e virtue of
Craterus; and no one but Eumenes knew the truth, and they engaged and
were victorious, and unwittingly killed Craterus, and only recognized
his dead body. So great a part did silence play in the battle,
concealing the name of the enemy's general: so that Eumenes' friends
marvelled more than found fault at his not having told them the truth.
And if anyone should receive blame in such a case, it is better to be
censured when one has done well by keeping one's counsel, rather than to
have to accuse others through having come to grief by trusting them.

Sec. X. But, generally speaking, who has the right to blame the person who
has not kept his secret? For if it was not to be known, it was not well
to tell another person of it at all, and if you divulged your secret
yourself and expected another person to keep it, you had more faith in
another than in yourself. And so should he be such another as yourself
you are deservedly undone, and should he be a better man than yourself,
your safety is more than you could have reckoned on, as it involved
finding a man more to be trusted than yourself. But you will say, He is
my friend. Yes, but he has another friend, whom he reposes confidence in
as much as you do in your friend, and that other friend has one of his
own, and so on, so that the secret spreads in many quarters from
inability to keep it close in one. For as the unit never deviates from
its orbit, but (as its name signifies) always remains one, but the
number two contains within it the seeds of infinity, for when it departs
from itself it becomes plurality at once by doubling, so speech confined
in one person's breast is truly secret, but if it be communicated to
another it soon gets noised abroad. And so Homer calls words "winged,"
for as he that lets a bird go from his hands cannot easily get it back
again, so he that lets a word go from his mouth cannot catch or stop it,
but it is borne along "whirling on swift wings," and dispersed from one
person to another. When a ship scuds before the gale the mariners can
stop it, or at least check its course with cables and anchors, but when
the spoken word once sails out of harbour, so to speak, there is no
roadstead or anchorage for it, but borne along with much noise and echo
it dashes its utterer on the rocks, and brings him into imminent danger
of shipwreck,

"As one might set on fire Ida's woods
With a small torch, so what one tells one person
Is soon th