Sobre a Ira

Next, if you choose to view its results and the mischief that
it does, no plague has cost the human race more dear: you will
see slaughterings and poisonings, accusations and counter-accusations,
sacking of cities, ruin of whole peoples, the persons of princes
sold into slavery by auction, torches applied to roofs, and fires
not merely confined within city-walls but making whole tracts of
country glow with hostile flame. See the foundations of the most
celebrated cities hardly now to be discerned; they were ruined by
anger. See deserts extending for many miles without an inhabitant:
they have been desolated by anger. See all the chiefs whom tradition
mentions as instances of ill fate; anger stabbed one of them in his
bed, struck down another, though he was protected by the sacred
rights of hospitality, tore another to pieces in the very home of
the laws and in sight of the crowded forum, bade one shed his own
blood by the parricide hand of his son, another to have his royal
throat cut by the hand of a slave, another to stretch out his limbs
on the cross: and hitherto I am speaking merely of individual cases.
What, if you were to pass from the consideration of those single
men against whom anger has broken out to view whole assemblies cut
down by the sword, the people butchered by the soldiery let loose
upon it, and whole nations condemned to death in one common ruin .
. . .[1] as though by men who either freed themselves from our
charge or despised our authority? Why, wherefore is the people angry
with gladiators, and so unjust as to think itself wronged if they
do not die cheerfully? It thinks itself scorned, and by looks,
gestures, and excitement turns itself from a mere spectator into
an adversary. Everything of this sort is not anger, but the semblance
of anger, like that of boys who want to beat the ground when they
have fallen upon it, and who often do not even know why they are
angry, but are merely angry without any reason or having received
any injury, yet not without some semblance of injury received, or
without some wish to exact a penalty for it. Thus they are deceived
by the likeness of blows, and are appeased by the pretended tears
of those who deprecate their wrath, and thus an unreal grief is
healed by an unreal revenge.

“We often are angry,” says our adversary, “not with men who
have hurt us, but with men who are going to hurt us: so you may be
sure that anger is not born of injury.” It is true that we are angry
with those who are going to hurt us, but they do already hurt us
in intention, and one who is going to do an injury is already doing
it. “The weakest of men,” argues he, “are often angry with the most
powerful: so you may be sure that anger is not a desire to punish
their antagonist—for men do not desire to punish him when they
cannot hope to do so.” In the first place, I spoke of a desire to
inflict punishment, not a power to do so: now men desire even what
they cannot obtain. In the next place, no one is so low in station
as not to be able to hope to inflict punishment even upon the
greatest of men: we all are powerful for mischief. Aristotle’s
definition differs little from mine: for he declares anger to be a
desire to repay suffering. It would be a long task to examine the
differences between his definition and mine: it may be urged against
both of them that wild beasts become angry without being excited
by injury, and without any idea of punishing others or requiting
them with pain: for, even though they do these things, these are
not what they aim at doing. We must admit, however, that neither
wild beasts nor any other creature except man is subject to anger:
for, whilst anger is the foe of reason, it nevertheless does not
arise in any place where reason cannot dwell. Wild beasts have
impulses, fury, cruelty, combativeness: they have not anger any
more than they have luxury: yet they indulge in some pleasures with
less self-control than human beings. Do not believe the poet who
says:

“The boar his wrath forgets, the stag forgets the hounds. The bear forgets how ’midst the herd he leaped with frantic bounds.”[2]

When he speaks of beasts being angry he means that they are excited,
roused up: for indeed they know no more how to be angry than they
know how to pardon. Dumb creatures have not human feelings, but
have certain impulses which resemble them: for if it were not so,
if they could feel love and hate, they would likewise be capable
of friendship and enmity, of disagreement and agreement. Some traces
of these qualities exist even in them, though properly all of them,
whether good or bad, belong to the human breast alone. To no creature
besides man has been given wisdom, foresight, industry, and reflexion.
To animals not only human virtues but even human vices are forbidden:
their whole constitution, mental and bodily, is unlike that of human
beings: in them the royal[3] and leading principle is drawn
from another source, as, for instance, they possess a voice, yet
not a clear one, but indistinct and incapable of forming words: a
tongue, but one which is fettered and not sufficiently nimble for
complex movements: so, too, they possess intellect, the greatest
attribute of all, but in a rough and inexact condition. It is,
consequently, able to grasp those visions and semblances which rouse
it to action, but only in a cloudy and indistinct fashion. It follows
from this that their impulses and outbreaks are violent, and that
they do not feel fear, anxieties, grief, or anger, but some semblances
of these feelings: wherefore they quickly drop them and adopt the
converse of them: they graze after showing the most vehement rage
and terror, and after frantic bellowing and plunging they straightway
sink into quiet sleep.

What anger is has been sufficiently explained. The difference
between it and irascibility is evident: it is the same as that
between a drunken man and a drunkard; between a frightened man and
a coward. It is possible for an angry man not to be irascible; an
irascible man may sometimes not be angry. I shall omit the other
varieties of anger, which the Greeks distinguish by various names,
because we have no distinctive words for them in our language,
although we call men bitter, and harsh, and also peevish, frantic,
clamorous, surly, and fierce: all of which are different forms of
irascibility. Among these you may class sulkiness, a refined form
of irascibility; for there are some sorts of anger which go no
further than noise, while some are as lasting as they are common:
some are fierce in deed, but inclined to be sparing of words: some
expend themselves in bitter words and curses: some do not go beyond
complaining and turning one’s back: some are great, deep-seated,
and brood within a man: there are a thousand other forms of a
multiform evil.

We have now finished our enquiry as to what anger is, whether
it exists in any other creature besides man, what the difference
is between it and irascibility, and how many forms it possesses.
Let us now enquire whether anger be in accordance with nature, and
whether it be useful and worth entertaining in some measure.

Whether it be according to nature will become evident if we consider
man’s nature, than which what is more gentle while it is in its
proper condition? Yet what is more cruel than anger? What is more
affectionate to others than man? Yet what is more savage against
them than anger? Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for
mutual ruin: the former loves society, the latter estrangement. The
one loves to do good, the other to do harm; the one to help even
strangers, the other to attack even its dearest friends. The one
is ready even to sacrifice itself for the good of others, the other
to plunge into peril provided it drags others with it. Who, then,
can be more ignorant of nature than he who classes this cruel and
hurtful vice as belonging to her best and most polished work? Anger,
as we have said, is eager to punish; and that such a desire should
exist in man’s peaceful breast is least of all according to his
nature; for human life is founded on benefits and harmony, and is
bound together into an alliance for the common help of all, not by
terror, but by love towards one another.

“What, then? Is not correction sometimes necessary?” Of course
it is; but with discretion, not with anger; for it does not injure,
but heals under the guise of injury. We char crooked spearshafts
to straighten them, and force them by driving in wedges, not in
order to break them, but to take the bends out of them; and, in
like manner, by applying pain to the body or mind we correct
dispositions which have been rendered crooked by vice. So the
physician at first, when dealing with slight disorders, tries not
to make much change in his patient’s daily habits, to regulate
his food, drink, and exercise, and to improve his health merely by
altering the order in which he takes them. The next step is to see
whether an alteration in their amount will be of service. If neither
alteration of the order or of the amount is of use, he cuts off
some and reduces others. If even this does not answer, he forbids
food, and disburdens the body by fasting. If milder remedies have
proved useless he opens a vein; if the extremities are injuring the
body and infecting it with disease he lays his hands upon the limbs;
yet none of his treatment is considered harsh if its result is to
give health. Similarly, it is the duty of the chief administrator
of the laws, or the ruler of a state, to correct ill-disposed men,
as long as he is able, with words, and even with gentle ones, that
he may persuade them to do what they ought, inspire them with a
love of honour and justice, and cause them to hate vice and set
store upon virtue. He must then pass on to severer language, still
confining himself to advising and reprimanding; last of all he must
betake himself to punishments, yet still making them slight and
temporary. He ought to assign extreme punishments only to extreme
crimes, that no one may die unless it be even to the criminal’s own
advantage that he should die. He will differ from the physician in
one point alone; for whereas physicians render it easy to die for
those to whom they cannot grant the boon of life, he will drive the
condemned out of life with ignominy and disgrace, not because he
takes pleasure in any man’s being punished, for the wise man is far
from such inhuman ferocity, but that they may be a warning to all
men, and that, since they would not be useful when alive, the state
may at any rate profit by their death. Man’s nature is not, therefore,
desirous of inflicting punishment; neither, therefore, is anger in
accordance with man’s nature, because that is desirous of inflicting
punishment. I will also adduce Plato’s argument—for what harm is
there in using other men’s arguments, so far as they are on
our side? “A good man,” says he, “does not do any hurt: it is only
punishment which hurts. Punishment, therefore, does not accord with
a good man: wherefore anger does not do so either, because punishment
and anger accord one with another. If a good man takes no pleasure
in punishment, he will also take no pleasure in that state of mind
to which punishment gives pleasure: consequently anger is not natural
to man.”

May it not be that, although anger be not natural, it may be
right to adopt it, because it often proves useful? It rouses the
spirit and excites it; and courage does nothing grand in war without
it, unless its flame be supplied from this source; this is the goad
which stirs up bold men and sends them to encounter perils. Some
therefore consider it to be best to control anger, not to banish
it utterly, but to cut off its extravagances, and force it to keep
within useful bounds, so as to retain that part of it without which
action will become languid and all strength and activity of mind
will die away.

In the first place, it is easier to banish dangerous passions than
to rule them; it is easier not to admit them than to keep them in
order when admitted; for when they have established themselves in
possession of the mind they are more powerful than the lawful ruler,
and will in no wise permit themselves to be weakened or abridged.
In the next place, Reason herself, who holds the reins, is only
strong while she remains apart from the passions; if she mixes and
befouls herself with them she becomes no longer able to restrain
those whom she might once have cleared out of her path; for the
mind, when once excited and shaken up, goes whither the passions
drive it. There are certain things whose beginnings lie in our own
power, but which, when developed, drag us along by their own force
and leave us no retreat. Those who have flung themselves over a
precipice have no control over their movements, nor can they
stop or slacken their pace when once started, for their own headlong
and irremediable rashness has left no room for either reflexion or
remorse, and they cannot help going to lengths which they might
have avoided. So, also, the mind, when it has abandoned itself to
anger, love, or any other passion, is unable to check itself: its
own weight and the downward tendency of vices must needs carry the
man off and hurl him into the lowest depth.

The best plan is to reject straightway the first incentives
to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to
be betrayed into it: for if once it begins to carry us away, it is
hard to get back again into a healthy condition, because reason
goes for nothing when once passion has been admitted to the mind,
and has by our own free will been given a certain authority, it
will for the future do as much as it chooses, not only as much as
you will allow it. The enemy, I repeat, must be met and driven back
at the outermost frontier-line: for when he has once entered the
city and passed its gates, he will not allow his prisoners to set
bounds to his victory. The mind does not stand apart and view its
passions from without, so as not to permit them to advance further
than they ought, but it is itself changed into a passion, and is
therefore unable to check what once was useful and wholesome strength,
now that it has become degenerate and misapplied: for passion and
reason, as I said before, have not distinct and separate provinces,
but consist of the changes of the mind itself for better or for
worse. How then can reason recover itself when it is conquered and
held down by vices, when it has given way to anger? or how can it
extricate itself from a confused mixture, the greater part of which
consists of the lower qualities? “But,” argues our adversary, “some
men when in anger control themselves.” Do they so far control
themselves that they do nothing which anger dictates, or some
what? If they do nothing thereof, it becomes evident that anger is
not essential to the conduct of affairs, although your sect advocated
it as possessing greater strength than reason . . . . Finally, I
ask, is anger stronger or weaker than reason? If stronger, how can
reason impose any check upon it, since it is only the less powerful
that obey: if weaker, then reason is competent to effect its ends
without anger, and does not need the help of a less powerful quality.
“But some angry men remain consistent and control themselves.” When
do they do so? It is when their anger is disappearing and leaving
them of its own accord, not when it was red-hot, for then it was
more powerful than they. What then? do not men, even in the height
of their anger, sometimes let their enemies go whole and unhurt,
and refrain from injuring them? “They do: but when do they do so?
It is when one passion overpowers another, and either fear or greed
gets the upper hand for a while. On such occasions, it is not thanks
to reason that anger is stilled, but owing to an untrustworthy and
fleeting truce between the passions.

In the next place, anger has nothing useful in itself, and does
not rouse up the mind to warlike deeds: for a virtue, being
self-sufficient, never needs the assistance of a vice: whenever it
needs an impetuous effort, it does not become angry, but rises to
the occasion, and excites or soothes itself as far as it deems
requisite, just as the machines which hurl darts may be twisted to
a greater or lesser degree of tension at the manager’s pleasure.
“Anger,” says Aristotle, “is necessary, nor can any fight be won
without it, unless it fills the mind, and kindles up the spirit.
It must, however, be made use of, not as a general, but as a soldier,”
Now this is untrue; for if it listens to reason and follows whither
reason leads, it is no longer anger, whose characteristic is
obstinacy: if, again, it is disobedient and will not be quiet when
ordered, but is carried away by its own wilful and headstrong
spirit, it is then as useless an aid to the mind as a soldier who
disregards the sounding of the retreat would be to a general. If,
therefore, anger allows limits to be imposed upon it, it must be
called by some other name, and ceases to be anger, which I understand
to be unbridled and unmanageable: and if it does not allow limits
to be imposed upon it, it is harmful and not to be counted among
aids: wherefore either anger is not anger, or it is useless: for
if any man demands the infliction of punishment, not because he is
eager for the punishment itself, but because it is right to inflict
it, he ought not to be counted as an angry man: that will be the
useful soldier, who knows how to obey orders: the passions cannot
obey any more than they can command.

For this cause reason will never call to its aid blind and fierce
impulses, over whom she herself possesses no authority, and which
she never can restrain save by setting against them similar and
equally powerful passions, as for example, fear against anger, anger
against sloth, greed against timidity. May virtue never come to
such a pass, that reason should fly for aid to vices! The mind can
find no safe repose there, it must needs be shaken and tempest-tossed
if it be safe only because of its own defects, if it cannot be brave
without anger, diligent without greed, quiet without fear: such is
the despotism under which a man must live if he becomes the slave
of a passion. Are you not ashamed to put virtues under the patronage
of vices? Then, too, reason ceases to have any power if she can do
nothing without passion, and begins to be equal and like unto
passion; for what difference is there between them if passion without
reason be as rash as reason without passion is helpless? They are
both on the same level, if one cannot exist without the other. Yet
who could endure that passion should be made equal to reason? “Then,”
says our adversary, “passion is useful, provided it be moderate.”
Nay, only if it be useful by nature: but if it be disobedient
to authority and reason, al that we gain by its moderation is that
the less there is of it, the less harm it does: wherefore a moderate
passion is nothing but a moderate evil.

“But,” argues he, “against our enemies anger is necessary.” In
no case is it less necessary; since our attacks ought not to be
disorderly, but regulated and under control. What, indeed, is it
except anger, so ruinous to itself, that overthrows barbarians, who
have so much more bodily strength than we, and are so much better
able to endure fatigue? Gladiators, too, protect themselves by
skill, but expose themselves to wounds when they are angry. Moreover,
of what use is anger, when the same end can be arrived at by reason?
Do you suppose that a hunter is angry with the beasts he kills? Yet
he meets them when they attack him, and follows them when they flee
from him, all of which is managed by reason without anger. When so
many thousands of Cimbri and Teutones poured over the Alps, what
was it that caused them to perish so completely, that no messenger,
only common rumour, carried the news of that great defeat to their
homes, except that with them anger stood in the place of courage?
and anger, although sometimes it overthrows and breaks to pieces
whatever it meets, yet is more often its own destruction. Who can
be braver than the Germans? who charge more boldly? who have more
love of arms, among which they are born and bred, for which alone
they care, to the neglect of everything else? Who can be more
hardened to undergo every hardship, since a large part of them have
no store of clothing for the body, no shelter from the continual
rigour of the climate: yet Spaniards and Gauls, and even the unwarlike
races of Asia and Syria cut them down before the main legion comes
within sight, nothing but their own irascibility exposing them to
death. Give but intelligence to those minds, and discipline
to those bodies of theirs, which now are ignorant of vicious
refinements, luxury, and wealth,—to say nothing more, we should
certainly be obliged to go back to the ancient Roman habits of life.
By what did Fabius restore the shattered forces of the state, except
by knowing how to delay and spin out time, which angry men know not
how to do? The empire, which then was at its last gasp, would have
perished if Fabius had been as daring as anger urged him to be: but
he took thought about the condition of affairs, and after counting
his force, no part of which could be lost without everything being
lost with it, he laid aside thoughts of grief and revenge, turning
his sole attention to what was profitable and to making the most
of his opportunities, and conquered his anger before he conquered
Hannibal. What did Scipio do? Did he not leave behind Hannibal and
the Carthaginian army, and all with whom he had a right to be angry,
and carry over the war into Africa with such deliberation that he
made his enemies think him luxurious and lazy? What did the second
Scipio do? Did he not remain a long, long time before Numantia, and
bear with calmness the reproach to himself and to his country that
Numantia took longer to conquer than Carthage? By blockading and
investing his enemies, he brought them to such straits that they
perished by their own swords. Anger, therefore, is not useful even
in wars or battles: for it is prone to rashness, and while trying
to bring others into danger, does not guard itself against danger.
The most trustworthy virtue is that which long and carefully considers
itself, controls itself, and slowly and deliberately brings itself
to the front.

“What, then,” asks our adversary, “is a good man not to be
angry if he sees his father murdered or his mother outraged?” No,
he will not be angry, but will avenge them, or protect them. Why
do you fear that filial piety will not prove a sufficient spur
to him even without anger? You may as well say—“What then? When a
good man sees his father or his son being cut down, I suppose he
will not weep or faint,” as we see women do whenever any trifling
rumour of danger reaches them. The good man will do his duty without
disturbance or fear, and he will perform the duty of a good man,
so as to do nothing unworthy of a man. My father will be murdered:
then I will defend him: he has been slain, then I will avenge him,
not because I am grieved, but because it is my duty. “Good men are
made angry by injuries done to their friends.” When you say this,
Theophrastus, you seek to throw discredit upon more manly maxims;
you leave the judge and appeal to the mob: because every one is
angry when such things befall his own friends, you suppose that men
will decide that it is their duty to do what they do: for as a rule
every man considers a passion which he recognises to be a righteous
one. But he does the same thing if the hot water is not ready for
his drink, if a glass be broken, or his shoe splashed with mud. It
is not filial piety, but weakness of mind that produces this anger,
as children weep when they lose their parents, just as they do when
they lose their toys. To feel anger on behalf of one’s friends does
not show a loving, but a weak mind: it is admirable and worthy
conduct to stand forth as the defender of one’s parents, children,
friends, and countrymen, at the call of duty itself, acting of one’s
own free will, forming a deliberate judgment, and looking forward
to the future, not in an impulsive, frenzied fashion. No passion
is more eager for revenge than anger, and for that very reason it
is unapt to obtain it: being over hasty and frantic, like almost
all desires, it hinders itself in the attainment of its own object,
and therefore has never been useful either in peace or war: for it
makes peace like war, and when in arms forgets that Mars belongs
to neither side, and falls into the power of the enemy, because
it is not in its own. In the next place, vices ought not to be
received into common use because on some occasions they have effected
somewhat: for so also fevers are good for certain kinds of ill-health,
but nevertheless it is better to be altogether free from them: it
is a hateful mode of cure to owe one’s health to disease. Similarly,
although anger, like poison, or falling headlong, or being shipwrecked,
may have unexpectedly done good, yet it ought not on that account
to be classed as wholesome, for poisons have often proved good for
the health.

