Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
SULLA. I think painters do well, Fundanus, when they set their works aside for a time before finishing them and then examine them again; for by withdrawing their sight from the work and renewing their judgment often, they make it fresher and more sensitive to the small discrepancies which continuity and familiarity conceal. Since, then, it is impossible for a man to come to himself again after an interval, having become detached and having separated the perception from its continuity—this in fact being the very thing that makes each of us a worse judge of himself than of others—the next best thing would be to observe one's friends after an interval, and to present oneself to them in the same way: not asking whether one has grown old quickly and whether one's body has become better or worse, but examining also one's character and disposition, to see whether time has added anything good to it or taken away anything base. I, at any rate, having arrived in Rome a year ago last year, and now in my fifth month of being with you, do not think it at all remarkable that, through native goodness, there should have been so much progress and growth from what already existed; but when I see that fierce and fiery temper toward anger become, to my eyes, so gentle and tractable to reason, it occurs to me to say to my own spirit, in the words of Homer, ‘Ah me, you have indeed grown much softer.’ And this softness is not idleness or slackness, but, like ground that has been well worked, it has acquired smoothness and an effective depth for action instead of that former impetuosity and sharpness. Hence it is clear that your passionate temper has not simply declined through some ebbing due to age, nor withered away of itself, but has been treated by certain wholesome arguments.
And yet—for I will tell you the truth—when our friend Eros reported these things to us, I was suspicious that he was testifying, out of goodwill, to qualities not really present but merely fitting to be present in men of honor and worth; although, as you know, he is in no way inclined to yield to what is merely pleasing rather than to what he judges true. But now he is released from the charge of false witness, and you, since our journey affords leisure, must go through for us, as it were, a treatment you have applied to yourself—by which you made your temper so tractable, simple, gentle to reason, and obedient.
FUNDANUS. Well then, my most eager Sulla, do you not consider that you yourself, out of goodwill and friendship toward us, may be overlooking something of our faults? For even Love himself, though he often does not keep the temper in its place, as in the Homeric prayer, but rather sharpens it through hatred of wrongdoing, it is likely that we should appear gentler to him—just as, in the transposition of musical scales, certain highest notes take the position of lowest notes relative to other highest notes.
SULLA. Neither of these is the case, Fundanus; but do as I ask, and grant us this favor.
FUNDANUS. Well then, among the fine sayings of Musonius that we remember, Sulla, one is that those who intend to be saved must live continually under treatment. For reason, I think, ought not to be carried off along with the disease once it has effected a cure, as with hellebore, but should remain in the soul, holding fast and guarding its judgments. For its power is not like that of drugs but like that of wholesome foods, producing a good state of health in those to whom it becomes habitual; whereas exhortations and admonitions directed at passions that are at their height and swollen accomplish their work slowly and with difficulty, and differ in no way from strong-smelling substances which rouse epileptics when they collapse but do not free them from the disease.
Nevertheless, other passions, even at the height of their intensity, do somehow yield and let in some helping word from outside into the soul; but anger does not, as Melanthius says, ‘do its terrible deeds by merely transplanting the mind,’ but rather by expelling it entirely and shutting it out—like men who burn down their own houses along with themselves—it fills the whole interior with confusion, smoke, and noise, so that nothing helpful can be seen or heard. Hence a ship deserted in a storm at sea will sooner take on a pilot from outside than a man tossed about by anger and rage will admit an argument not his own, unless he already has his own reasoning prepared beforehand. But just as those expecting a siege gather and lay in provisions, having given up hope of help from outside, so above all must one, in dealing with anger, fetch remedies from far off, out of philosophy, and store them up in the soul, so that when the moment of need arrives one will not easily be able to bring them in fresh; for the soul does not listen to what is outside because of the uproar, unless it has, as it were, a boatswain within—its own reason—ready to receive quickly and understand each of the orders given. And when it does listen, it despises what is said gently and calmly, but is provoked to greater harshness against those who oppose it directly. For anger is arrogant and self-willed and altogether hard to move by another; like a fortified tyranny, it ought to have within itself, as a kinsman and housemate, the power that will overthrow it.
