PAGE 8
On Curiosity
by
Footnotes:
[608] Jeremy Taylor has largely borrowed from this
Treatise in his “Holy Living,” chap. ii. Sec. v. Of
Modesty.
[609] Chaeronea in Boeotia.
[610] Lines from some comic poet, no doubt.
[611] “Oeconomicus,” cap. viii.
[612] The mother of Oedipus, better known as “Jocasta.”
[613] Homer, “Odyssey,” xi. 278. Epicaste hung herself.
[614] “[Greek: oikisko] corrigit Valekenarius ad Herodot.
p. 557.”– Wyttenbach.
[615] Aristophanes, “Equites,” 79.
[616] Sophocles, Fragm. 713. The lines are quoted more
fully by our author in his “Lives,” p. 911. There are
there four preceding lines that compare human life to
the moon’s changes.
[617] AEschylus, “Supplices,” 937.
[618] All three being eminent doctors.
[619] “Intelligo Charondam.”– Xylander.
[620] Plutarch wants to show that curiosity and adultery
are really the same vice in principle. Hence his imagery
here. Jeremy Taylor has very beautifully dealt with this
passage, “Holy Living,” chap. ii. Sec. v. I cannot pretend
to his felicity of language. Thus Plutarch makes
adultery mere curiosity, and curiosity a sort of
adultery in regard to secrets. A profoundly ethical and
moral view. Compare Sec. ix.
[621] Compare Lucian’s [Greek: echeglottia], after
[Greek: echecheiria] ( armistice ), Lexiph. 9.
[622] See the story in Homer, “Iliad,” vi. 155 sq.
[623] Or self-control.
[624] Literally, some woman shut up, or enclosed.
[625] See also our author’s “On those who are punished
by the Deity late,” Sec. xi.
[626] See Euripides, Fragm., 389. Also Plutarch’s
“Theseus,” cap. xv.
[627] Plutarch rather reminds one, in his evident
contempt for Epitaphs, of the cynic who asked, “Where
are all the bad people buried?” Where indeed?
[628] Sophocles, “Electra,” 724, 725.
[629] euphrone, a stock phrase for night, is here
defined.
[630] “Historia exstat initio libri quinti
Cyropaediae.”– Reiske.
[631] Literally, “slippery and prone to.” For the
metaphor of “slippery” compare Horace, “Odes,” i. 19-8,
“Et vultus nimium lubricus adspici.”
[632] This and the line above are in Sophocles, “Oedipus
Tyrannus,” 1169, 1170.
[633] Euripides, “Orestes,” 213.
[634] Literally, ears.
[635] The paronomasia is as follows. The word for
impious people is supposed to mean listeners to mills
grinding.