Plutarch, On Talkativeness
Talkativity, if the word existed, pleases my ears more than talkativeness. However, garrulity is a little too obscure. Loquacity might be perfect.
Since apparently i'm just posting work here now...
(these are posted with the understanding that they will not be plagiarized - ha! as if anyone would want to do such a thing...)
Plutarch’s Moralia: περὶ ἀδολεσχίας
Plutarch’s treatise on garrulity touches on the subject of gossip and provides excellent examples of the effects of gossip.
503E-504B - Plutarch relates drunkenness to garrulity, but does state that “drinking is not blamed if silence attends the drinking, but it is foolish talk which converts the influence of wine into drunkenness” (504B).
504E - A parallel is drawn between wine and speech. Wine, which can be used for pleasure and good fellowship, can be misused by those who force others to drink it undiluted in large quantities, producing discomfort and intoxication. So speech, the most pleasant and human of social bonds, is made inhuman and unsocial by those who use it badly and wantonly. Those who abuse speech offend those they wish to please, are ridiculed for their attempts to gain honor, and are disliked because of the method they use to seek admiration. [Plutarch notes that it isn’t speech itself that is bad-it’s the excess of speech. Also, he seems to mark a relationship between a bad host (one who forces his guests to drink too much undiluted wine, which thus affects their behavior) and a bad speaker (one who forces people to take in too much speech, which produces a negative result for the listeners). As gossip is almost by definition superfluous speech, this passage may indicate that gossip affects both the teller and the listeners negatively.]
504F-505A - Anacharsis lays down to sleep after a party at Solon’s house, placing his left hand over his genitals, but his right hand upon his mouth. Plutarch remarks that he rightly believed that his tongue required the stronger restraint.
505B - Plutarch relates a story about how gossip caused the destruction of Athens. Sulla was preparing to beseige Athens, and spies overheard old men talking in a barber’s shop, saying that the Heptachaleon was unguarded. The spies told Sulla, who subsequently led in his army that night and attacked the city. Sulla’s anger with the Athenians was also on account of their words, as they used to say, “Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled with meal” (reference to his complexion). Plutarch quotes Plato, saying that with their idle talk they drew upon themselves “a very heavy penalty for the lightest of things: words.” [This is true gossip-old men talking idly in a public place. Even in ancient Greece, the hairstylist’s shop is the hot spot for gossip! Gossip is also connected with old men here, showing that men do, in fact, gossip. Why is gossip almost always connected with the older generation in antiquity? Is it that they are the generation with the most idle time? This story in particular relates gossip to treachery-a fairly severe offense.]
505C-D - Plutarch tells how one man’s inability to keep a secret delayed the removal of Nero. One night remained before the tyrant was to be murdered, but the hitma, on his way to the theater, saw a prisoner about to be led before Nero. He approached the lamenting man and said. “Only pray, my good man, that today may pass by, and tomorrow you will be thankful to me.” The prisoner understood the veiled meaning, and chose a surer route to safety: he told Nero. The hitman was seized and tortured as he denied his involvement. [This story hinges on the previous one in its association of excessive speech with treason. In this case, a secret that would free Rome from tyranny was revealed to the wrong person. Gossip is not always about secrets, but tends to take place in secrecy, within a select group of people, and it’s always bad if the subject of gossip finds out. The hitman is idle here-he’s on his way to the theater. His destination itself connotes lack of self-control, lasciviousness, drunkenness, and idle chatter-characteristics that the reader is invited to map onto the hitman.]
506E-507B - Plutarch discusses the danger of telling secrets. Once you have told a secret to someone else, you have taken refuge in another’s faith while abandoning your own. The story may go on increasing and multiplying by link after link of incontinent betrayal. A story is only secret when confined to its first possessor, but if it passes to another, it acquires the status of rumor. He cites Homer as calling words “winged,” remarking that when you let go of a winged thing it is impossible to grab hold of it again-thus when a word slips from the mouth, it is impossible to arrest and control it, but it is borne away “circling on swift wings.” [Perhaps Virgil’s feathered depiction of Fama comes somehow from a relationship to “winged words.” Here again one finds Plutarch discussing secrets in relation to rumor, as well as warning against the out-of-control nature of words, once uttered.]
