Solemn Dissertation on the Philosophy of Silence

DE PHILOSOPHIA SILENTII.

...hieroglyphics, symbols, and other enigmas. See above §. IV and Nicolaus Caussin On the Occult Wisdom of the Egyptians, and also the Blessed D. Conring in Hermetic Medicine. The Persians appear to be their rivals in this matter, according to the testimony of Xenophon, among whom it was not even permitted for a servant, even one serving the table, to open his mouth or speak in the least. For he says: "They indicated to boys as if they were deaf what needed to be done." Thus it indeed becomes every servant, so that he can say from Plautus in Bacchides 4: "I know that I am a servant, and I do not even know what I know." Among the Indians also, just as with the Persians, it passed into law that he who was convicted of lying three times should have silence imposed upon him for his entire life, and he would not be held worthy of any office or honor. Alexander ab Alexandro, Book IV, Genial Days, chap. X. Curtius agrees in Book IV, chap. 6, where he commemorates that among the Persians incontinence of the tongue is punished more severely than any other disgrace. Let me not repeat what I brought up a little earlier in §. VII & VIII concerning the silence of the Gymnosophists used among the Indians, or concerning the sect of silence among the Arabs. How much silence was valued among the Greeks is abundantly clear from the institution of the Lacedaemonians, whose author they say was Lycurgus. Indeed, he who was eldest by birth stood before the door and spoke these words to those entering the banquet, pointing to the doors with his finger: "Through these, no word goes out." What else moved the Athenians to hear capital cases in the Areopagus at night, if not a love of silence, so that actions would not so easily come to the notice of the mob? See the Blessed Christoph Cellarius in Declamation on the Praises of the Areopagites and Hackius on the Amphictyonic Judgment. In the court of the Greek Emperors, there was a peculiar function of silentiaries, who campaigned at the side of the Prince and kept guard in his front chamber. Conf. Tit.