Moreover, qualities which we ought to possess become better
and more desirable the more extensive they are: if justice is a
good thing, no one will say that it would be better if any part
were subtracted from it; if bravery is a good thing, no one would
wish it to be in any way curtailed: consequently the greater anger
is, the better it is, for who ever objected to a good thing being
increased? But it is not expedient that anger should be increased:
therefore it is not expedient that it should exist at all, for that
which grows bad by increase cannot be a good thing. “Anger is
useful,” says our adversary, “because it makes men more ready to
fight.” According to that mode of reasoning, then, drunkenness also
is a good thing, for it makes men insolent and daring, and many use
their weapons better when the worse for liquor: nay, according to
that reasoning, also, you may call frenzy and madness essential to
strength, because madness often makes men stronger. Why, does not
fear often by the rule of contraries make men bolder, and does not
the terror of death rouse up even arrant cowards to join battle?
Yet anger, drunkenness, fear, and the like, are base and temporary
incitements to action, and can furnish no arms to virtue, which has
no need of vices, although they may at times be of some little
assistance to sluggish and cowardly minds. No man becomes
braver through anger, except one who without anger would not have
been brave at all: anger does not therefore come to assist courage,
but to take its place. What are we to say to the argument that, if
anger were a good thing it would attach itself to all the best men?
Yet the most irascible of creatures are infants, old men, and sick
people. Every weakling is naturally prone to complaint.

It is impossible, says Theophrastus, for a good man not to be
angry with bad men. By this reasoning, the better a man is, the
more irascible he will be: yet will he not rather be more tranquil,
more free from passions, and hating no one: indeed, what reason has
he for hating sinners, since it is error that leads them into such
crimes? now it does not become a sensible man to hate the erring,
since if so he will hate himself: let him think how many things he
does contrary to good morals, how much of what he has done stands
in need of pardon, and he will soon become angry with himself also,
for no righteous judge pronounces a different judgment in his own
case and in that of others. No one, I affirm, will be found who can
acquit himself. Every one when he calls himself innocent looks
rather to external witnesses than to his own conscience. How much
more philanthropic it is to deal with the erring in a gentle and
fatherly spirit, and to call them into the right course instead of
hunting them down? When a man is wandering about our fields because
he has lost his way, it is better to place him on the right path
than to drive him away.

The sinner ought, therefore, to be corrected both by warning
and by force, both by gentle and harsh means, and may be made a
better man both towards himself and others by chastisement, but not
by anger: for who is angry with the patient whose wounds he is
tending? “But they cannot be corrected, and there is nothing in
them that is gentle or that admits of good hope.” Then let
them be removed from mortal society, if they are likely to deprave
every one with whom they come in contact, and let them cease to be
bad men in the only way in which they can: yet let this be done
without hatred: for what reason have I for hating the man to whom
I am doing the greatest good, since I am rescuing him from himself?
Does a man hate his own limbs when he cuts them off? That is not
an act of anger, but a lamentable method of healing. We knock mad
dogs on the head, we slaughter fierce and savage bulls, and we doom
scabby sheep to the knife, lest they should infect our flocks: we
destroy monstrous births, and we also drown our children if they
are born weakly or unnaturally formed; to separate what is useless
from what is sound is an act, not of anger, but of reason. Nothing
becomes one who inflicts punishment less than anger, because the
punishment has all the more power to work reformation if the sentence
be pronounced with deliberate judgment. This is why Socrates said
to the slave, “I would strike you, were I not angry.” He put off
the correction of the slave to a calmer season; at the moment, he
corrected himself. Who can boast that he has his passions, under
control, when Socrates did not dare to trust himself to his anger?

We do not, therefore, need an angry chastiser to punish the
erring and wicked: for since anger is a crime of the mind, it is
not right that sins should be punished by sin. “What! am I not to
be angry with a robber, or a poisoner?” No: for I am not angry with
myself when I bleed myself. I apply all kinds of punishment as
remedies. You are as yet only in the first stage of error, and do
not go wrong seriously, although you do so often: then I will try
to amend you by a reprimand given first in private and then in
public.[4] You, again, have gone too far to be restored to
virtue by words alone; you must be kept in order by disgrace. For
the next, some stronger measure is required, something that he can
feel must be branded upon him; you, sir, shall be sent into exile
and to a desert place. The next man’s thorough villany needs harsher
remedies: chains and public imprisonment must be applied to him.
You, lastly, have an incurably vicious mind, and add crime to crime:
you have come to such a pass, that you are not influenced by the
arguments which are never wanting to recommend evil, but sin itself
is to you a sufficient reason for sinning: you have so steeped your
whole heart in wickedness, that wickedness cannot be taken from you
without bringing your heart with it. Wretched man! you have long
sought to die; we will do you good service, we will take away that
madness from which you suffer, and to you who have so long lived a
misery to yourself and to others, we will give the only good thing
which remains, that is, death. Why should I be angry with a man
just when I am doing him good: sometimes the truest form of compassion
is to put a man to death. If I were a skilled and learned physician,
and were to enter a hospital, or a rich[5] man’s house, I should
not have prescribed the same treatment for all the patients who
were suffering from various diseases. I see different kinds of vice
in the vast number of different minds, and am called in to heal the
whole body of citizens: let us seek for the remedies proper for
each disease. This man may be cured by his own sense of honour,
that one by travel, that one by pain, that one by want, that one
by the sword. If, therefore, it becomes my duty as a magistrate to
put on black[6] robes, and summon an assembly by the sound of a
trumpet,[7] I shall walk to the seat of judgment not in a rage
or in a hostile spirit, but with the countenance of a judge; I shall
pronounce the formal sentence in a grave and gentle rather than a
furious voice, and shall bid them proceed sternly, yet not
angrily. Even when I command a criminal to be beheaded, when I sew
a parricide up in a sack, when I send a man to be punished by
military law, when I fling a traitor or public enemy down the
Tarpeian Rock, I shall be free from anger, and shall look and feel
just as though I were crushing snakes and other venomous creatures.
“Anger is necessary to enable us to punish.” What? do you think
that the law is angry with men whom it does not know, whom it has
never seen, who it hopes will never exist? We ought, therefore, to
adopt the law’s frame of mind, which does not become angry, but
merely defines offences: for, if it is right for a good man to be
angry at wicked crimes, it will also be right for him to be moved
with envy at the prosperity of wicked men: what, indeed, is more
scandalous than that in some cases the very men, for whose deserts
no fortune could be found bad enough, should flourish and actually
be the spoiled children of success? Yet he will see their affluence
without envy, just as he sees their crimes without anger: a good
judge condemns wrongful acts, but does not hate them. “What then?
when the wise man is dealing with something of this kind, will his
mind not be affected by it and become excited beyond its usual
wont?” I admit that it will: he will experience a slight and trifling
emotion; for, as Zeno says, “Even in the mind of the wise man, a
scar remains after the wound is quite healed.” He will, therefore,
feel certain hints and semblances of passions; but he will be free
from the passions themselves.

Aristotle says that “certain passions, if one makes a proper
use of them, act as arms”: which would be true if, like weapons of
war, they could be taken up or laid aside at the pleasure of their
wielder. These arms, which Aristotle assigns to virtue, fight of
their own accord, do not wait to be seized by the hand, and possess
a man instead of being possessed by him. We have no need of
external weapons, nature has equipped us sufficiently by giving us
reason. She has bestowed this weapon upon us, which is strong,
imperishable, and obedient to our will, not uncertain or capable
of being turned against its master. Reason suffices by itself not
merely to take thought for the future, but to manage our affairs:[8]
what, then, can be more foolish than for reason to beg anger for
protection, that is, for what is certain to beg of what is uncertain?
what is trustworthy of what is faithless? what is whole of what is
sick? What, indeed? since reason is far more powerful by itself
even in performing those operations in which the help of anger seems
especially needful: for when reason has decided that a particular
thing should be done, she perseveres in doing it; not being able
to find anything better than herself to exchange with. She, therefore,
abides by her purpose when it has once been formed; whereas anger
is often overcome by pity: for it possesses no firm strength, but
merely swells like an empty bladder, and makes a violent beginning,
just like the winds which rise from the earth and are caused by
rivers and marshes, which blow furiously without any continuance:
anger begins with a mighty rush, and then falls away, becoming
fatigued too soon: that which but lately thought of nothing but
cruelty and novel forms of torture, is become quite softened and
gentle when the time comes for punishment to be inflicted. Passion
soon cools, whereas reason is always consistent: yet even in cases
where anger has continued to burn, it often happens that although
there may be many who deserve to die, yet after the death of two
or three it ceases to slay. Its first onset is fierce, just as the
teeth of snakes when first roused from their lair are venomous, but
become harmless after repeated bites have exhausted their poison.
Consequently those who are equally guilty are not equally
punished, and often he who has done less is punished more, because
he fell in the way of anger when it was fresher. It is altogether
irregular; at one time it runs into undue excess, at another it
falls short of its duty: for it indulges its own feelings and gives
sentence according to its caprices, will not listen to evidence,
allows the defence no opportunity of being heard, clings to what
it has wrongly assumed, and will not suffer its opinion to be wrested
from it, even when it is a mistaken one.

Reason gives each side time to plead; moreover, she herself
demands adjournment, that she may have sufficient scope for the
discovery of the truth; whereas anger is in a hurry: reason wishes
to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought
just: reason looks no further than the matter in hand; anger is
excited by empty matters hovering on the outskirts of the case: it
is irritated by anything approaching to a confident demeanour, a
loud voice, an unrestrained speech, dainty apparel, high-flown
pleading, or popularity with the public. It often condemns a man
because it dislikes his patron; it loves and maintains error even
when truth is staring it in the face. It hates to be proved wrong,
and thinks it more honourable to persevere in a mistaken line of
conduct than to retract it. I remember Gnaeus Piso, a man who was
free from many vices, yet of a perverse disposition, and one who
mistook harshness for consistency. In his anger he ordered a soldier
to be led off to execution because he had returned from furlough
without his comrade, as though he must have murdered him if he could
not show him. When the man asked for time for search, he would not
grant it: the condemned man was brought outside the rampart, and
was just offering his neck to the axe, when suddenly there appeared
his comrade who was thought to be slain. Hereupon the centurion in
charge of the execution bade the guardsman sheathe his sword, and
led the condemned man back to Piso, to restore to him the
innocence which Fortune had restored to the soldier. They were led
into his presence by their fellow soldiers amid the great joy of
the whole camp, embracing one another and accompanied by a vast
crowd. Piso mounted the tribunal in a fury and ordered them both
to be executed, both him who had not murdered and him who had not
been slain. What could be more unworthy than this? Because one was
proved to be innocent, two perished. Piso even added a third: for
he actually ordered the centurion, who had brought back the condemned
man, to be put to death. Three men were set up to die in the same
place because one was innocent. O, how clever is anger at inventing
reasons for its frenzy! “You,” it says, “I order to be executed,
because you have been condemned to death: you, because you have
been the cause of your comrade’s condemnation, and you, because
when ordered to put him to death you disobeyed your general.” He
discovered the means of charging them with three crimes, because
he could find no crime in them.

Irascibility, I say, has this fault—it is loth to be ruled:
it is angry with the truth itself, if it comes to light against its
will: it assails those whom it has marked for its victims with
shouting and riotous noise and gesticulation of the entire body,
together with reproaches and curses. Not thus does reason act: but
if it must be so, she silently and quietly wipes out whole households,
destroys entire families of the enemies of the state, together with
their wives and children, throws down their very dwellings, levels
them with the ground, and roots out the names of those who are the
foes of liberty. This she does without grinding her teeth or shaking
her head, or doing anything unbecoming to a judge, whose countenance
ought to be especially calm and composed at the time when he is
pronouncing an important sentence. “What need is there,” asks
Hieronymus, “for you to bite your own lips when you want to strike
some one?” What would he have said, had he seen a proconsul
leap down from the tribunal, snatch the fasces from the lictor, and
tear his own clothes because those of others were not torn as fast
as he wished. Why need you upset the table, throw down the drinking
cups, knock yourself against the columns, tear your hair, smite
your thigh and your breast? How vehement do you suppose anger to
be, if it thus turns back upon itself, because it cannot find vent
on another as fast as it wishes? Such men, therefore, are held back
by the bystanders and are begged to become reconciled with themselves.
But he who while free from anger assigns to each man the penalty
which he deserves, does none of these things. He often lets a man
go after detecting his crime, if his penitence for what he has done
gives good hope for the future, if he perceives that the man’s
wickedness is not deeply rooted in his mind, but is only, as the
saying is, skin-deep. He will grant impunity in cases where it will
hurt neither the receiver nor the giver. In some cases he will
punish great crimes more leniently than lesser ones, if the former
were the result of momentary impulse, not of cruelty, while the
latter were instinct with secret, underhand, long-practised craftiness.
The same fault, committed by two separate men, will not be visited
by him with the same penalty, if the one was guilty of it through
carelessness, the other with a premeditated intention of doing
mischief. In all dealing with crime he will remember that the one
form of punishment is meant to make bad men better, and the other
to put them out of the way. In either case he will look to the
future, not to the past: for, as Plato says, “no wise man punishes
any one because he has sinned, but that he may sin no more: for
what is past cannot be recalled, but what is to come may be checked.”
Those, too, whom he wishes to make examples of the ill success of
wickedness, he executes publicly, not merely in order that they
themselves may die, but that by dying they may deter others
from doing likewise. You see how free from any mental disturbance
a man ought to be who has to weigh and consider all this, when he
deals with a matter which ought to be handled with the utmost care,
I mean, the power of life and death. The sword of justice is
ill-placed in the hands of an angry man.

Neither ought it to be believed that anger contributes anything
to magnanimity: what it gives is not magnanimity but vain glory.
The increase which disease produces in bodies swollen with morbid
humours is not healthy growth, but bloated corpulence. All those
whose madness raises them above human considerations, believe
themselves to be inspired with high and sublime ideas; but there
is no solid ground beneath, and what is built without foundation
is liable to collapse in ruin. Anger has no ground to stand upon,
and does not rise from a firm and enduring foundation, but is a
windy, empty quality, as far removed from true magnanimity as
fool-hardiness from courage, boastfulness from confidence, gloom
from austerity, cruelty from strictness. There is, I say, a great
difference between a lofty and a proud mind: anger brings about
nothing grand or beautiful. On the other hand, to be constantly
irritated seems to me to be the part of a languid and unhappy mind,
conscious of its own feebleness, like folk with diseased bodies
covered with sores, who cry out at the lightest touch. Anger,
therefore, is a vice which for the most part affects women and
children. “Yet it affects men also.” Because many men, too, have
womanish or childish intellects. “But what are we to say? do not
some words fall from angry men which appear to flow from a great
mind?” Yes, to those who know not what true greatness is: as, for
example, that foul and hateful saying, “Let them hate me, provided
they fear me,” which you may be sure was written in Sulla’s time.
I know not which was the worse of the two things he wished
for, that he might be hated or that he might be feared. It occurs
to his mind that some day people will curse him, plot against him,
crush him: what prayer does he add to this? May all the gods curse
him—for discovering a cure for hate so worthy of it. “Let them
hate.” How? “Provided they obey me?” No! “Provided they approve of
me?” No! How then? “Provided they fear me!” I would not even be
loved upon such terms. Do you imagine that this was a very spirited
saying? You are wrong: this is not greatness, but monstrosity. You
should not believe the words of angry men, whose speech is very
loud and menacing, while their mind within them is as timid as
possible: nor need you suppose that the most eloquent of men, Titus
Livius, was right in describing somebody as being “of a great rather
than a good disposition.” The things cannot be separated: he must
either be good or else he cannot be great, because I take greatness
of mind to mean that it is unshaken, sound throughout, firm and
uniform to its very foundation; such as cannot exist in evil
dispositions. Such dispositions may be terrible, frantic, and
destructive, but cannot possess greatness; because greatness rests
upon goodness, and owes its strength to it. “Yet by speech, action,
and all outward show they will make one think them great.” True,
they will say something which you may think shows a great spirit,
like Gaius Caesar, who when angry with heaven because it interfered
with his ballet-dancers, whom he imitated more carefully than he
attended to them when they acted, and because it frightened his
revels by its thunders, surely ill-directed,[9] challenged Jove to
fight, and that to the death, shouting the Homeric verse:—

“Carry me off, or I will carry thee!”

How great was his madness! He must have believed either that
he could not be hurt even by Jupiter himself, or that he could hurt
even Jupiter itself. I imagine that this saying of his had no small
weight in nerving the minds of the conspirators for their task: for
it seemed to be the height of endurance to bear one who could not
bear Jupiter.

There is therefore nothing great or noble in anger, even when
it seems to be powerful and to contemn both gods and men alike. Any
one who thinks that anger produces greatness of mind, would think
that luxury produces it: such a man wishes to rest on ivory, to be
clothed with purple, and roofed with gold; to remove lands, embank
seas, hasten the course of rivers, suspend woods in the air. He
would think that avarice shows greatness of mind: for the avaricious
man broods over heaps of gold and silver, treats whole provinces
as merely fields on his estate, and has larger tracts of country
under the charge of single bailiffs than those which consuls once
drew lots to administer. He would think that lust shows greatness
of mind: for the lustful man swims across straits, castrates troops
of boys, and puts himself within reach of the swords of injured
husbands with complete scorn of death. Ambition, too, he would think
shows greatness of mind: for the ambitious man is not content with
office once a year, but, if possible, would fill the calendar of
dignities with his name alone, and cover the whole world with his
titles. It matters nothing to what heights or lengths these passions
may proceed: they are narrow, pitiable, grovelling. Virtue alone
is lofty and sublime, nor is anything great which is not at the
same time tranquil.

[1] Here a leaf or more has been lost, including the fragment cited
in Lactantius, _De ira dei_, 17 “Ira est eupiditas,” &c. The entire
passage is:—“But the Stoics did not perceive that there is a
difference between right and wrong; that there is just and unjust
anger: and as they could find no remedy for it, they wished to
extirpate it. The Peripatetics, on the other hand, declared that
it ought not to be destroyed, but restrained. These I have sufficiently
answered in the sixth book of my ‘Institutiones.’ It is clear that
the philosophers did not comprehend the reason of anger, from the
definitions of it which Seneca has enumerated in the books ‘On
Anger’ which he has written. ‘Anger,’ he says, ‘is the desire of
avenging an injury.’ Others, as Posidonius says, call it ‘a desire
to punish one by whom you think that you have been unjustly injured,’
Some have defined it thus, ‘Anger is an impulse of the mind to
injure him who either has injured you or has sought to injure you.’
Aristotle’s definition differs but little from our own. He says,
‘that anger is a desire to repay suffering,’” etc.

[2] Ovid, “Met.” vii. 545-6.

[3] τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν of the Stoics.

[4] The gospel rule. Matt, xviii. 15.

[5] _Divitis_ (where there might be an army of slaves).

[6] “Lorsque le Préteur devoit prononcer la sentence d’un coupable,
il se depouilloit de la robe pretexte, et se revêtoit alors d’une
simple tunique, ou d’une autre robe, presque usée, et d’un blanc
sale (_sordida_) ou d’un gris très foncé tirant sur le noir (_toga
pulla_), telle qu’en portoient à Rome le peuple et les pauvres
(_pullaque paupertas_). Dans les jours solemnelles et marqués par
un deuil public, les Senateurs quittoient le laticlave, et les
Magistrats la pretexte. La pourpre, la hache, les faisceaux, aucun
de ces signes extérieurs de leur dignité ne les distinguoient alors
des autres citoyens: _sine insignibus Magistratus_. Mais ce n’étoit
pas seulement pendant le temps ou la ville étoit plongée dans le
deuil et dans I’affliction, que les magistrats s’habilloient comme
le peuple (_sordidam vestem induebant_); ils en usoient de même
lorsqu’ils devoient condamner à mort un citoyen. C’est dans ces
tristes circonstances qu’ils quittoient la prétexte et prenoient
la robe de deuil _perversam vestem_. (No doubt “inside out.”—J. E.
B. M.) ”On pourroit supposer avec assez de vraisemblance que par
cette expression, Séneque a voulu faire allusion à ce changement .
. . . . Peut-être les Magistrats qui devoient juger à mort un
citoyen, portoient ils aussi leur robe renversée, ou la jettoient
ils de travers ou confusément sur leurs épaules, pour mieux peindre
par ce desordre le trouble de leur esprit. Si cette conjecture est
vraie, comme je serais assez porté à croire, l’expression _perversa
vestis_ dont Séneque s’est servi ici, indiqueroit plus d’un simple
changement d’habit,” &c, (La Grange’s translation of Seneca, edited
by J, A. Naigeon. Paris, 1778.)