507B - In this story, a husband tests his wife by telling her a false piece of news and instructing her to keep silent. She immediately tells her maid, adding the refrain common to every babbler: “keep this quiet and tell it to no one!” The maid tells another servant-one who, she saw, had the least to do. This servant told her visiting lover, and thus the story rolled out (ἐκκυλισθέντος - as by the eccyclema on the Greek stage), reaching the Forum before the husband himself. He punishes his wife by claiming her tongue ruined him, and that he was to be exiled from home for her lack of self-control. She denies it, declaring that he himself heard the news along with 300 other people. He then admits the fabrication of the story, exposing her as a gossip and liar. Thus this man made trial of his wife cautiously and in complete safety, pouring, as it were into a leaky vessel, not wine or oil, but water. [This is the stereotypical illustration of the gossipy and idle wife. The comparison between the woman and a “leaky vessel” is interesting, especially in light of discussion of women as containers and the container associated with Pandora. Plutarch further shows that gossip is most frequently propagated by those with nothing to do-the maid told the servant with the least amount to do, and she thus told her lover, who was visiting (another idle activity).]
508A - Fulvius, friend of Caesar Augustus, heard the emperor lamenting the desolation of his house, for two of his grandchildren were dead, and Postumius was in exile on account of a false accusation. Caesar was thus forced to import his wife’s son (Tiberius) into the royal succession; yet he pitied his grandson and was planning to recall him from abroad. Fulvius told this to his wife, who told Livia; Livia rebuked Caesar for not revealing his plan to her sooner. Fulvius greets Caesar the next day: “Ave, Caesar,” and Caesar responds, “Vale, Fulvi.” Fulvius sends for his wife, telling her that Caesar has found out his unfaithfulness and that he intended suicide. His wife states that it’s right for him to commit suicide, since after living with her for so long, he hasn’t learned how to guard against her unfaithful tongue. She kills herself first. [Both Fulvius & his wife are guilty of gossip. The husband is responsible for the words of his wife (she gossiped to the wrong person), but is also guilty of telling her what he heard in the first place. Their idle words brought further strife into Caesar’s household. Death is the consequence (although, not from Caesar).]
508C - Plutarch asserts that garrulity is accompanied by another vice-inquisitiveness. Babblers wish to hear many things so that they may tell them-so they search out stories, especially secrets, for the purpose of gossip. They collect a second-hand cache of hucksters’ wares; then like children with a piece of ice they are neither able to hold it nor willing to let go. Or rather, the secrets are like reptiles which they catch and place in their bosoms, yet cannot confine them there, but are devoured by them. For pipe-fish and vipers burst upon giving birth, and secrets, when they escape, destroy and ruin those who cannot keep them. [So gossip appears to be influenced by a number of things. It’s motivated by a desire for attention and admiration, and propagated by inquisitiveness. Those who engage in gossip are presented as fools, but also as children, as in this passage, where they engage in an activity that is fundamentally paradoxical and self-defeating. Plutarch says that secrets destroy those who can’t keep them-not necessarily the subject of the secret. The link between inquisitiveness and gossip perhaps is followed up in the treatise on curiosity (very next treatise in the Loeb).]
508F - Barbers are especially singled out for being talkative. Again, Plutarch presents a scene of gossip (idle chatter) at a barber’s shop-this time, concerning how unbreakable the despotism of Dionysius was. The barber remarks, “Fancy your saying that about Dionysius, when I have my razor at his throat every few days or so!” Dionysius crucified the barber after hearing of this. [This is a scene of gossip accompanied by an inappropriate joke taken the wrong way. But who told Dionysius about it? Another gossip, or a spy?]
509A - Plutarch states that it’s no surprise that barbers are talkative, as they deal with chatterers all day long, and are thus ‘infected’ with the habit. [First mention of garrulity as a disease.] A barber first announced great disaster of Athenians at Sicily, but the people questioned the origin of the rumor (in reality, barber heard from a slave). The barber referred to the origin as an unknown and nameless person-the crowd tortured him for lying. [Note: unknown source of a rumor is definitely NOT considered divine in this case!] Once he was freed (because story was true), he immediately asked whether they had heard how the general Nicias had died (immediately back to gossiping without learning his lesson). [Gossip depicted as communicable disease and habit.]
