Keep It Short
Plutarch argues that it when it comes to strong speech, less is always more.
written AD ?100
Heraclitus, by Johannes Moreelse.
By Johannes Moreelse (?1602-1634), Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
The philosopher Heraclitus, as imagined by Johannes Moreelse (?1602-1634). Little is known of the life of Heraclitus. He lived in Ephesus, now in western Turkey but at that time under the Persian Empire. He belongs to the group known as the Pre-Socratic philosophers, because he was active in around 500 BC, whereas Socrates of Athens, the found of the great traditions of Greek philosophy, lived in ?470-399 BC. “Sound thinking” he wrote “is the greatest virtue and wisdom: to speak the truth and to act on the basis of an understanding of the nature of things.”
Introduction
Plutarch has been discussing at length (the incongruity has to be passed over) the annoyance of people who talk too much. The insatiable prattlers, he says, should consider how we admire men of few words; and he gave some examples, from the Spartans, who rebuffed Philip of Macedon, to the god Apollo, who would rather be obscure than wordy.
And we must be careful to offer to chatterers examples of this terseness, so that they may see how charming and how effective they are. For example: “The Spartans to Philip: Dionysius in Corinth.”* And again, when Philip wrote to them,* “If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out,” they wrote back, “If.”* And when King Demetrius was annoyed and shouted, “Have the Spartans sent only one envoy to me?”, the envoy replied undismayed, “One to one.”*
And among the men of old also sententious* speakers are admired, and upon the temple of the Pythian Apollo the Amphictyons inscribed, not the Iliad and the Odyssey or the paeans of Pindar, but “Know thyself”, and “Avoid extremes” and ”Give a pledge and mischief is at hand,” admiring, as they did, the compactness and simplicity of the expression which contains within a small compass a well-forged sentiment. And is not the god himself fond of conciseness and brevity in his oracles, and is he not called Loxias because he avoids prolixity rather than obscurity?*
* Dionysius II (the Younger) ruled Syracuse in Sicily twice, from 367 BC to 357 BC and from 346 BC to 344 BC. He was banished to Corinth when Syracuse was taken by Timoleon, and subsequently kept a school there, living in impoverished conditions. The remark implies, Remember what happened to Dionysius.
* Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. This was at the beginning of his later campaigns, of 346-336 BC.
* From this exchange over Laconia, we have derived the word ‘laconic’, meaning ‘very brief, but full of meaning’.
* Demetrius I Poliorcetes (337-283 BC) was King of Asia from 306 to 301 BC, and King of Macedon from 294 to 288 BC. Plutarch records this in his Life of Demetrius c. 42.
* Sententious here is used in a complimentary sense, to indicate ‘full of meaning and wisdom’; it may also be used negatively, to imply that someone is given to moralising in a pompously proverbial manner.
* That is, members of the Amphictyonic League, a confederation of twelve tribes that became associated with the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and the ‘Pythia’, the oracle.
* That is, Apollo, the god of prophecy, is often called Loxias (‘slanting’) because when given a choice between being clear and being brief he chooses to be brief.