[7] “Ceci fait allusion à une coutume que Caius Gracchus prétend
avoir été pratiquée de tout tems à Rome, ‘Lorsqu’un citoyen,” dit
il, “avoit un procès criminel qui alloit à la mort, s’il refusoit
d’obéir aux sommations qui lui étoient faites; le jour qu’on devoit
le juger, en envoyoit des le matin à la porte de sa maison un
Officier I’appeller au son de la trompette, et jamais avant que
cette cérémonie eût été observée, les Juges ne donneroient leur
voix contre lui: tant ces hommes sages,’ ajoute ce hardi Tribun,
‘avoient de retenue et de precaution dans leurs jugements, quand
il s’agissoit de la vie d’un citoyen.’”

“C’étoit de même au son de la trompette que l’on convoquoit le
peuple, lorsqu’on devoit faire mourir un citoyen, afin qu’il fût
témoin de ce triste spectacle, et que la supplice du coupable pût
lui servir d’exemple. Tacite dit qu’un Astrologue, nommé P. Marcius,
fût exécuté, selon l’ancien usage, hors de la porte Esquiline, en
presence du peuple Romain que les Consuls firent convoquer au son
de la trompette.” (Tac. Ann. II. 32.) L. Grom.

[8] _I.e._ not only for counsel but for action.

[9] _Prorsus parum certis_ (_i.e._, the thunderbolts missed their aim in not striking him dead).

THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO NOVATUS.

OF ANGER.

Whither, say you, does this inquiry tend? That we may know what
anger is: for if it springs up against our will, it never will yield
to reason: because all the motions which take place without our
volition are beyond our control and unavoidable, such as shivering
when cold water is poured over us, or shrinking when we are touched
in certain places. Men’s hair rises up at bad news, their faces
blush at indecent words, and they are seized with dizziness when
looking down a precipice; and as it is not in our power to prevent
any of these things, no reasoning can prevent their taking place.
But anger can be put to flight by wise maxims; for it is a voluntary
defect of the mind, and not one of those things which are evolved
by the conditions of human life, and which, therefore, may happen
even to the wisest of us. Among these and in the first place must
be ranked that thrill of the mind which seizes us at the thought
of wrongdoing. We feel this even when witnessing the mimic scenes
of the stage, or when reading about things that happened long ago.
We often feel angry with Clodius for banishing Cicero, and
with Antonius for murdering him. Who is not indignant with the wars
of Marius, the proscriptions of Sulla? who is not enraged against
Theodotus and Achillas and the boy king who dared to commit a more
than boyish crime?[2] Sometimes songs excite us, and quickened
rhythm and the martial noise of trumpets; so, too, shocking pictures
and the dreadful sight of tortures, however well deserved, affect
our minds. Hence it is that we smile when others are smiling, that
a crowd of mourners makes us sad, and that we take a glowing interest
in another’s battles; all of which feelings are not anger, any more
than that which clouds our brow at the sight of a stage shipwreck
is sadness, or what we feel, when we read how Hannibal after Cannae
beset the walls of Rome, can be called fear. All these are emotions
of minds which are loth to be moved, and are not passions, but
rudiments which may grow into passions. So, too, a soldier starts
at the sound of a trumpet, although he may be dressed as a civilian
and in the midst of a profound peace, and camp horses prick up their
ears at the clash of arms. It is said that Alexander, when Xenophantus
was singing, laid his hand upon his weapons.

None of these things which casually influence the mind deserve
to be called passions: the mind, if I may so express it, rather
suffers passions to act upon itself than forms them. A passion,
therefore, consists not in being affected by the sights which are
presented to us, but in giving way to our feelings and following
up these chance promptings: for whoever imagines that paleness,
bursting into tears, lustful feelings, deep sighs, sudden flashes
of the eyes, and so forth, are signs of passion and betray the
state of the mind, is mistaken, and does not understand that these
are merely impulses of the body. Consequently, the bravest of men
often turns pale while he is putting on his armour; when the signal
for battle is given, the knees of the boldest soldier shake for a
moment; the heart even of a great general leaps into his mouth just
before the lines clash together, and the hands and feet even of the
most eloquent orator grow stiff and cold while he is preparing to
begin his speech. Anger must not merely move, but break out of
bounds, being an impulse: now, no impulse can take place without
the consent of the mind: for it cannot be that we should deal with
revenge and punishment without the mind being cognisant of them. A
man may think himself injured, may wish to avenge his wrongs, and
then may be persuaded by some reason or other to give up his intention
and calm down: I do not call that anger, it is an emotion of the
mind which is under the control of reason. Anger is that which goes
beyond reason and carries her away with it: wherefore the first
confusion of a man’s mind when struck by what seems an injury is
no more anger than the apparent injury itself: it is the subsequent
mad rush, which not only receives the impression of the apparent
injury, but acts upon it as true, that is anger, being an exciting
of the mind to revenge, which proceeds from choice and deliberate
resolve. There never has been any doubt that fear produces flight,
and anger a rush forward; consider, therefore, whether you suppose
that anything can be either sought or avoided without the participation
of the mind.

Furthermore, that you may know in what manner passions begin
and swell and gain spirit, learn that the first emotion is involuntary,
and is, as it were, a preparation for a passion, and a threatening
of one. The next is combined with a wish, though not an obstinate
one, as, for example, “It is my duty to avenge myself, because I
have been injured,” or “It is right that this man should be
punished, because he has committed a crime.” The third emotion is
already beyond our control, because it overrides reason, and wishes
to avenge itself, not if it be its duty, but whether or no. We are
not able by means of reason to escape from that first impression
on the mind, any more than we can escape from those things which
we have mentioned as occurring to the body: we cannot prevent other
people’s yawns temping us to yawn:[3] we cannot help winking when
fingers are suddenly darted at our eyes. Reason is unable to overcome
these habits, which perhaps might be weakened by practice and
constant watchfulness: they differ from an emotion which is brought
into existence and brought to an end by a deliberate mental act.

We must also enquire whether those whose cruelty knows no bounds,
and who delight in shedding human blood, are angry when they kill
people from whom they have received no injury, and who they themselves
do not think have done them any injury; such as were Apollodorus
or Phalaris. This is not anger, it is ferocity: for it does not do
hurt because it has received injury: but is even willing to receive
injury, provided it may do hurt. It does not long to inflict stripes
and mangle bodies to avenge its wrongs, but for its own pleasure.
What then are we to say? This evil takes its rise from anger; for
anger, after it has by long use and indulgence made a man forget
mercy, and driven all feelings of human fellowship from his mind,
passes finally into cruelty. Such men therefore laugh, rejoice,
enjoy themselves greatly, and are as unlike as possible in countenance
to angry men, since cruelty is their relaxation. It is said that
when Hannibal saw a trench full of human blood, he exclaimed, “O,
what a beauteous sight!” How much more beautiful would he have
thought it, if it had filled a river or a lake? Why should we wonder
that you should be charmed with this sight above all others, you
who were born in bloodshed and brought up amid slaughter from a
child? Fortune will follow you and favour your cruelty for twenty
years, and will display to you everywhere the sight that you love.
You will behold it both at Trasumene and at Cannae, and lastly at
your own city of Carthage. Volesus, who not long ago, under the
Emperor Augustus, was proconsul of Asia Minor, after he had one day
beheaded three hundred persons, strutted out among the corpses with
a haughty air, as though he had performed some grand and notable
exploit, and exclaimed in Greek, “What a kingly action!” What would
this man have done, had he been really a king? This was not anger,
but a greater and an incurable disease.

“Virtue,” argues our adversary, “ought to be angry with what
is base, just as she approves of what is honourable.” What should
we think if he said that virtue ought to be both mean and great;
yet this is what he means, when he wants her to be raised and
lowered, because joy at a good action is grand and glorious, while
anger at another’s sin is base and befits a narrow mind: and virtue
will never be guilty of imitating vice while she is repressing it;
she considers anger to deserve punishment for itself, since it often
is even more criminal than the faults which which it is angry. To
rejoice and be glad is the proper and natural function of virtue:
it is as much beneath her dignity to be angry, as to mourn: now,
sorrow is the companion of anger, and all anger ends in sorrow,
either from remorse or from failure. Secondly, if it be the part
of the wise man to be angry with sins, he will be more angry the
greater they are, and will often be angry: from which it follows
that the wise man will not only be angry but irascible. Yet
if we do not believe that great and frequent anger can find any
place in the wise man’s mind, why should we not set him altogether
free from this passion? for there can be no limit, if he ought to
be angry in proportion to what every man does: because he will
either be unjust if he is equally angry at unequal crimes, or he
will be the most irascible of men, if he blazes into wrath as often
as crimes deserve his anger.

What, too, can be more unworthy of the wise man, than that his
passions should depend upon the wickedness of others? If so, the
great Socrates will no longer be able to return home with the same
expression of countenance with which he set out. Moreover, if it
be the duty of the wise man to be angry at base deeds, and to be
excited and saddened at crimes, then is there nothing more unhappy
than the wise man, for all his life will be spent in anger and
grief. What moment will there be at which he will not see something
deserving of blame? whenever he leaves his house, he will be obliged
to walk among men who are criminals, misers, spendthrifts, profligates,
and who are happy in being so: he can turn his eyes in no direction
without their finding something to shock them. He will faint, if
he demands anger from himself as often as reason calls for it. All
these thousands who are hurrying to the law courts at break of day,
how base are their causes, and how much baser their advocates? One
impugns his father’s will, when he would have done better to deserve
it; another appears as the accuser of his mother; a third comes to
inform against a man for committing the very crime of which he
himself is yet more notoriously guilty. The judge, too, is chosen
to condemn men for doing what he himself has done, and the audience
takes the wrong side, led astray by the fine voice of the pleader.

Why need I dwell upon individual cases? Be assured, when you
see the Forum crowded with a multitude, the Saepta[4] swarming
with people, or the great Circus, in which the greater part of the
people find room to show themselves at once, that among them there
are as many vices as there are men. Among those whom you see in the
garb of peace there is no peace: for a small profit any one of them
will attempt the ruin of another: no one can gain anything save by
another’s loss. They hate the fortunate and despise the unfortunate:
they grudgingly endure the great, and oppress the small: they are
fired by divers lusts: they would wreck everything for the sake of
a little pleasure or plunder: they live as though they were in a
school of gladiators, fighting with the same people with whom they
live: it is like a society of wild beasts, save that beasts are
tame with one another, and refrain from biting their own species,
whereas men tear one another, and gorge themselves upon one another.
They differ from dumb animals in this alone, that the latter are
tame with those who feed them, whereas the rage of the former preys
on those very persons by whom they were brought up.

The wise man will never cease to be angry, if he once begins,
so full is every place of vices and crimes. More evil is done than
can be healed by punishment: men seem engaged in a vast race of
wickedness. Every day there is greater eagerness to sin, less
modesty. Throwing aside all reverence for what is better and more
just, lust rushes whithersoever it thinks fit, and crimes are no
longer committed by stealth, they take place before our eyes, and
wickedness has become so general and gained such a footing in
everyone’s breast that innocence is no longer rare, but no longer
exists. Do men break the law singly, or a few at a time? Nay, they
rise in all quarters at once, as though obeying some universal
signal, to wipe out the boundaries of right and wrong.

“Host is not safe from guest, Father-in-law from son; but seldom
love Exists ’twixt brothers; wives long to destroy Their husbands,
husbands long to slay their wives, Stepmothers deadly aconite
prepare And child-heirs wonder when their sires will die.”

And how small a part of men’s crimes are these! The poet[5] has not
described one people divided into two hostile camps, parents and
children enrolled on opposite sides, Rome set on fire by the hand
of a Roman, troops of fierce horsemen scouring the country to track
out the hiding-places of the proscribed, wells defiled with poison,
plagues created by human hands, trenches dug by children round their
beleaguered parents, crowded prisons, conflagrations that consume
whole cities, gloomy tyrannies, secret plots to establish despotisms
and ruin peoples, and men glorying in those deeds which, as long
as it was possible to repress them, were counted as crimes—I mean
rape, debauchery, and lust . . . . . Add to these, public acts of
national bad faith, broken treaties, everything that cannot defend
itself carried off as plunder by the stronger, knaveries, thefts,
frauds, and disownings of debt such as three of our present law-courts
would not suffice to deal with. If you want the wise man to be as
angry as the atrocity of men’s crimes requires, he must not merely
be angry, but must go mad with rage.

You will rather think that we should not be angry with people’s
faults; for what shall we say of one who is angry with those who
stumble in the dark, or with deaf people who cannot hear his orders,
or with children, because they forget their duty and interest
themselves in the games and silly jokes of their companions? What
shall we say if you choose to be angry with weaklings for being
sick, for growing old, or becoming fatigued? Among the other
misfortunes of humanity is this, that men’s intellects are confused,
and they not only cannot help going wrong, but love to go wrong.
To avoid being angry with individuals, you must pardon the whole
mass, you must grant forgiveness to the entire human race. If you
are angry with young and old men because they do wrong, you will
be angry with infants also, for they soon will do wrong. Does any
one become angry with children, who are too young to comprehend
distinctions? Yet, to be a human being is a greater and a better
excuse than to be a child. Thus are we born, as creatures liable
to as many disorders of the mind as of the body; not dull and
slow-witted, but making a bad use of our keenness of wit, and leading
one another into vice by our example. He who follows others who
have started before him on the wrong road is surely excusable for
having wandered on[6] the highway. A general’s severity may be shown
in the case of individual deserters; but where a whole army deserts,
it must needs be pardoned. What is it that puts a stop to the wise
man’s anger? It is the number of sinners. He perceives how unjust
and how dangerous it is to be angry with vices which all men share.
Heraclitcus, whenever he came out of doors and beheld around him
such a number of men who were living wretchedly, nay, rather perishing
wretchedly, used to weep: he pitied all those who met him joyous
and happy. He was of a gentle but too weak disposition: and he
himself was one of those for whom he ought to have wept. Democritus,
on the other hand, is said never to have appeared in public without
laughing; so little did men’s serious occupations appear serious
to him. What room is there for anger? Everything ought either to
move us to tears or to laughter. The wise man will not be angry
with sinners. Why not? Because he knows that no one is born
wise, but becomes so: he knows that very few wise men are produced
in any age, because he thoroughly understands the circumstances of
human life. Now, no sane man is angry with nature: for what should
we say if a man chose to be surprised that fruit did not hang on
the thickets of a forest, or to wonder at bushes and thorns not
being covered with some useful berry? No one is angry when nature
excuses a defect. The wise man, therefore, being tranquil, and
dealing candidly with mistakes, not an enemy to but an improver of
sinners, will go abroad every day in the following frame of mind:—”Many
men will meet me who are drunkards, lustful, ungrateful, greedy,
and excited by the frenzy of ambition.” He will view all these as
benignly as a physician does his patients. When a man’s ship leaks
freely through its opened seams, does he become angry with the
sailors or the ship itself? No; instead of that, he tries to remedy
it: he shuts out some water, bales out some other, closes all the
holes that he can see, and by ceaseless labour counteracts those
which are out of sight and which let water into the hold; nor does
he relax his efforts because as much water as he pumps out runs in
again. We need a long-breathed struggle against permanent and
prolific evils; not, indeed, to quell them, but merely to prevent
their overpowering us.

“Anger,” says our opponent, “is useful, because it avoids
contempt, and because it frightens bad men.” Now, in the first
place, if anger is strong in proportion to its threats, it is hateful
for the same reason that it is terrible: and it is more dangerous
to be hated than to be despised. If, again, it is without strength,
it is much more exposed to contempt, and cannot avoid ridicule; for
what is more flat than anger when it breaks out into meaningless
ravings? Moreover, because some things are somewhat terrible, they
are not on that account desirable: nor does wisdom wish it to
be said of the wise man, as it is of a wild beast, that the fear
which he inspires is as a weapon to him. Why, do we not fear fever,
gout, consuming ulcers? and is there, for that reason, any good in
them? nay; on the other hand, they are all despised and thought to
be foul and base, and are for this very reason feared. So, too,
anger is in itself hideous and by no means to be feared; yet it is
feared by many, just as a hideous mask is feared by children. How
can we answer the fact that terror always works back to him who
inspired it, and that no one is feared who is himself at peace? At
this point it is well that you should remember that verse of Laberius,
which, when pronounced in the theatre during the height of the civil
war, caught the fancy of the whole people as though it expressed
the national feeling:—

“He must fear many, whom so many fear.”

Thus has nature ordained, that whatever becomes great by causing
fear to others is not free from fear itself. How disturbed lions
are at the faintest noises! How excited those fiercest of beasts
become at strange shadows, voices, or smells! Whatever is a terror
to others, fears for itself. There can be no reason, therefore, for
any wise man to wish to be feared, and no one need think that anger
is anything great because it strikes terror, since even the most
despicable things are feared, as, for example, noxious vermin whose
bite is venomous: and since a string set with feathers stops the
largest herds of wild beasts and guides them into traps, it is no
wonder that from its effect it should be named a “Scarer.”[7] Foolish
creatures are frightened by foolish things: the movement of chariots
and the sight of their wheels turning round drives lions back into
their cage: elephants are frightened at the cries of pigs: and so
also we fear anger just as children fear the dark, or wild
beasts fear red feathers: it has in itself nothing solid or valiant,
but it affects feeble minds.

“Wickedness,” says our adversary, “must be removed from the
system of nature, if you wish to remove anger: neither of which
things can be done.” In the first place, it is possible for a man
not to be cold, although according to the system of nature it may
be winter-time, nor yet to suffer from heat, although it be summer
according to the almanac. He may be protected against the inclement
time of the year by dwelling in a favoured spot, or he may have so
trained his body to endurance that it feels neither heat nor cold.
Next, reverse this saying:—You must remove anger from your mind
before you can take virtue into the same, because vices and virtues
cannot combine, and none can at the same time be both an angry man
and a good man, any more than he can be both sick and well. “It is
not possible,” says he, “to remove anger altogether from the mind,
nor does human nature admit of it.” Yet there is nothing so hard
and difficult that the mind of man cannot overcome it, and with
which unremitting study will not render him familiar, nor are there
any passions so fierce and independent that they cannot be tamed
by discipline. The mind can carry out whatever orders it gives
itself: some have succeeded in never smiling: some have forbidden
themselves wine, sexual intercourse, or even drink of all kinds.
Some, who are satisfied with short hours of rest, have learned to
watch for long periods without weariness. Men have learned to run
upon the thinnest ropes even when slanting, to carry huge burdens,
scarcely within the compass of human strength, or to dive to enormous
depths and suffer themselves to remain under the sea without any
chance of drawing breath. There are a thousand other instances in
which application has conquered all obstacles, and proved that
nothing which the mind has set itself to endure is difficult. The
men whom I have just mentioned gain either no reward or one
that is unworthy of their unwearied application; for what great
thing does a man gain by applying his intellect to walking upon a
tight rope? or to placing great burdens upon his shoulders? or to
keeping sleep from his eyes? or to reaching the bottom of the sea?
and yet their patient labour brings all these things to pass for a
trifling reward. Shall not we then call in the aid of patience, we
whom such a prize awaits, the unbroken calm of a happy life? How
great a blessing is it to escape from anger, that chief of all
evils, and therewith from frenzy, ferocity, cruelty, and madness,
its attendants?

