urself. For you
will gain no advantage by mixing yourself up with curious people: but
you will derive the greatest benefit from putting a force upon your
inclinations, and bridling your curiosity, and accustoming it to obey
reason. Afterwards it will be well to extend the practice still further,
and not to go to the theatre when some fine piece is performing, and if
your friends invite you to see some dancer or actor to decline, and, if
there is some shouting in the stadium and hippodrome, not even to turn
your head to look what is up. For as Socrates advised people to abstain
from food that made them eat when they were not hungry, and from drinks
that made them drink when they were not thirsty, so ought we also to
shun and flee from those objects of interest, whether to eye or ear,
that master us and attract us when we stand in no need of them. Thus
Cyrus would not look at Panthea, but when Araspes told him that her
beauty was well worth inspection, he replied, "For that very reason must
I the more abstain from seeing her, for if at your persuasion I were to
pay her a visit, perhaps she would persuade me to visit her again when I
could ill spare the time, so that I might neglect important business to
sit with her and gaze on her charms."[630] Similarly Alexander would not
see the wife of Darius, who was reputed to be very beautiful, but
visited her mother who was old, and would not venture to look upon the
young and handsome queen. We on the contrary peep into women's litters,
and hang about their windows, and think we do no harm, though we thus
make our curiosity a loop-hole[631] for all manner of vice.

Sec. XIV. Moreover, as it is of great help to fair dealing sometimes not to
seize some honest gain, that you may accustom yourself as far as
possible to flee from unjust gains, and as it makes greatly for virtue
to abstain sometimes from your own wife, that you may not ever be
tempted by another woman, so, applying the habit to curiosity, try not
to see and hear at times all that goes on in your own house even, and if
anyone wishes to tell you anything about it give him the go-by, and
decline to hear him. For it was nothing but his curiosity that involved
Oedipus in his extreme calamities: for it was to try and find out his
extraction that he left Corinth and met Laius, and killed him, and got
his kingdom, and married his own mother, and when he then seemed at the
acme of felicity, he must needs make further inquiries