Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
A house that is stifling, or dark, or cold in winter, or unhealthy, is perhaps best simply abandoned. But if one is fond of the place out of long habit, it is possible, by moving the lamp-stands, changing the position of the staircase, opening some doors and closing others, to make it brighter, better ventilated, and healthier. And some people, by making such changes, have benefited whole cities, just as my own homeland, which was inclined toward the west wind and received the sun as it bore down in the afternoon from Parnassus toward the east, is said to have been turned by Chaeron. And the natural philosopher Empedocles, by blocking up a certain mountain cleft that let a heavy and unhealthy south wind blow down over the plains, was thought to have shut a plague out of the country. Since, then, there are certain diseased and harmful passions that bring winter and darkness upon the soul, the best course is to drive these out and raze them
to the ground, giving ourselves clear sky and light and a pure breeze; but if that cannot be done, then at least to change and rearrange them somehow, turning them around or redirecting them. Take curiosity itself, to begin with: it is a kind of eager desire to learn about other people's misfortunes, a disease that seems free neither of envy nor of malice. Why, most spiteful of men, do you look so sharply at another's trouble while overlooking your own? Redirect your curiosity -- turn it from what lies outside back within, if
you enjoy occupying yourself with the study of misfortunes; you have plenty of material to work with at home: "as much water as flows past Halizon, or leaves grow round an oak," so great a multitude of faults will you find in your own life, and of passions in your soul, and of oversights in your duties. For just as Xenophon says that good household managers have a special place for the vessels used in sacrifice, a special spot for those used at dinner, and keep the farming tools elsewhere,
and the implements of war separate -- so too in your case, some evils lie stored up from envy, others from jealousy, others from cowardice, others from pettiness. Go over these, review these; block up the windows that look onto your neighbors' houses and stop up the pathways of your curiosity, and open others instead, leading into your own men's quarters, into the women's quarters, into the living areas of your household
servants. There this inquisitiveness and meddling spirit will find occupations that are not useless or malicious but useful and salutary, as each person asks himself: where did I go wrong? What have I done? What duty of mine has been left unfulfilled? But as it is, just as they say the Lamia in the fable sleeps blind at home, keeping her eyes stored away in a jar, and only puts them in and sees when she goes out --
so each of us fixes meddlesomeness, like an eye, outward upon others through our malice, while through ignorance we constantly stumble over our own faults and failings, since we provide no sight, no light, to see them by. That is why the busybody is actually more useful to his enemies: he examines and exposes and points out to them what they must guard against and correct,
while he overlooks most of what is at home because of his excitement over what lies outside. Odysseus, for his part, would not consent to speak even with his own mother until he had first learned from the seer why he had come to Hades; and once he had learned that, he turned to her, and questioned the other women too -- who was Tyro, and who was fair Chloris, and why
Epicaste "fastened a steep noose from the lofty roof-beam." We, on the other hand, put our own affairs in a state of great carelessness and ignorance, and while neglecting them we trace other people's family trees -- that our neighbor's grandfather was a Syrian, and his grandmother a Thracian; that so-and-so owes three talents and has not paid the interest. We also inquire into such things as where so-and-so's
wife came back from, and what so-and-so and so-and-so were whispering to each other in the corner. Socrates, by contrast, went about puzzling over what teaching Pythagoras used to persuade people; and Aristippus, meeting Ischomachus at Olympia, asked what it was in Socrates's conversation that so affected the Athenians; and having received a few small seeds and samples of his words, he was so moved that his body wasted away and he became
utterly pale and thin, until at last he sailed to Athens, thirsty and burning, and drank from the spring itself, and came to know the man and his words and his philosophy, whose end was to recognize one's own faults and be rid of them. But some people cannot bear to look upon their own life as the most joyless of spectacles, nor to bend the light of reason back upon themselves and turn it around;
