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A citizen of Athens, having invited the king of Persia’s ambassadors to a magnificent feast, at their request gave the same invitation to the most eminent philosophers in the city, to bear them company. Now, when all the rest were propounding of themes, and raising arguments pro and con, and others were maintaining of paradoxes to show their wit and learning, only Zeno sat still, so reserved and mute that the ambassadors took notice of it; and thereupon, after they thought they had opened his heart with two or three lusty brimmers, Pray tell us, Zeno, said they, what report we shall make concerning thee to our master? To whom Zeno: Nothing more, said he, but that there was an old man at Athens that could hold his tongue in the midst of his cups. Such profound and divine mysterious virtues are silence and sobriety; whereas drunkenness is loquacious, void of reason and understanding, and therefore full of jangling and impertinent tautologies. Wherefore the philosophers, when they come to define drunkenness, call it vain talk over wine. So that drinking is not condemned, provided a man keep himself within the bounds of silence; only vain and silly discourse makes wine-bibbing to be drunkenness. He then that is drunk talks idly over his wine; but the babbler does it everywhere,—in the market-place, at the theatre, in the public walks, as well by night as by day. If he be a physician, certainly he is more troublesome than the disease; if your companion in a voyage, more insupportable than the qualms occasioned by the tumbling of the sea. If he praise thee, his panegyric is more offensive than the reproaches of another. It is a greater pleasure to converse with vicious men, so they be discreet in their language, than with twaddlers, though never so honest. Therefore Nestor in Sophocles, desirous to appease exasperated Ajax, mildly thus rebuked him: I blame thee not, for though thy words are ill, Thy deeds bespeak thee brave and valiant still.From Sophocles Frag. 770. But there is not the same excuse to be made for a vain babbling fellow; for the ill government of his tongue corrupts and vitiates all the merits of his actions.
