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."18 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-hole19 for all manner of vice.
§ 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 Œdipus 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 about himself; and though his wife tried to prevent him, he none the less compelled the old man that had been an eye-witness of the deed to tell him all the circumstances of it, and though he long suspected how the story would end, yet when the old man cried out,