instead, the soul, full of every kind of evil and shuddering and fearful of what is within, leaps out the door and wanders about among the affairs of others, feeding and fattening its own malice. For just as a hen, though plenty of food is set beside it in the house, often burrows into a corner and scratches about there, "where somewhere in the dung a single barleycorn may show," so busybodies pass over discussions and accounts that lie open before them,
and things that no one forbids anyone to ask about and is not annoyed at being asked, and instead pick out the hidden, unseen troubles of every household. And yet there is a certain charm in what the Egyptian said to the man who asked him what he was carrying covered up: "It is covered up for that very reason." And you too -- why do you pry into what is being kept hidden? If it were not something bad, it would not be hidden. And yet it is not considered proper to enter another man's house without
first knocking on the door -- nowadays there are doorkeepers, but in the old days the knocker rapping against the door gave notice, so that the intruder would not catch the mistress of the house exposed, or the unmarried daughter, or a servant being punished, or the maids screaming. But the busybody slips in precisely upon such moments, and even in a well-ordered and respectable household he would not gladly become a spectator even if invited; whereas the very things
for which a key and bolt and outer door exist, these he uncovers and carries out into the open for others to see. And yet, as Ariston says, "of all the winds we find most disagreeable those that blow open our cloaks"; but the busybody strips bare not merely the garments and tunics of his neighbors but their very walls, throws open their doors, and, like a breeze, slips "through a tender-skinned maiden's" chamber
and steals through, prying into and informing on Bacchic revels and dances and all-night festivals. And just as with the comic Cleon, whose hands were said to be in Aetolia while his mind was in Clopidae, so the busybody's mind is at once in the houses of the rich, in the little rooms of the poor, in the courts of kings, in the bedchambers of newlyweds -- he seeks out everything, the affairs of foreigners, the affairs of rulers; and it is not without danger that he seeks these things.
Rather, just as if someone, out of curiosity to know the taste of aconite, should sample it, he will destroy the very sense that was about to perceive it before it can perceive anything -- so those who search out the troubles of their betters use themselves up before they gain the knowledge. Indeed, those who overlook the sun's freely given light, poured out abundantly on everyone, and instead recklessly stare down at the disc itself and force their way in, straining to split the light apart, go blind for their daring.
That is why the comic poet Philippides answered well when King Lysimachus once said to him, "Which of my possessions shall I share with you?" "Only, O king," he said, "not your secrets." For the most pleasant and beautiful things about kings lie out in the open -- their banquets, their riches, their public festivals, their acts of favor; but if there is some secret matter, do not approach it, do not stir it up. A king's joy at his good fortune is not hidden, nor is
his laughter at play, nor the display of his kindness and favor; what is frightening is what is kept hidden -- sullen, unsmiling, hard to approach: a treasury of some festering anger, or a scheme for some heavy-hearted vengeance, or a wife's jealousy, or some suspicion toward a son, or distrust toward a friend. Flee this dark and gathering cloud: it will not escape your notice thundering and flashing, once what is now hidden bursts forth. What, then, is
the escape? A turning away, as has been said, and a diversion of one's curiosity, best of all by directing the soul toward better and more pleasant things. Busy yourself with the things in heaven, the things on earth, the things in the air, the things in the sea. Whether by nature you are a lover of small sights or great, if it is great things, busy yourself with where the sun goes down and whence it rises again; inquire into the changes in the moon, as if in a human being,
where it has spent so much of its light, and from where it acquires it again, how it first comes from invisibility, growing new faces and filling out, and then, just when it appears at its fairest, again drains away and comes to nothing. These too are secrets of nature, yet nature is not annoyed at those who examine them. But have you given up on the great things? Busy yourself with the smaller ones: how it is that some plants are always in leaf and
green and take pride at every season in displaying their own wealth, while others are at one time like these, and at another, like a man who has managed his affairs badly and squandered his whole fortune at once, are left bare and impoverished; and why some yield elongated fruits, others angular ones, others round and rounded ones. Perhaps, though, you will not trouble yourself over these things, because there is no evil in them for you to find.
