De curiositate

This essay, which was apparently written only a short time before De Garrulitate,[*](And no doubt also before De Tranquillitate (so rightly Brokate).) 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[*](Die Rhetorischen Schriften Plutarchs, Munich Diss., Nürnberg, 1912, pp. 67 ff. See also the interesting table (p. 87) of rhetorical figures which places our essay in the very centre of Plutarch’s literary activity.) 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[*](It is hard to render it in English also. The translator uses the word curiosity - Ed.); 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[*](Select Essays of Plutarch, Oxford, Clarendon, 1913.) 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,[*](Chaeroneia) 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,[*](Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker 5, i. p. 284, A 14; cf. Moralia, 1126 b.) 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,[*](Cf. Menander’s typical curious slave, a πολυπράγμων, who says (Frag. 850 Kock): οὐδεν γλυκύτερόν ἐστιν ἢ πάντ’ εἰδέναι..) a disease which is thought to be free from neither envy nor malice:

1. Why do you look so sharp on others’ ills,
2. Malignant man, yet overlook your own?[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag., iii. p. 476, ades. 359; Cf. 469 b, supra.)

1. Great as the water flowing down Alizon,
2. Many as the leaves around the oak,[*](A verse of unknown origin; the text is probably corrupt.)

For as Xenophon[*](Oeconomicus, viii. 19, 20.) 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

Where did I err? And what deed have I done? What duty neglected?[*](Pythagoras,Carmina Aurea, 42; cf. Moralia, 168 b.)

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,[*]( Cf.Moralia, 87 b-c.) 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[*](Cf. Homer, Od., xi. 88 ff.; Ps.-Lucian, De Astrologia, 24.) refused to converse even with his mother until he had learned from the seer[*](Teiresias.) 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,[*](Od., xi. 229 ff.) asking who was Tyro, who the beautiful Chloris, why Epicaste met her death

Tying a noose, sheer-hung, from the high roof.[*](Ibid. 278; Epicaste is better known as Jocasta, the mother of Oedipus.)

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

1. Where one sole barley grain perhaps appears
2. In the dung-heap,[*](Perhaps a verse of Callimachus (Frag. anon. 374 ed. Schneider).)

And like Cleon in the comedy,[*](Aristophanes, Knights, 79; Klopidai (Thief-deme) is a play upon the actual deme Kropidai.)

His hands in Beggar-town, his mind on Thefton,[*](Or better, Theevingen.)

What escape is there, then, from this vice? By a process of shifting and diverting our inquisitiveness, as has been said,[*](In 515 d, supra.) and, if possible, by turning the soul to better and more pleasant subjects. Direct your curiosity to heavenly things and things on earth, in the air, in the sea. Are you by nature fond of small or of great spectacles? If of great ones, apply your curiosity to the sun: where does it set and whence does it rise? Inquire into the changes in the moon, as you would into those of a human being: what becomes of all the light she has spent and from what source did she regain it, how does it happen that

1. When out of darkness first she comes anew,
2. She shows her face increasing fair and full;
3. And when she reaches once her brightest sheen,
4. Again she wastes away and comes to naught?[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 315, Sophocles, Frag. 787 (871 ed. Pearson); the full quotation may be found in Life of Demetrius, xlv. (911 c-d). Cf. also Moralia, 282 b.)

But perhaps you will have no curiosity about these subjects since there is nothing evil in them. Yet if your zest for meddling must by all means be for ever feeding and dwelling on depraved things, like a maggot on dead matter, let us escort it to history and supply it with an unstinted abundance of evils. For there you will find

The deaths of men, the shufflings off of life,[*](Aeschylus, Suppliants, 937; cf. Moralia, 937 f.)