There is no reason why we should seek to defend such a passion
as this or excuse its excesses by declaring it to be either useful
or unavoidable. What vice, indeed, is without its defenders? yet
this is no reason why you should declare anger to be ineradicable.
The evils from which we suffer are curable, and since we were born
with a natural bias towards good, nature herself will help us if
we try to amend our lives. Nor is the path to virtue steep and
rough, as some think it to be: it may be reached on level ground.
This is no untrue tale which I come to tell you: the road to happiness
is easy; do you only enter upon it with good luck and the good help
of the gods themselves. It is much harder to do what you are doing.
What is more restful than a mind at peace, and what more toilsome
than anger? What is more at leisure than clemency, what fuller of
business than cruelty? Modesty keeps holiday while vice is overwhelmed
with work. In fine, the culture of any of the virtues is easy, while
vices require a great expense. Anger ought to be removed from our
minds: even those who say that it ought to be kept low admit this
to some extent: let it be got rid of altogether; there is nothing
to be gained by it. Without it we can more easily and more justly
put an end to crime, punish bad men, and amend their lives.
The wise man will do his duty in all things without the help of any
evil passion, and will use no auxiliaries which require watching
narrowly lest they get beyond his control.

Anger, then, must never become a habit with us, but we may
sometimes affect to be angry when we wish to rouse up the dull minds
of those whom we address, just as we rouse up horses who are slow
at starting with goads and firebrands. We must sometimes apply fear
to persons upon whom reason makes no impression: yet to be angry
is of no more use than to grieve or to be afraid. “What? do not
circumstances arise which provoke us to anger?” Yes: but at those
times above all others we ought to choke down our wrath. Nor is it
difficult to conquer our spirit, seeing that athletes, who devote
their whole attention to the basest parts of themselves, nevertheless
are able to endure blows and pain, in order to exhaust the strength
of the striker, and do not strike when anger bids them, but when
opportunity invites them. It is said that Pyrrhus, the most celebrated
trainer for gymnastic contests, used habitually to impress upon his
pupils not to lose their tempers: for anger spoils their science,
and thinks only how it can hurt: so that often reason counsels
patience while anger counsels revenge, and we, who might have
survived our first misfortunes, are exposed to worse ones. Some
have been driven into exile by their impatience of a single
contemptuous word, have been plunged into the deepest miseries
because they would not endure the most trifling wrong in silence,
and have brought upon themselves the yoke of slavery because they
were too proud to give up the least part of their entire liberty.

“That you may be sure,” says our opponent, “that anger has in
it something noble, pray look at the free nations, such as the
Germans and Scythians, who are especially prone to anger.” The
reason of this is that stout and daring intellects are liable
to anger before they are tamed by discipline; for some passions
engraft themselves upon the better class of dispositions only, just
as good land, even when waste, grows strong brushwood, and the trees
are tall which stand upon a fertile soil. In like manner, dispositions
which are naturally bold produce irritability, and, being hot and
fiery, have no mean or trivial qualities, but their energy is
misdirected, as happens with all those who without training come
to the front by their natural advantages alone, whose minds, unless
they be brought under control, degenerate from a courageous temper
into habits of rashness and reckless daring. “What? are not milder
spirits linked with gentler vices, such as tenderness of heart,
love, and bashfulness?” Yes, and therefore I can often point out
to you a good disposition by its own faults: yet their being the
proofs of a superior nature does not prevent their being vices.
Moreover, all those nations which are free because they are wild,
like lions or wolves, cannot command any more than they can obey:
for the strength of their intellect is not civilized, but fierce
and unmanageable: now, no one is able to rule unless he is also
able to be ruled. Consequently, the empire of the world has almost
always remained in the hands of those nations who enjoy a milder
climate. Those who dwell near the frozen north have uncivilized
tempers—

“Just on the model of their native skies,”

as the poet has it.

Those animals, urges our opponent, are held to be the most
generous who have large capacity for anger. He is mistaken when he
holds up creatures who act from impulse instead of reason as patterns
for men to follow, because in man reason takes the place of impulse.
Yet even with animals, all do not alike profit by the same thing.
Anger is of use to lions, timidity to stags, boldness to hawks,
flight to doves. What if I declare that it is not even true that
the best animals are the most prone to anger? I may suppose that
wild beasts, who gain their food by rapine, are better the angrier
they are; but I should praise oxen and horses who obey the rein for
their patience. What reason, however, have you for referring mankind
to such wretched models, when you have the universe and God, whom
he alone of animals imitates because he alone comprehends Him? “The
most irritable men,” says he, “are thought to be the most straightforward
of all.” Yes, because they are compared with swindlers and sharpers,
and appear to be simple because they are outspoken. I should not
call such men simple, but heedless. We give this title of “simple”
to all fools, gluttons, spendthrifts, and men whose vices lie on
the surface.

“An orator,” says our opponent, “sometimes speaks better,
when he is angry.” Not so, but when he pretends to be angry: for
so also actors bring down the house by their playing, not when they
are really angry, but when they act the angry man well: and in like
manner, in addressing a jury or a popular assembly, or in any other
position in which the minds of others have to be influenced at our
pleasure, we must ourselves pretend to feel anger, fear, or pity
before we can make others feel them, and often the pretence of
passion will do what the passion itself could not have done. “The
mind which does not feel anger,” says he, “is feeble.” True, if it
has nothing stronger than anger to support it. A man ought to be
neither robber nor victim, neither tender-hearted nor cruel. The
former belongs to an over-weak mind, the latter to an over-hard
one. Let the wise man be moderate, and when things have to be done
somewhat briskly, let him call force, not anger, to his aid.

Now that we have discussed the questions propounded concerning
anger, let us pass on to the consideration of its remedies.
These, I imagine, are two-fold: the one class preventing our becoming
angry, the other preventing our doing wrong when we are angry. As
with the body we adopt a certain regimen to keep ourselves in health,
and use different rules to bring back health when lost, so likewise
we must repel anger in one fashion and quench it in another. That
we may avoid it, certain general rules of conduct which apply to
all men’s lives must be impressed upon us. We may divide these into
such as are of use during the education of the young and in after-life.

Education ought to be carried on with the greatest and most salutary
assiduity: for it is easy to mould minds while they are still tender,
but it is difficult to uproot vices which have grown up with
ourselves.

A hot mind is naturally the most prone to anger: for as there
are four elements,[8] consisting of fire, air, earth, and water,
so there are powers corresponding and equivalent to each of these,
namely, hot, cold, dry, and moist. Now the mixture of the elements
is the cause of the diversities of lands and of animals, of bodies
and of character, and our dispositions incline to one or the other
of these according as the strength of each element prevails in us.
Hence it is that we call some regions wet or dry, warm or cold. The
same distinctions apply likewise to animals and mankind; it makes
a great difference how much moisture or heat a man contains; his
character will partake of whichever element has the largest share
in him. A warm temper of mind will make men prone to anger; for
fire is full of movement and vigour; a mixture of coldness
makes men cowards, for cold is sluggish and contracted. Because of
this, some of our Stoics think that anger is excited in our breasts
by the boiling of the blood round the heart: indeed, that place is
assigned to anger for no other reason than because the breast is
the warmest part of the whole body. Those who have more moisture
in them become angry by slow degrees, because they have no heat
ready at hand, but it has to be obtained by movement; wherefore the
anger of women and children is sharp rather than strong, and arises
on lighter provocation. At dry times of life anger is violent and
powerful, yet without increase, and adding little to itself, because
as heat dies away cold takes its place. Old men are testy and full
of complaints, as also are sick people and convalescents, and all
whose store of heat has been consumed by weariness or loss of blood.
Those who are wasted by thirst or hunger are in the same condition,
as also are those whose frame is naturally bloodless and faints
from want of generous diet. Wine kindles anger, because it increases
heat; according to each man’s disposition, some fly into a passion
when they are heavily drunk, some when they are slightly drunk: nor
is there any other reason than this why yellow-haired, ruddy-complexioned
people should be excessively passionate, seeing that they are
naturally of the colour which others put on during anger; for their
blood is hot and easily set in motion.

But just as nature makes some men prone to anger, so there are
many other causes which have the same power as nature. Some are
brought into this condition by disease or bodily injury, others by
hard work, long watching, nights of anxiety, ardent longings, and
love: and everything else which is hurtful to the body or the spirit
inclines the distempered mind to find fault. All these, however,
are but the beginning and causes of anger. Habit of mind has very
great power, and, if it be harsh, increases the disorder. As
for nature, it is difficult to alter it, nor may we change the
mixture of the elements which was formed once for all at our birth:
yet knowledge will be so far of service, that we should keep wine
out of the reach of hot-tempered men, which Plato thinks ought also
to be forbidden to boys, so that fire be not made fiercer. Neither
should such men be over-fed: for if so, their bodies will swell,
and their minds will swell with them. Such men ought to take exercise,
stopping short, however, of fatigue, in order that their natural
heat may be abated, but not exhausted, and their excess of fiery
spirit may be worked off. Games also will be useful: for moderate
pleasure relieves the mind and brings it to a proper balance. With
those temperaments which incline to moisture, or dryness and
stiffness, there is no danger of anger, but there is fear of greater
vices, such as cowardice, moroseness, despair, and suspiciousness:
such dispositions therefore ought to be softened, comforted, and
restored to cheerfulness: and since we must make use of different
remedies for anger and for sullenness, and these two vices require
not only unlike, but absolutely opposite modes of treatment, let
us always attack that one of them which is gaining the mastery.

It is, I assure you, of the greatest service to boys that they
should be soundly brought up, yet to regulate their education is
difficult, because it is our duty to be careful neither to cherish
a habit of anger in them, nor to blunt the edge of their spirit.
This needs careful watching, for both qualities, both those which
are to be encouraged, and those which are to be checked, are fed
by the same things; and even a careful watcher may be deceived by
their likeness. A boy’s spirit is increased by freedom and depressed
by slavery: it rises when praised, and is led to conceive great
expectations of itself: yet this same treatment produces arrogance
and quickness of temper: we must therefore guide him between
these two extremes, using the curb at one time and the spur at
another. He must undergo no servile or degrading treatment; he never
must beg abjectly for anything, nor must he gain anything by begging;
let him rather receive it for his own sake, for his past good
behaviour, or for his promises of future good conduct. In contests
with his comrades we ought not to allow him to become sulky or fly
into a passion: let us see that he be on friendly terms with those
whom he contends with, so that in the struggle itself he may learn
to wish not to hurt his antagonist but to conquer him: whenever he
has gained the day or done something praiseworthy, we should allow
him to enjoy his victory, but not to rush into transports of delight:
for joy leads to exultation, and exultation leads to swaggering and
excessive self-esteem, We ought to allow him some relaxation, yet
not yield him up to laziness and sloth, and we ought to keep him
far beyond the reach of luxury, for nothing makes children more
prone to anger than a soft and fond bringing-up, so that the more
only children are indulged, and the more liberty is given to orphans,
the more they are corrupted. He to whom nothing is ever denied,
will not be able to endure a rebuff, whose anxious mother always
wipes away his tears, whose _paedagogus_[9] is made to pay for his
shortcomings. Do you not observe how a man’s anger becomes more
violent as he rises in station? This shows itself especially in
those who are rich and noble, or in great place, when the favouring
gale has roused all the most empty and trivial passions of their
minds. Prosperity fosters anger, when a man’s proud ears are
surrounded by a mob of flatterers, saying, “That man answer you!
you do not act according to your dignity, you lower yourself.” And
so forth, with all the language which can hardly be resisted even
by healthy and originally well-principled minds. Flattery,
then, must be kept well out of the way of children. Let a child
hear the truth, and sometimes fear it: let him always reverence it.
Let him rise in the presence of his elders. Let him obtain nothing
by flying into a passion: let him be given when he is quiet what
was refused him when he cried for it: let him behold, but not make
use of his father’s wealth: let him be reproved for what he does
wrong. It will be advantageous to furnish boys with even-tempered
teachers and _paedagogi_: what is soft and unformed clings to what
is near, and takes its shape: the habits of young men reproduce
those of their nurses and _paedagogi_. Once, a boy who was brought
up in Plato’s house went home to his parents, and, on seeing his
father shouting with passion, said, “I never saw any one at Plato’s
house act like that.” I doubt not that he learned to imitate his
father sooner than he learned to imitate Plato. Above all, let his
food be scanty, his dress not costly, and of the same fashion as
that of his comrades: if you begin by putting him on a level with
many others, he will not be angry when some one is compared with
him.

These precepts, however, apply to our children: in ourselves
the accident of birth and our education no longer admits of either
mistakes or advice; we must deal with what follows. Now we ought
to fight against the first causes of evil: the cause of anger is
the belief that we are injured; this belief, therefore, should not
be lightly entertained. We ought not to fly into a rage even when
the injury appears to be open and distinct: for some false things
bear the semblance of truth. We should always allow some time to
elapse, for time discloses the truth. Let not our ears be easily
lent to calumnious talk: let us know and be on our guard against
this fault of human nature, that we are willing to believe what we
are unwilling to listen to, and that we become angry before we have
formed our opinion. What shall I say? we are influenced not
merely by calumnies but by suspicions, and at the very look and
smile of others we may fly into a rage with innocent persons because
we put the worst construction upon it. We ought, therefore, to plead
the cause of the absent against ourselves, and to keep our anger
in abeyance: for a punishment which has been postponed may yet be
inflicted, but when once inflicted cannot be recalled.

Every one knows the story of the tyrannicide who, being
caught before he had accomplished his task, and being tortured by
Hippias to make him betray his accomplices, named the friends of
the tyrant who stood around, and every one to whom he knew the
tyrant’s safety was especially dear. As the tyrant ordered each man
to be slain as he was named, at last the man, being asked if any
one else remained, said, “You remain alone, for I have left no one
else alive to whom you are dear.” Anger had made the tyrant lend
his assistance to the tyrant-slayer, and cut down his guards with
his own sword. How far more spirited was Alexander, who after reading
his mother’s letter warning him to beware of poison from his physician
Philip, nevertheless drank undismayed the medicine which Philip
gave him! He felt more confidence in his friend: he deserved that
his friend should be innocent, and deserved that his conduct should
make him innocent. I praise Alexander’s doing this all the more
because he was above all men prone to anger; but the rarer moderation
is among kings, the more it deserves to be praised. The great Gaius
Caesar, who proved such a merciful conqueror in the civil war, did
the same thing; he burned a packet of letters addressed to Gnaeus
Pompeius by persons who had been thought to be either neutrals or
on the other side. Though he was never violent in his anger, yet
he preferred to put it out of his power to be angry: he thought
that the kindest way to pardon each of them was not to know what
his offence had been.

Readiness to believe what we hear causes very great mischief;
we ought often not even to listen, because in some cases it is
better to be deceived than to suspect deceit. We ought to free our
minds of suspicion and mistrust, those most untrustworthy causes
of anger. “This man’s greeting was far from civil; that one would
not receive my kiss; one cut short a story I had begun to tell;
another did not ask me to dinner; another seemed to view me with
aversion.” Suspicion will never lack grounds: what we want is
straightforwardness, and a kindly interpretation of things. Let us
believe nothing unless it forces itself upon our sight and is
unmistakable, and let us reprove ourselves for being too ready to
believe, as often as our suspicions prove to be groundless: for
this discipline will render us habitually slow to believe what we
hear.

Another consequence of this will be, that we shall not be
exasperated by the slightest and most contemptible trifles. It is
mere madness to be put out of temper because a slave is not quick,
because the water we are going to drink is lukewarm, or because our
couch is disarranged or our table carelessly laid. A man must be
in a miserably bad state of health if he shrinks from a gentle
breath of wind; his eyes must be diseased if they are distressed
by the sight of white clothing; he must be broken down with debauchery
if he feels pain at seeing another man work. It is said that there
was one Mindyrides, a citizen of Sybaris, who one day seeing a man
digging and vigorously brandishing a mattock, complained that the
sight made him weary, and forbade the man to work where he could
see him. The same man complained that he had suffered from the
rose-leaves upon which he lay being folded double. When pleasures
have corrupted both the body and the mind, nothing seems endurable,
not indeed because it is hard, but because he who has to bear it
is soft: for why should we be driven to frenzy by any one’s
coughing and sneezing, or by a fly not being driven away with
sufficient care, or by a dog’s hanging about us, or a key dropping
from a careless servant’s hand? Will one whose ears are agonised
by the noise of a bench being dragged along the floor be able to
endure with unruffled mind the rude language of party strife, and
the abuse which speakers in the forum or the senate house heap upon
their opponents? Will he who is angry with his slave for icing his
drink badly, be able to endure hunger, or the thirst of a long march
in summer? Nothing, therefore, nourishes anger more than excessive
and dissatisfied luxury: the mind ought to be hardened by rough
treatment, so as not to feel any blow that is not severe.

We are angry, either with those who can, or with those who
cannot do us an injury. To the latter class belong some inanimate
things, such as a book, which we often throw away when it is written
in letters too small for us to read, or tear up when it is full of
mistakes, or clothes which we destroy because we do not like them.
How foolish to be angry with such things as these, which neither
deserve nor feel our anger! “But of course it is their makers who
really affront us.” I answer that, in the first place, we often
become angry before making this distinction clear in our minds, and
secondly, perhaps even the makers might put forward some reasonable
excuses: one of them, it may be, could not make them any better
than he did, and it is not through any disrespect to you that he
was unskilled in his trade: another may have done his work so without
any intention of insulting you: and, finally, what can be more crazy
than to discharge upon things the ill-feeling which one has accumulated
against persons? Yet as it is the act of a madman to be angry with
inanimate objects, so also is it to be angry with dumb animals,
which can do us no wrong because they are not able to form a
purpose; and we cannot call anything a wrong unless it be done
intentionally. They are, therefore, able to hurt us, just as a sword
or a stone may do so, but they are not able to do us a wrong. Yet
some men think themselves insulted when the same horses which are
docile with one rider are restive with another, as though it were
through their deliberate choice, and not through habit and cleverness
of handling that some horses are more easily managed by some men
than by others. And as it is foolish to be angry with them, so it
is to be angry with children, and with men who have little more
sense than children: for all these sins, before a just judge,
ignorance would be as effective an excuse as innocence.

There are some things which are unable to hurt us, and whose
power is exclusively beneficial and salutary, as, for example, the
immortal gods, who neither wish nor are able to do harm: for their
temperament is naturally gentle and tranquil, and no more likely
to wrong others than to wrong themselves. Foolish people who know
not the truth hold them answerable for storms at sea, excessive
rain, and long winters, whereas all the while these phenomena by
which we suffer or profit take place without any reference whatever
to us: it is not for our sake that the universe causes summer and
winter to succeed one another; these have a law of their own,
according to which their divine functions are performed. We think
too much of ourselves, when we imagine that we are worthy to have
such prodigious revolutions effected for our sake: so, then, none
of these things take place in order to do us an injury, nay, on the
contrary, they all tend to our benefit. I have said that there are
some things which cannot hurt us, and some which would not. To the
latter class belong good men in authority, good parents, teachers,
and judges whose punishments ought to be submitted to by us in the
same spirit in which we undergo the surgeon’s knife, abstinence
from food, and such like things which hurt us for our benefit.
Suppose that we are being punished; let us think not only of what
we suffer, but of what we have done: let us sit in judgement on our
past life. Provided we are willing to tell ourselves the truth, we
shall certainly decide that our crimes deserve a harder measure
than they have received.