But if this meddlesome instinct must, like some creeping thing feeding among deadly plants, always graze and linger among base things, then let us lead it instead to history and set before it an abundance and excess of evils: for there are to be found the downfalls of men and the trampling underfoot of lives; the corruption of women, the plots of servants, the slanders of friends, the preparation of poisons, envies, jealousies, the shipwrecks of households, the falls of rulers. Glut yourself on these and take your pleasure, troubling
no one among your companions and grieving no one. But it seems that meddlesome curiosity does not delight in stale misfortunes but in warm, fresh ones, and it enjoys watching new tragedies gladly, while it has little enthusiasm for keeping company with comic and more cheerful matters. That is why, when someone is describing a wedding, or a sacrifice, or a procession, the busybody is a careless and lazy listener, and claims to have already heard most of it, and urges
the narrator to cut it short and move on; but if someone sitting nearby tells of the seduction of a maiden, or a woman's adultery, or preparations for a lawsuit, or a quarrel between brothers, he neither dozes nor is he otherwise occupied, but "seeks out other words as well, and casts them to his ears." And the line "alas, how much more the misfortune of the fortunate is carried to mortal ears" is truly spoken of busybodies. For just
as cupping-glasses draw out the worst matter from the flesh, so the ears of busybodies draw in the basest reports; or rather, just as cities have certain grim, ill-omened gates through which they lead out those condemned to death and cast out refuse and purifications, and through which nothing sacred or holy ever enters or leaves, so too the
ears of busybodies admit nothing decent or fine, but murderous tales pass through and wear a groove there, carrying with them stories fit only for expiation and defilement: "always in my halls has fallen the wailing of mourners, and no song." This is the Muse of busybodies, their one melody, the sweetest thing they can hear. For meddlesome curiosity is a passion for learning about hidden and secret things, and no one who possesses something good keeps it hidden -- indeed
people even pretend to possess good things they do not have. So the busybody, reaching after the discovery of evils, is gripped by a kindred passion, malicious delight -- the brother of envy and spite. For envy is pain at another's good fortune, while malicious delight is pleasure at another's misfortune; both arise from a savage and bestial passion, malice. And the uncovering of one's troubles is so painful to everyone that many
would rather die than reveal certain private ailments to physicians. Consider: if Herophilus, or Erasistratus, or even Asclepius himself, when he was still a man, carrying his drugs and instruments, were to go from house to house asking whether anyone had a fistula near the anus, or a woman a cancer in the womb -- even though the meddling of that art is beneficial -- everyone,
I think, would drive such a man away, because, without waiting to be needed, he comes uninvited to examine other people's ailments. But busybodies seek out these very things, and worse, not in order to treat them but merely to expose them; and for this they are justly hated. Indeed, we resent and are annoyed at tax collectors not when they inspect goods that are openly brought in, but when they go rummaging for hidden items among other people's
baggage and cargo -- even though the law grants them the right to do this, and they suffer loss if they fail to do it. But busybodies destroy and squander their own affairs by occupying themselves with those of others, and they rarely go out to their farms, unable to bear the quiet and silence of solitude; and if they do happen to visit after a long while, they look at their neighbors' vines rather than their own,
and ask how many of the neighbor's oxen have died, or how much of his wine has turned to vinegar; and having quickly had their fill of such news, they hurry off again. The true farmer does not even gladly receive news that comes to him unbidden from the city, saying, "Well then, while I am digging he will tell me the reasons for the divorce -- this is what the wretch, in his meddling, is now going about asking." But busybodies, fleeing the countryside as something
stale and cold and lacking drama, push their way into the marketplace and the harbors: "Anything new?" "Weren't you in the market this morning?" "Well then? Do you suppose the city has been made over in the space of three hours?" And yet, if someone does have some such news to tell, they get down from their horse, greet him warmly, kiss him, and stand there
listening. But if someone they meet says there is nothing new, they respond as though offended, "What do you mean? Weren't you in the marketplace? Didn't you pass by the general's headquarters? Haven't you met the men who have arrived from Italy?" That is why the magistrates of the Locrians did well when, on a man returning from abroad asking, "Is there anything new?", they fined him. For just as cooks pray for a good crop of livestock, and