Now the continuance of anger, and frequent giving way to offense, produces in the soul an evil habit which men call irascibility, ending in bitterness of temper, sourness, and ill humor, whenever the temper becomes sore and touchy over trifles and quick to find fault at the slightest occasion, like iron that is weak and thin and easily notched. But the judgment that resists anger immediately and holds it in check not only cures the present trouble but also makes the soul strong and resistant to suffering for the future. I myself, at any rate, on two or three occasions when I stood firm against anger, experienced what happened to the Thebans, who, having once repulsed the Spartans though they were thought invincible, were never afterward defeated by them in any battle; for they had gained the confidence that they could prevail by reasoning. And I observed that anger subsides not only when cold water is poured over it, as Aristotle recorded, but also when fear is brought to bear it is quenched, and, by Zeus, when sudden joy comes upon it, the temper of many, as Homer says, is ‘warmed’ and dissolved. So it appeared to me that the passion is not entirely without remedy for those who wish to be rid of it.
For it does not always have great and powerful beginnings, but a jest, a bit of play, someone's laughter, or a nod can set many people into a rage—just as Helen, addressing her niece as ‘maiden,’ provoked Electra, after so long a time, to say, ‘Late indeed do you come to your senses, you who then shamefully left the house.’ And Callisthenes, when the great cup was being passed around, provoked Alexander by saying, ‘I do not wish, after drinking from Alexander's cup, to need an Asclepius.’ Just as a flame kindled in hare's fur, wicks, and rubbish is easy to check, but if it once takes hold of solid and deep-set material, it quickly destroys and consumes, as Aeschylus says, ‘the lofty labor of builders brought to ruin’—so the man who attends to his temper at the beginning, and, from some small talk or vulgar buffoonery composed of rubbish, notices it smoking and beginning to catch fire, needs no great effort, but often by mere silence and neglect has put a stop to it. For he who supplies no fuel puts out the fire, and he who does not nourish anger at the outset, nor puff himself up, guards against it and destroys it.
I was not pleased, then—though he says many other useful and sound things—with Hieronymus, when he says that anger is not perceived while it is coming into being, but only once it has come to be and exists, because of its swiftness. For no other passion, when it is gathering and being stirred up, has its origin and growth so plainly visible; as Homer, indeed, teaches with such experience, making Achilles, when grieved, instantly and suddenly affected the moment the news falls upon him, in the words, ‘So he spoke, and a black cloud of grief covered him’; but growing angry with Agamemnon slowly, and being inflamed through many words. If someone had cut short those words at the beginning and had prevented them, the quarrel would not have grown to such size and magnitude.
Hence Socrates, whenever he perceived himself being moved rather harshly against one of his friends, would—as a sailor, before a storm, shortening sail as he steers round a headland at sea—slacken his voice, smile in his face, and give his glance a gentler look, guarding himself against falling and remaining unconquered by leaning to the opposite side and counteracting the passion. For there is, my friend, a first step, as it were, in the overthrow of a tyrant—the overthrow of anger—namely, not to obey or heed it when it commands us to shout loudly, glare fiercely, and beat ourselves, but to keep quiet and not to intensify the passion, as one would a disease, by thrashing about and crying out. For amorous actions, such as serenading, singing, and garlanding a door, have in them some relief that is not without charm or grace: ‘And coming, I did not shout out who or whose I was, but I kissed the doorpost. If this is a wrong, I am guilty of it.’
And the license granted to mourners to weep aloud and lament draws off much of their grief together with their tears; but anger is fanned rather by what those in its grip do and say. It is best, then, to remain still, or to flee and hide oneself, and to bring oneself to rest, as those who feel an epileptic seizure coming on withdraw from company, so that we may not fall—or rather, fall upon others; for we fall upon our friends most of all, and most often. For we do not love everyone, nor envy everyone, nor fear everyone, but nothing is untouched or unassailed by anger; rather we grow angry with enemies and friends alike, with children and parents, and, by Zeus, even with the gods, and with animals and lifeless implements, as Thamyris did, ‘shattering his gold-bound horn, shattering the harmony of his tuned lyre’; and as Pandarus cursed himself if he did not burn his bow, ‘having broken it with his own hands.’ Xerxes even inflicted brands and blows upon the sea, and sent letters to the mountain: ‘Divine and sky-reaching Athos, do not set in my path stones too great and hard to work; if you do, I will cut you down and cast you into the sea.’
For anger has much that is fearsome, but much also that is ridiculous; and for this reason it is both hated and despised more than any other passion. It is useful to consider both sides of it. I, for my part—whether rightly I do not know—made this the beginning of my own cure: just as the Spartans studied drunkenness among the helots to see what it was like, so I studied anger in others. And first, just as Hippocrates says that the most dangerous disease is the one in which the patient's face becomes most unlike itself, so, observing that people under anger are altered most of all and change their look, color, gait, and voice, I formed for myself, as it were, an image of the passion, and was quite displeased at the thought: ‘Am I really so terrifying, so distraught, when my friends, my wife, and my little daughters see me—not only looking wild and unfamiliar, but also uttering a harsh and grating voice?’—just as I had encountered other acquaintances who, under the influence of anger, could not preserve their character, their looks, the charm of their speech, or the persuasiveness and pleasantness of their company.
