this is to the curious their one Muse and Siren, this the sweetest note they can hear. For curiosity desires to know what is hidden and secret; but no one conceals his good fortune, nay sometimes people even pretend to have such advantages as they do not really possess. So the curious man, eager to hear a history of what is bad, is possessed by the passion of malignity, which is brother to envy and jealousy. For envy is pain at another's blessings, and malignity is joy at another's misfortunes: and both proceed from the same savage and brutish vice, ill-nature.
§ vii. But so unpleasant is it to everybody to have his private ills brought to light, that many have died rather than acquaint the doctors with their secret ailments. For suppose Herophilus, or Erasistratus, or even Æsculapius himself during his sojourn on earth, had gone with their drugs and surgical instruments from house to house, to inquire what man had a fistula in ano, or what woman had a cancer in her womb;—and yet their curiosity would have been professional8—who would not have driven them away from their house, for not waiting till they were sent for, and for coming without being asked to spy out their neighbours' ailments? But curious people pry into these and even worse matters, not from a desire to heal them, but only to expose them to others, which makes them deservedly hated. For we are not vexed and mortified with custom-house officers when they levy toll on goods bona fide imported, but only when they seek for contraband articles, and rip up bags and packages: and yet the law allows them to do even this, and sometimes it is injurious to them not to do so. But curious people abandon and neglect their own affairs, and are busy about their neighbours' concerns. Seldom do they go into the country, for they do not care for its quiet and stillness and solitude, but if once in a way they do go there, they look more at their neighbours' vines than their own, and inquire how many cows of their neighbour have died, or how much of his wine has turned sour, and when they are satisfied on these points they soon return to town again. But the genuine countryman does not willingly listen to any rumour that chances to come from the town, for he quotes the following lines,