But curiosity apparently takes no pleasure in stale calamities, but wants them hot and fresh; it enjoys the spectacle of novel tragedies and has not much zest for association with the comic and more cheerful side of life. Consequently when anyone tells the tale of a wedding or a sacrifice or a complimentary escort, the busybody is a careless and inattentive listener, and declares that he has already heard most of the details and urges the narrator to

But asks more speech and proffers both his ears[*](Callimachus, Frag. anon. 375 ed. Schneider.);

1. Alas!
2. How much more readily than glad events
3. Is mischance carried to the ears of men!

1. The only song that’s heard within my house
2. Is wailing cries.[*](Cf. 463 b, supra.)

For curiosity is really a passion for finding out whatever is hidden and concealed, and no one conceals a good thing when he has it; why, people even pretend to have good things when they have them

So painful for all of us is the revelation of our own troubles that many die rather than reveal to physicians some hidden malady. Just imagine Herophilus[*](Of Chalcedon, a great anatomist of the Alexandrian age (flor. circa 300 b.c.).) or Erasistratus[*](Of Ceos, worked in Alexandria at the height of his fame (258 b.c.).) or Asclepius himself, when he was a mortal man,[*](Asclepius, the son of Apollo, was deified after death as the god of medicine.) carrying about their drugs and instruments, calling at one house after another, and inquiring whether a man had an abscess in the anus or a woman a cancer in the womb! And yet the inquisitiveness of this profession is a salutary thing. Yet everyone, I imagine, would have driven such a man away, because he does not wait to be sent for, but comes unsummoned to investigate others’ infirmities. And busybodies search out these very matters and others still worse, not to cure, but merely to expose them. For this reason they are hated deservedly. For example, we are annoyed and displeased with customs-officials, not when they pick up those articles which we are importing openly, but when in the search for concealed goods they pry into baggage and merchandize which are another’s property. And yet the law allows them to do this and they would lose[*](Since the collection of taxes and duties was farmed out to individuals, they would be the losers in failing to make a minute search for dutiable articles.) by not doing so. But busybodies ruin and abandon

1. Then he will tell me while he digs
2. On what terms peace was made. The cursed scamp
3. Now strolls around and meddles with these things.

And the busybody, shunning the country as something stale and uninteresting and undramatie, pushes into the bazaar and the market-place and the harbours: Is there any news? Weren’t you at market early this morning? Well then, do you suppose the city has changed its constitution in three hours? If, however, someone really does have something of that nature to tell him, he dismounts from his horse, grasps his informant’s hand, kisses him, and stands there listening. But if someone meets him and tells him that there is no news, he exclaims as though he were annoyed, What do you mean? Haven’t you been at market? Didn’t you pass the War Office? Didn’t you interview the new arrivals from Italy either? It is for this reason that the legislation of the Locrian magistrates was excellent. For if anyone who had been out of town came

Another good law was that of the legislator of Thurii,[*](Charondas.) for he forbade the lampooning on the comic stage of all citizens except adulterers and busybodies. And indeed adultery does seem to be a sort of curiosity about another’s pleasure and a searching out and examination of matters which are closely guarded and escape general observation, while curiosity is an encroaching, a debauching and denuding of secret things.

Since a natural consequence of much learning is to have much to say (and for this reason Pythagoras[*](Cf. Life of Numa, viii. (65 b); De Vita et Poesi Homeri, 149 (Bernardakis, vol. vii. p. 420); Lucian, Vitarum Auctio, 3.) enjoined upon the young a five years’ silence which he called a Truce to Speech), a necessary concomitant of inquisitiveness is to speak evil.[*](Cf. 508 c, supra.) For what the curious delight to hear they delight to tell, and what they zealously collect from others they joyously reveal to everyone else. Consequently, in addition to its other evils, their disease actually impedes the fulfilment of their desires.[*](Cf. 502 e-f, supra.) For everyone is on his guard to hide things from them and is reluctant to do anything while a busybody is looking, or to say anything while one is listening, but defers consultation and postpones the consideration of business until such an inquisitive person is out of