Gaius Gracchus, the orator, a man of harsh temper and given to overly passionate speaking, had a small pitch-pipe tuned for him, by which musicians gradually lead the voice up and down through the tones; and a servant of his, holding this, would stand behind him as he spoke and sound a mild and gentle tone, by which he would recall him from shouting and take away the harshness and passion from his voice—just as the herdsmen's waxen reed sounds a resonant, sleep-inducing strain, charming and calming the anger of the orator. As for me, if I had had some tuneful and elegant attendant, I would not have minded his holding up a mirror to me during my fits of anger, as some hold up mirrors to men after bathing, though to no useful purpose; for to see oneself in an unnatural and disturbed state is no small thing toward discrediting the passion.
Indeed, they say in jest that Athena, while playing the flute, was rebuked by the satyr and paid no attention: ‘This posture does not become you; put down the flutes, take up your weapons, and arrange your cheeks properly.’ But when she saw the reflection of her face in a river, she was disgusted and threw away the flutes; and yet her art possessed, as a consolation for the unsightliness, its own melodiousness. And Marsyas, it seems, confined the violence of his breath with a certain headband and mouth-bands, and adorned and concealed the distortion of his face, and fastened together with gleaming gold his shaggy cheeks, and his greedy mouth with straps tied behind. But anger, puffing out and distending the face unbecomingly, sends forth a voice even more ugly and unpleasant, stirring up strings of the mind that ought to remain still.
For they say that the sea is purified when, stirred up by the winds, it casts up seaweed and scum; but the words which anger, as it overturns the soul, casts up—unrestrained, bitter, and scurrilous—defile and fill with disgrace those who utter them first of all, as though they always had these things within them and were full of them, but were merely uncovered by anger. Hence, for the lightest of things, as Plato says—mere words—men pay the heaviest penalty, being thought hostile, foul-mouthed, and malicious.
Observing and watching these things, then, it has become my practice to lay down and constantly remind myself that, while it is good in a fever, it is even better in anger, to keep the tongue soft and smooth. For roughness in the speech of the feverish, if it is not natural to them, is a bad sign but not a cause; whereas the speech of the angry, once it has become rough and foul and has run into improper language, produces insult that is the maker of incurable enmity, and stands as accuser of a festering ill will. For undiluted wine reveals nothing so unrestrained and offensive as anger does; the former belongs to laughter and play, the latter is mixed with bile. And at a drinking party, the man who stays silent is burdensome and tiresome to his companions, but in anger nothing is more dignified than silence, as Sappho advises: ‘When rage is spreading in the breast, guard against a barking tongue.’
But attending to oneself when caught by anger allows one to reckon on not only these things, but also to understand the whole nature of the passion further—that it is not noble, nor manly, nor does it possess high-mindedness and greatness, though the majority think its turbulence a sign of effectiveness, its threats a sign of boldness, and its refusal to yield a sign of strength. Some even wrongly regard cruelty as a mark of great achievement, implacability as a mark of firmness, and moroseness as a mark of hatred for wrongdoing; for their deeds, their movements, and their postures betray great pettiness and weakness—not only in cases where men tear at little children, rage bitterly against women, and think they must punish dogs, horses, and mules, as Ctesiphon the pancratiast thought fit to kick back at his mule, but also in the murderous cruelties of tyrants, where meanness of spirit joins with bitterness
...of theirs, and the suffering visible mirrored back in the one who inflicts it, resembles the bites of snakes, when they become inflamed and intensely painful, as the snakes press their fierce venom hard into those who have provoked them. For just as swelling in the flesh is the after-effect of a severe wound, so in the softest souls the readiness to feel hurt produces a greater rage out of a greater weakness. That is why women are more prone to anger than men, the sick more than the healthy, the old more than those in their prime, and the unfortunate more than the prosperous. The miser is most irritable toward his steward, the glutton toward his cook, the jealous man toward his wife, the vain man when he hears himself spoken ill of. Worst of all, in Pindar's words, are "men in their cities who court excessive ambition or strife, a manifest pain." Thus it is from the part of the soul that is most pained and afflicted that anger rises up most strongly, through weakness — not resembling, as someone said, the sinews of the soul, but rather cuts and spasms, rising up more violently in its defensive impulses.
