ess, but an attempt to cure it: for we overcome the
passions by judgement and practice, but judgement is the first step. For
no one is wont to shun, and eradicate from his soul, what he does not
dislike. And we dislike the passions only when we discern by reason the
harm and shame that results to us by indulging them. As we see every day
in the case of talkative people: if they wish to be loved, they are
hated; if they desire to please, they bore; when they think they are
admired, they are really laughed at; they spend, and get no gain from so
doing; they injure their friends, benefit their enemies, and ruin
themselves. So that the first cure and remedy of this disorder will be
to reckon up the shame and trouble that results from it.

Sec. XVII. In the next place we must consider the opposite virtue to
talkativeness, always listening to and having on our lips the encomiums
passed upon reserve, and remembering the decorum sanctity and mysterious
power of silence, and ever bearing in mind that terse and brief
speakers, who put the maximum of matter into the minimum of words, are
more admired and esteemed and thought wiser[590] than unbridled
windbags. And so Plato[591] praises, and compares to clever javelin-men,
such as speak tersely, compressedly, and concisely. And Lycurgus by
using his citizens from boyhood to silence taught them to perfection
their brevity and terseness. For as the Celtiberians make steel of iron
only after digging down deep in the soil, and carefully separating the
iron ore, so Laconian oratory has no rind,[592] but by the removal of
all superfluous matter goes home straight to the point like steel. For
its sententiousness,[593] and pointed suppleness in repartee, comes from
the habit of silence. And we ought to quote such pointed sayings
especially to talkative people, such neatness and vigour have they, as,
for example, what the Lacedaemonians said to Philip, "[Remember]
Dionysius at Corinth."[594] And again, when Philip wrote to them, "If I
invade Laconia, I will drive you all out of house and home," they only
wrote back, "If." And when king Demetrius was indignant and cried out,
"The Lacedaemonians have only sent me one ambassador," the ambassador was
not frightened but said, "Yes, one to one man." Certainly among the
ancients men of few words were admired. So the Amphictyones did not
write extracts from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the Paeans of Pindar, in the
temple of Pythian Apollo at Delphi, but