This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Now therefore we come to understand that there
are three sorts of answers to questions, the necessary, the
polite, and the superfluous. For example, if a man should
ask whether Socrates is within, the other, if he were in an
ill-humor or not disposed to make many words, would
answer, Not within; or if he intended to be more Laconic,
he would cut off ‘within,’ and reply briefly, No. Thus
the Lacedaemonians, when Philip sent them an epistle, to
know whether or not they would admit him into their
city, vouchsafed him no other answer than only No, fairly
written in large letters upon a sheet of paper. Another
that would answer more courteously would say: He is not
within; he is gone among the bankers; and perhaps he
[p. 249]
would add, Where he expects some friends. But a superfluous prater, if he chance to have read Antimachus of
Colophon, would reply: He is not within; but is gone
among the bankers, in expectation to meet certain Ionian
friends, who are recommended to him in a letter from Alcibiades, who lives at Miletus with Tissaphernes, one of
the great king of Persia's lieutenant-generals, who formerly assisted the Lacedaemonians, but is now, by the
solicitation of Alcibiades, in league with the Athenians;
for Alcibiades, being desirous to return to his own country,
has prevailed with Tissaphernes to change his mind and
join with the Athenians. And thus perhaps you shall have
him run on and repeat the whole eighth book of Thucydides, and overwhelm a man with his impertinent
discourse, till he has taken Miletus, and banished Alcibiades a second time. Herein therefore ought a man
chiefly to restrain the profuseness of his language, by
following the footsteps of the question, and circumscribing
the answer, as it were, within a circle proportionable to
the benefit which the propounder proposes to make of
his question. It is reported of Carneades, that before he
was well known in the world, while he was disputing in
the Gymnasium, the president of the place sent him an
admonition to moderate his voice (for he naturally spoke
very deep and loud); in answer to which he desired the
president to send him a gauge for his voice, when the president not improperly made answer: Let that be the person
who disputes with thee. In like manner, the intent of
the propounder ought to be the rule and measure of the
answer.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.