509F - The murderers of Ibycus are supposedly exposed by those overhearing their ‘inside jokes.’
510C - For garrulity to be cured, it first must be recognized (‘diagnosed’). The sufferer must learn of the painful and shameful effects of their chatter: being hated when they want to be liked, causing annoyance when they wish to please, being laughed at when they wish to be admired, spending money without gain, wronging friends, helping enemies, and destroying the self. The first step in curing is to apply reason in order to identify these consequences of garrulity. [Again, the identification of garrulity as a disease.]
510E - The second step to curing garrulity is to use reason to identify effects of the opposite behavior-praising and remembering the benefits of silence.
511F - It is impossible to stop a chatterer by holding the reins, but his disease must be conquered by habit. Plutarch here gives suggestions about how to control one’s propensity for chatter: accustoming oneself to silence until all have refused a response, avoiding insolency and boldness in asking questions, etc. Answering in someone else’s place is likened to running up and kissing someone who wanted to be kissed by someone else. To take the answer out of another person’s mouth is to divert another person’s hearing, attract his attention and wrest it from another person. [The gossip at work attracts much attention to himself.]
513A - Answers to questions come in three varieties: the barely necessary, the polite, and the superfluous. Plutarch gives examples here of these three answers.
514A - Be wary of subjects that incite a chatterer to speak. One person might have a different weakness than another: the great reader will narrate tales, a literary expert will enjoy technical discussions, a traveller/wanderer will tell stories of foreign lands. Garrulity is incited by these subject, like a beast making for familiar haunts.
514C - Talkativeness is less unpleasant when its excesses are in a learned subject. Chatterers should seek company of superiors and elders, where they will become accustomed to silence.
514E - Plutarch gives more exercises for self-restraint-particularly, vigilance and reflection before speaking: “What is this remark that is so pressing and important? What object is my tongue panting for? What good will become of its being said, or what ill of its being repressed?” For it isn’t as if the weight of the remark will be rid once one has said it-it stays with a person whether or not he says it. Men talk either for their own sake, because they need something, or to benefit the listener... or they seek to ingratiate themselves with each other by seasoning their business with the salt of conversation. Why does one talk if a remark isn’t useful or is without pleasure/charm? Futility/purposelessness does exist in speech.
Since apparently i'm just posting work here now...
(these are posted with the understanding that they will not be plagiarized - ha! as if anyone would want to do such a thing...)
Plutarch’s Moralia: περὶ ἀδολεσχίας
Plutarch’s treatise on garrulity touches on the subject of gossip and provides excellent examples of the effects of gossip.
503E-504B - Plutarch relates drunkenness to garrulity, but does state that “drinking is not blamed if silence attends the drinking, but it is foolish talk which converts the influence of wine into drunkenness” (504B).
504E - A parallel is drawn between wine and speech. Wine, which can be used for pleasure and good fellowship, can be misused by those who force others to drink it undiluted in large quantities, producing discomfort and intoxication. So speech, the most pleasant and human of social bonds, is made inhuman and unsocial by those who use it badly and wantonly. Those who abuse speech offend those they wish to please, are ridiculed for their attempts to gain honor, and are disliked because of the method they use to seek admiration. [Plutarch notes that it isn’t speech itself that is bad-it’s the excess of speech. Also, he seems to mark a relationship between a bad host (one who forces his guests to drink too much undiluted wine, which thus affects their behavior) and a bad speaker (one who forces people to take in too much speech, which produces a negative result for the listeners). As gossip is almost by definition superfluous speech, this passage may indicate that gossip affects both the teller and the listeners negatively.]
504F-505A - Anacharsis lays down to sleep after a party at Solon’s house, placing his left hand over his genitals, but his right hand upon his mouth. Plutarch remarks that he rightly believed that his tongue required the stronger restraint.
505B - Plutarch relates a story about how gossip caused the destruction of Athens. Sulla was preparing to beseige Athens, and spies overheard old men talking in a barber’s shop, saying that the Heptachaleon was unguarded. The spies told Sulla, who subsequently led in his army that night and attacked the city. Sulla’s anger with the Athenians was also on account of their words, as they used to say, “Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled with meal” (reference to his complexion). Plutarch quotes Plato, saying that with their idle talk they drew upon themselves “a very heavy penalty for the lightest of things: words.” [This is true gossip-old men talking idly in a public place. Even in ancient Greece, the hairstylist’s shop is the hot spot for gossip! Gossip is also connected with old men here, showing that men do, in fact, gossip. Why is gossip almost always connected with the older generation in antiquity? Is it that they are the generation with the most idle time? This story in particular relates gossip to treachery-a fairly severe offense.]
