, and author
of a Thebaid. Pausanias mentions him, viii. 25; ix. 35.

[602] The mediaeval proverb, _Ubi dolor ibi digitus_.

[603] A proverbial expression for having no judgment.
See Sophocles, Fragm. 307; Plato, "Charmides," 154 B;
Erasmus, "Adagia." So we say a person's mind is a blank
sheet on a subject he knows nothing about.

[604] Euripides, Fragm. 202. Quoted also by Plato,
"Gorgias," 484 E.

[605] Reading with Reiske, [Greek: misthon auto dounai
to mikron siopesai me dynamenos].

[606] A celebrated Greek historian, and pupil of
Isocrates. See Cicero, "De Oratore," ii. 13.

[607] Of Tarsus. See Cicero, "De Officiis," iii. 12.

ON CURIOSITY.[608]

Sec. I. If a house is dark, or has little air, is in an exposed position,
or unhealthy, the best thing will probably be to leave it; but if one is
attached to it from long residence in it, one can improve it and make it
more light and airy and healthy by altering the position of the windows
and stairs, and by throwing open new doors and shutting up old ones. So
some towns have been altered for the better, as my native place,[609]
which did lie to the west and received the rays of the setting sun from
Parnassus, was they say turned to the east by Chaeron. And Empedocles the
naturalist is supposed to have driven away the pestilence from that
district, by having closed up a mountain gorge that was prejudicial to
health by admitting the south wind to the plains. Similarly, as there
are certain diseases of the soul that are injurious and harmful and
bring storm and darkness to it, the best thing will be to eject them and
lay them low by giving them open sky, pure air and light, or, if that
cannot be, to change and improve them some way or other. One such mental
disease, that immediately suggests itself to one, is curiosity, the
desire to know other people's troubles, a disease that seems neither
free from envy nor malignity.

"Malignant wretch, why art so keen to mark
Thy neighbour's fault, and seest not thine own?"[610]

Shift your view, and turn your curiosity so as to look inwards: if you
delight to study the history of evils, you have copious material at
home, "as much as there is water in the Alizon, or leaves on the oak,"
such a quantity of faults will you find in your own life, and passions
in your soul, and shortcomings in your duty. For as Xenophon says[611]
good managers have one place for