Perde 1
[Textpart 2]
But how say you—?
CALLICLES
What do you want?
MEGARONIDES
Where is the young man living now?
CALLICLES
This back part The back part: Posticulum probably means detached buildings at the back of the house, and within the garden walls, which adjoin the posticum or posticula, the back door or garden-gate. of the building he retained when he sold the house.
MEGARONIDES
That I wanted to know. Now, then, go at once. But what say you, where is the damsel now? She is at your house, I suppose?
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CALLICLES
She is so; I take care of her almost as much as of my own daughter.
MEGARONIDES
You act properly.
CALLICLES
Before I go away, are you going to ask me anything else?
MEGARONIDES
Farewell. (Exit CALLICLES.) Really, there is nothing more foolish or more stupid,
nothing more lying or indeed more tattling, more self-conceited or more forsworn, than those men of this city everlastingly gossiping about, whom they call Busybodies Call Busybodies: The word Scurra, which is here rendered busybody, originally meant a fellow-townsman, well to do in life, and a pleasant companion. In time, however, the word came to have a bad signification attached to it, and to mean an idle fellow, who did nothing but go about cracking his jokes at the expense of others, gossiping, and mischief-making, and at last to signify a clown, buffoon, or mimic on the stage. These men are most probably termed here assidui, everlasting gossipers, from a habit which many people have of making frequent calls on their neighbours, sitting down, and never thinking of taking their departure till they have exhausted all their stock of evil-speaking, lying, and slandering. Gossiping was notoriously the propensity of the Athenians. Numbers did nothing but saunter about the city, and go from spot to spot, with the question τι καινοῦ, Any news? Few will fail to remember the censure of them in the Seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, v. 21: For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.. And thus have I enlisted myself in their ranks together with them; who have been the swallower of the false tales
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of those who pretend that they know everything, and yet know nothing. They know, forsooth, what each person either has in his mind, or is likely to have; they know what the king whispered in the ear of the queen; they know what Juno talked about in conversation with Jupiter; that which neither is nor is likely to be, do these fellows know.
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Whether they praise or dispraise any one they please, falsely or truly, they care not a straw, so they know that which they choose to know. All people were in the habit of saying that this Callicles was unworthy of this state, and, himself, to exist, who had despoiled this young man of his property.
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From the reports of these tale-bearers, in my ignorance I rushed forward to rebuke my guiltless friend. But if the authority was always required from the foundation, upon which they speak of anything they have heard, unless that clearly appeared, the matter ought to be to the peril and loss of the tale-bearer.
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If this were so, it would be for the public benefit. I would cause those to be but few, who now that which they do not know They do not know: That is, who only pretend to know., and I would make them have their silly chattering more restricted.
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