fishermen for a good catch of fish, so busybodies pray for a crop of misfortunes and a multitude of troubles and novelties and changes, so that they may always have something to hunt and pick over. The lawgiver of Thurii also did well: he forbade the comic mockery of citizens except for adulterers and busybodies. For adultery seems to be a kind of meddlesomeness directed at another's pleasure, a search and investigation into what is guarded and
hidden from most people; and meddlesomeness itself is a kind of dissolution and corruption and stripping bare of secrets. Now it happens that excessive talkativeness follows from excessive learning: that is why Pythagoras prescribed for the young a five-year silence, which he called "holding one's tongue." And it necessarily follows that meddlesomeness is accompanied by slander; for people gladly repeat what they gladly hear, and what they eagerly gather from others they pass on to still others with delight
and repeat it to others with delight. This is why, along with their other troubles, their disease also stands in the way of their own desire; for everyone is on guard against them and hides things from them, and people are unwilling either to do anything while a busybody is watching or to say anything while he is listening. Instead they postpone their deliberations and put off examining matters until such a person is out of the way; and if a busybody appears while some secret talk or serious business is being transacted, they snatch it out of the way and hide it, just as they would snatch a dainty from a passing weasel. The result is that things which are open and speakable to everyone else become, for busybodies alone, unspeakable and unseen.
This is why the busybody is deprived of everyone's trust: we entrust letters, documents, and seals to servants and even to strangers sooner than to friends and relatives who are busybodies. That famous Bellerophon did not even open the letter he carried against himself, but held back from the king's letter just as he held back from the king's wife, out of the same self-restraint. For meddling is a form of intemperance, just as adultery is, and along with the intemperance there is also a terrible folly and senselessness in it: to pass by so many women who are common and available to the public, and to force one's way toward the woman who is kept locked up and expensive — even if, as often happens, she turns out to be plain as well — is the height of madness and derangement.
Busybodies do the very same thing: passing by many fine sights and things worth hearing, and schools and lecture-halls, they pry open other people's little letters and press their ears to their neighbors' walls, and whisper together with household slaves and serving-girls — often not even without danger, but always without honor. For this reason it is especially useful, as a deterrent, for busybodies to recall what they have already learned in this way.
For if, just as Simonides used to say that whenever he opened his money-chests after a time he always found the one full of fees but the one for favors always empty, so too if a person opens the storehouse of his meddling after a time and inspects it, finding it full of much that is useless, vain, and joyless, the whole business might well strike him as unpleasant, appearing altogether disagreeable and full of nonsense.
Consider this: if someone went through the writings of the ancients picking out the worst passages in them, and had a book compiled — say, of headless lines of Homer, solecisms from the tragedians, and the things Archilochus said improperly and licentiously about women, making a spectacle of himself — would he not deserve the tragic curse: "May you perish, you who pick out the misfortunes of mortals"?
And even without the curse, such a man's treasury of other people's faults is unseemly and useless, like the city which Philip founded out of the worst and most disreputable people and named Wickedtown. So too the busybodies, gathering and collecting not lines of poetry or verses but the failures, mistakes, and solecisms of people's lives, carry about with them, as their own memory-store, the most tasteless and joyless archive of evils there is.
Just as in Rome some people, paying no regard whatsoever to paintings and statues, or, by Zeus, to the beauty of slaves and women for sale, hang about the market of monstrosities, examining the limbless, the crab-armed, the three-eyed, and the ostrich-headed, seeking out any freakish or misshapen creature that has come into being — yet if one kept exposing them continually to such sights, the thing would soon produce in them satiety and nausea — so too those who go prying into other people's disgraces in life, the shames of families, certain domestic disorders and faults in other households, should remind themselves of the first examples, that they brought no pleasure or benefit at all.
The greatest help, however, toward turning aside this affliction is habituation, if we begin far in advance and train and teach ourselves toward this self-control. For indeed the growth of the disease comes about through habit, as it advances little by little; and how this happens we shall learn as we discuss the training together.