Now the base examples afford a spectacle that is not pleasant but only necessary to consider; but in making the finest things to hear and the finest things to see out of those who deal with anger gently and smoothly, I begin to despise those who say, "You have wronged a man — is this to be endured, from a man?" and "Trample him, trample on his neck, and grind him into the earth," and the other goading phrases by which some people wrongly relocate anger from the women's quarters into the men's quarters. For courage, which in other respects agrees with justice, seems to me to contend with it only over gentleness, as though gentleness belonged more properly to courage itself. For it has happened that worse men prevail over better ones, but to set up within the soul a trophy over anger — "a thing hard to fight against," as Heraclitus says, "for whatever it wants, it buys at the price of the soul" — belongs to a great and victorious strength, one whose judgments truly serve as sinews and tension against the passions.
That is why I always try to gather and read not only the sayings of philosophers — of whom those who have no sense say that they have no gall — but also, and even more, the sayings of kings and tyrants. Such as that of Antigonus toward the soldiers who were abusing him near his tent, thinking he could not hear: pushing his staff out from inside, he said, "Ouch! Won't you move a bit further off before you speak ill of us?" And when Arcadion the Achaean was forever speaking ill of Philip, and advising others to flee until they reached people who had never heard of Philip, and then he himself somehow turned up in Macedonia, Philip's friends thought he ought to be punished and not overlooked. But Philip met with him kindly, sent him gifts of hospitality, and later had someone find out what reports he was giving the Greeks about him. And when everyone testified that the man had become a wonderful admirer of his, Philip said, "Well then, I am a better physician than you." And at the Olympic games, when abuse was spoken about him and some said that the Greeks deserved to howl in misery for speaking ill of Philip after receiving good treatment from him, he said, "What then will they do, if they are treated badly?"
Fine too are the words of Pisistratus toward Thrasybulus, of Porsenna toward Mucius, and of Magas toward Philemon. For after being publicly mocked by him in a comedy in the theater — "A letter has come to you from the king, Magas. Wretched Magas, you don't even know your letters!" — Magas later captured Philemon when a storm had driven him ashore at Paraetonium, and ordered a soldier merely to touch his neck with a bared sword and then withdraw quietly; and, sending him knucklebones and a ball, as to a senseless little boy, he let him go. Ptolemy, mocking a grammarian for his ignorance, asked him who Peleus's father was; and the man replied, "If you will first tell me who Lagus's father was." The jest touched on the king's low birth, and everyone was indignant, feeling it was not fit to be tolerated; but Ptolemy said, "If it is not kingly to endure being mocked, then neither is it kingly to mock." Alexander, however, became harsher than his usual self in his dealings with Callisthenes and Cleitus. And when Porus was captured, he asked to be treated "like a king"; and when Alexander asked, "Is there nothing more you want?", he said, "In 'like a king' everything is included."
That is why they call the king of the gods "Meilichios," the gentle one, while the Athenians, I believe, call him "Maimaktes," the stormy one; but the punitive is Fury-like and demonic, not divine or Olympian. So just as someone said of Philip, after he razed Olynthus, "But he could not build up again so great a city," so one can say to anger: "You can overturn and destroy and cast down, but to raise up and save and spare and hold firm belongs to gentleness, forgiveness, and moderation of feeling — the qualities of Camillus, Metellus, Aristides, and Socrates; while to sink one's teeth in and bite is the way of ants and mice."
Nevertheless, looking also at anger's usefulness for defense, I find the way of acting through anger for the most part ineffective — spent in biting the lips, grinding the teeth, empty rushes forward, and abuse full of senseless threats, and then, like children in a race who, from not controlling themselves, fall down before the finish line they are ridiculously racing toward. Hence it was not badly said by the Rhodian to an attendant of the Roman general who was shouting and blustering: "I don't care what you say, but what that man passes over in silence." And so too Sophocles, having armed Neoptolemus and Eurypylus, says that, "without exchanging insults," they "burst into the circles of bronze armor." For some barbarians treat their iron with poison, but courage has no need of gall, since it is already tempered by reason; whereas the passionate and frenzied is easily shattered and unsound. That, at any rate, is why the Spartans strip their fighters of anger with flutes, and sacrifice to the Muses before battle, so that reason may hold steady; and having routed their enemies, they do not pursue, but call their fury back, as though it were a well-proportioned dagger, easy to sheathe again and manageable. Anger, on the other hand, has destroyed countless men before they could even take defensive action, as it did Cyrus and Pelopidas the Theban.