For the same reason the busybody is deprived of everybody’s confidence[*](Cf. 503 c-d, supra.): we should prefer, on any account, to entrust our letters and papers and seals to slaves and strangers rather than to inquisitive friends and relatives. That noble Bellerophon[*](Cf. Il., vi. 168.) did not break the seal even on a letter accusing himself which he was carrying, but kept his hands from the king’s letter by reason of that same continence which kept him from the king’s wife. Inquisitiveness, in fact, is indicative of incontinence no less than is adultery, and in addition, it is indicative of terrible folly and fatuity. For to pass by so many women who are public property open to all and then to be drawn toward a woman who is kept under lock and key and is expensive, and often, if it so happens, quite ugly, is the very height of madness and insanity. And it is this same thing which busybodies do: they pass by much that is beautiful to see and to hear, many matters excellent for relaxation and amusement, and spend their time digging into other men’s trifling correspondence, gluing their ears to their neighbours’ walls, whispering with slaves and women of the streets, and often incurring danger, and always infamy.

For this reason the most useful means possible for turning the busybody from his vice is for him to

Be damned, compiler of men’s miseries?[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 913, ades. 388; cf. Moralia, 855 b.)

Busybodies, however, by gleaning and gathering the blunders and errors and solecisms, not of lines or poems, but of lives, carry about with them a most

Commingled shape and misformed prodigy,[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 680, Euripides, Frag. 996; cf. Life of Theseus, xv. (6 d).)

The greatest factor, however, in ridding ourselves of this affliction is the habit of beginning early to train and teach ourselves to acquire this self-control. It is, in fact, by habituation that the disease has come to increase, advancing, as it does, little by little. How this habit is acquired, we shall learn when we discuss the proper training. So first let us begin with the most trifling and unimportant matters. What difficulty is there about refraining from reading the inscriptions on tombs as we journey along the roads? Or what is there arduous in just glancing at the writing on walls when we take our walks? We have only to remind ourselves that

With nostrils tracking down the paths of beasts[*](From an unknown poet: Empedocles? (cf. Diels, Hermes, xv. 176).);

In the second place, then, let us accustom ourselves not to look inside when we pass another’s door, nor with our curious gaze to clutch, as it were by main force, at what is happening within, but let us ever keep ready for use the saying of Xenocrates,

Unsightly, stranger, are the things within,[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 617, Euripides, Frag. 790, probably from the Philoctetes.)

1. Then the Aenianian’s hard-mouthed yearlings break
2. From his control and bolt;

Yet truly, neither is this[*](Cf. 520 d, supra.) a difficult nor arduous task: when men are reviling and abusing each other in the market-place, not to approach them, or when a crowd is running to see something or other, to remain seated, or, if you are without self-control, to get up and go away. For you will reap no advantage from mixing yourself with busy bodies, whereas you will

And after this it is well to make our training more intensive and pass by a theatre where a successful performance is in progress; and, when our friends urge us to see a certain dancer or comedian, to thrust them aside; and, when shouts are heard on the racecourse or in the circus, not to turn round. For as Socrates[*](Cf. 513 d, supra.) used to advise the avoidance of such foods as tempt us to eat when we are not hungry and such drinks as tempt us to imbibe when we are not thirsty, so we also should avoid and guard against such sights and sounds as master and attract us without fulfilling any need of ours. Thus Cyrus[*](Cf. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, v. 1. 8; Moralia, 31 c.) was unwilling to see Pantheia; and when Araspes declared that the woman’s beauty was worth seeing, Cyrus said, Then this is all the more reason for keeping away from her. For if, persuaded by you, I should go to her, perhaps she herself might tempt me, when I couldn’t spare the time, to go to see her again and sit by her, to the neglect of many important matters. So too Alexander[*](Cf. Life of Alexander, xxii. (677 b); Moralia, 97 d, 338 e.) would not go to see Darius’s wife who was said to be very beautiful, but although he visited her mother, an elderly woman, he could not bring himself to see the young and beautiful daughter. Yet we peep into women’s litters and hang about their windows, and think we are doing nothing wrong in thus making our curiosity prone to slip and slide into all kinds of vice.