If we desire to be impartial judges of all that takes place,
we must first convince ourselves of this, that no one of us is
faultless: for it is from this that most of our indignation proceeds.
“I have not sinned, I have done no wrong.” Say, rather, you do not
admit that you have done any wrong. We are infuriated at being
reproved, either by reprimand or actual chastisement, although we
are sinning at that very time, by adding insolence and obstinacy
to our wrong-doings. Who is there that can declare himself to have
broken no laws? Even if there be such a man, what a stinted innocence
it is, merely to be innocent by the letter of the law. How much
further do the rules of duty extend than those of the law! how many
things which are not to be found in the statute book, are demanded
by filial feeling, kindness, generosity, equity, and honour? Yet
we are not able to warrant ourselves even to come under that first
narrowest definition of innocence: we have done what was wrong,
thought what was wrong, wished for what was wrong, and encouraged
what was wrong: in some cases we have only remained innocent because
we did not succeed. When we think of this, let us deal more justly
with sinners, and believe that those who scold us are right: in any
case let us not be angry with ourselves (for with whom shall we not
be angry, if we are angry even with our own selves?), and least of
all with the gods: for whatever we suffer befalls us not by any
ordinance of theirs but of the common law of all flesh. “But diseases
and pains attack us.” Well, people who live in a crazy dwelling
must have some way of escape from it. Some one will be said to have
spoken ill of you: think whether you did not first speak ill of
him: think of how many persons you have yourself spoken ill. Let
us not, I say, suppose that others are doing us a wrong, but are
repaying one which we have done them, that some are acting with
good intentions, some under compulsion, some in ignorance, and let
us believe that even he who does so intentionally and knowingly did
not wrong us merely for the sake of wronging us, but was led into
doing so by the attraction of saying something witty, or did whatever
he did, not out of any spite against us, but because he himself
could not succeed unless he pushed us back. We are often offended
by flattery even while it is being lavished upon us: yet whoever
recalls to his mind how often he himself has been the victim of
undeserved suspicion, how often fortune has given his true service
an appearance of wrong-doing, how many persons he has begun by
hating and ended by loving, will be able to keep himself from
becoming angry straightway, especially if he silently says to himself
when each offence is committed: “I have done this very thing myself.”
Where, however, will you find so impartial a judge? The same man
who lusts after everyone’s wife, and thinks that a woman’s belonging
to someone else is a sufficient reason for adoring her, will not
allow any one else to look at his own wife. No man expects such
exact fidelity as a traitor: the perjurer himself takes vengeance
of him who breaks his word: the pettifogging lawyer is most indignant
at an action being brought against him: the man who is reckless of
his own chastity cannot endure any attempt upon that of his slaves.
We have other men’s vices before our eyes, and our own behind our
backs: hence it is that a father, who is worse than his son, blames
the latter for giving extravagant feasts,[10] and disapproves of
the least sign of luxury in another, although he was wont to
set no bounds to it in his own case; hence it is that despots are
angry with homicides, and thefts are punished by those who despoil
temples. A great part of mankind is not angry with sins, but with
sinners. Regard to our own selves[11] will make us more moderate,
if we inquire of ourselves:—have we ever committed any crime of
this sort? have we ever fallen into this kind of error? is it for
our interest that we should condemn this conduct?

The greatest remedy for anger is delay: beg anger to grant
you this at the first, not in order that it may pardon the offence,
but that it may form a right judgment about it: if it delays, it
will come to an end. Do not attempt to quell it all at once, for
its first impulses are fierce; by plucking away its parts we shall
remove the whole. We are made angry by some things which we learn
at second-hand, and by some which we ourselves hear or see. Now,
we ought to be slow to believe what is told us. Many tell lies in
order to deceive us, and many because they are themselves deceived.
Some seek to win our favour by false accusations, and invent wrongs
in order that they may appear angry at our having suffered them.
One man lies out of spite, that he may set trusting friends at
variance; some because they are suspicious,[12] and wish to see
sport, and watch from a safe distance those whom they have set by
the ears. If you were about to give sentence in court about ever
so small a sum of money, you would take nothing as proved without
a witness, and a witness would count for nothing except on his oath.
You would allow both sides to be heard: you would allow them time:
you would not despatch the matter at one sitting, because the oftener
it is handled the more distinctly the truth appears. And do you
condemn your friend off-hand? Are you angry with him before
you hear his story, before you have cross-examined him, before he
can know either who is his accuser or with what he is charged. Why
then, just now, in the case which you just tried, did you hear what
was said on both sides? This very man who has informed against your
friend, will say no more if he be obliged to prove what he says.
“You need not,” says he, “bring me forward as a witness; if I am
brought forward I shall deny what I have said; unless you excuse
me from appearing I shall never tell you anything.” At the same
time he spurs you on and withdraws himself from the strife and
battle. The man who will tell you nothing save in secret hardly
tells you anything at all. What can be more unjust than to believe
in secret, and to be angry openly?

Some offences we ourselves witness: in these cases let us
examine the disposition and purpose of the offender. Perhaps he is
a child; let us pardon his youth, he knows not whether he is doing
wrong: or he is a father; he has either rendered such great services,
as to have won the right even to wrong us—or perhaps this very act
which offends us is his chief merit: or a woman; well, she made a
mistake. The man did it because he was ordered to do it. Who but
an unjust person can be angry with what is done under compulsion?
You had hurt him: well, there is no wrong in suffering the pain
which you have been the first to inflict. Suppose that your opponent
is a judge; then you ought to take his opinion rather than your
own: or that he is a king; then, if he punishes the guilty, yield
to him because he is just, and if he punishes the innocent, yield
to him because he is powerful. Suppose that it is a dumb animal or
as stupid as a dumb animal: then, if you are angry with it, you
will make yourself like it. Suppose that it is a disease or a
misfortune; it will take less effect upon you if you bear it quietly:
or that it is a god; then you waste your time by being angry with
him as much as if you prayed him to be angry with some one
else. Is it a good man who has wronged you? do not believe it: is
it a bad one? do not be surprised at this; he will pay to some one
else the penalty which he owes to you—indeed, by his sin he has
already punished himself.

There are, as I have stated, two cases which produce anger:
first, when we appear to have received an injury, about which enough
has been said, and, secondly, when we appear to have been treated
unjustly: this must now be discussed. Men think some things unjust
because they ought not to suffer them, and some because they did
not expect to suffer them: we think what is unexpected is beneath
our deserts. Consequently, we are especially excited at what befalls
us contrary to our hope and expectation: and this is why we are
irritated at the smallest trifles in our own domestic affairs, and
why we call our friends’ carelessness deliberate injury. How is it,
then, asks our opponent, that we are angered by the injuries inflicted
by our enemies? It is because we did not expect those particular
injuries, or, at any rate, not on so extensive a scale. This is
caused by our excessive self-love: we think that we ought to remain
uninjured even by our enemies: every man bears within his breast
the mind of a despot, and is willing to commit excesses, but unwilling
to submit to them. Thus it is either ignorance or arrogance that
makes us angry: ignorance of common facts; for what is there to
wonder at in bad men committing evil deeds? what novelty is there
in your enemy hurting you, your friend quarrelling with you, your
son going wrong, or your servant doing amiss? Fabius was wont to
say that the most shameful excuse a general could make was “I did
not think.” I think it the most shameful excuse that a man can make.
Think of everything, expect everything: even with men of good
character something queer will crop up; human nature produces minds
that are treacherous, ungrateful, greedy, and impious: when you are
considering what any man’s morals may be, think what those
of mankind are. When you are especially enjoying yourself, be
especially on your guard: when everything seems to you to be peaceful,
be sure that mischief is not absent, but only asleep. Always believe
that something will occur to offend you. A pilot never spreads all
his canvas abroad so confidently as not to keep his tackle for
shortening sail ready for use. Think, above all, how base and hateful
is the power of doing mischief, and how unnatural in man, by whose
kindness even fierce animals are rendered tame. See how bulls yield
their necks to the yoke, how elephants[13] allow boys and women to
dance on their backs unhurt, how snakes glide harmlessly over our
bosoms and among our drinking-cups, how within their dens bears and
lions submit to be handled with complacent mouths, and wild beasts
fawn upon their master: let us blush to have exchanged habits with
wild beasts. It is a crime to injure one’s country: so it is,
therefore, to injure any of our countrymen, for he is a part of our
country; if the whole be sacred, the parts must be sacred too.
Therefore it is also a crime to injure any man: for he is your
fellow-citizen in a larger state. What, if the hands were to wish
to hurt the feet? or the eyes to hurt the hands? As all the limbs
act in unison, because it is the interest of the whole body to keep
each one of them safe, so men should spare one another, because
they are born for society. The bond of society, however, cannot
exist unless it guards and loves all its members. We should not
even destroy vipers and water-snakes and other creatures whose teeth
and claws are dangerous, if we were able to tame them as we do other
animals, or to prevent their being a peril to us: neither ought we,
therefore, to hurt a man because he has done wrong, but lest he
should do wrong, and our punishment should always look to the future,
and never to the past, because it is inflicted in a spirit of
precaution, not of anger: for if everyone who has a crooked
and vicious disposition were to be punished, no one would escape
punishment.

“But anger possesses a certain pleasure of its own, and it
is sweet to pay back the pain you have suffered.” Not at all; it
is not honourable to requite injuries by injuries, in the same way
as it is to repay benefits by benefits. In the latter case it is a
shame to be conquered; in the former it is a shame to conquer.
Revenge and retaliation are words which men use and even think to
be righteous, yet they do not greatly differ from wrong-doing,
except in the order in which they are done: he who renders pain for
pain has more excuse for his sin; that is all. Some one who did not
know Marcus Cato struck him in the public bath in his ignorance,
for who would knowingly have done him an injury? Afterwards when
he was apologizing, Cato replied, “I do not remember being struck.”
He thought it better to ignore the insult than to revenge it. You
ask, “Did no harm befall that man for his insolence?” No, but rather
much good; he made the acquaintance of Cato. It is the part of a
great mind to despise wrongs done to it; the most contemptuous form
of revenge is not to deem one’s adversary worth taking vengeance
upon. Many have taken small injuries much more seriously to heart
than they need, by revenging them: that man is great and noble who
like a large wild animal hears unmoved the tiny curs that bark at
him.

“We are treated,” says our opponent, “with more respect if
we revenge our injuries.” If we make use of revenge merely as a
remedy, let us use it without anger, and not regard revenge as
pleasant, but as useful: yet often it is better to pretend not to
have received an injury than to avenge it. The wrongs of the powerful
must not only be borne, but borne with a cheerful countenance: they
will repeat the wrong if they think they have inflicted it. This
is the worst trait of minds rendered arrogant by prosperity,
they hate those whom they have injured. Every one knows the saying
of the old courtier, who, when some one asked him how he had achieved
the rare distinction of living at court till he reached old age,
replied, “By receiving wrongs and returning thanks for them.” It
is often so far from expedient to avenge our wrongs, that it will
not do even to admit them. Gaius Caesar, offended at the smart
clothes and well-dressed hair of the son of Pastor, a distinguished
Roman knight, sent him to prison. When the father begged that his
son might suffer no harm, Caius, as if reminded by this to put him
to death, ordered him to be executed, yet, in order to mitigate his
brutality to the father, invited him that very day to dinner. Pastor
came with a countenance which betrayed no illwill. Caesar pledged
him in a glass of wine, and set a man to watch him. The wretched
creature went through his part, feeling as though he were drinking
his son’s blood: the emperor sent him some perfume and a garland,
and gave orders to watch whether he used them: he did so. On the
very day on which he had buried, nay, on which he had not even
buried his son, he sat down as one of a hundred guests, and, old
and gouty as he was, drank to an extent which would have been hardly
decent on a child’s birthday; he shed no tear the while; he did not
permit his grief to betray itself by the slightest sign; he dined
just as though his entreaties had gained his son’s life. You ask
me why he did so? he had another son. What did Priam do in the
Iliad? Did he not conceal his wrath and embrace the knees of Achilles?
did he not raise to his lips that death-dealing hand, stained with
the blood of his son, and sup with his slayer? True! but there were
no perfumes and garlands, and his fierce enemy encouraged him with
many soothing words to eat, not to drain huge goblets with a guard
standing over him to see that he did it. Had he only feared for
himself, the father would have treated the tyrant with scorn:
but love for his son quenched his anger: he deserved the emperor’s
permission to leave the banquet and gather up the bones of his son:
but, meanwhile, that kindly and polite youth the emperor would not
even permit him to do this, but tormented the old man with frequent
invitations to drink, advising him thereby to lighten his sorrows.
He, on the other hand, appeared to be in good spirits, and to have
forgotten what had been done that day: he would have lost his second
son had he proved an unacceptable guest to the murderer of his
eldest.

We must, therefore, refrain from anger, whether he who
provokes us be on a level with ourselves, or above us, or below us.
A contest with one’s equal is of uncertain issue, with one’s superior
is folly, and with one’s inferior is contemptible. It is the part
of a mean and wretched man to turn and bite one’s biter: even mice
and ants show their teeth if you put your hand to them, and all
feeble creatures think that they are hurt if they are touched. It
will make us milder tempered to call to mind any services which he
with whom we are angry may have done us, and to let his deserts
balance his offence. Let us also reflect, how much credit the tale
of our forgiveness will confer upon us, how many men may be made
into valuable friends by forgiveness. One of the lessons which
Sulla’s cruelty teaches us is not to be angry with the children of
our enemies, whether they be public or private; for he drove the
sons of the proscribed into exile. Nothing is more unjust than that
any one should inherit the quarrels of his father. Whenever we are
loth to pardon any one, let us think whether it would be to our
advantage that all men should be inexorable. He who refuses to
pardon, how often has he begged it for himself? how often has he
grovelled at the feet of those whom he spurns from his own? How can
we gain more glory than by turning anger into friendship?
what more faithful allies has the Roman people than those who have
been its most unyielding enemies? where would the empire be to-day,
had not a wise foresight united the conquered and the conquerors?
If any one is angry with you, meet his anger by returning benefits
for it: a quarrel which is only taken up on one side falls to the
ground: it takes two men to fight. But[14] suppose that there is
an angry struggle on both sides, even then, he is the better man
who first gives way; the winner is the real loser. He struck you;
well then, do you fall back: if you strike him in turn you will
give him both an opportunity and an excuse for striking you again:
you will not be able to withdraw yourself from the struggle when
you please.

Does any one wish to strike his enemy so hard, as to leave
his own hand in the wound, and not to be able to recover his balance
after the blow? yet such a weapon is anger: it is scarcely possible
to draw it back. We are careful to choose for ourselves light
weapons, handy and manageable swords: shall we not avoid these
clumsy, unwieldy,[15] and never-to-be-recalled impulses of the mind?
The only swiftness of which men approve is that which, when bidden,
checks itself and proceeds no further, and which can be guided, and
reduced from a run to a walk: we know that the sinews are diseased
when they move against our will. A man must be either aged or weakly
who runs when he wants to walk: let us think that those are the
most powerful and the soundest operations of our minds, which act
under our own control, not at their own caprice. Nothing, however,
will be of so much service as to consider, first, the hideousness,
and, secondly, the danger of anger. No passion bears a more troubled
aspect: it befouls the fairest face, makes fierce the expression
which before was peaceful. From the angry “all grace has fled;”
though their clothing may be fashionable, they will trail it
on the ground and take no heed of their appearance; though their
hair be smoothed down in a comely manner by nature or art, yet it
will bristle up in sympathy with their mind. The veins become
swollen, the breast will be shaken by quick breathing, the man’s
neck will be swelled as he roars forth his frantic talk: then, too,
his limbs will tremble, his hands will be restless, his whole body
will sway hither and thither. What, think you, must be the state
of his mind within him, when its appearance without is so shocking?
how far more dreadful a countenance he bears within his own breast,
how far keener pride, how much more violent rage, which will burst
him unless it finds some vent? Let us paint anger looking like those
who are dripping with the blood of foemen or savage beasts, or those
who are just about to slaughter them—like those monsters of the
nether world fabled by the poet to be girt with serpents and breathing
flame, when they sally forth from hell, most frightful to behold,
in order that they may kindle wars, stir up strife between nations,
and overthrow peace; let us paint her eyes glowing with fire, her
voice hissing, roaring, grating, and making worse sounds if worse
there be, while she brandishes weapons in both hands, for she cares
not to protect herself, gloomy, stained with blood, covered with
scars and livid with her own blows, reeling like a maniac, wrapped
in a thick cloud, dashing hither and thither, spreading desolation
and panic, loathed by every one and by herself above all, willing,
if otherwise she cannot hurt her foe, to overthrow alike earth,
sea, and heaven, harmful and hateful at the same time. Or, if we
are to see her, let her be such as our poets have described her—

“There with her blood-stained scourge Bellona fights. And Discord in her riven robe delights,”[16]

or, if possible, let some even more dreadful aspect be invented for this dreadful passion.

Some angry people, as Sextius remarks, have been benefited
by looking at the glass: they have been struck by so great an
alteration in their own appearance: they have been, as it were,
brought into their own presence and have not recognized themselves:
yet how small a part of the real hideousness of anger did that
reflected image in the mirror reproduce? Could the mind be displayed
or made to appear through any substance, we should be confounded
when we beheld how black and stained, how agitated, distorted, and
swollen it looked: even at present it is very ugly when seen through
all the screens of blood, bones, and so forth: what would it be,
were it displayed uncovered? You say, that you do not believe that
any one was ever scared out of anger by a mirror: and why not?
Because when he came to the mirror to change his mind, he had changed
it already: to angry men no face looks fairer than one that is
fierce and savage and such as they wish to look like. We ought
rather to consider, how many men anger itself has injured. Some in
their excessive heat have burst their veins; some by straining their
voices beyond their strength have vomited blood, or have injured
their sight by too violently injecting humours into their eyes, and
have fallen sick when the fit passed off. No way leads more swiftly
to madness: many have, consequently, remained always in the frenzy
of anger, and, having once lost their reason, have never recovered
it. Ajax was driven mad by anger, and driven to suicide by madness.
Men, frantic with rage, call upon heaven to slay their children,
to reduce themselves to poverty, and to ruin their houses, and yet
declare that they are not either angry or insane. Enemies to their
best friends, dangerous to their nearest and dearest, regardless
of the laws save where they injure, swayed by the smallest trifles,
unwilling to lend their ears to the advice or the services
of their friends, they do everything by main force, and are ready
either to fight with their swords or to throw themselves upon them,
for the greatest of all evils, and one which surpasses all vices,
has gained possession of them. Other passions gain a footing in the
mind by slow degrees: anger’s conquest is sudden and complete, and,
moreover, it makes all other passions subservient to itself. It
conquers the warmest love: men have thrust swords through the bodies
of those whom they loved, and have slain those in whose arms they
have lain. Avarice, that sternest and most rigid of passions, is
trampled underfoot by anger, which forces it to squander its carefully
collected wealth and set fire to its house and all its property in
one heap. Why, has not even the ambitious man been known to fling
away the most highly valued ensigns of rank, and to refuse high
office when it was offered to him? There is no passion over which
anger does not bear absolute rule.

[1] “_Vehiculorum ridicule Koch_,” says Gertz, justly, “_vitiorum_ makes excellent sense.”—J. E. B. M.

[2] The murder of Pompeius, B.C. 48. Achillas and Theodotus acted
under the nominal orders of Ptolemy XII., Cleopatra’s brother, then
about seventeen years of age.

[3] See “De Clem.” ii. 6, 4, I emended many years ago ένὸς χανόντος
με ΤΕΣΧΗΚεν into ἐ. χ., με ΤΑΚΕΧΗΝεν ἄτερος: “when one has yawned,
the other yawns.”—J. E. B. M.

[4] The voting-place in the Campus Martius.