Let us begin, then, from the smallest and most trivial things. What difficulty is there, on the roads, in not reading the inscriptions on tombs, or what hardship is there, on our walks, in letting our eyes run past the graffiti on the walls, telling ourselves that nothing useful or pleasant has been written there — just "So-and-so remembered so-and-so for a good deed," or "This man is the best of friends," and much other nonsense of that kind? These things, when read, seem to do no harm, but they secretly do harm by implanting in us the practice of seeking out what does not concern us.
And just as hunters do not allow their hound-puppies to turn aside and chase every scent, but pull them back and check them with the leash, keeping their sense of smell clean and undiluted for its proper work, so that it may fasten more vigorously upon the tracks when it searches out with its nostrils the footprints of the wild creatures' limbs — so we must strip away and pull back the busybody's excursions and wanderings toward every sight and every sound,
keeping them and turning them instead toward useful things. For just as eagles and lions, when walking, draw their claws inward so as not to wear down their edge and sharpness, so we should reckon that meddlesomeness is a kind of edge or temper belonging to the love of learning, and not use it up on useless things nor blunt it.
Second, then, let us accustom ourselves, when passing another person's door, not to look inside nor to seize with our eyes, as if with a hand, at the things within through prying curiosity, but let us keep ready at hand the saying of Xenocrates, who said there was no difference between setting one's feet or one's eyes inside another man's house: for it is neither just nor honorable, nor even, for that matter, a pleasant sight. "Ugly indeed are the things within to see, stranger": for most such things in houses are little furnishings lying about and serving-girls sitting idle, nothing serious or delightful.
This sidelong glance and oblique glance, which twists the soul along with it, is shameful, and the habit is corrupt. When Diogenes saw the Olympic victor Dioxippus riding in on his chariot, and a man who could not tear his eyes away from a beautiful woman watching the procession, but kept peeking and turning around, he said, "Look, the athlete is being pinned by the neck by a mere slip of a girl."
You would see busybodies likewise pinned by the neck and dragged around by every sight alike, whenever habit and practice have made it so that their gaze is scattered in every direction. What is needed, I think, is that our perception should not roam abroad unrestrained like an unruly maidservant, but rather, sent out by the soul, should meet quickly with its object, report back, and then again be composed and stay within, obedient to reason and attentive to it.
As it is, what happens is what Sophocles describes: "then the mouthless colts of an Aenian man carry him off" — just as we were saying, perceptions that have not received proper training or discipline run out ahead and are swept along, often casting the mind down into things it ought not. Hence that story is false, that Democritus deliberately extinguished his eyesight by fixing his gaze on a heated mirror and receiving its reflection,
so that his sight might not so often call his mind outward and cause disturbance, but might let it stay at home within and occupy itself with intelligible things, like windows onto the street that have been sealed shut. This, however, is truer than anything: that those who make the most use of their minds set their senses in motion the least. This is also why they founded their sanctuaries of the Muses very far from cities, and called night "the kindly one," considering quiet and freedom from distraction of great importance
for the discovery and consideration of the things they were investigating. Nor, indeed, is it difficult or hard, when people are reviling one another and speaking ill of each other in the marketplace, not to go up to them; or, when a crowd has gathered around some incident, to remain seated where you are; and if you cannot restrain yourself, to get up and leave. For by mixing yourself in with people who are meddling in something, you will gain no benefit at all, but you will profit greatly
by forcibly turning your meddlesomeness away and checking it, accustoming it to obey reason. From this point, intensifying the training further, it is right also to pass by a theater when it is enjoying a successful performance, and to turn away friends who invite you to watch some dancer or comic actor, and not to turn around when a shout goes up in the stadium or at the horse-races. For just as Socrates used to advise guarding against those foods which persuade one to eat without being hungry,
and those drinks which persuade one to drink without being thirsty, so too we must guard against and avoid those sights and sounds which overpower and draw in people who have no need of them. Cyrus did not wish to see Panthea; and when Araspas told him that the woman's beauty was worth seeing, he said, "That is exactly why I must keep away from her all the more; for if,
persuaded by you, I were to go to her, she might in turn persuade me to go again, even when I had no time, to gaze at her and sit beside her, letting go of many things worthy of my attention." Likewise Alexander did not come into the presence of Darius's wife, who was said to be the most beautiful of women; instead, though he visited her mother, who was elderly, he did not bring himself to see the young and beautiful daughter. But we,
leaning our heads into women's litters and hanging out of windows, think we are doing nothing wrong, even as we make our meddlesomeness slippery and prone to flow into everything. There is, then, also a kind of training toward justice: to forgo, on occasion, some rightful gain, so that you may accustom yourself to be far removed from unjust ones; and likewise toward self-control: to abstain, on occasion, from one's own wife, so that you may never be stirred by another man's.
