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And were not they who murdered the poet Ibycus discovered after the same manner, as they sat in the theatre? For as they were sitting there under the open sky to behold the public pastimes, they observed a flock of cranes flying over their heads; upon which they whispered merrily one to another, Look, yonder are the revengers of Ibycus’s death. Which words being overheard by some that sat next them,—in regard that Ibycus had been long missing but could not be found, though diligent search had been made after him,—they presently gave information of what they had heard to the magistrates. By whom being examined and convicted, they suffered condign punishment, though not betrayed by the cranes, but by the incontinency of their own tongues, and by an avenging Erinnys hovering over their heads and constraining them to confess the murder. For as in the body, wounded and diseased members draw to themselves the vicious humors of the neighboring parts; in like manner, the unruly tongues of babblers, infested (as it were) with inflammations where a sort of feverish pulses continually lie beating, will be always drawing to themselves something of the secret and private concerns of other men. And therefore the tongue ought to be environed with reason, as with a rampart perpetually lying before it, like a mound, to stop the overflowing and slippery exuberance of impertinent talk; that we may not seem to be more silly than geese, which, when they take their flight out of Cilicia over the mountain Taurus, which abounds with eagles, are reported to carry every one a good big stone in their bills, instead of a bridle or barricade, to restrain their gaggling. By which means they cross those hideous forests in the night-time undiscovered.
