15. Wherefore, as a farther help to check the impatience of our
curiosity, it will contribute much to practise such acts of abstinence
as these. If a letter be brought thee, lay it aside for some time
before thou read it; and do not (as many do) eagerly fall upon the seal
with tooth and nail, as soon as ever it comes to thy hands, as if it
were scarce possible to open it with sufficient speed; when a messenger
returns, do not hastily rise up and run towards him, as if thou couldst
not hear what he had to say time enough; and if any one makes an offer
to tell thee something that is new, say that thou hadst rather it were
good and useful.
When, at a public dissertation I sometime made at Rome, Rusticus
(who afterwards perished by the mere envy of Domitian) was one of my
auditors, a messenger comes suddenly in with an express from Caesar;
upon which, when I offered to be silent till he had perused the paper,
he desired me to proceed, nor would so much as look into it till the
discourse was ended and the audience dismissed; all that were present
much admiring the gravity of the man. In great persons, whose power
encourages them to greater licentiousness, this vicious curiosity is
hardly curable; for when it is arrived in them to the consistence of an
inveterate habit, they will never undergo those previous restraints
upon their outward actions which are necessary to destroy the evil
habit within them. For such as are thus inured will be breaking up
other men’s letters, intruding upon the privacies of their friends,
making bold enquiries into the unfathomable mysteries of religion,
profaning sacred places and holy offices by their coming where and
doing what they ought not, and even prying into the most secret acts
and discourses of princes; all or any of which odious practices it will
be hard for any one after long custom to forbear, but especially for
great persons.
16. And indeed princes themselves—who are concerned to have as
particular knowledge of all things as they can, and to whom it is in
some sort necessary for the ends of government to maintain spies and
intelligencers about them—are yet usually hated for nothing more than
their retaining this lewd sort of people in quality of eavesdroppers
of state and public informers. The first that employed this kind of
officers was Darius in his younger years, when he could not confide in
himself nor durst trust any one else. The Sicilian tyrants afterwards
planted them in Syracuse; but upon a revolution that happened there,
the people first fell upon these informers, and destroyed them without
mercy. Of near affinity with these are common accusers, which, from
a particular occasion imported in the word, were called sycophants,
fig-blabbers; because, upon the prohibited exportation of that fruit,
they became informers against those that broke this order. Much the
like sort of people were those at Athens, where a dearth of grain
happened and the corn-sellers were commanded to bring out their stores
for public sale; and those that went about listening at the mills and
prying into granaries, that they might find matter of information
against offenders, were thence called aliterians or (if you please)
mill-clackers. Which consideration, superadded to the rest that has
been said, is enough to render this sort of malignant curiosity
extremely execrable, and to be highly abhorred and most carefully
avoided by every man who would desire, for mere reputation’s sake, not
to be ranked among that profligate crew of villains which are looked
upon as the most detestable of all mankind.