no sight or light by which to inspect them. Therefore the busybody is also more useful to his enemies than to himself,[*] for he rebukes and drags out their faults and demonstrates to them what they should avoid or correct, but he neglects the greater part of his own domestic errors through his passionate interest in those abroad. So Odysseus[*] refused to converse even with his mother until he had learned from the seer[*] the matters by reason of which he had come to the House of Hades; and when he had his answer, he both turned to his mother and also made inquiries of the other women,[*] asking who was Tyro, who the beautiful Chloris, why Epicaste met her death

Tying a noose, sheer-hung, from the high roof.[*]

But we, while treating our own affairs with considerable laxity and ignorance and neglect, pry into the pedigrees of the rest of the world: our neighbour’s grandfather was a Syrian and his grandmother a Thracian[*]; so-and-so owes three talents and has not paid the interest. We inquire also into such matters as where so-and-so’s wife was coming back from,[*] and what A and B’s private conversation in the corner was about. Yet Socrates went about seeking to solve the question of what arguments Pythagoras used to carry conviction; and Aristippus, when he met Ischomachus at Olympia, asked him by what manner of conversation Socrates succeeded in so affecting the young men. And when Aristippus had gleaned a few odd seeds and samples of Socrates’ talk, he was so moved that he suffered a physical collapse and became quite pale and thin. Finally he sailed for Athens and slaked his burning thirst with draughts from the fountain-head, and engaged in a study of the man and his words and his philosophy, of which the end and aim was to come to recognize one’s own vices and so rid oneself of them.

Yet there are some who cannot bear to face their own lives, regarding these as a most unlovely spectacle, or to reflect and revolve upon themselves, like a light, the power of reason, but their souls, being full of all manner of vices, shuddering and frightened at what is within, leap outwards and prowl about other people’s concerns and there batten and make fat their own malice. For as a domestic fowl will often, though its own food lies near at hand, slip into a corner and there scratch

Where one sole barley grain perhaps appears

In the dung-heap,[*]

in the same way busybodies, passing over topics and narratives which are in plain view and matters concerning which no one prevents their inquiring or is vexed if inquiry is made, pick out the hidden and obscure troubles of every household. And yet it was surely a clever answer that the Egyptian gave to the man who asked him what he was carrying wrapped up: That’s why it is wrapped up. And why, if you please, are you inquisitive about what is concealed? If it were not something bad, it would not be concealed. Yet it is not customary to walk into the house of someone else without at least first knocking on the door; but nowadays there are doormen and formerly there were knockers to be struck at the door and give warning, so that the stranger might not catch the mistress of the house or the unmarried daughter unawares, or a slave being punished or the maid-servants screaming. But it is for these very things that the busybody slips in. A sober and respectable household he would not willingly enter as a spectator even if he were invited to come; but the matters to conceal which keys and bolts and streetdoors are used-these are what he uncovers and communicates to outsiders. And yet the winds with which we are most vexed, as Ariston[*] says, are those which pull up our garments, but the busybody strips off not only the mantles and tunics of those near him, but also their very walls; he flings the doors wide open and makes his way, like a piercing wind, through the maiden of tender skin,[*] and creeps in, searching out with slanderous intent drunken revels and dances and all-night festivals.

And like Cleon in the comedy,[*]

His hands in Beggar-town, his mind on Thefton,[*]

so the mind of the busybody is at the same time in mansions of the rich, in hovels of the poor, in royal courts, and in bridal chambers of the newly-wed. He searches out everybody’s business, that of strangers and that of rulers, nor is this search of his without danger; but just as though a man should taste aconite[*] through curiosity about its properties, he would find that he had killed the taster before he had got his taste, so those who search out the vices of those more powerful than themselves destroy themselves before they acquire their knowledge. For instance those who scarcely glance[*] at these sunbeams which have been poured down so lavishly upon us all, but recklessly dare to gaze upon the orb itself and to rend its radiance apart, striving to force their way within, are blinded. This is the reason why Philippides,[*] the comic poet, made an excellent reply when King Lysimachus once said to him, Which one of my possessions may I share with you? Anything, Sire, said Philippides, except your secrets. For only the most pleasant and most decorous attributes of kings are displayed openly-their banquets and wealth and festivals and favours; but if there is anything secret, do not approach it, but let it be! The joy of a prosperous king is not concealed, nor is his laughter when he is amused, nor his outlay on entertainment and favours; but it is time for alarm when something is hidden, something dark, unsmiling, unapproachable, a storehouse of festering wrath, or the meditation of a punishment indicative of sullen anger, or jealousy of a wife, or some suspicion against a son, or distrust of a friend. Beware of this darkening and gathering cloud! That which is now hidden will be disclosed to you when the cloud bursts forth amid crashes of thunder and bolts of lightning!