tured to death. Indeed
informers are of the same tribe and family as curious people. However
informers only investigate wicked acts or plots, but curious people pry
into and publish abroad the involuntary misfortunes of their neighbours.
And it is said that impious people first got their name from curiosity,
for it seems there was a mighty famine at Athens, and those people that
had wheat not producing it, but grinding it stealthily by night in their
houses, some of their neighbours went about and noticed the noise of the
mills grinding, and so they got their name.[635] This also is the origin
of the well-known Greek word for informer, (Sycophant, _quasi_
Fig-informer), for when the people were forbidden to export figs, those
who informed against those who did were called Fig-informers. It is well
worth the while of curious people to give their attention to this, that
they may be ashamed of having any similarity or connection in habit with
a class of people so universally hated and disliked as informers.

[608] Jeremy Taylor has largely borrowed from this
Treatise in his "Holy Living," chap. ii. Sec. v. Of
Modesty.

[609] Chaeronea in Boeotia.

[610] Lines from some comic poet, no doubt.

[611] "Oeconomicus," cap. viii.

[612] The mother of Oedipus, better known as "Jocasta."

[613] Homer, "Odyssey," xi. 278. Epicaste hung herself.

[614] "[Greek: oikisko] corrigit Valekenarius ad Herodot.
p. 557."--_Wyttenbach._

[615] Aristophanes, "Equites," 79.

[616] Sophocles, Fragm. 713. The lines are quoted more
fully by our author in his "Lives," p. 911. There are
there four preceding lines that compare human life to
the moon's changes.

[617] AEschylus, "Supplices," 937.

[618] All three being eminent doctors.

[619] "Intelligo Charondam."--_Xylander._

[620] Plutarch wants to show that curiosity and adultery
are really the same vice in principle. Hence his imagery
here. Jeremy Taylor has very beautifully dealt with this
passage, "Holy Living," chap. ii. Sec. v. I cannot pretend
to his felicity of language. Thus Plutarch makes
adultery mere curiosity, and curiosity a sort of
adultery in regard to secrets. A profoundly ethical and
moral view. Compare Sec. ix.

[621] Compare Lucian's [Greek: echeglottia], after
[Greek: echecheiria] (_armistice_), _Lexiph_. 9.

[622] See the story in Homer, "Ili