Agathocles bore it mildly when he was reviled by the men he was besieging; and when someone called out, "Potter, how will you pay your mercenaries?", he laughed and said, "When I take this city." And when some men mocked Antigonus from the city wall for his ugliness, he replied, "And yet I thought I was rather good-looking." But when he took the city, he sold the mockers into slavery, declaring publicly that he would settle the matter with their masters if they abused him again. I observe, too, that both hunters and orators fail greatly on account of anger. Aristotle records that when Satyrus was pleading a case, his friends stopped his ears with wax, so that he would not be thrown into confusion by anger when abused by his opponents. And does it not often happen to us ourselves that we fail even to punish a slave who has done wrong, because he runs away, having feared our threats and words?
So what nurses say to children, "Don't cry, and you shall have it," can usefully be said to anger too: "Don't hurry, don't shout, don't rush, and what you want will happen, and better." For indeed a father, seeing his child trying to cut or divide something with a knife, took the knife himself and did it; and, taking the punishment away from anger, he himself safely, harmlessly, and beneficially punished the one who deserved it — not himself, as the angry man often does instead of the offender. Since all the passions need habituation — training that tames and subdues, through practice, the irrational and unruly part — there is nothing better to exercise ourselves against, using our household slaves, than anger. For toward them we feel neither envy, nor fear, nor any rivalry; but constant fits of anger, producing many collisions and blunders because of the unchecked power we hold over them, carry us along as though on slippery ground, with nothing to resist or restrain us. For it is not possible to hold unaccountable power in the grip of passion without erring, unless one wraps that power around with much gentleness, and endures the many complaints of wife and friends who accuse one of weakness and laxity. It was precisely such reproaches that used to provoke me most against my own household slaves, on the grounds that they were being spoiled by going unpunished.
Late in the day, however, I came to see, first, that it is better to make them worse through forbearance than to twist myself out of shape with bitterness and anger for the sake of correcting others; and next, seeing that many, precisely by not being punished, are often ashamed to go on being bad, and take forgiveness rather than punishment as the starting point of change, and, by Zeus, seeing others serve their masters at a mere nod and in silence, and more eagerly than those who serve under blows and brandings, I became persuaded that reason is more fit to command than anger. For it is not, as the poet said, "where there is fear, there is also shame"; rather the opposite — it is in those who feel shame that a chastening fear arises. Constant and relentless beating produces not a change of heart about doing wrong, but rather a greater forethought about not being caught.
Third, I always kept in mind and thought to myself that the man who taught us to shoot with a bow did not forbid us to shoot, but only to miss; likewise, teaching how to punish at the right time, moderately, usefully, and fittingly will not stand in the way of punishing itself. So I try above all to remove anger from the process, not by depriving those being punished of their defense, but by hearing them out. For time creates for the passion both a delay and a pause that dissolves it, and the judgment that follows discovers both the fitting manner and the appropriate measure of punishment. Moreover, no pretext is left for the one paying the penalty to resist correction, if he is punished not out of anger but after being convicted; nor does the most shameful thing occur — that the slave should appear to be speaking more justly than his master.
So, just as Phocion, after the death of Alexander, would not let the Athenians rise up prematurely or believe the news too quickly, saying, "If he is dead today, men of Athens, he will still be dead tomorrow and the day after," so too, I think, the man rushing through anger toward punishment ought to say to himself, "If this man has done wrong today, he will still have done wrong tomorrow and the day after." There is nothing terrible in his paying the penalty a bit later; what is terrible is if, having suffered quickly, he should always appear not to have done wrong at all — which has, in fact, happened many times already. For which of us is so terrible as to whip and punish a slave because five or ten days ago he burned the meat, or knocked over the table, or was slow to answer? And yet these are just the things over which, when they have just happened and are still fresh, we grow disturbed and become bitter and implacable. For just as bodies seen through mist appear larger, so too things seen through anger appear greater than they are.
Therefore one should quickly call similar cases to mind, and, standing outside the passion without suspicion, turn back to it if, viewed with a clear and settled reason, it still appears blameworthy — and not, at that point, let the punishment go or drop it, as though one had simply lost one's appetite for food. For nothing is so much a cause of punishing while anger is present as the habit of not punishing once it has ceased, but instead letting it slacken, and thereby suffering the same fate as lazy rowers, who lie idle at anchor in a calm and then find themselves in danger when they must sail in wind. For we too, having condemned our own reason for feebleness and softness in punishing, rush recklessly to make use of anger, when it is present, as though it were a favorable wind. For a hungry man makes natural use of food, but a man who is neither hungry nor thirsty for punishment, and has no need of anger as a relish for chastising, applies reason to it out of necessity precisely when he is furthest from craving it.
