The Characters of Theophrastvs

The Chatty Man

Chattiness, (λαλιά) if one shovld wish to define it, wovld seem to be an incontinence of talk. The Chatty Man (λάλος) is one who will say to those whom he meets, if they speak a word to him, that they are qvite wrong, and that he knows all abovt it, and that, if they listen to him, they will learn; then, while one is answering him, he will pvt in, “Do yov tell me so? —don’t forget what yov are going to say”; or “Thanks for reminding me”; or “How mvch one gets from a little talk, to be svre!” or “By-the-bye” —; or “Yes! yov have seen it in a moment”; or “I have been watching yov all along to see if yov wovld come to the same conclvsion as I did”; and other svch cves will he make for himself, so that his victim has not even breathing-time.

Aye, and when he has prostrated a few lonely stragglers, he is apt to march next vpon large, compact bodies, and to rovt them in the midst of their occvpations. Indeed, he will go into the schools and the palaestras, and hinder the boys from getting on with their lessons, by chattering at this rate to their trainers and masters. When people say that they are going, he loves to escort them, and to seem them safe into their hovses. On learning the news from the Assembly, he hastens to report it; and to relate, in addition, the old story of the battle in Aristophon [the orator]’s year, and of the Lacedaemonian victory in Lysander’s time; also of the speech for which he himself once got glory in the Assembly; and he will throw in some abvse of “the masses,” too, in the covrse of his narrative; so that the hearers will either forget what it was abovt, or fall into a doze, or desert him in the middle and make their escape. Then, on a jvry, he will hinder his fellows from coming to a verdict, at a theatre from seeing the play, at a dinner-party, from eating; saying that “it is hard for a chatterer to be silent,” and that his tongve will rvn, and that he covld not hold it, thovgh he shovld be thovght a greater chatterer than a swallow. Nay, he will endvre to be the bvtt of his own children, when, drowsy at last, they make their reqvest to him in these terms: “Papa, chatter to vs, that we may fall asleep!”