n's name who had told him, so was obliged to refer its
origin to an anonymous and unknown person. Then anger filled the
theatre, and the multitude cried out, "Torture the cursed fellow, put
him to the rack: he has fabricated and concocted this news: who else
heard it? who credits it?" The wheel was brought, the poor fellow
stretched on it. Meantime those came up who had brought the news, who
had escaped from the carnage in Sicily. Then all the multitude dispersed
to weep over their private sorrows, and abandoned the poor barber, who
remained fastened to the wheel. And when released late in the evening he
actually asked the executioner, if they had heard how Nicias the General
was slain. So invincible and incorrigible a vice does habit make
talkativeness to be.

Sec. XIV. And yet, as those that drink bitter and strong-smelling physic
are disgusted even with the cups they drink it out of, so those that
bring evil tidings are disliked and hated by their hearers. Wittily
therefore has Sophocles described the conversation between Creon and the
guard.

"_G._ Is't in your ears or in your mind you're grieved?
_C._ Why do you thus define the seat of grief?
_G._ The doer pains your mind, but I your ears."[585]

However those that tell the tale grieve us as well as those that did the
deed: and yet there is no means of checking or controlling the running
tongue. At Lacedaemon the temple of Athene Chalcioecus[586] was broken
into, and an empty flagon was observed lying on the ground inside, and a
great concourse of people came up and discussed the matter. And one of
the company said, "If you will allow me, I will tell you what I think
about this flagon. I cannot help being of opinion that these
sacrilegious wretches drank hemlock, and brought wine with them, before
commencing their nefarious and dangerous work: that so, if they should
fail to be detected, they might depart in safety, drinking the wine neat
as an antidote to the hemlock: whereas should they be caught in the act,
before they were put to the torture they would die of the poison easily
and painlessly." When he had uttered these words, the idea seemed so
ingenious and farfetched that it looked as if it could not emanate from
fancy, but only from knowledge of the real facts. So the crowd
surrounded this man, and asked him one after the other, "Who are you?
Who knows you? How come you to know all this?" And at last he was
convicted in this way, and confessed tha