A panic naturally ensued, and the people were gathered to an assembly, where they set to work to trace the rumour to its source. When, however, the barber was brought forward and questioned, he did not even know the name of his informant, but could only give as his authority a person unnamed and unknown. Thereupon the audience shouted in anger: ‘To the rack and the wheel with the wretch! The thing is a pure concoction! Who else has heard it? Who believes it?’ The wheel [Sidenote: C] had been brought, and the man had been stretched upon it, when there appeared upon the scene the bearers of the disastrous news, who had escaped from the very midst of the action. At this they all dispersed, to occupy themselves with their private griefs, leaving the poor wretch bound upon the wheel. When at a late hour towards evening he was set free, he proceeded to ask the executioner ‘whether they had also heard in what manner Nicias, the commander, had met his death’. Such a hopeless and incorrigible failing does garrulity become through force of habit.
After drinking a bitter and evil-smelling medicine, we are disgusted with the cup as well. In the same way, if you are the bearer of bad news, you are regarded with disgust and hatred by those who hear it. Hence a pretty discussion in Sophocles: [Sidenote: D]
A. _Is it in ear or heart that thou art stung?_
B. _Why seek thus to define where lies my pain?_
A. _’Tis the doer grieves thine heart, I but thine ears._
Be that as it may, a speaker causes pain as well as a doer. Nevertheless there is no stopping or chastening a loose, glib tongue.
On one occasion it was discovered that the temple of Athena ‘Of the Bronze House’ at Sparta had been pillaged, and an empty flask was found lying inside. The crowd which had run together could make nothing of it, when one of their number said, ‘If you like, I will tell you my notion as to the flask. I fancy the robbers, realizing all the danger they were to run, first drank hemlock, and then brought wine with them. If they managed to escape detection, they were to neutralize [Sidenote: E] the effects of the poison by drinking the unmixed wine, and so get away in safety. If they were caught, they were to die an easy and painless death from the poison, before they could be put to torture.’ The theory was so ingenious and acute that it appeared to come of knowledge rather than conjecture. He was therefore surrounded and questioned on every side—‘Who are [Sidenote: F] you? Who knows you? How do you get to know all that?‘—till finally, under this searching examination, he confessed that he was one of the thieves.