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There is, however, really not a pin’s differenceLiterally a white line on a white stone: Cf. Sophocles, Frag. 330 ed. Pearson (307 ed. Nauck) with the note; Plato, Charmides, 154 b; Paroemiographi Graeci, i. pp. 109, 327. to the chatterer what subjects may arise; nevertheless he that has a greater weakness for one class of subjects than for the other should be on his guard against these subjects and force himself to hold back and withdraw as far as possible from them, since they are always able, because of the pleasure they give, to lure him on to dilate upon them. And talkers have this same difficulty with those subjects in which they think that they surpass all others because of some experience or acquired habit. For such a person, being self-centred and vain, Will give the chief part of the day to that In which he chances to surpass himselfNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 413, Euripides, Frag. 183. 2-3, from the Antiope; Cf.Moralia, 43 b, 622 a, 630 b.: the great reader will spend it in narrating tales, the literary expert in technical discussions, the wide traveller and wanderer over the face of the earth in stories of foreign parts. We must, therefore, be on our guard against these subjects also, since garrulity is enticed by them, like a beast making for familiar haunts. And Cyrus’sXenophon, Cyropaedia, i.4. 4; Cf.Moralia, 632 c. conduct was admirable, because he challenged his mates to match themselves with him, not in those contests in which he was superior, but in those in which he was less skilled than they, so that he might cause no pain by surpassing them and might also have the advantage of learning something. But the chatterer, on the contrary, if some topic comes up from which he can learn and find out something he does not know, thrusts it aside and diverts it, being unable to give even so small a fee as silence, but he works steadily around until he drives the conversation into the stale and well-worn paths of twaddle. Just so, in my native town, there was a man who chanced to have read two or three books of Ephorus, and would always bore everybody to death and put every dinner-party to rout by invariably narrating the battle of Leuctra and its sequel; so he got the nickname of Epameinondas.With this chapter Cf. chapters 18 and 19 of De Laude Ipsius (Moralia, 546 b-e) and the first part of Quaestiones Conviv., ii. 1 (Moralia, 629 e - 632 c).
