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Since, therefore, for the attainment of justice you may sometimes forgo an honest gain that you may accustom yourself to keep clear of dishonest profit, so likewise, for the attainment of continence, you may sometimes keep aloof from your own wife in order that you may never be stirred by another’s. Then apply this habit to inquisitiveness and endeavour sometimes not to hear or see some of the things that concern you, and when someone wishes to tell you something that has happened in your house, put him off and refuse to hear words that are supposed to have been spoken about you. It was, in fact, curiosity which involved Oedipus in the greatest calamities. Believing that he was no Corinthian, but a foreigner, and seeking to discover his identity, he encountered Laïus; and when he had killed Laïus and had taken, in addition to the throne, his own mother to wife, though seeming to all to be blessed by fortune, he began again to try to discover his identity. And although his wife attempted to prevent him, all the more vigorously did he cross-examine the old man who knew the truth, bringing every form of compulsion to bear. And at last, when circumstances were already bringing him to suspect the truth and the old manThe herdsman who had saved Oedipus on Cithaeron. cried out, Alas! I stand on the dread brink of speech,Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 1169. Oedipus was none the less so inflamed and maddened by his afflictionCuriosity. that he replied, And I of hearing, and yet hear I mustSophocles, l.c., 1170.; so bitter-sweet, so uncontrollable is the itching of curiosity, like the itching of a sore which gets bloody whenever we scratch it. But the man who has got rid of this disease and is gentle by nature will say, if he is ignorant of something unpleasant, Forgetfulness of evil, sovereign queen, How wise you are!Euripides, Orestes, 213.