[5] Ovid, Metamorphoses, i., 144, sqq. The same lines are quoted in the essay on Benefits, v. 15.

[6] _I.e._, he can plead that he kept the beaten track.

[7] De Clem. i. 12, 5.

[8] Compare Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” Act v. Sc. 5:—

“His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him, that
nature might stand up And say to all the world, _this was a
man!_”

See Mr. Aldis Wright’s note upon the passage.

[9] _Paedagogus_ was a slave who accompanied a boy to school, &c., to keep him out of mischief; he did not teach him anything.

[10] _Tempestiva_, beginning before the usual hour.

[11] Fear of self-condemnation.

[12] Lipsius conjectures _supprocax_, mischievous.

[13] I have adopted the transposition of Haase and Koch.

[14] I adopt Vahlen’s reading. See his Preface, p. viii., ed, Jenae, 1879.

[15] I read _onerosos_ with Vahlen, See his Preface, p, viii., ed, Jenae, 1879.

[16] The lines are from Virgil, Aen. viii. 702, but are inaccurately quoted.

THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO NOVATUS.

OF ANGER.

We will now, my Novatus, attempt to do that which you so especially
long to do, that is, to drive out anger from our minds, or at all
events to curb it and restrain its impulses. This may sometimes be
done openly and without concealment, when we are only suffering
from a slight attack of this mischief, and at other times it must
be done secretly, when our anger is excessively hot, and when every
obstacle thrown in its way increases it and makes it blaze higher.
It is important to know how great and how fresh its strength may
be, and whether it can be driven forcibly back and suppressed, or
whether we must give way to it until its first storm blow over,
lest it sweep away with it our remedies themselves. We must deal
with each case according to each man’s character: some yield to
entreaties, others are rendered arrogant and masterful by submission:
we may frighten some men out of their anger, while some may be
turned from their purpose by reproaches, some by acknowledging
oneself to be in the wrong, some by shame, and some by delay, a
tardy remedy for a hasty disorder, which we ought only to use when
all others have failed: for other passions admit of having
their case put off, and may be healed at a later time; but the eager
and self-destructive violence of anger does not grow up by slow
degrees, but reaches its full height as soon as it begins. Nor does
it, like other vices, merely disturb men’s minds, but it takes them
away, and torments them till they are incapable of restraining
themselves and eager for the common ruin of all men, nor does it
rage merely against its object, but against every obstacle which
it encounters on its way. The other vices move our minds; anger
hurls them headlong. If we are not able to withstand our passions,
yet at any rate our passions ought to stand firm: but anger grows
more and more powerful, like lightning flashes or hurricanes, or
any other things which cannot stop themselves because they do not
proceed along, but fall from above. Other vices affect our judgment,
anger affects our sanity: others come in mild attacks and grow
unnoticed, but men’s minds plunge abruptly into anger. There is no
passion that is more frantic, more destructive to its own self; it
is arrogant if successful, and frantic if it fails. Even when
defeated it does not grow weary, but if chance places its foe beyond
its reach, it turns its teeth against itself. Its intensity is in
no way regulated by its origin: for it rises to the greatest heights
from the most trivial beginnings.

It passes over no time of life; no race of men is exempt from
it: some nations have been saved from the knowledge of luxury by
the blessing of poverty; some through their active and wandering
habits have escaped from sloth; those whose manners are unpolished
and whose life is rustic know not chicanery and fraud and all the
evils to which the courts of law give birth: but there is no race
which is not excited by anger, which is equally powerful with Greeks
and barbarians, and is just as ruinous among law-abiding folk as
among those whose only law is that of the stronger. Finally,
the other passions seize upon individuals; anger is the only one
which sometimes possesses a whole state. No entire people ever fell
madly in love with a woman, nor did any nation ever set its affections
altogether upon gain and profit. Ambition attacks single individuals;
ungovernable rage is the only passion that affects nations. People
often fly into a passion by troops; men and women, old men and boys,
princes and populace all act alike, and the whole multitude, after
being excited by a very few words, outdoes even its exciter: men
betake themselves straightway to fire and sword, and proclaim a war
against their neighbours or wage one against their countrymen. Whole
houses are burned with the entire families which they contain, and
he who but lately was honoured for his popular eloquence now finds
that his speech moves people to rage. Legions aim their darts at
their commander; the whole populace quarrels with the nobles; the
senate, without waiting for troops to be levied or appointing a
general, hastily chooses leaders, for its anger chases well-born
men through the houses of Rome, and puts them to death with its own
hand. Ambassadors are outraged, the law of nations violated, and
an unnatural madness seizes the state. Without allowing time for
the general excitement to subside, fleets are straightway launched
and laden with a hastily enrolled soldiery. Without organization,
without taking any auspices, the populace rushes into the field
guided only by its own anger, snatches up whatever comes first to
hand by way of arms, and then atones by a great defeat for the
reckless audacity of its anger. This is usually the fate of savage
nations when they plunge into war: as soon as their easily excited
minds are roused by the appearance of wrong having been done them,
they straightway hasten forth, and, guided only by their wounded
feelings, fall like an avalanche upon our legions, without either
discipline, fear, or precaution, and wilfully seeking for danger.
They delight in being struck, in pressing forward to meet the
blow, writhing their bodies along the weapon, and perishing by a
wound which they themselves make.

“No doubt,” you say, “anger is very powerful and ruinous: point
out, therefore, how it may be cured.” Yet, as I stated in my former
books, Aristotle stands forth in defence of anger, and forbids it
to be uprooted, saying that it is the spur of virtue, and that when
it is taken away, our minds become weaponless, and slow to attempt
great exploits. It is therefore essential to prove its unseemliness
and ferocity, and to place distinctly before our eyes how monstrous
a thing it is that one man should rage against another, with what
frantic violence he rushes to destroy alike himself and his foe,
and overthrows those very things whose fall he himself must share.
What, then? can any one call this man sane, who, as though caught
up by a hurricane, does not go but is driven, and is the slave of
a senseless disorder? He does not commit to another the duty of
revenging him, but himself exacts it, raging alike in thought and
deed, butchering those who are dearest to him, and for whose loss
he himself will ere long weep. Will any one give this passion as
an assistant and companion to virtue, although it disturbs calm
reason, without which virtue can do nothing? The strength which a
sick man owes to a paroxysm of disease is neither lasting nor
wholesome, and is strong only to its own destruction. You need not,
therefore, imagine that I am wasting time over a useless task in
defaming anger, as though men had not made up their minds about it,
when there is some one, and he, too, an illustrious philosopher,
who assigns it services to perform, and speaks of it as useful and
supplying energy for battles, for the management of business, and
indeed for everything which requires to be conducted with spirit.
Lest it should delude any one into thinking that on certain occasions
and in certain positions it may be useful, we must show its
unbridled and frenzied madness, we must restore to it its attributes,
the rack, the cord, the dungeon, and the cross, the fires lighted
round men’s buried bodies, the hook[1] that drags both living men
and corpses, the different kinds of fetters, and of punishments,
the mutilations of limbs, the branding of the forehead, the dens
of savage beasts. Anger should be represented as standing among
these her instruments, growling in an ominous and terrible fashion,
herself more shocking than any of the means by which she gives vent
to her fury.

There may be some doubt about the others, but at any rate no
passion has a worse look. We have described the angry man’s appearance
in our former books, how sharp and keen he looks, at one time pale
as his blood is driven inwards and backwards, at another with all
the heat and fire of his body directed to his face, making it
reddish-coloured as if stained with blood, his eyes now restless
and starting out of his head, now set motionless in one fixed gaze.
Add to this his teeth, which gnash against one another, as though
he wished to eat somebody, with exactly the sound of a wild boar
sharpening his tusks: add also the cracking of his joints, the
involuntary wringing of his hands, the frequent slaps he deals
himself on the chest, his hurried breathing and deep-drawn sighs,
his reeling body, his abrupt broken speech, and his trembling lips,
which sometimes he draws tight as he hisses some curse through them.
By Hercules, no wild beast, neither when tortured by hunger, or
with a weapon struck through its vitals, not even when it gathers
its last breath to bite its slayer, looks so shocking as a man
raging with anger. Listen, if you have leisure, to his words
and threats: how dreadful is the language of his agonized mind!
Would not every man wish to lay aside anger when he sees that it
begins by injuring himself? When men employ anger as the most
powerful of agents, consider it to be a proof of power, and reckon
a speedy revenge among the greatest blessings of great prosperity,
would you not wish me to warn them that he who is the slave of his
own anger is not powerful, nor even free? Would you not wish me to
warn all the more industrious and circumspect of men, that while
other evil passions assail the base, anger gradually obtains dominion
over the minds even of learned and in other respects sensible men?
So true is that, that some declare anger to be a proof of
straight-forwardness, and it is commonly believed that the best-natured
people are prone to it.

You ask me, whither does all this tend? To prove, I answer, that
no one should imagine himself to be safe from anger, seeing that
it rouses up even those who are naturally gentle and quiet to commit
savage and violent acts. As strength of body and assiduous care of
the health avail nothing against a pestilence, which attacks the
strong and weak alike, so also steady and good-humoured people are
just as liable to attacks of anger as those of unsettled character,
and in the case of the former it is both more to be ashamed of and
more to be feared, because it makes a greater alteration in their
habits. Now as the first thing is not to be angry, the second to
lay aside our anger, and the third to be able to heal the anger of
others as well as our own, I will set forth first how we may avoid
falling into anger; next, how we may set ourselves free from it,
and, lastly, how we may restrain an angry man, appease his wrath,
and bring him back to his right mind. We shall succeed in avoiding
anger, if from time to time we lay before our minds all the vices
connected with anger, and estimate it at its real value: it must
be prosecuted before us and convicted: its evils must be
thoroughly investigated and exposed. That we may see what it is,
let it be compared with the worst vices. Avarice scrapes together
and amasses riches for some better man to use: anger spends money;
few can indulge in it for nothing. How many slaves an angry master
drives to run away or to commit suicide! how much more he loses by
his anger than the value of what he originally became angry about!
Anger brings grief to a father, divorce to a husband, hatred to a
magistrate, failure to a candidate for office. It is worse than
luxury, because luxury enjoys its own pleasure, while anger enjoys
another’s pain. It is worse than either spitefulness or envy; for
they wish that some one may become unhappy, while anger wishes to
make him so: they are pleased when evil befalls one by accident,
but anger cannot wait upon Fortune; it desires to injure its victim
personally, and is not satisfied merely with his being injured.
Nothing is more dangerous than jealousy: it is produced by anger.
Nothing is more ruinous than war: it is the outcome of powerful
men’s anger; and even the anger of humble private persons, though
without arms or armies, is nevertheless war. Moreover, even if we
pass over its immediate consequences, such as heavy losses, treacherous
plots, and the constant anxiety produced by strife, anger pays a
penalty at the same moment that it exacts one: it forswears human
feelings. The latter urge us to love, anger urges us to hatred: the
latter bid us do men good, anger bids us do them harm. Add to this
that, although its rage arises from an excessive self-respect and
appears to show high spirit, it really is contemptible and mean:
for a man must be inferior to one by whom he thinks himself despised,
whereas the truly great mind, which takes a true estimate of its
own value, does not revenge an insult because it does not feel it.
As weapons rebound from a hard surface, and solid substances hurt
those who strike them, so also no insult can make a really
great mind sensible of its presence, being weaker than that against
which it is aimed. How far more glorious is it to throw back all
wrongs and insults from oneself, like one wearing armour of proof
against all weapons, for revenge is an admission that we have been
hurt. That cannot be a great mind which is disturbed by injury. He
who has hurt you must be either stronger or weaker than yourself.
If he be weaker, spare him: if he be stronger, spare yourself.

There is no greater proof of magnanimity than that nothing which
befalls you should be able to move you to anger. The higher region
of the universe, being more excellently ordered and near to the
stars, is never gathered into clouds, driven about by storms, or
whirled round by cyclones: it is free from all disturbance: the
lightnings flash in the region below it. In like manner a lofty
mind, always placid and dwelling in a serene atmosphere, restraining
within itself all the impulses from which anger springs, is modest,
commands respect, and remains calm and collected: none of which
qualities will you find in an angry man: for who, when under the
influence of grief and rage, does not first get rid of bashfulness?
who, when excited and confused and about to attack some one, does
not fling away any habits of shamefacedness he may have possessed?
what angry man attends to the number or routine of his duties? who
uses moderate language? who keeps any part of his body quiet? who
can guide himself when in full career? We shall find much profit
in that sound maxim of Democritus which defines peace of mind to
consist in not labouring much, or too much for our strength, either
in public or private matters. A man’s day, if he is engaged in many
various occupations, never passes so happily that no man or no thing
should give rise to some offence which makes the mind ripe for
anger. Just as when one hurries through the crowded parts of the
city one cannot help jostling many people, and one cannot
help slipping at one place, being hindered at another, and splashed
at another, so when one’s life is spent in disconnected pursuits
and wanderings, one must meet with many troubles and many accusations.
One man deceives our hopes, another delays their fulfilment, another
destroys them: our projects do not proceed according to our intention.
No one is so favoured by Fortune as to find her always on his side
if he tempts her often: and from this it follows that he who sees
several enterprises turn out contrary to his wishes becomes
dissatisfied with both men and things, and on the slightest provocation
flies into a rage with people, with undertakings, with places, with
fortune, or with himself. In order, therefore, that the mind may
be at peace, it ought not to be hurried hither and thither, nor,
as I said before, wearied by labour at great matters, or matters
whose attainment is beyond its strength. It is easy to fit one’s
shoulder to a light burden, and to shift it from one side to the
other without dropping it: but we have difficulty in bearing the
burdens which others’ hands lay upon us, and when overweighted by
them we fling them off upon our neighbours. Even when we do stand
upright under our load, we nevertheless reel beneath a weight which
is beyond our strength.

Be assured that the same rule applies both to public and private
life: simple and manageable undertakings proceed according to the
pleasure of the person in charge of them, but enormous ones, beyond
his capacity to manage, are not easily undertaken. When he has got
them to administer, they hinder him, and press hard upon him, and
just as he thinks that success is within his grasp, they collapse,
and carry him with them: thus it comes about that a man’s wishes
are often disappointed if he does not apply himself to easy tasks,
yet wishes that the tasks which he undertakes may be easy. Whenever
you would attempt anything, first form an estimate both of
your own powers, of the extent of the matter which you are undertaking,
and of the means by which you are to accomplish it: for if you have
to abandon your work when it is half done, the disappointment will
sour your temper. In such cases, it makes a difference whether one
is of an ardent or of a cold and unenterprising temperament: for
failure will rouse a generous spirit to anger, and will move a
sluggish and dull one to sorrow. Let our undertakings, therefore,
be neither petty nor yet presumptuous and reckless: let our hopes
not range far from home: let us attempt nothing which if we succeed
will make us astonished at our success.

Since we know not how to endure an injury, let us take care
not to receive one: we should live with the quietest and easiest-tempered
persons, not with anxious or with sullen ones: for our own habits
are copied from those with whom we associate, and just as some
bodily diseases are communicated by touch, so also the mind transfers
its vices to its neighbours. A drunkard leads even those who reproach
him to grow fond of wine: profligate society will, if permitted,
impair the morals even of robust-minded men: avarice infects those
nearest it with its poison. Virtues do the same thing in the opposite
direction, and improve all those with whom they are brought in
contact: it is as good for one of unsettled principles to associate
with better men than himself as for an invalid to live in a warm
country with a healthy climate. You will understand how much may
be effected this way, if you observe how even wild beasts grow tame
by dwelling among us, and how no animal, however ferocious, continues
to be wild, if it has long been accustomed to human companionship:
all its savageness becomes softened, and amid peaceful scenes is
gradually forgotten. We must add to this, that the man who lives
with quiet people is not only improved by their example, but also
by the fact that he finds no reason for anger and does not practise
his vice: it will, therefore, be his duty to avoid all those
who he knows will excite his anger. You ask, who these are: many
will bring about the same thing by various means; a proud man will
offend you by his disdain, a talkative man by his abuse, an impudent
man by his insults, a spiteful man by his malice, a quarrelsome man
by his wrangling, a braggart and liar by his vain-gloriousness: you
will not endure to be feared by a suspicious man, conquered by an
obstinate one, or scorned by an ultra-refined one: Choose
straightforward, good-natured, steady people, who will not provoke
your wrath, and will bear with it. Those whose dispositions are
yielding, polite and suave, will be of even greater service, provided
they do not flatter, for excessive obsequiousness irritates
bad-tempered men. One of my own friends was a good man indeed, but
too prone to anger, and it was as dangerous to flatter him as to
curse him. Caelius the orator, it is well known, was the worst-tempered
man possible. It is said that once he was dining in his own chamber
with an especially long-suffering client, but had great difficulty
when thrown thus into a man’s society to avoid quarrelling with
him. The other thought it best to agree to whatever he said, and
to play second fiddle, but Caelius could not bear his obsequious
agreement, and exclaimed, “Do contradict me in something, that there
may be two of us!” Yet even he, who was angry at not being angry,
soon recovered his temper, because he had no one to fight with. If,
then, we are conscious of an irascible disposition, let us especially
choose for our friends those who will look and speak as we do: they
will pamper us and lead us into a bad habit of listening to nothing
that does not please us, but it will be good to give our anger
respite and repose. Even those who are naturally crabbed and wild
will yield to caresses: no creature continues either angry or
frightened if you pat him. Whenever a controversy seems likely to
be longer or more keenly disputed than usual, let us check its first
beginnings, before it gathers strength. A dispute nourishes
itself as it proceeds, and takes hold of those who plunge too deeply
into it: it is easier to stand aloof than to extricate oneself from
a struggle.

Irascible men ought not to meddle with the more serious class
of occupations, or, at any rate, ought to stop short of weariness
in the pursuit of them; their mind ought not to be engaged upon
hard subjects, but handed over to pleasing arts: let it be softened
by reading poetry, and interested by legendary history: let it be
treated with luxury and refinement. Pythagoras used to calm his
troubled spirit by playing upon the lyre: and who does not know
that trumpets and clarions are irritants, just as some airs are
lullabies and soothe the mind? Green is good for wearied eyes, and
some colours are grateful to weak sight, while the brightness of
others is painful to it. In the same way cheerful pursuits soothe
unhealthy minds. We must avoid law courts, pleadings, verdicts, and
everything else that aggravates our fault, and we ought no less to
avoid bodily weariness; for it exhausts all that is quiet and gentle
in us, and rouses bitterness. For this reason those who cannot trust
their digestion, when they are about to transact business of
importance always allay their bile with food, for it is peculiarly
irritated by fatigue, either because it draws the vital heat into
the middle of the body, and injures the blood and stops its circulation
by the clogging of the veins, or else because the worn-out and
weakened body reacts upon the mind: this is certainly the reason
why those who are broken by ill-health or age are more irascible
than other men. Hunger also and thirst should be avoided for the
same reason; they exasperate and irritate men’s minds: it is an old
saying that “a weary man is quarrelsome “: and so also is a hungry
or a thirsty man, or one who is suffering from any cause whatever:
for just as sores pain one at the slightest touch, and afterwards
even at the fear of being touched, so an unsound mind takes offence
at the slightest things, so that even a greeting, a letter,
a speech, or a question, provokes some men to anger.

