Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/284

262 barber stretched: meanwhile, and even as the poor wretch was hoisted thereupon, behold there arrived and came to the city those who brought certain news indeed of the said defeature, even they who made a shift to escape out of that infortunate field: then brake up the assembly, and every man departed and retired home to his own house, for to bewail his own private loss and calamity, leaving the silly barber lying along bound to the wheel, and racked out to the length, and there remained he until it was very late in the evening, at what time he was let loose; and no sooner was he at liberty but he must needs inquire news of the executioner, and namely; what they heard abroad of the general himself, Nicias, and in what sort he was slain? So inexpugnable and incorrigible a vice is this, gotten by custom of much talk, that a man cannot leave it, though he were going to the gallows, nor keep in those tidings which no man is willing to hear: for certes, like as they who have drunk bitter potions or unsavoury medicines, cannot away with the very cups wherein they were; even so, they that bring evil and heavy tidings, are ordinarily hated and detested of those unto whom they report the same. And therefore Sophocles the poet hath very finely distinguished upon this point in these verses:

Well then, those who tell us any woeful news be as odious as they who work our woe; and yet for all that, there is no restraint and bridling of an untemperate tongue that is given to talk and overreach. It fortuned one day at Lacedaemon, that the temple of Juno, called there Chalciaecos, was robbed, and within it was found a certain empty flagon or stone bottle for wine: great running there was and concourse of the people thither, and men could not tell what to make of that flagon: at last one of them that stood by; My masters (quoth he), if you will give me leave, I shall tell you what my conceit is of that flagon, for my mind gives me (saith he) that these church-robbers who projected to execute so perilous an enterprise, had first drunk the juice of hemlock before they entered into the action, and afterwards brought wine with them in this bottle, to the end that if they were not surprised nor taken in the manner, they might save their lives by drinking each of them a good draught