Be that as it may, a speaker causes pain as well as a doer. Nevertheless
there is no stopping or chastening a loose, glib tongue.
On one occasion it was discovered that the temple of Athena ‘Of the
Bronze House’ at Sparta had been pillaged, and an empty flask was found
lying inside. The crowd which had run together could make nothing of it,
when one of their number said, ‘If you like, I will tell you my notion
as to the flask. I fancy the robbers, realizing all the danger they were
to run, first drank hemlock, and then brought wine with them. If they
managed to escape detection, they were to neutralize [Sidenote: E] the
effects of the poison by drinking the unmixed wine, and so get away in
safety. If they were caught, they were to die an easy and painless death
from the poison, before they could be put to torture.’ The theory was so
ingenious and acute that it appeared to come of knowledge rather than
conjecture. He was therefore surrounded and questioned on every
side—‘Who are [Sidenote: F] you? Who knows you? How do you get to know
all that?‘—till finally, under this searching examination, he confessed
that he was one of the thieves.
Were not the murderers of Ibycus found out in the same way? As they were
sitting in the theatre, a number of cranes happened to come in sight,
and they whispered laughingly to one another, ‘Here are the avengers of
Ibycus!’ They were overheard by persons sitting near them, and as a
search was being made for Ibycus, who had been missing for a
considerable time, the words were seized upon and reported to the
magistrates. By this means the matter was brought home, and the
assassins carried off to prison, where their punishment was due, not to
the cranes, but to their own garrulity, which played the part [Sidenote:
510] of an Erinys or Spirit of Vengeance in compelling them to divulge
the murder. For as in the body, when a part is diseased or in pain, the
neighbouring matter gathers towards it by attraction; so is it with the
babbler’s tongue. Perpetually throbbing and inflamed, it must keep
drawing towards itself some secret or other which ought to be concealed.
We must therefore make ourselves secure. Let Reason lie like a barrier
in the way of the tongue, to restrain its flow or prevent its slipping.
And let us show that we possess no less [Sidenote: B] sense than certain
geese of which we are told. It is said that, when they cross from
Cilicia over the Taurus Range—which is full of eagles—they clap a bolt
or bit upon their utterance. That is to say, they take in their mouths a
good-sized stone, and so fly over at night without being discovered.