10
Busybodies, however, by gleaning and gathering the blunders and errors and solecisms, not of lines or poems, but of lives, carry about with them a most inelegant and unlovely record-box of evils, their own memory. Therefore just as at Rome there are some who take no account of paintings or statues or even, by Heaven, of the beauty of the boys and women for sale, but haunt the monster-market, examining those who have no calves, or are weasel-armed,That is, with exceptionally short arms. or have three eyes, or ostrich-heads, and searching to learn whether there has been born some Commingled shape and misformed prodigy,Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 680, Euripides, Frag. 996; cf. Life of Theseus, xv. (6 d). yet if one continually conduct them to such sights, they will soon experience satiety and nausea; so let those who are curious about life’s failures, the blots on the scutcheon, the delinquencies and errors in other people’s homes, remind themselves that their former discoveries have brought them no favour or profit.
