ture has fenced and barricaded in us nothing so much as
the tongue, having put the teeth before it as a barrier, so that if,
when reason holds tight her "glossy reins,"[547] it hearken not, nor
keep within bounds, we may check its intemperance, biting it till the
blood comes. For Euripides tells us that, not from unbolted houses or
store-rooms, but "from unbridled mouths the end is misfortune."[548] But
those persons who think that houses without doors and open purses are no
good to their possessors, and yet keep their mouths open and unshut, and
allow their speech to flow continually like the waves of the
Euxine,[549] seem to regard speech as of less value than anything. And
so they never get believed, though credit is the aim of every speech;
for to inspire belief in one's hearers is the proper end of speech, but
praters are disbelieved even when they tell the truth. For as corn
stowed away in a granary is found to be larger in quantity but inferior
in quality, so the speech of a talkative man is increased by a large
addition of falsehood, which destroys his credit.

Sec. IV. Then again every man of modesty and propriety would avoid
drunkenness, for anger is next door neighbour to madness as some
think,[550] but drunkenness lives in the same house: or rather
drunkenness is madness, more short-lived indeed, but more potent also
through volition, for it is self-chosen. Nor is drunkenness censured for
anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.

"Wine makes a prudent man begin to sing,
And gently laugh, and even makes him dance."[551]

And yet there is no harm in all this, in singing and laughing and
dancing. But the poet adds--

"And it compels to say what's best unsaid."[552]

This is indeed dreadful and dangerous. And perhaps the poet in this
passage has solved that problem of the philosophers, and stated the
difference between being under the influence of wine and being drunk,
mirth being the condition of the former, foolish talk of the latter. For
as the proverb tells us, "What is in the heart of the sober is on the
tongue of the drunken."[553] And so Bias, being silent at a drinking
bout, and jeered at by some young man in the company as stupid, replied,
"What fool could hold his tongue in liquor?" And at Athens a certain
person gave an entertainment to the king's ambassadors, and at their
desire contrived to get the philosophers there too, and as they were all
talking together and comparing i