For one should not, as Aristotle reports that in his day household slaves in Etruria were whipped to the accompaniment of a flute, so gorge oneself on punishment for pleasure, as though it were a delicacy craved, rejoicing while punishing and repenting afterward — of these, the one is bestial, the other womanish. Rather, one should exact justice apart from both pain and pleasure, at the time proper to reason, leaving no pretext for anger. Now this, perhaps, will not appear to be a cure for anger, but rather a means of deflecting and guarding against the errors that occur in anger. And yet a swollen spleen, too, is a symptom of fever, but when it subsides it relieves the fever, as Hieronymus says.
But when I examined the origin of anger itself, I saw that different people fall into it from different causes, though in nearly all of them it arises from a sense of being despised or neglected. For this reason one must help those who ask for pardon by removing the deed as far as possible from any appearance of contempt or insolence, attributing it instead to ignorance, necessity, passion, or misfortune — as Sophocles says: "But no, my lord, the mind, whatever its nature, does not remain steady in those who have fared badly; it is driven from its place." And Agamemnon, though attributing the seizure of Briseis to Ate, Delusion, is nevertheless willing "to make amends again, and give countless gifts of atonement." For indeed the very act of asking belongs to one who is not showing contempt, and the wrongdoer, by appearing humbled, has dispelled the impression of disdain.
But the angry man ought not to wait for such gestures; rather he should take to himself the saying of Diogenes — when told, "These men are laughing at you, Diogenes," he replied, "But I am not being laughed at" — and should not think himself despised, but rather despise the other instead, considering that he is erring through weakness, or fault, or rashness, or laziness, or lack of breeding, or old age, or youth. Toward household slaves and friends, this sort of thing must be given up entirely. For it is not as being incapable or ineffectual that they show us disrespect, but through our own fairness or goodwill: slaves take advantage of us as being kind masters, friends as being fond of them. But nowadays we grow harsh not only toward wife, slaves, and friends, as though being despised by them, but we also often clash in anger with innkeepers, sailors, and drunken muleteers, imagining that we are being treated with contempt, and we get exasperated even at barking dogs and colliding donkeys — like the man who wanted to strike the donkey-driver, and, when the driver cried out, "I am an Athenian!", said, "Well, you are not an Athenian," meaning the donkey, and struck it, raining down many blows.
Moreover, self-love, together with a fastidious temper, luxury, and softness, breeds in us, as it were, a swarm or a wasp's nest of anger — constant, frequent, and gathering little by little in the soul. Hence there is no greater resource for good temper and simplicity, leading to gentleness toward slaves, wife, and friends, than to be able to make do with what is at hand and not to need many superfluous things. The man, by contrast, who takes pleasure neither in roasted meats nor in boiled ones overdone, nor in dishes seasoned less or more or just right, so as to praise them; who would not drink if snow were not at hand, nor eat bread bought in the market, nor taste a relish served in plain or earthenware vessels, nor sleep on bedding unless it were puffed up and stirred as if it were the depths of the sea — such a man is ready to turn with rods and blows against the attendants around his table...
— hurrying them along with running and shouting and sweat, as though bringing poultices to an inflammation — living as a slave to a diet that is weak, fault-finding, and given to complaint, and, like a man worn down by a persistent cough from many small irritations, unknowingly producing in his spirited part a condition that is ulcerated and prone to running sores. One must therefore train the body, through simplicity of living, to become self-sufficient and easygoing; for those who need little do not fail to get what they need. And there is nothing terrible in beginning with one's food and dealing in silence with whatever is at hand, rather than growing peevish and difficult and serving up anger as the most joyless of dishes to oneself and one's friends. Nothing could be a more graceless accompaniment to a dinner than servants beaten and a wife railed at on account of an overdone dish, or smoke, or a lack of salt, or bread that was too cold.
When Arcesilaus was entertaining some foreign guests along with his friends, the dinner was set out, but there was no bread, because the slaves had neglected to buy any. Which of us would not have brought the walls down with shouting over this? But he only smiled and said, "What a fine thing it is for a wise man to be good company at a party!" And when Socrates had brought Euthydemus back with him from the wrestling school, Xanthippe stood over them in a rage, hurled abuse, and finally overturned the table; Euthydemus got up and went away deeply distressed. But Socrates said, "Didn't the very same thing happen at your house the other day, when a bird flew in and did just this — and we were not annoyed?" For one must receive one's friends with good humor, laughter, and kindliness, not knitting one's brows or striking fear and trembling into the household staff.
