ht say, "Not at home;" or, if he wished to speak with Laconic
brevity, might cut off "at home," and simply say "No;" as, when Philip
wrote to the Lacedaemonians to ask if they would receive him in their
city, they sent him back merely a large "No." But another would answer
more politely, "He is not at home, but with the bankers," and if he
wished to add a little more, "he expects to see some strangers there."
But the superfluous prater, if he has read Antimachus of Colophon,[601]
says, "He is not at home, but with the bankers, waiting for some Ionian
strangers, about whom he has had a letter from Alcibiades who is in the
neighbourhood of Miletus, staying with Tissaphernes the satrap of the
great king, who used long ago to favour the Lacedaemonian party, but now
attaches himself to the Athenians for Alcibiades' sake, for Alcibiades
desires to return to his country, and so has succeeded in changing the
views of Tissaphernes." And then he will go over the whole of the Eighth
Book of Thucydides, and deluge the man, till before he is aware Miletus
is captured, and Alcibiades is in exile the second time. In such a case
most of all ought we to curtail talkativeness, by following the track of
a question closely, and tracing out our answer according to the need of
the questioner with the same accuracy as we describe a circle. When
Carneades was disputing in the gymnasium before the days of his great
fame, the superintendent of the gymnasium sent to him a message to bid
him modulate his voice (for it was of the loudest), and when he asked
him to fix a standard, the superintendent replied not amiss, "The
standard of the person talking with you." So the meaning of the
questioner ought to be the standard for the answer.

Sec. XXII. Moreover as Socrates urged his disciples to abstain from such
food as tempted them to eat when they were not hungry, and from such
drinks as tempted them to drink when they were not thirsty, so the
talkative person ought to be afraid most of such subjects of
conversation as he most delights in and repeats _ad nauseam_, and to try
and resist their influence. For example, soldiers are fond of
descriptions about war, and thus Homer introduces Nestor frequently
narrating his prowess and glorious deeds. And generally speaking those
who have been successful in the law courts, or beyond their hopes been
favourites of kings and princes, are possessed, as it were by some
disease, with the itch for frequently recall