505C-D - Plutarch tells how one man’s inability to keep a secret delayed the removal of Nero. One night remained before the tyrant was to be murdered, but the hitma, on his way to the theater, saw a prisoner about to be led before Nero. He approached the lamenting man and said. “Only pray, my good man, that today may pass by, and tomorrow you will be thankful to me.” The prisoner understood the veiled meaning, and chose a surer route to safety: he told Nero. The hitman was seized and tortured as he denied his involvement. [This story hinges on the previous one in its association of excessive speech with treason. In this case, a secret that would free Rome from tyranny was revealed to the wrong person. Gossip is not always about secrets, but tends to take place in secrecy, within a select group of people, and it’s always bad if the subject of gossip finds out. The hitman is idle here-he’s on his way to the theater. His destination itself connotes lack of self-control, lasciviousness, drunkenness, and idle chatter-characteristics that the reader is invited to map onto the hitman.]
506E-507B - Plutarch discusses the danger of telling secrets. Once you have told a secret to someone else, you have taken refuge in another’s faith while abandoning your own. The story may go on increasing and multiplying by link after link of incontinent betrayal. A story is only secret when confined to its first possessor, but if it passes to another, it acquires the status of rumor. He cites Homer as calling words “winged,” remarking that when you let go of a winged thing it is impossible to grab hold of it again-thus when a word slips from the mouth, it is impossible to arrest and control it, but it is borne away “circling on swift wings.” [Perhaps Virgil’s feathered depiction of Fama comes somehow from a relationship to “winged words.” Here again one finds Plutarch discussing secrets in relation to rumor, as well as warning against the out-of-control nature of words, once uttered.]
507B - In this story, a husband tests his wife by telling her a false piece of news and instructing her to keep silent. She immediately tells her maid, adding the refrain common to every babbler: “keep this quiet and tell it to no one!” The maid tells another servant-one who, she saw, had the least to do. This servant told her visiting lover, and thus the story rolled out (ἐκκυλισθέντος - as by the eccyclema on the Greek stage), reaching the Forum before the husband himself. He punishes his wife by claiming her tongue ruined him, and that he was to be exiled from home for her lack of self-control. She denies it, declaring that he himself heard the news along with 300 other people. He then admits the fabrication of the story, exposing her as a gossip and liar. Thus this man made trial of his wife cautiously and in complete safety, pouring, as it were into a leaky vessel, not wine or oil, but water. [This is the stereotypical illustration of the gossipy and idle wife. The comparison between the woman and a “leaky vessel” is interesting, especially in light of discussion of women as containers and the container associated with Pandora. Plutarch further shows that gossip is most frequently propagated by those with nothing to do-the maid told the servant with the least amount to do, and she thus told her lover, who was visiting (another idle activity).]
508A - Fulvius, friend of Caesar Augustus, heard the emperor lamenting the desolation of his house, for two of his grandchildren were dead, and Postumius was in exile on account of a false accusation. Caesar was thus forced to import his wife’s son (Tiberius) into the royal succession; yet he pitied his grandson and was planning to recall him from abroad. Fulvius told this to his wife, who told Livia; Livia rebuked Caesar for not revealing his plan to her sooner. Fulvius greets Caesar the next day: “Ave, Caesar,” and Caesar responds, “Vale, Fulvi.” Fulvius sends for his wife, telling her that Caesar has found out his unfaithfulness and that he intended suicide. His wife states that it’s right for him to commit suicide, since after living with her for so long, he hasn’t learned how to guard against her unfaithful tongue. She kills herself first. [Both Fulvius & his wife are guilty of gossip. The husband is responsible for the words of his wife (she gossiped to the wrong person), but is also guilty of telling her what he heard in the first place. Their idle words brought further strife into Caesar’s household. Death is the consequence (although, not from Caesar).]
