Plut. Mor., Garrulity 21 — Of Garrulity, or Talkativeness

Plut. Mor., Garrulity 21 — Of Garrulity, or Talkativeness, Plutarch; served verbatim

Now therefore we come to understand that there are three sorts of answers to questions, the necessary, the polite, and the superfluous. For example, if a man should ask whether Socrates is within, the other, if he were in an ill-humor or not disposed to make many words, would answer, Not within; or if he intended to be more Laconic, he would cut off within, and reply briefly, No. Thus the Lacedaemonians, when Philip sent them an epistle, to know whether or not they would admit him into their city, vouchsafed him no other answer than only No, fairly written in large letters upon a sheet of paper. Another that would answer more courteously would say: He is not within; he is gone among the bankers; and perhaps he would add, Where he expects some friends. But a superfluous prater, if he chance to have read Antimachus of Colophon, would reply: He is not within; but is gone among the bankers, in expectation to meet certain Ionian friends, who are recommended to him in a letter from Alcibiades, who lives at Miletus with Tissaphernes, one of the great king of Persia’s lieutenant-generals, who formerly assisted the Lacedaemonians, but is now, by the solicitation of Alcibiades, in league with the Athenians; for Alcibiades, being desirous to return to his own country, has prevailed with Tissaphernes to change his mind and join with the Athenians. And thus perhaps you shall have him run on and repeat the whole eighth book of Thucydides, and overwhelm a man with his impertinent discourse, till he has taken Miletus, and banished Alcibiades a second time. Herein therefore ought a man chiefly to restrain the profuseness of his language, by following the footsteps of the question, and circumscribing the answer, as it were, within a circle proportionable to the benefit which the propounder proposes to make of his question. It is reported of Carneades, that before he was well known in the world, while he was disputing in the Gymnasium, the president of the place sent him an admonition to moderate his voice (for he naturally spoke very deep and loud); in answer to which he desired the president to send him a gauge for his voice, when the president not improperly made answer: Let that be the person who disputes with thee. In like manner, the intent of the propounder ought to be the rule and measure of the answer.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

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Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Antimachus — a candidate entry Carneades — a candidate entry Persia — a candidate entry Philip — a candidate entry Socrates — a candidate entry Thucydides — a candidate entry Tissaphernes — a candidate entry

Of Garrulity, or Talkativeness, Plutarch — translated by John Philips (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)