Plutarch, De curiositate, William Clark Helmbold (Translator), 10

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[10] For this reason the most useful means possible for turning the busybody from his vice is for him to remember what he has previously learned.¹ For, as Simonides² used to say that when he opened his boxes after some time, he always found the fee-box full, but the thanks-box empty, so if one opens from time to time the deposit-box of inquisitiveness and examines it, full as it is of many useless, futile, and unlovely things, perhaps this procedure would give sufficient offence, so completely disagreeable and silly would it appear. Suppose a man should run over the works of the ancients and pick out the worst passages in them and keep a book compiled from such things as headless lines in Homer³ and solecisms in the tragedians and the unbecoming and licentious language applied to women by which Archilochus⁴ makes a sorry spectacle of himself, would he not deserve that curse in the tragedy,

Be damned, compiler of men’s miseries?⁵

And even without this curse, such a man’s treasurehouse of other people’s faults is unbecoming and useless. It is like the city populated by the vilest and most intractable of men which Philip founded and called Roguesborough.⁶

Busybodies, however, by gleaning and gathering the blunders and errors and solecisms, not of lines or poems, but of lives, carry about with them a most inelegant and unlovely record-box of evils, their own memory. Therefore just as at Rome there are some who take no account of paintings or statues or even, by Heaven, of the beauty of the boys and women for sale, but haunt the monster-market, examining those who have no calves, or are weasel-armed,⁷ or have three eyes, or ostrich-heads, and searching to learn whether there has been born some

Commingled shape and misformed prodigy,⁸

yet if one continually conduct them to such sights, they will soon experience satiety and nausea; so let those who are curious about life’s failures, the blots on the scutcheon, the delinquencies and errors in other people’s homes, remind themselves that their former discoveries have brought them no favour or profit.

De curiositate. Plutarch. William Clark Helmbold (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1939.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

On Being a Busybody (English) (Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. VI. Helmbold, William Clark, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1939 (printing).)

Editions (1)

Περὶ πολυπραγμοσύνης Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, Vol. III. Vernardakēs, Grēgorios N., editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1891.) — 10 focus

[10] διὸ καὶ χρήσιμον ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα πρὸς τὴν¹ 520a ἀποτροπὴν τοῖς πολυπράγμοσιν ἡ τῶν προεγνωσμένων ἀνάμνησις. ἂν γάρ, ὥσπερ ὁ Σιμωνίδης ἔλεγε 10 τὰς κιβωτοὺς ἀνοίγων διὰ χρόνου τὴν μὲν τῶν μισθῶν ἀεὶ μεστὴν τὴν δὲ τῶν χαρίτων εὑρίσκειν ἀεὶ κενήν, οὕτως; ἄν τις² τῆς πολυπραγμοσύνης τὴν ἀποθήκην ἀνοίγῃ διὰ χρόνου καὶ κατασκέπτηται πολλῶν ἀχρήστων καὶ ματαίων καὶ ἀτερπῶν γέμουσαν, ἴσως 15 ἂν αὐτῷ τὸ πρᾶγμα προσσταίη, φανὲν ἀηδὲς παντάπασι καὶ φλυαρῶδες. φέρε γάρ, εἴ τις ἐπιὼν τὰ συγγράμματα τῶν παλαιῶν ἐκλαμβάνοι τὰ κάκιστα τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς, καὶ βιβλίον ἔχοι συντεταγμένον, οἷον Ὁμηρικῶν 520b στίχων ἀκεφάλων καὶ τραγικῶν σολοικισμῶν 20 καὶ τῶν ὑπʼ Ἀρχιλόχου πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας ἀπρεπῶς καὶ ἀκολάστως εἰρημένων, ἑαυτὸν παραδειγματίζοντος· ἆρʼ οὐκ ἔστι τῆς τραγικῆς κατάρας ἄξιος,

ὄλοιο θνητῶν ἐκλέγων τὰς συμφοράς;ʼ

³ καὶ ἄνευ δὲ τῆς κατάρας ἀπρεπὴς καὶ ἀνωφελὴς ὁ 25 θησαυρὸς αὐτοῦ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων ἁμαρτημάτων ὥσπερ ἡ πόλις, ἣν ἐκ τῶν κακίστων καὶ ἀναγωγοτάτων οἰκίσας ὁ Φίλιππος Πονηρόπολιν προσηγόρευσεν. οἱ τοίνυν πολυπράγμονες οὐ στίχων οὐδὲ ποιημάτων, ἀλλὰ βίων ἀστοχήματα καὶ πλημμελήματα καὶ σολοικισμοὺς ἀναλεγόμενοι καὶ συνάγοντες, 5 520c ἀμουσότατον καὶ ἀτερπέστατον κακῶν γραμματοφυλακεῖον τὴν ἑαυτῶν μνήμην περιφέρουσιν. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐν Ῥώμῃ τινὲς τὰς γραφὰς καὶ τοὺς ἀνδριάντας καὶ νὴ Δία τὰ κάλλη τῶν ὠνίων παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν ἐν μηδενὶ λόγῳ τιθέμενοι, περὶ τὴν τῶν 10 τεράτων ἀγορὰν ἀναστρέφονται, τοὺς ἀκνήμους καὶ τοὺς γαλεάγκωνας καὶ τοὺς τριοφθάλμους καὶ τοὺς στρουθοκεφάλους καταμανθάνοντες καὶ ζητοῦντες εἴ τι γεγένηται

