ON TALKATIVENESS.

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 wiser³⁹ than unbridled windbags. And so Plato⁴⁰ 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,⁴¹ but by the removal of all superfluous matter goes home straight to the point like steel. For its sententiousness,⁴² 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 Lacedæmonians said to Philip, "[Remember] Dionysius at Corinth."⁴³ 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 Lacedæmonians 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 Pæans of Pindar, in the temple of Pythian Apollo at Delphi, but "Know thyself," "Not too much of anything,"⁴⁴ and "Be a surety, trouble is near;"⁴⁵ so much did they admire compactness and simplicity of speech, combining brevity with shrewdness of mind. And is not the god himself short and concise in his oracles? Is he not called Loxias,⁴⁶ because he prefers ambiguity to longwindedness? And are not those who express their meaning by signs without words wonderfully praised and admired? As Heraclitus, when some of the citizens asked him to give them his opinion about concord, got on the platform, and took a cup of cold water, and put some barley-meal in it, and stirred it up with penny-royal, thus showing them that it is being content with anything, and not needing costly dainties, that keeps cities in peace and concord.