One should also accustom oneself to dealing easily with all one's belongings, and not favor this one over that — as some people, when many cups are at hand, pick out one little beaker (as they say Marius did, or a particular drinking-horn) and will not drink from any other. And they behave the same way toward their oil-flasks and strigils, being fond of one out of the whole set; then, whenever one of these gets broken or lost, they take it hard and punish someone for it. A person prone to anger, then, should keep away from rare and superfluous things — cups, for instance, and seal-rings and costly stones — for the loss of these upsets people more than the loss of things easily replaced and ordinary. This is why, when Nero had an octagonal pavilion built, a spectacle of extraordinary beauty and expense, Seneca said, "You have proved yourself a poor man: for if you lose this one, you will never own another like it." And indeed it did happen that the tent was lost when the ship carrying it went down; and Nero, remembering Seneca's words, bore it more moderately.
Easiness of temper toward circumstances also makes a man easy and gentle toward his household slaves; and if toward slaves, then clearly also toward friends and toward those he governs. We observe that newly bought slaves, when asking about their purchaser, inquire not whether he is superstitious or grudging, but whether he is quick-tempered — and in general, men cannot endure living under anger, women cannot endure the sound sense of husbands or the love of wives felt in anger, nor can friends endure one another's company under it. Thus neither marriage nor friendship is bearable together with anger, whereas even drunkenness, apart from anger, is a light thing: the god's wand is a sufficient chastiser of the drunken man, unless anger, joining in, turns the unmixed wine, instead of a thing of Bacchic revelry and dance, into something savage and maddening. Madness by itself Anticyra can cure, but once mixed with anger it produces tragedies and myths.
One must not give it room when jesting, for it turns friendliness into enmity; nor in discussion, for it turns love of argument into love of strife; nor when judging, for it adds insolence to one's authority; nor when teaching, for it produces discouragement and hatred of learning; nor in good fortune, for it increases envy; nor in misfortune, for it removes pity, whenever people become peevish and quarrel with those who are grieving with them — as Priam said, "Away, disgraces, objects of reproach! Have you no grieving of your own at home, that you come here to trouble me?" Good temper, on the other hand, helps in some matters, adorns others, and sweetens still others, and it overcomes, by its gentleness, both anger and every kind of ill humor — as with Euclides, when his brother said to him in a quarrel, "May I die if I do not have my revenge on you," and he replied, "And may I die if I do not persuade you" — and at once turned him around and changed his mind.
And Polemo, when a man obsessed with precious stones and infatuated with costly seal-rings railed at him, made no reply, but fixed his attention on one of the rings and examined it closely; the man, delighted, said, "No, not like that, Polemo — hold it up to the light, and it will look far better to you." And Aristippus, when he had grown angry with Aeschines and someone said, "Aristippus, where is your friendship now?" replied, "It is asleep, but I will wake it"; and going up to Aeschines he said, "Do I seem to you so utterly unfortunate and incurable as not to deserve a word of correction?" And Aeschines said, "It is no wonder, if, being naturally superior to me in everything else, you have also seen here what needed to be done before I did."
For not only can a woman calm a bristle-necked boar, but even a newborn child, scratching it with a young hand, can lay it low more easily than any wrestler. Yet we tame and gentle wild creatures, carrying wolf-cubs and lion-cubs about in our arms, while we drive away our own children, friends, and companions in anger; and we let our temper loose on our slaves and fellow citizens like some wild beast, giving it the fine-sounding name not of hatred of wrongdoing but — as, I think, we do with the other passions and diseases of the soul, calling one foresight, another generosity, another piety — so that we are able to rid ourselves of none of them. And yet, just as Zeno used to say that seed is a compound and blend of the soul's faculties drawn off from it, so anger seems to be a kind of seed-bed of all the passions together: it is drawn off from grief, from pleasure, and from insolence alike.
