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Yet there are some who cannot bear to face their own lives, regarding these as a most unlovely spectacle, or to reflect and revolve upon themselves, like a light, the power of reason, but their souls, being full of all manner of vices, shuddering and frightened at what is within, leap outwards and prowl about other people’s concerns and there batten and make fat their own malice. For as a domestic fowl will often, though its own food lies near at hand, slip into a corner and there scratch Where one sole barley grain perhaps appears In the dung-heap,Perhaps a verse of Callimachus (Frag. anon. 374 ed. Schneider). in the same way busybodies, passing over topics and narratives which are in plain view and matters concerning which no one prevents their inquiring or is vexed if inquiry is made, pick out the hidden and obscure troubles of every household. And yet it was surely a clever answer that the Egyptian gave to the man who asked him what he was carrying wrapped up: That’s why it is wrapped up. And why, if you please, are you inquisitive about what is concealed? If it were not something bad, it would not be concealed. Yet it is not customary to walk into the house of someone else without at least first knocking on the door; but nowadays there are doormen and formerly there were knockers to be struck at the door and give warning, so that the stranger might not catch the mistress of the house or the unmarried daughter unawares, or a slave being punished or the maid-servants screaming. But it is for these very things that the busybody slips in. A sober and respectable household he would not willingly enter as a spectator even if he were invited to come; but the matters to conceal which keys and bolts and streetdoors are used-these are what he uncovers and communicates to outsiders. And yet the winds with which we are most vexed, as AristonVon Arnim, Stoic. Vet. Frag., i. pp. 89-90, Frag. 401. says, are those which pull up our garments, but the busybody strips off not only the mantles and tunics of those near him, but also their very walls; he flings the doors wide open and makes his way, like a piercing wind, through the maiden of tender skin,Hesiod, Works and Days, 519; Cf. 465 d, supra. and creeps in, searching out with slanderous intent drunken revels and dances and all-night festivals.
