Blackmailers and informers are a breed belonging to the Busybody clan; they are members of the family. But, whereas the informer looks to see if his neighbours have done or plotted any mischief, the busybody brings to book and drags into public even the misfortunes for which they are not responsible. It is said that the outcast derived his name of _aliterios_ in the first instance from being a busybody. It appears that when a severe famine once occurred at Athens, and when those who were in possession of wheat, instead of bringing it in to the public [Sidenote: B] stock, used to grind it (_alein_) secretly by night in their houses, certain persons, who went round watching for the noise of the mills, were in consequence called _aliterioi_. It was in the same way, we are told, that the informer won his name of _sukophantes_. The export of figs (_suka_) being prohibited, those who gave information (_phainein_) and impeached the offenders were called _sukophantai_. Busybodies would do well to reflect upon this fact. It may make them ashamed of the family likeness between their own practices and those of a class which is a special object of loathing and anger. Footnote 42: These were farmed. ON GARRULOUSNESS [Sidenote: 502 B] When philosophy undertakes to cure garrulity it has a difficult and intractable case in hand. The remedy is reason, which requires that the patient should listen. But the garrulous person [Sidenote: C] does not listen, for he is always talking. Herein lies the first trouble with an inability to keep silent; it means an inability to listen. It is the deliberate deafness of a person who appears to find fault with nature for giving him two ears and only one tongue. Euripides is, of course, right when he says of the unintelligent hearer: _I cannot fill a man who cannot hold My wise words, poured and poured in unwise ears._ But there is more reason to say of the babbler: _I cannot fill a man who takes not in My wise words, poured and poured in unwise ears_, —or rather poured over them, since he talks though you do [Sidenote: D] not listen, and refuses to listen when you talk. For even if, thanks to some ebb in his loquacity, he does listen for a moment, he immediately makes up for it several times over. There is a colonnade at Olympia which reverberates a single utterance time after time, and is therefore known as the ‘Seven-Voiced’. Say but the least thing to set garrulity sounding, and it immediately dins you with its echoes: _Stirring the strings o’ the mind that none should stir._