It shares with envy its delight in others' misfortune, and it is even worse than envy: for it strives not merely to avoid suffering itself but to inflict suffering by wronging another. Of desire, too, the most joyless element is rooted in it, if indeed desire is a longing to cause someone else pain. This is why, when we approach the houses of the dissolute, we hear a flute-girl playing at daybreak, and see, as someone put it, "the mud of wine and the tatters of garlands," and drunken attendants sprawled at the doors; but the hidden signs of harsh and ill-tempered men you will see in the faces of their household slaves, and in their brand-marks and shackles: always, in the house of an angry man, a lone lament of mourning has fallen, as stewards are whipped within and servant-girls tortured — so that, watching this, one comes to pity the pains that anger causes even more than those that come from desires and pleasures.
Nevertheless, for those who, out of genuine hatred of wrongdoing, often find themselves overtaken by anger, one must strip away its excess and its unmixed intensity, along with too strong a confidence in the people around them. For it is this above all that increases anger's causes — when a man supposed to be honest turns out to be worthless, or one thought to be a friend becomes involved in some quarrel or complaint. As for my own character, you know well enough how strong an inclination it has toward goodwill and trust in people; and so, like men walking on hollow ground, the more I lean my weight on love for people, the more I go wrong, and I am pained when I stumble. To draw off the excess and overeager passion from my love I could no longer manage; but I might perhaps make use of Plato's rein of caution as regards trusting too readily.
For indeed Plato says that he used to praise Helicon the mathematician in this way — as a creature naturally prone to change, as are all those raised in the city — rightly fearing that, being men and the offspring of men, they might somewhere reveal the weakness of their nature. And Sophocles, in saying that if you search out most things about mortals you will find them shameful, seems to me to trample on us too harshly and to cut us down unfairly. Still, this very tendency to harsh and fault-finding judgment makes people more prone to outbursts of anger; for what is sudden and unexpected is what throws us out of ourselves. One must, as Panaetius somewhere says, make use of Anaxagoras's example, and just as he, at the death of his son, said, "I knew that I had begotten a mortal," so one should say to oneself, at each provoking fault, "I knew that I did not buy a wise slave," "I knew that I did not acquire a friend free of faults," "I knew that I had married a woman who was a woman."
And if a person, further, continually adds to this Plato's saying, "Am I not perhaps such a person myself?" and turns his reasoning back from outward things to himself, and mixes caution in with his complaints, he will not make much use of hatred of wrongdoing against others when he sees that he himself stands in need of much forgiveness. As it is, each of us, when angry and inflicting punishment, brings out the sayings of Aristides and Cato — "Do not steal," "Do not lie," "Why are you so lazy?" — and, what is most shameful of all, we rebuke angry people while we ourselves are angry, and punish with wrath faults that were committed through wrath, not behaving like doctors, who flush out bitter bile with a bitter medicine, but rather intensifying and further disturbing the trouble. Whenever, then, I find myself in the midst of such reflections, I also try, at the same time, to strip away something of my meddlesomeness.
For scrutinizing everything with precision, ferreting things out, and dragging into the open every occupation of a slave, every act of a friend, every pastime of a son, and every whisper of a wife, brings many, constant, daily bouts of anger, of which the chief cause is a difficult and harsh disposition. God, as Euripides says, concerns himself with great matters, and leaves small things to chance; but I do not think one should entrust everything to chance, nor should a sensible man overlook things altogether — rather, he should trust and make use, in some matters, of his wife, in others of his slaves, in others of his friends, as a ruler makes use of certain stewards, accountants, and administrators, while he himself keeps control, through his own reasoning, over the most important and greatest matters. For just as fine print strains the eyes, so small matters, when we strain too hard over them, prick and disturb our anger more, since it is acquiring a bad habit that it then carries over to greater things.
Above all, then, I used to consider the saying of Empedocles great and divine — "to fast from wickedness" — and I also praised, as neither graceless nor unphilosophical, those vows made in prayers: to abstain for a year from sexual intercourse and from wine, honoring the god through self-restraint; or, again, to refrain from falsehood for a set period of time, paying close attention to how one might speak the truth both in jest and in all seriousness. I then compared my own vow to these, as being no less pleasing to the gods and sacred: first I resolved to pass a few days free from anger, as though free from wine and strong drink, offering, as it were, sober and honey-mixed libations; then, testing myself little by little over a month or two, I advanced in this way, over time, further and further in patient forbearance, keeping careful watch
and preserving myself, with fair speech, gracious and free of wrath, abstaining also from wicked words and improper deeds and from passion indulged for some small and graceless pleasure — a passion that brings great disturbances and the most shameful regret. From this, I think, with some help from god as well, experience made clear to me the truth of that judgment: that this gracious, gentle, and humane disposition is welcomed by none of those around us so warmly, and is as dear and untroubling, as it is to those who possess it themselves.