But, it may be argued, it is difficult to reach so high a standard [Sidenote: E] as this. I am well aware of it. We can therefore only do our best to take a pattern by such conduct, and minimize any tendency to ungovernable rage. As in other matters, we are no match for either the moral mastery or the finished character of those great models. Nevertheless we may act towards them as we might towards the Gods, serving as hierophants and torch-bearers of their wisdom and endeavouring to imitate in our nibbling way as much as lies in our power. As for the control of the tongue—the remaining point to be considered according to our promise—any one who regards it as of trivial moment is very much in the wrong. In a timely [Sidenote: F] silence there is a wisdom superior to any speech. It is apparently for this reason that men in old times invented our mystic rites and ceremonies. The notion was that, through being trained to silence in connexion with these, we should secure the keeping of human secrets by carrying into them the same religious fear. Moreover, though multitudes have repented of talking, no man has repented of silence, and while it is easy to utter what has been kept back, it is impossible to recall what has been uttered. My own reading affords countless instances of the greatest disasters resulting from an ungoverned tongue. I will content [Sidenote: 11] myself with mentioning one or two typical examples. When, upon the marriage of Philadelphus with his sister, Sotades composed a scurrilous verse, he paid ample atonement for talking out of season by rotting for a long time in prison. He thus purchased a laugh in others by long weeping of his own. The [Sidenote: *] story is closely matched by that of the sophist Theocritus, who endured similar, but much more terrible, consequences for a similar remark. Alexander had ordered the Greeks to provide a stock of purple garments, with a view to the thanksgiving [Sidenote: B] sacrifice on his return from his Persian victories, and the various peoples were contributing at so much per head. Hereupon Theocritus observed: ‘I have now become clear upon a point which used to puzzle me. This is what is meant by Homer’s “purple death”‘—words which earned him the enmity of Alexander. Antigonus, the Macedonian king, had but one eye, and Theocritus made him excessively angry by a taunt at this disfigurement. Eutropion, the chief cook, who had become a person of importance, was sent to him by the king with a request that he would come to court and engage him in argument. On receiving repeated visits from Eutropion with this message, he [Sidenote: C] remarked, ‘I am well aware that you want to dish me up raw to the Cyclops,’ thus twitting the one with being disfigured, the other with being a cook. ‘Then,’ replied Eutropion, ‘it will be without your head, for you shall be punished for such mad and reckless language.’ Thereupon he reported the words to the king, who sent and put Theocritus to death.