Applying this same habit to meddlesomeness, try also, at times, to overhear some of your own household affairs without paying attention, and to overlook them; and if someone wants to report to you something concerning your own house, put it off; and reject reports that seem to have been made about you. Indeed, it was meddlesome curiosity that wrapped Oedipus in the greatest evils: for in seeking to learn about himself, on the ground that he was not a Corinthian but a foreigner, he met Laius,
and having killed him, and having taken his mother as wife along with the kingship, and thinking himself blessed, he went seeking himself once again. And though his wife tried to stop him, he pressed the old man who knew the truth all the harder, bringing every kind of compulsion to bear. Finally, when the matter was already carrying him around toward his suspicion, and the old man cried out, "Alas, I am right at the terrible thing I must tell," still, inflamed by his passion
and writhing, he answered, "And I at hearing it; but still it must be heard." So bittersweet and uncontrollable is the itch of meddlesomeness, like a sore that draws its own blood when scratched. But the man who is free of this disease, and gentle by nature, upon learning of some disagreeable thing he had not known, might well say, "O lady Forgetfulness of ills, how wise you are!" For this reason we must accustom ourselves in these matters too: when a letter is delivered,
not to untie it quickly or in haste, the way most people do, gnawing through the cords with their teeth if their hands are too slow; when a messenger arrives from somewhere, not to run up to him or jump to our feet; when a friend says, "I have some news to tell you," to answer, "Rather, if you have anything useful or beneficial." Once, when I was lecturing in Rome, the famous Rusticus, whom Domitian later put to death out of envy of his reputation, was listening,
and a soldier came through the middle of the room and handed him a letter from Caesar. When silence fell and I paused so that he might read the letter, he refused, and did not open it until I had finished my discourse and the audience had dispersed — at which everyone marveled at the man's gravity.
But when someone, by feeding his meddlesomeness on things that are permitted, makes it strong and violent, he is no longer easily able to master it when it is carried by habit toward forbidden things; instead, such people pry open the letters of friends, insert themselves into private councils, become spectators of sacred rites which it is not lawful to see, tread on forbidden ground, and search out the affairs and words of kings.
It is worth knowing that the class of people called "ears" and informers is the most oppressive of all. The younger Darius was the first to keep listeners-in, because he distrusted himself and suspected and feared everyone; and the Dionysii mixed informers in among the Syracusans, whence, when the political change came, the Syracusans seized these men first of all and beat them to death with clubs.
For indeed the class of sycophants belongs to the same tribe and hearth as the busybodies. But sycophants only investigate whether someone has planned or committed some wrong, whereas busybodies also bring into the open even the unwilled misfortunes of their neighbors, exposing them.
It is said, too, that the word "alitērios" (accursed one) was first applied out of meddlesome curiosity: for when, as it seems, a severe famine had struck the Athenians, and those who had grain did not bring it out into the open but ground it secretly at night in their houses, people went around listening for the sound of the mills, and thereafter such people were called "alitērioi" (grinders). Likewise the name "sycophant" is said to have come about in a similar way:
when it was forbidden to export figs, those who informed on and exposed the people smuggling them out were called "sycophants" (fig-showers). And it is not useless to keep this in mind as well: that busybodies should be ashamed of their kinship and affinity, in their pursuit, with the most hated and most despised of men.