σύμμικτον εἶδος κἀποφώλιον⁴ τέρας·⁵⁶ 15

ἀλλʼ ἐὰν συνεχῶς τις ἐπάγῃ τοῖς τοιούτοις αὐτοὺς θεάμασι, ταχὺ πλησμονὴν καὶ ναυτίαν τὸ πρᾶγμα παρέξει· οὕτως οἱ τὰ περὶ τὸν βίον ἀστοχήματα καὶ γενῶν αἴσχη καὶ διαστροφάς τινας ἐν οἴκοις ἀλλοτρίοις 520d καὶ πλημμελείας πολυπραγμονοῦντες, τῶν 20 πρώτων ἀναμιμνησκέτωσαν ἑαυτοὺς ὅτι χάριν καὶ ὄνησιν οὐδεμίαν ἤνεγκε.

Translations (1)

Of Curiosity, or an Over-Busy Inquisitiveness into Things Impertinent. Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. II. Goodwin, William W., editor; Wheeler, Maurice, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.) — 10 focus

[10] Now to dissuade inquisitive persons (as much as possible) from this sneaking and most despicable humor, it would contribute much, if they would but recollect and review all their past observations. For as Simonides, using at certain times to open two chests he kept by him, found that wherein he put rewards ever full, and the other appointed for thanks always empty; so, if inquisitive people did but now and then look into their bag of news, they would certainly be ashamed of that vain and foolish curiosity which, with so much hazard and trouble to themselves, had been gathering together such a confused heap of worthless and loathsome trash. If a man, in reading over the writings of the ancients, should rake together all the dross he could meet with, and collect into one volume all the unfinished scraps of verse in Homer, the incongruous expressions in the tragedians, or those obscenities of smutty Archilochus for which he was scorned and pointed at, would not such a filthy scavenger of books well deserve that curse of the tragedian,

Pox on your taste! Must you, like lice and fleas,

Be always fed with scabs and nastiness?

But without this imprecation, the practice itself becomes its own punishment, in the dishonest and unprofitable drudgery of amassing together such a noisome heap of other men’s vices and follies; a treasure much resembling the city Poneropolis (or Rogue-town), so called by King Philip after he had peopled it with a crew of rogues and vagabonds. For curious people do so load their dirty brains with the ribaldry and solecisms of other men’s writings, as well as the defects and blemishes of their lives, that there is not the least room left in their heads for one witty, graceful, or ingenious thought.

There is a sort of people at Rome who, being unaffected with any thing that is beautiful and pretty, either in the works of art or nature, despise the most curious pieces in painting or sculpture, and the fairest boys and girls that are there exposed to sale, as not worth their money; therefore they much frequent the monster-market, looking after people of distorted limbs and preternatural shapes, of three eyes and pointed heads, and mongrels

Where kinds of unlike form oft blended be

Into one hideous deformity.

All which are sights so loathsome, that they themselves would abhor them were they compelled often to behold them. And if they who curiously enquire into those vicious deformities and unlucky accidents that may be observed in the lives of other men would only bind themselves to a frequent recollection of what they had seen and heard, there would be found very little delight or advantage in such ungrateful and melancholy reflections.

Notes on the current edition

On Being a Busybody

1. With this chapter may be compared chapter 19 of De Vitioso Pudore ( Moralia, 536 c-d).

2. Cf. the same story, illustrating the avarice of Simonides, in Moralia, 555 f; there the box containing his fees is full of silver.

3. Lines which begin with a short syllable instead of the long one demanded by the metre: cf. Moralia, 397 d, 611 b; Athenaeus, xiv. 632 d.

4. Cf. Moralia, 45 a.

5. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 913, ades. 388; cf. Moralia, 855 b.

6. Cf. Jacoby, Frag. d. gr. Historiker, ii. B, p. 561, Theopompus, Frag. 110.

7. That is, with exceptionally short arms.

8. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 680, Euripides, Frag. 996; cf . Life of Theseus, xv. (6 d).

Plutarch De curiositate 10

William Clark Helmbold (Translator)

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