6
But curiosity apparently takes no pleasure in stale calamities, but wants them hot and fresh; it enjoys the spectacle of novel tragedies and has not much zest for association with the comic and more cheerful side of life. Consequently when anyone tells the tale of a wedding or a sacrifice or a complimentary escort, the busybody is a careless and inattentive listener, and declares that he has already heard most of the details and urges the narrator to cut them short or skip them. But if someone sitting near at hand narrates the seduction of a maiden or the adultery of a wife or the framing of a law-suit or a quarrel of brothers, the busybody neither dozes off to sleep nor pleads an engagement, But asks more speech and proffers both his earsCallimachus, Frag. anon. 375 ed. Schneider.; and that saying,Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 913, ades. 386. Alas! How much more readily than glad events Is mischance carried to the ears of men! is spoken truly when applied to busy bodies. For as cupping-glassesCf. 469 b, supra, and Moralia, 600 c. draw from the flesh what is worst in it, so the ears of busy bodies attract the most evil stories. Or rather, as cities have certain unlucky and dismal gates through which they lead out condemned criminals and cast out the refuse Cf.Moralia, 271 a. and the scapegoats, while nothing undefiled or sacred either goes in or out through them, so also the ears of busy bodies give passage and thoroughfare to nothing good or decent, but only to gruesome tales, serving, as they do, as conveyance for foul and polluted narratives. The only song that’s heard within my house Is wailing cries.Cf. 463 b, supra. This is the one Muse and Siren for busybodies, this is the sweetest of all music to their ears.
