[14] And yet we find that people have the same antipathy
against divulgers of bad tidings, as they that drink
bitter and distasteful potions have against the cups wherein
they drank them. Elegant therefore is the dispute in
Sophocles between the messenger and Creon:
MESSENGER. By what I tell and what you hear,
Do I offend your heart or ear?
CREON. Why so inquisitive to sound
My grief, and search the painful wound?
MESSENGER. My news afflicts thy ears, I find,
But 'tis the fact torments thy mind.
Thus they that bring us bad tidings are as bad as they
who are the authors of our misery; and yet there is
no restraining or correcting the tongue that will run at
random.
It happened that the temple of Minerva in Lacedaemon
called Chalcioecus was robbed, and nothing but an earthen
pitcher left behind; which caused a great concourse of
people, where every one spent his verdict about the empty
pitcher. Gentlemen, says one, pray give me leave to tell
ye my opinion concerning this pitcher. I am apt to believe,
that these sacrilegious villains, before they ventured
upon so dangerous an attempt, drank each of them a
draught of hemlock juice, and then brought wine along
with them in this pitcher; to the end that, if it were their
good hap to escape without being apprehended, they might
soon dissolve and extinguish the strength and vigor of the
venom by the force of the wine unmixed and pure; but if
they should be surprised and taken in the fact, that then
they might die without feeling any pain under the torture
of the rack. Having thus said, the people, observing so
much forecast and contrivance in the thing, would not be
persuaded that any man could have such ready thoughts
upon a bare conjecture, but that he must know it to be so.
Thereupon, immediately gathering about him, one asked
who he was; another, who knew him; a third, how he
came to be so much a philosopher. And at length, they
did so sift and canvass and fetch him about, that the
fellow confessed himself to be one of those that committed
the sacrilege.
And were not they who murdered the poet Ibycus discovered
after the same manner, as they sat in the theatre?
For as they were sitting there under the open sky to behold
the public pastimes, they observed a flock of cranes
flying over their heads; upon which they whispered merrily
one to another, Look, yonder are the revengers of
Ibycus's death. Which words being overheard by some
that sat next them,–in regard that Ibycus had been long
missing but could not be found, though diligent search had
been made after him,–they presently gave information
of what they had heard to the magistrates. By whom
being examined and convicted, they suffered condign punishment,
though not betrayed by the cranes, but by the
incontinency of their own tongues, and by an avenging
Erinnys hovering over their heads and constraining them
to confess the murder. For as in the body, wounded and
diseased members draw to themselves the vicious humors
of the neighboring parts; in like manner, the unruly
tongues of babblers, infested (as it were) with inflammations
where a sort of feverish pulses continually lie beating,
will be always drawing to themselves something of
the secret and private concerns of other men. And therefore
the tongue ought to be environed with reason, as with
a rampart perpetually lying before it, like a mound, to
stop the overflowing and slippery exuberance of impertinent
talk; that we may not seem to be more silly than
geese, which, when they take their flight out of Cilicia
over the mountain Taurus, which abounds with eagles, are
reported to carry every one a good big stone in their bills,
instead of a bridle or barricado, to restrain their gaggling.
By which means they cross those hideous forests in the
night-time undiscovered.