fault at his not having told them the truth. And if anyone should receive blame in such a case, it is better to be censured when one has done well by keeping one's counsel, rather than to have to accuse others through having come to grief by trusting them.
§ x. But, generally speaking, who has the right to blame the person who has not kept his secret? For if it was not to be known, it was not well to tell another person of it at all, and if you divulged your secret yourself and expected another person to keep it, you had more faith in another than in yourself. And so should he be such another as yourself you are deservedly undone, and should he be a better man than yourself, your safety is more than you could have reckoned on, as it involved finding a man more to be trusted than yourself. But you will say, He is my friend. Yes, but he has another friend, whom he reposes confidence in as much as you do in your friend, and that other friend has one of his own, and so on, so that the secret spreads in many quarters from inability to keep it close in one. For as the unit never deviates from its orbit, but (as its name signifies) always remains one, but the number two contains within it the seeds of infinity, for when it departs from itself it becomes plurality at once by doubling, so speech confined in one person's breast is truly secret, but if it be communicated to another it soon gets noised abroad. And so Homer calls words "winged," for as he that lets a bird go from his hands cannot easily get it back again, so he that lets a word go from his mouth cannot catch or stop it, but it is borne along "whirling on swift wings," and dispersed from one person to another. When a ship scuds before the gale the mariners can stop it, or at least check its course with cables and anchors, but when the spoken word once sails out of harbour, so to speak, there is no roadstead or anchorage for it, but borne along with much noise and echo it dashes its utterer on the rocks, and brings him into imminent danger of shipwreck,
§ xi. The Roman Senate had been discussing for several days a secret matter, and there was much doubt and suspicion about it. And one of