tes. Thus Homer has described the most eloquent Odysseus,
and Telemachus, and Penelope, and the nurse, as all remarkable for their
taciturnity. You remember the nurse saying,

"I'll keep it close as heart of oak or steel."[565]

And Odysseus sitting by Penelope,

"Though in his heart he pitied her sad grief,
His eyes like horn or steel impassive stood
Within their lids, and craft his tears repressed."[566]

So great control had he over all his body, and so much were all his
members under the sway and rule of reason, that he commanded his eyes
not to weep, his tongue not to speak, and his heart not to tremble or
quake.[567]

"So calm and passive did his heart remain,"[568]

reason penetrating even to the irrational instincts, and making spirit
and blood obedient and docile to it. Such also were most of his
companions, for though they were dashed to the ground and dragged along
by the Cyclops, they said not a word about Odysseus, nor did they show
the stake of wood that had been put into the fire and prepared to put
out Polyphemus' eye, but they would rather have been eaten alive than
divulge secrets, such wonderful self-control and fidelity had they.[569]
And so it was not amiss of Pittacus, when the king of Egypt sent him a
victim, and bade him take from it the best and worst piece of it, to
pull out the tongue and send that to the king, as being the instrument
of the greatest blessings and withal the greatest mischiefs.

Sec. IX. So Ino in Euripides, speaking plainly about herself, says she
knows "how to be silent when she should, and to speak when speech is
safe."[570] For those who have enjoyed a truly noble and royal education
learn first to be silent and then to speak. So the famous king
Antigonus, when his son asked him, "When are we going to shift our
quarters?" answered, "Are you afraid that you only will not hear the
trumpet?" Was he afraid then to entrust a secret to him, to whom he
intended one day to leave his kingdom? Nay rather, it was to teach him
to be close and guarded on such matters. Metellus[571] also, the
well-known veteran, when questioned somewhat similarly about an
expedition, said, "If I thought my coat knew the secret, I would strip
it off and throw it into the fire." And Eumenes, when he heard that
Craterus was marching against him, told none of his friends, but
pretended that it was Neoptolemus; for his soldiers despised
Neoptolemus, but they admired the glory and loved th