That which is diseased can never bear to be handled without
complaining: it is best, therefore, to apply remedies to oneself
as soon as we feel that anything is wrong, to allow oneself as
little licence as possible in speech, and to restrain one’s
impetuosity: now it is easy to detect the first growth of our
passions: the symptoms precede the disorder. Just as the signs of
storms and rain come before the storms themselves, so there are
certain forerunners of anger, love, and all the storms which torment
our minds. Those who suffer from epilepsy know that the fit is
coming on if their extremities become cold, their sight fails, their
sinews tremble, their memory deserts them, and their head swims:
they accordingly check the growing disorder by applying the usual
remedies: they try to prevent the loss of their senses by smelling
or tasting some drug; they battle against cold and stiffness of
limbs by hot fomentations; or, if all remedies fail, they retire
apart, and faint where no one sees them fall. It is useful for a
man to understand his disease, and to break its strength before it
becomes developed. Let us see what it is that especially irritates
us. Some men take offence at insulting words, others at deeds: one
wishes his pedigree, another his person, to be treated with respect.
This man wishes to be considered especially fashionable, that man
to be thought especially learned: one cannot bear pride, another
cannot bear obstinacy. One thinks it beneath him to be angry with
his slaves, another is cruel at home, but gentle abroad. One imagines
that he is proposed for office because he is unpopular, another
thinks himself insulted because he is not proposed. People do not
all take offence in the same way; you ought then to know what your
own weak point is, that you may guard it with especial care.

It is better not to see or to hear everything: many causes of
offence may pass by us, most of which are disregarded by the
man who ignores them. Would you not be irascible? then be not
inquisitive. He who seeks to know what is said about him, who digs
up spiteful tales even if they were told in secret, is himself the
destroyer of his own peace of mind. Some stories may be so construed
as to appear to be insults: wherefore it is best to put some aside,
to laugh at others, and to pardon others. There are many ways in
which anger may be checked; most things may be turned into jest.
It is said that Socrates when he was given a box on the ear, merely
said that it was a pity a man could not tell when he ought to wear
his helmet out walking. It does not so much matter how an injury
is done, as how it is borne; and I do not see how moderation can
be hard to practise, when I know that even despots, though success
and impunity combine to swell their pride, have sometimes restrained
their natural ferocity. At any rate, tradition informs us that once,
when a guest in his cups bitterly reproached Pisistratus, the despot
of Athens, for his cruelty, many of those present offered to lay
hands on the traitor, and one said one thing and one another to
kindle his wrath, he bore it coolly, and replied to those who were
egging him on, that he was no more angry with the man than he should
be with one who ran against him blindfold.

A large part of mankind manufacture their own grievances either
by entertaining unfounded suspicions or by exaggerating trifles.
Anger often comes to us, but we often go to it. It ought never to
be sent for: even when it falls in our way it ought to be flung
aside. No one says to himself, “I myself have done or might have
done this very thing which I am angry with another for doing.” No
one considers the intention of the doer, but merely the thing done:
yet we ought to think about him, and whether he did it intentionally
or accidentally, under compulsion or under a mistake, whether he
did it out of hatred for us, or to gain something for himself,
whether he did it to please himself or to serve a friend. In
some cases the age, in others the worldly fortunes of the culprit
may render it humane or advantageous to bear with him and put up
with what he has done. Let us put ourselves in the place of him
with whom we are angry: at present an overweening conceit of our
own importance makes us prone to anger, and we are quite willing
to do to others what we cannot endure should be done to ourselves.
No one will postpone his anger: yet delay is the best remedy for
it, because it allows its first glow to subside, and gives time for
the cloud which darkens the mind either to disperse or at any rate
to become less dense. Of these wrongs which drive you frantic, some
will grow lighter after an interval, not of a day, but even of an
hour: some will vanish altogether. Even if you gain nothing by your
adjournment, still what you do after it will appear to be the result
of mature deliberation, not of anger. If you want to find out the
truth about anything, commit the task to time: nothing can be
accurately discerned at a time of disturbance. Plato, when angry
with his slave, could not prevail upon himself to wait, but straightway
ordered him to take off his shirt and present his shoulders to the
blows which he meant to give him with his own hand: then, when he
perceived that he was angry, he stopped the hand which he had raised
in the air, and stood like one in act to strike. Being asked by a
friend who happened to come in, what he was doing, he answered: “I
am making an angry man expiate his crime.” He retained the posture
of one about to give way to passion, as if struck with astonishment
at its being so degrading to a philosopher, forgetting the slave,
because he had found another still more deserving of punishment.
He therefore denied himself the exercise of authority over his own
household, and once, being rather angry at some fault, said,
“Speusippus, will you please to correct that slave with stripes;
for I am in a rage.” He would not strike him, for the very reason
for which another man would have struck him. “I am in a rage,” said
he; “I should beat him more than I ought: I should take more
pleasure than I ought in doing so: let not that slave fall into the
power of one who is not in his own power.” Can any one wish to grant
the power of revenge to an angry man, when Plato himself gave up
his own right to exercise it? While you are angry, you ought not
to be allowed to do anything. “Why?” do you ask? Because when you
are angry there is nothing that you do not wish to be allowed to
do.

Fight hard with yourself and if you cannot conquer anger, do
not let it conquer you: you have begun to get the better of it if
it does not show itself, if it is not given vent. Let us conceal
its symptoms, and as far as possible keep it secret and hidden. It
will give us great trouble to do this, for it is eager to burst
forth, to kindle our eyes and to transform our face; but if we allow
it to show itself in our outward appearance, it is our master. Let
it rather be locked in the innermost recesses of our breast, and
be borne by us, not bear us: nay, let us replace all its symptoms
by their opposites; let us make our countenance more composed than
usual, our voice milder, our step slower. Our inward thoughts
gradually become influenced by our outward demeanour. With Socrates
it was a sign of anger when he lowered his voice, and became sparing
of speech; it was evident at such times that he was exercising
restraint over himself. His friends, consequently, used to detect
him acting thus, and convict him of being angry; nor was he displeased
at being charged with concealment of anger; indeed, how could he
help being glad that many men should perceive his anger, yet that
none should feel it? they would however, have felt it had not he
granted to his friends the same right of criticizing his own conduct
which he himself assumed over theirs. How much more needful is it
for us to do this? let us beg all our best friends to give us their
opinion with the greatest freedom at the very time when we can bear
it least, and never to be compliant with us when we are angry.
While we are in our right senses, while we are under our own control,
let us call for help against so powerful an evil, and one which we
regard with such unjust favour. Those who cannot carry their wine
discreetly, and fear to be betrayed into some rash and insolent
act, give their slaves orders to take them away from the banquet
when they are drunk; those who know by experience how unreasonable
they are when sick give orders that no one is to obey them when
they are in ill health. It is best to prepare obstacles beforehand
for vices which are known, and above all things so to tranquilize
our mind that it may bear the most sudden and violent shocks either
without feeling anger, or, if anger be provoked by the extent of
some unexpected wrong, that it may bury it deep, and not betray its
wound. That it is possible to do this will be seen, if I quote a
few of an abundance of examples, from which we may learn both how
much evil there is in anger, when it exercises entire dominion over
men in supreme power, and how completely it can control itself when
overawed by fear.

King Cambyses[2] was excessively addicted to wine. Praexaspes
was the only one of his closest friends who advised him to drink
more sparingly, pointing out how shameful a thing drunkenness was
in a king, upon whom all eyes and ears were fixed. Cambyses answered,
“That you may know that I never lose command of myself, I will
presently prove to you that both my eyes and my hands are fit for
service after I have been drinking.” Hereupon he drank more freely
than usual, using larger cups, and when heavy and besotted with
wine ordered his reprover’s son to go beyond the threshold and stand
there with his left hand raised above his head; then he bent his
bow and pierced the youth’s heart, at which he had said that he
aimed. He then had his breast cut open, showed the arrow
sticking exactly into the heart, and, looking at the boy’s father,
asked whether his hand was not steady enough. He replied, that
Apollo himself could not have taken better aim. God confound such
a man, a slave in mind, if not in station! He actually praised an
act which he ought not to have endured to witness. He thought that
the breast of his son being torn assunder, and his heart quivering
with its wound, gave him an opportunity of making a complimentary
speech. He ought to have raised a dispute with him about his success,
and have called for another shot, that the king might be pleased
to prove upon the person of the father that his hand was even
steadier than when he shot the son. What a savage king! what a
worthy mark for all his follower’s arrows! Yet though we curse him
for making his banquet end in cruelty and death, still it was worse
to praise that arrow-shot than to shoot it. We shall see hereafter
how a father ought to bear himself when standing over the corpse
of his son, whose murder he had both caused and witnessed: the
matter which we are now discussing, has been proved, I mean, that
anger can be suppressed. He did not curse the king, he did not so
much as let fall a single inauspicious word, though he felt his own
heart as deeply wounded as that of his son. He may be said to have
done well in choking down his words; for though he might have spoken
as an angry man, yet he could not have expressed what he felt as a
father. He may, I repeat, be thought to have behaved with greater
wisdom on that occasion than when he tried to regulate the drink
of one who was better employed in drinking wine than in drinking
blood, and who granted men peace while his hands were busy with the
winecup. He, therefore, added one more to the number of those who
have shown to their bitter cost how little kings care for their
friends’ good advice.

I have no doubt that Harpagus must have given some such advice
to the king of the Persians and of himself, in anger at which the
king placed Harpagus’s own children before him on the dinner-table
for him to eat, and asked him from time to time, whether he liked
the seasoning. Then, when he saw that he was satiated with his own
misery, he ordered their heads to be brought to him, and asked him
how he liked his entertainment. The wretched man did not lose his
readiness of speech; his face did not change. “Every kind of dinner,”
said he, “is pleasant at the king’s table.” What did he gain by
this obsequiousness? He avoided being invited a second time to
dinner, to eat what was left of them. I do not forbid a father to
blame the act of his king, or to seek for some revenge worthy of
so bloodthirsty a monster, but in the meanwhile I gather from the
tale this fact, that even the anger which arises from unheard of
outrages can be concealed, and forced into using language which is
the very reverse of its meaning. This way of curbing anger is
necessary, at least for those who have chosen this sort of life and
who are admitted to dine at a king’s table; this is how they must
eat and drink, this is how they must answer, and how they must laugh
at their own deaths. Whether life is worth having at such a price,
we shall see hereafter; that is another question. Let us not console
so sorry a crew, or encourage them to submit to the orders of their
butchers; let us point out that however slavish a man’s condition
may be, there is always a path to liberty open to him, unless his
mind be diseased. It is a man’s own fault if he suffers, when by
putting an end to himself he can put an end to his misery. To him
whose king aimed arrows at the breasts of his friends, and to him
whose master gorged fathers with the hearts of their children, I
would say “Madman, why do you groan? for what are you waiting? for
some enemy to avenge you by the destruction of your entire
nation, or for some powerful king to arrive from a distant land?
Wherever you turn your eyes you may see an end to your woes. Do you
see that precipice? down that lies the road to liberty; do you see
that sea? that river? that well? Liberty sits at the bottom of them.
Do you see that tree? stunted, blighted, dried up though it be, yet
liberty hangs from its branches. Do you see your own throat, your
own neck, your own heart? they are so many ways of escape from
slavery. Are these modes which I point out too laborious, and needing
much strength and courage? do you ask what path leads to liberty?
I answer, any vein[3] in your body.

As long, however, as we find nothing in our life so unbearable
as to drive us to suicide, let us, in whatever position we may be,
set anger far from us: it is destructive to those who are its slaves.
All its rage turns to its own misery, and authority becomes all the
more irksome the more obstinately it is resisted. It is like a wild
animal whose struggles only pull the noose by which it is caught
tighter; or like birds who, while flurriedly trying to shake
themselves free, smear birdlime on to all their feathers. No yoke
is so grievous as not to hurt him who struggles against it more
than him who yields to it: the only way to alleviate great evils
is to endure them and to submit to do what they compel. This control
of our passions, and especially of this mad and unbridled passion
of anger, is useful to subjects, but still more useful to kings.
All is lost when a man’s position enables him to carry out whatever
anger prompts him to do; nor can power long endure if it be exercised
to the injury of many, for it becomes endangered as soon as common
fear draws together those who bewail themselves separately. Many
kings, therefore, have fallen victims, some to single individuals,
others to entire peoples, who have been forced by general
indignation to make one man the minister of their wrath. Yet many
kings have indulged their anger as though it were a privilege of
royalty, like Darius, who, after the dethronement of the Magian,
was the first ruler of the Persians and of the greater part of the
East: for when he declared war[4] against the Scythians who bordered
on the empire of the East, Oeobazus, an aged noble, begged that one
of his three sons might be left at home to comfort his father, and
that the king might be satisfied with the services of two of them.
Darius promised him more than he asked for, saying that he would
allow all three to remain at home, and flung their dead bodies
before their father’s eyes. He would have been harsh, had he taken
them all to the war with him. How much more good-natured was
Xerxes,[5] who, when Pythias, the father of five sons, begged for
one to be excused from service, permitted him to choose which he
wished for. He then tore the son whom the father had chosen into
two halves, placed one on each side of the road, and, as it were,
purified his army by means of this propitiatory victim. He therefore
had the end which he deserved, being defeated, and his army scattered
far and wide in utter rout, while he in the midst of it walked among
the corpses of his soldiers, seeing on all sides the signs of his
own overthrow.

So ferocious in their anger were those kings who had no
learning, no tincture of polite literature: now I will show you
King Alexander (the Great), fresh from the lap of Aristotle, who
with his own hand while at table stabbed Clitus, his dearest friend,
who had been brought up with him, because he did not flatter him
enough, and was too slow in transforming himself from a free man
and a Macedonian into a Persian slave. Indeed he shut up
Lysimachus,[6] who was no less his friend than Clitus, in a cage
with a lion; yet did this make Lysimachus, who escaped by some happy
chance from the lion’s teeth, any gentler when he became a king?
Why, he mutilated his own friend, Telesphorus the Rhodian, cutting
off his nose and ears, and kept him for a long while in a den, like
some new and strange animal, after the hideousness of his hacked
and disfigured face had made him no longer appear to be human,
assisted by starvation and the squalid filth of a body left to
wallow in its own dung! Besides this, his hands and knees, which
the narrowness of his abode forced him to use instead of his feet,
became hard and callous, while his sides were covered with sores
by rubbing against the walls, so that his appearance was no less
shocking than frightful, and his punishment turned him into so
monstrous a creature that he was not even pitied. Yet, however
unlike a man he was who suffered this, even more unlike was he who
inflicted it.

Would to heaven that such savagery had contented itself with
foreign examples, and that barbarity in anger and punishment had
not been imported with other outlandish vices into our Roman manners!
Marcus Marius, to whom the people erected a statue in every street,
to whom they made offerings of incense and wine, had, by the command
of Lucius Sulla, his legs broken, his eyes pulled out, his hands
cut off, and his whole body gradually torn to pieces limb by limb,
as if Sulla killed him as many times as he wounded him. Who was it
who carried out Sulla’s orders? who but Catiline, already practising
his hands in every sort of wickedness? He tore him to pieces before
the tomb of Quintus Catulus, an unwelcome burden to the ashes of
that gentlest of men, above which one who was no doubt a criminal,
yet nevertheless the idol of the people, and who was not
undeserving of love, although men loved him beyond all reason, was
forced to shed his blood drop by drop. Though Marius deserved such
tortures, yet it was worthy of Sulla to order them, and of Catiline
to execute them; but it was unworthy of the State to be stabbed by
the swords of her enemy and her avenger alike. Why do I pry into
ancient history? quite lately Gaius Caesar flogged and tortured
Sextus Papinius, whose father was a consular, Betilienus Bassus,
his own quaestor, and several others, both senators and knights,
on the same day, not to carry out any judicial inquiry, but merely
to amuse himself. Indeed, so impatient was he of any delay in
receiving the pleasure which his monstrous cruelty never delayed
in asking, that when walking with some ladies and senators in his
mother’s gardens, along the walk between the colonnade and the
river, he struck off some of their heads by lamplight. What did he
fear? what public or private danger could one night threaten him
with? how very small a favour it would have been to wait until
morning, and not to kill the Roman people’s senators in his slippers?

It is to the purpose that we should know how haughtily his
cruelty was exercised, although some one might suppose that we are
wandering from the subject and embarking on a digression; but this
digression is itself connected with unusual outbursts of anger. He
beat senators with rods; he did it so often that he made men able
to say, “It is the custom.” He tortured them with all the most
dismal engines in the world, with the cord, the boots, the rack,
the fire, and the sight of his own face. Even to this we may answer,
“To tear three senators to pieces with stripes and fire like criminal
slaves was no such great crime for one who had thoughts of butchering
the entire Senate, who was wont to wish that the Roman people had
but one neck, that he might concentrate into one day and one
blow all the wickedness which he divided among so many places and
times. Was there ever anything so unheard-of as an execution in the
night-time? Highway robbery seeks for the shelter of darkness, but
the more public an execution is, the more power it has as an example
and lesson. Here I shall be met by: “This, which you are so surprised
at, was the daily habit of that monster; this was what he lived
for, watched for, sat up at night for.” Certainly one could find
no one else who would have ordered all those whom he condemned to
death to have their mouths closed by a sponge being fastened in
them, that they might not have the power even of uttering a sound.
What dying man was ever forbidden to groan? He feared that the last
agony might find too free a voice, that he might hear what would
displease him. He knew, moreover, that there were countless crimes,
with which none but a dying man would dare to reproach him. When
sponges were not forthcoming, he ordered the wretched men’s clothes
to be torn up, and the rags stuffed into their mouths. What savagery
was this? Let a man draw his last breath: give room for his soul
to escape through: let it not be forced to leave the body through
a wound. It becomes tedious to add to this that in the same night
he sent centurions to the houses of the executed men and made an
end of their fathers also, that is to say, being a compassionate-minded
man, he set them free from sorrow: for it is not my intention to
describe the ferocity of Gaius, but the ferocity of anger, which
does not merely vent its rage upon individuals, but rends in pieces
whole nations, and even lashes cities, rivers, and things which
have no sense of pain.

Thus, the king of the Persians cut off the noses of a whole
nation in Syria, wherefore the place is called Rhinocolura. Do you
think that he was merciful, because he did not cut their heads off
altogether? no, he was delighted at having invented a new
kind of punishment. Something of the same kind would have befallen
the Aethiopians,[7] who on account of their prodigiously long lives
are called Macrobiotae; for, because they did not receive slavery
with hands uplifted to heaven in thankfulness, and sent an embassy
which used independent, or what kings call insulting language,
Cambyses became wild with rage, and, without any store of provisions,
or any knowledge of the roads, started with all his fighting men
through an arid and trackless waste, where during the first day’s
march the necessaries of life failed, and the country itself furnished
nothing, being barren and uncultivated, and untrodden by the foot
of man. At first the tenderest parts of leaves and shoots of trees
relieved their hunger, then hides softened by fire, and anything
else that their extremity drove them to use as food. When as they
proceeded neither roots nor herbs were to be found in the sand, and
they found a wilderness destitute even of animal life, they chose
each tenth man by lot and made of him a meal which was more cruel
than hunger. Rage still drove the king madly forwards, until after
he had lost one part of his army and eaten another he began to fear
that he also might be called upon to draw the lot for his life;
then at last he gave the order for retreat. Yet all the while his
well-bred hawks were not sacrificed, and the means of feasting were
carried for him on camels, while his soldiers were drawing lots for
who should miserably perish, and who should yet more miserably live.

This man was angry with an unknown and inoffensive nation,
which nevertheless was able to feel his wrath; but Cyrus[8] was
angry with a river. When hurrying to besiege Babylon, since in
making war it is above all things important to seize one’s opportunity,
he tried to ford the wide-spread river Gyndes, which it is hardly
safe to attempt even when the river has been dried up by the
summer heat and is at its lowest. Here one of the white horses which
drew the royal chariot was washed away, and his loss moved the king
to such violent rage, that he swore to reduce the river which had
carried off his royal retinue to so low an ebb that even women
should walk across it and trample upon it. He thereupon devoted all
the resources of his army to this object, and remained working until
by cutting one hundred and eighty channels across the bed of the
river he divided it into three hundred and sixty brooks, and left
the bed dry, the waters flowing through other channels. Thus he
lost time, which is very important in great operations, and lost,
also, the soldiers’ courage, which was broken by useless labour,
and the opportunity of falling upon his enemy unprepared, while he
was waging against the river the war which he had declared against
his foes. This frenzy, for what else can you call it, has befallen
Romans also, for G. Caesar destroyed a most beautiful villa at
Herculaneum because his mother was once imprisoned in it, and has
thus made the place notorious by its misfortune; for while it stood,
we used to sail past it without noticing it, but now people inquire
why it is in ruins.