Since, therefore, for the attainment of justice you may sometimes forgo an honest gain that you may accustom yourself to keep clear of dishonest profit, so likewise, for the attainment of continence, you may sometimes keep aloof from your own wife in order that you may never be stirred by another’s. Then apply this habit to inquisitiveness and endeavour sometimes not to hear or see some of the things that concern you, and when someone wishes to tell you something that has happened in your house, put him off and refuse to hear words that are supposed to have been spoken about you. It was, in fact, curiosity which involved Oedipus in the greatest calamities. Believing that he was no Corinthian, but a foreigner, and seeking to discover his identity, he encountered Laïus; and when he had killed Laïus and had taken, in addition to the throne, his own mother to wife, though seeming to all to be blessed by fortune, he began again to try to discover his identity. And although his wife attempted to prevent him, all the more vigorously did he cross-examine the old man who knew the truth, bringing every form of compulsion to bear. And at last, when circumstances were already bringing him to suspect the truth and the old man[*](The herdsman who had saved Oedipus on Cithaeron.) cried out,

Alas! I stand on the dread brink of speech,[*](Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 1169.)

And I of hearing, and yet hear I must[*](Sophocles, l.c., 1170.);

1. Forgetfulness of evil, sovereign queen,
2. How wise you are

We must, therefore, also habituate ourselves to things like these: when a letter is brought to us, not to open it quickly or in a hurry, as most people do, who go so far as to bite through the fastenings with their teeth if their hands are too slow; when a messenger arrives from somewhere or other, not to rush up, or even to rise to our feet; when a friend says, I have something new to tell you, to say, I should prefer that you had something useful or profitable.

When I was once lecturing in Rome, that famous Rusticus,[*](Probably Arulenus Rusticus, put to death in or after 93 a.d. for having in his biography of Paetus Thrasea called his subject sanctus (Dio, lxvii. 13. 2, cf. also Tacitus, Agricola, 2).) whom Domitian later killed through envy at his repute, was among my hearers, and a soldier came through the audience and delivered to him a letter from the emperor. There was a silence and I, too, made a pause, that he might read his letter; but he refused and did not break the seal until I had finished my lecture and the audience had dispersed. Because of this incident everyone admired the dignity of the man.

But when one nourishes his curiosity upon permissible material until he renders it vigorous and violent, he is no longer able to master it easily, since it is borne, by force of habit, toward forbidden things. And such persons pry into their friends’ correspondence, thrust themselves into secret meetings, become spectators of sacred rites which it is an impiety

And yet surely in the case of despots,[*](Cf. Aristotle, Politics, v. (viii.) 9. 3 (1313 b 12 ff.).) who have to know everything, it is the tribe of socalled Ears and Jackals that makes them most detested. It was Darius Nothus, who had no confidence in himself and regarded everyone with fear and suspicion, who first instituted Listeners; and Jackals were distributed by the Dionysii[*](Cf. Life of Dion, xxviii. (970 b-c).) among the people of Syracuse. Consequently when the revolution came, these were the first persons whom the Syracusans arrested and crushed to death. And in fact the tribe of informers is from the same clan and family as busy bodies. But while informers search to see whether anyone has planned or committed a misdemeanour, busy bodies investigate and make public even the involuntary mischances of their neighbours. And it is said that the person called aliterios[*](Transgressor, or outlaw; Plutarch rejects this explanation in Moralia, 297 a.) first acquired his name from being a busybody. For it appears that when there was a severe famine at Athens and those who possessed wheat would not contribute it to the common stock, but ground[*](The verb ἀλεῖν, from which ἀλιτήριος is here derived.) it in their houses secretly by night, some persons went about listening for the noise of the. mills, and so acquired the name aliterioi. It was in the same way, they say, that the sycophant[*](Informer; cf. Life of Solon, xxiv. (91 e); Athenaeus, 74 e-f.) won his name. Since the export of figs[*](σῦκα.) was prohibited, men who revealed[*](φαίνειν, from which the noun -φάντης.) and gave information against those