508C - Plutarch asserts that garrulity is accompanied by another vice-inquisitiveness. Babblers wish to hear many things so that they may tell them-so they search out stories, especially secrets, for the purpose of gossip. They collect a second-hand cache of hucksters’ wares; then like children with a piece of ice they are neither able to hold it nor willing to let go. Or rather, the secrets are like reptiles which they catch and place in their bosoms, yet cannot confine them there, but are devoured by them. For pipe-fish and vipers burst upon giving birth, and secrets, when they escape, destroy and ruin those who cannot keep them. [So gossip appears to be influenced by a number of things. It’s motivated by a desire for attention and admiration, and propagated by inquisitiveness. Those who engage in gossip are presented as fools, but also as children, as in this passage, where they engage in an activity that is fundamentally paradoxical and self-defeating. Plutarch says that secrets destroy those who can’t keep them-not necessarily the subject of the secret. The link between inquisitiveness and gossip perhaps is followed up in the treatise on curiosity (very next treatise in the Loeb).]
508F - Barbers are especially singled out for being talkative. Again, Plutarch presents a scene of gossip (idle chatter) at a barber’s shop-this time, concerning how unbreakable the despotism of Dionysius was. The barber remarks, “Fancy your saying that about Dionysius, when I have my razor at his throat every few days or so!” Dionysius crucified the barber after hearing of this. [This is a scene of gossip accompanied by an inappropriate joke taken the wrong way. But who told Dionysius about it? Another gossip, or a spy?]
509A - Plutarch states that it’s no surprise that barbers are talkative, as they deal with chatterers all day long, and are thus ‘infected’ with the habit. [First mention of garrulity as a disease.] A barber first announced great disaster of Athenians at Sicily, but the people questioned the origin of the rumor (in reality, barber heard from a slave). The barber referred to the origin as an unknown and nameless person-the crowd tortured him for lying. [Note: unknown source of a rumor is definitely NOT considered divine in this case!] Once he was freed (because story was true), he immediately asked whether they had heard how the general Nicias had died (immediately back to gossiping without learning his lesson). [Gossip depicted as communicable disease and habit.]
509F - The murderers of Ibycus are supposedly exposed by those overhearing their ‘inside jokes.’
510C - For garrulity to be cured, it first must be recognized (‘diagnosed’). The sufferer must learn of the painful and shameful effects of their chatter: being hated when they want to be liked, causing annoyance when they wish to please, being laughed at when they wish to be admired, spending money without gain, wronging friends, helping enemies, and destroying the self. The first step in curing is to apply reason in order to identify these consequences of garrulity. [Again, the identification of garrulity as a disease.]
510E - The second step to curing garrulity is to use reason to identify effects of the opposite behavior-praising and remembering the benefits of silence.
511F - It is impossible to stop a chatterer by holding the reins, but his disease must be conquered by habit. Plutarch here gives suggestions about how to control one’s propensity for chatter: accustoming oneself to silence until all have refused a response, avoiding insolency and boldness in asking questions, etc. Answering in someone else’s place is likened to running up and kissing someone who wanted to be kissed by someone else. To take the answer out of another person’s mouth is to divert another person’s hearing, attract his attention and wrest it from another person. [The gossip at work attracts much attention to himself.]
513A - Answers to questions come in three varieties: the barely necessary, the polite, and the superfluous. Plutarch gives examples here of these three answers.
514A - Be wary of subjects that incite a chatterer to speak. One person might have a different weakness than another: the great reader will narrate tales, a literary expert will enjoy technical discussions, a traveller/wanderer will tell stories of foreign lands. Garrulity is incited by these subject, like a beast making for familiar haunts.
514C - Talkativeness is less unpleasant when its excesses are in a learned subject. Chatterers should seek company of superiors and elders, where they will become accustomed to silence.
514E - Plutarch gives more exercises for self-restraint-particularly, vigilance and reflection before speaking: “What is this remark that is so pressing and important? What object is my tongue panting for? What good will become of its being said, or what ill of its being repressed?” For it isn’t as if the weight of the remark will be rid once one has said it-it stays with a person whether or not he says it. Men talk either for their own sake, because they need something, or to benefit the listener... or they seek to ingratiate themselves with each other by seasoning their business with the salt of conversation. Why does one talk if a remark isn’t useful or is without pleasure/charm? Futility/purposelessness does exist in speech.