These should be regarded as examples to be avoided, and what
I am about to relate, on the contrary, to be followed, being examples
of gentle and lenient conduct in men who both had reasons for anger
and power to avenge themselves. What could have been easier than
for Antigonus to order those two common soldiers to be executed who
leaned against their king’s tent while doing what all men especially
love to do, and run the greatest danger by doing, I mean while they
spoke evil of their king. Antigonus heard all they said, as was
likely, since there was only a piece of cloth between the speakers
and the listener, who gently raised it, and said “Go a little
further off, for fear the king should hear you.” He also on one
night, hearing some of his soldiers invoking everything that was
evil upon their king for having brought them along that road and
into that impassable mud, went to those who were in the greatest
difficulties, and having extricated them without their knowing who
was their helper, said, “Now curse Antigonus, by whose fault you
have fallen into this trouble, but bless the man who has brought
you out of this slough.” This same Antigonus bore the abuse of his
enemies as good-naturedly as that of his countrymen; thus when he
was besieging some Greeks in a little fort, and they, despising
their enemy through their confidence in the strength of their
position, cut many jokes upon the ugliness of Antigonus, at one
time mocking him for his shortness of stature, at another for his
broken nose, he answered, “I rejoice, and expect some good fortune
because I have a Silenus in my camp.” After he had conquered these
witty folk by hunger, his treatment of them was to form regiments
of those who were fit for service, and sell the rest by public
auction; nor would he, said he, have done this had it not been
better that men who had such evil tongues should be under the control
of a master.

This man’s grandson[9] was Alexander, who used to hurl his
lance at his guests, who, of the two friends which I have mentioned
above, exposed one to the rage of a wild beast, and the other to
his own; yet of these two men, he who was exposed to the lion
survived. He did not derive this vice from his grandfather, nor
even from his father; for it was an especial virtue of Philip’s to
endure insults patiently, and was a great safeguard of his kingdom.
Demochares, who was surnamed Parrhesiastes on account of his unbridled
and impudent tongue, came on an embassy to him with other ambassadors
from Athens. After graciously listening to what they had to
say, Philip said to them, “Tell me, what can I do that will please
the Athenians? “Demochares took him up, and answered, “Hang yourself.”
All the bystanders expressed their indignation at so brutal an
answer, but Philip bade them be silent, and let this Thersites
depart safe and sound. “But do you,” said he, “you other ambassadors,
tell the Athenians that those who say such things are much more
arrogant than those who hear them without revenging themselves.”

The late Emperor Augustus also did and said many memorable things,
which prove that he was not under the dominion of anger. Timagenes,
the historical writer, made some remarks upon him, his wife, and
his whole family: nor did his jests fall to the ground, for nothing
spreads more widely or is more in people’s mouths than reckless
wit. Caesar often warned him to be less audacious in his talk, and
as he continued to offend, forbade him his house. Timagenes after
this passed the later years of his life as the guest of Asinius
Pollio, and was the favourite of the whole city: the closing of
Caesar’s door did not close any other door against him. He read
aloud the history which he wrote after this, but burned the books
which contained the doings of Augustus Caesar. He was at enmity
with Caesar, but yet no one feared to be his friend, no one shrank
from him as though he were blasted by lightning: although he fell
from so high a place, yet some one was found to catch him in his
lap. Caesar, I say, bore this with patience, and was not even
irritated by the historian’s having laid violent hands upon his own
glories and acts: he never complained of the man who afforded his
enemy shelter, but merely said to Asinius Pollio “You are keeping
a wild beast:” then, when the other would have excused his conduct,
he stopped him, and said “Enjoy, my Pollio, enjoy his friendship.”
When Pollio said, “If you order me, Caesar, I will straightway
forbid him my house,” he answered, “Do you think that I am
likely to do this, after having made you friends again?” for formerly
Pollio had been angry with Timagenes, and ceased to be angry with
him for no other reason than that Caesar began to be so.

Let every one, then, say to himself, whenever he is provoked,
“Am I more powerful than Philip? yet he allowed a man to curse him
with impunity. Have I more authority in my own house than the Emperor
Augustus possessed throughout the world? yet he was satisfied with
leaving the society of his maligner. Why should I make my slave
atone by stripes and manacles for having answered me too loudly or
having put on a stubborn look, or muttered something which I did
not catch? Who am I, that it should be a crime to shock my ears?
Many men have forgiven their enemies: shall I not forgive men for
being lazy, careless, and gossipping?” We ought to plead age as an
excuse for children, sex for women, freedom for a stranger, familiarity
for a house-servant. Is this his first offence? think how long he
has been acceptable. Has he often done wrong, and in many other
cases? then let us continue to bear what we have borne so long. Is
he a friend? then he did not intend to do it. Is he an enemy? then
in doing it he did his duty. If he be a sensible man, let us believe
his excuses; if a fool, let us grant him pardon; whatever he may
be, let us say to ourselves on his behalf, that even the wisest of
men are often in fault, that no one is so alert that his carefulness
never betrays itself, that no one is of so ripe a judgment that his
serious mind cannot be goaded by circumstances into some hotheaded
action, that, in fine, no one, however much he may fear to give
offence, can help doing so even while he tries to avoid it.

As it is a consolation to a humble man in trouble that the
greatest are subject to reverses of fortune, and a man weeps more
calmly over his dead son in the corner of his hovel if he
sees a piteous[10] funeral proceed out of the palace as well; so
one bears injury or insult more calmly if one remembers that no
power is so great as to be above the reach of harm. Indeed, if even
the wisest do wrong, who cannot plead a good excuse for his faults?
Let us look back upon our own youth, and think how often we then
were too slothful in our duty, too impudent in our speech, too
intemperate in our cups. Is anyone angry? then let us give him
enough time to reflect upon what he has done, and he will correct
his own self. But suppose he ought to pay the penalty of his deeds:
well, that is no reason why we should act as he does. It canot be
doubted that he who regards his tormentor with contempt raises
himself above the common herd and looks down upon them from a loftier
position: it is the property of true magnanimity not to feel the
blows which it may receive. So does a huge wild beast turn slowly
and gaze at yelping curs: so does the wave dash in vain against a
great cliff. The man who is not angry remains unshaken by injury:
he who is angry has been moved by it. He, however, whom I have
described as being placed too high for any mischief to reach him,
holds as it were the highest good in his arms: he can reply, not
only to any man, but to fortune herself: “Do what you will, you are
too feeble to disturb my serenity: this is forbidden by reason, to
whom I have entrusted the guidance of my life: to become angry would
do me more harm than your violence can do me. ‘More harm?’ say you.
Yes, certainly: I know how much injury you have done me, but I
cannot tell to what excesses anger might not carry me.”

You say, “I cannot endure it: injuries are hard to bear.” You
lie; for how can any one not be able to bear injury, if he can bear
to be angry? Besides, what you intend to do is to endure both
injury and anger. Why do you bear with the delirium of a sick man,
or the ravings of a madman, or the impudent blows of a child?
Because, of course, they evidently do not know what they are doing:
if a man be not responsible for his actions, what does it matter
by what malady he became so: the plea of ignorance holds equally
good in every case. “What then?” say you, “shall he not be punished?”
He will be, even supposing that you do not wish it: for the greatest
punishment for having done harm is the sense of having done it, and
no one is more severely punished than he who is given over to the
punishment of remorse. In the next place, we ought to consider the
whole state of mankind, in order to pass a just judgment on all the
occurrences of life: for it is unjust to blame individuals for a
vice which is common to all. The colour of an Aethiop is not
remarkable amongst his own people, nor is any man in Germany ashamed
of red hair rolled into a knot. You cannot call anything peculiar
or disgraceful in a particular man if it is the general characteristic
of his nation. Now, the cases which I have quoted are defended only
by the usage of one out-of-the-way quarter of the world: see now,
how far more deserving of pardon those crimes are which are spread
abroad among all mankind. We all are hasty and careless, we all are
untrustworthy, dissatisfied, and ambitious: nay, why do I try to
hide our common wickedness by a too partial description? we all are
bad. Every one of us therefore will find in his own breast the vice
which he blames in another. Why do you remark how pale this man,
or how lean that man is? there is a general pestilence. Let us
therefore be more gentle one to another: we are bad men, living
among bad men: there is only one thing which can afford us peace,
and that is to agree to forgive one another. “This man has already
injured me,” say you, “and I have not yet injured him.” No, but you
have probably injured some one else, and you will injure him
some day. Do not form your judgment by one hour, or one day: consider
the whole tendency of your mind: even though you have done no evil,
yet you are capable of doing it.

How far better is it to heal an injury than to avenge it?
Revenge takes up much time, and throws itself in the way of many
injuries while it is smarting under one. We all retain our anger
longer than we feel our hurt: how far better it were to take the
opposite course and not meet one mischief by another. Would any one
think himself to be in his perfect mind if he were to return kicks
to a mule or bites to a dog?” These creatures,” you say, “know not
that they are doing wrong.” Then, in the first place, what an unjust
judge you must be if a man has less chance of gaining your forgiveness
than a beast! Secondly, if animals are protected from your anger
by their want of reason, you ought to treat all foolish men in the
like manner: for if a man has that mental darkness which excuses
all the wrong-doings of dumb animals, what difference does it make
if in other respects he be unlike a dumb animal? He has sinned.
Well, is this the first time, or will this be the last time? Why,
you should not believe him even if he said, “Never will I do so
again.” He will sin, and another will sin against him, and all his
life he will wallow in wickedness. Savagery must be met by kindness:
we ought to use, to a man in anger, the argument which is so effective
with one in grief, that is, “Shall you leave off this at some time,
or never? If you will do so at some time, how better is it that you
should abandon anger than that anger should abandon you? Or, will
this excitement never leave you? Do you see to what an unquiet life
you condemn yourself? for what will be the life of one who is always
swelling with rage?” Add to this, that after you have worked yourself
up into a rage, and have from time to time renewed the causes of
your excitement, yet your anger will depart from you of its
own accord, and time will sap its strength: how much better then
is it that it should be overcome by you than by itself?

If you are angry, you will quarrel first with this man, and
then with that: first with slaves, then with freedmen: first with
parents, then with children: first with acquaintances, then with
strangers: for there are grounds for anger in every case, unless
your mind steps in and intercedes with you: your frenzy will drag
you from one place to another, and from thence to elsewhere, your
madness will constantly meet with newly-occurring irritants, and
will never depart from you. Tell me, miserable man, what time you
will have for loving? O, what good time you are wasting on an evil
thing! How much better it would be to win friends, and disarm
enemies: to serve the state, or to busy oneself with one’s private
affairs, rather than to cast about for what harm you can do to
somebody, what wound you can inflict either upon his social position,
his fortune, or his person, although you cannot succeed in doing
so without a struggle and risk to yourself, even if your antagonist
be inferior to you. Even supposing that he were handed over to you
in chains, and that you were at liberty to torture him as much as
you please, yet even then excessive violence in striking a blow
often causes us to dislocate a joint, or entangles a sinew in the
teeth which it has broken. Anger makes many men cripples, or invalids,
even when it meets with an unresisting victim: and besides this,
no creature is so weak that it can be destroyed without any danger
to its destroyer: sometimes grief, sometimes chance, puts the weakest
on a level with the strongest. What shall we say of the fact that
the greater part of the things which enrage us are insults, not
injuries? It makes a great difference whether a man thwarts my
wishes or merely fails to carry them out, whether he robs me or
does not give me anything: yet we count it all the same whether a
man takes anything from us or refuses to give anything to us,
whether he extinguishes our hope or defers it, whether his object
be to hinder us or to help himself, whether he acts out of love for
some one or out of hatred for us. Some men are bound to oppose us
not only on the ground of justice, but of honour: one is defending
his father, another his brother, another his country, another his
friend: yet we do not forgive men for doing what we should blame
them for not doing; nay, though one can hardly believe it, we often
think well of an act, and ill of the man who did it. But, by Hercules,
a great and just man looks with respect at the bravest of his
enemies, and the most obstinate defender of his freedom and his
country, and wishes that he had such a man for his own countryman
and soldier.

It is shameful to hate him whom you praise: but how much more
shameful is it to hate a man for something for which he deserves
to be pitied? If a prisoner of war, who has suddenly been reduced
to the condition of a slave, still retains some remnants of liberty,
and does not run nimbly to perform foul and toilsome tasks, if,
having grown slothful by long rest, he cannot run fast enough to
keep pace with his master’s horse or carriage, if sleep overpowers
him when weary with many days and nights of watching, if he refuses
to undertake farm work, or does not do it heartily when brought
away from the idleness of city service and put to hard labour, we
ought to make a distinction between whether a man cannot or will
not do it: we should pardon many slaves, if we began to judge them
before we began to be angry with them: as it is, however, we obey
our first impulse, and then, although we may prove to have been
excited about mere trifles, yet we continue to be angry, lest we
should seem to have begun to be angry without cause; and, most
unjust of all, the injustice of our anger makes us persist in it
all the more; for we nurse it and inflame it, as though to
be violently angry proved our anger to be just.

How much better is it to observe how trifling, how inoffensive
are the first beginnings of anger? You will see that men are subject
to the same influences as dumb animals: we are put out by trumpery,
futile matters. Bulls are excited by red colour, the asp raises its
head at a shadow, bears or lions are irritated at the shaking of a
rag, and all creatures who are naturally fierce and wild are alarmed
at trifles. The same thing befalls men both of restless and of
sluggish disposition; they are seized by suspicions, sometimes to
such an extent that they call slight benefits injuries: and these
form the most common and certainly the most bitter subject for
anger: for we become angry with our dearest friends for having
bestowed less upon us than we expected, and less than others have
received from them: yet there is a remedy at hand for both these
grievances. Has he favoured our rival more than ourselves? then let
us enjoy what we have without making any comparisons. A man will
never be well off to whom it is a torture to see any one better off
than himself. Have I less than I hoped for? well, perhaps I hoped
for more than I ought. This it is against which we ought to be
especially on our guard: from hence arises the most destructive
anger, sparing nothing, not even the holiest. The Emperor Julius
was not stabbed by so many enemies as by friends whose insatiable
hopes he had not satisfied. He was willing enough to do so, for no
one ever made a more generous use of victory, of whose fruits he
kept nothing for himself save the power of distributing them; but
how could he glut such unconscionable appetites, when each man
coveted as much as any one man could possess? This was why he saw
his fellow-soldiers standing round his chair with drawn swords,
Tillius Cimber, though he had a short time before been the keenest
defender of his party, and others who only became Pompeians
after Pompeius was dead. This it is which has turned the arms of
kings against them, and made their trustiest followers meditate the
death of him for whom and before whom[11] they once would have been
glad to die.

No man is satisfied with his own lot if he fixes his attention
on that of another: and this leads to our being angry even with the
gods, because somebody precedes us, though we forget of how many
we take precedence, and that when a man envies few people, he must
be followed in the background by a huge crowd of people who envy
him. Yet so churlish is human nature, that, however much men may
have received, they think themselves wronged if they are able to
receive still more. “He gave me the praetorship. Yes, but I had
hoped for the consulship. He bestowed the twelve axes upon me: true,
but he did not make me a regular[12] consul. He allowed me to give
my name to the year, but he did not help me to the priesthood. I
have been elected a member of the college: but why only of one? He
has bestowed upon me every honour that the state affords: yes, but
he has added nothing to my private fortune. What he gave me he was
obliged to give to somebody: he brought out nothing from his own
pocket.” Rather than speak thus, thank him for what you have received:
wait for the rest, and be thankful that you are not yet too full
to contain more: there is a pleasure in having something left to
hope for. Are you preferred to every one? then rejoice at holding
the first place in the thoughts of your friend. Or are many others
preferred before you? then think how many more are below you than
there are above you. Do you ask, what is your greatest fault?
It is, that you keep your accounts wrongly: you set a high value
upon what you give, and a low one upon what you receive.

Let different qualities in different people keep us from
quarrelling with them: let us fear to be angry with some, feel
ashamed of being angry with others, and disdain to be angry with
others. We do a fine thing, indeed, when we send a wretched slave
to the workhouse! Why are we in such a hurry to flog him at once,
to break his legs straightway? we shall not lose our boasted power
if we defer its exercise. Let us wait for the time when we ourselves
can give orders: at present we speak under constraint from anger.
When it has passed away we shall see what amount of damage has been
done; for this is what we are especially liable to make mistakes
about: we use the sword, and capital punishment, and we appoint
chains, imprisonment, and starvation to punish a crime which deserves
only flogging with a light scourge. “In what way,” say you, “do you
bid us look at those things by which we think ourselves injured,
that we may see how paltry, pitiful, and childish they are?” Of all
things I would charge you to take to yourself a magnanimous spirit,
and behold how low and sordid all these matters are about which we
squabble and run to and fro till we are out of breath; to any one
who entertains any lofty and magnificent ideas, they are not worthy
of a thought.

The greatest hullabaloo is about money: this it is which
wearies out the law-courts, sows strife between father and son,
concocts poisons, and gives swords to murderers just as to soldiers:
it is stained with our blood: on account of it husbands and wives
wrangle all night long, crowds press round the bench of magistrates,
kings rage and plunder, and overthrow communities which it has taken
the labour of centuries to build, that they may seek for gold and
silver in the ashes of their cities. Do you like to look at
your money-bags lying in the corner? it is for these that men shout
till their eyes start from their heads, that the law-courts ring
with the din of trials, and that jurymen brought from great distances
sit to decide which man’s covetousness is the more equitable. What
shall we say if it be not even for a bag of money, but for a handful
of coppers or a shilling scored up by a slave that some old man,
soon to die without an heir, bursts with rage? what if it be an
invalid money-lender whose feet are distorted by the gout, and who
can no longer use his hands to count with, who calls for his interest
of one thousandth a month,[13] and by his sureties demands his pence
even during the paroxysms of his disease? If you were to bring to
me all the money from all our mines, which we are at this moment
sinking, if you were to bring to-night all that is concealed in
hoards, where avarice returns money to the earth from whence it
came, and pity that it ever was dug out—all that mass I should not
think worthy to cause a wrinkle on the brow of a good man. What
ridicule those things deserve which bring tears into our eyes!

Come now, let us enumerate the other causes of anger: they
are food, drink, and the showy apparatus connected with them, words,
insults, disrespectful movements of the body, suspicions, obstinate
cattle, lazy slaves, and spiteful construction put upon other men’s
words, so that even the gift of language to mankind becomes reckoned
among the wrongs of nature. Believe me, the things which cause us
such great heat are trifles, the sort of things that children fight
and squabble over: there is nothing serious, nothing important in
all that we do with such gloomy faces. It is, I repeat, the setting
a great value on trifles that is the cause of your anger and madness.
This man wanted to rob me of my inheritance, that one has
brought a charge against me before persons[14] whom I had long
courted with great expectations, that one has coveted my mistress.
A wish for the same things, which ought to have been a bond of
friendship, becomes a source of quarrels and hatred. A narrow path
causes quarrels among those who pass up and down it; a wide and
broadly spread road may be used by whole tribes without jostling.
Those objects of desire of yours cause strife and disputes among
those who covet the same things, because they are petty, and cannot
be given to one man without being taken away from another.

You are indignant at being answered back by your slave, your
freedman, your wife, or your client: and then you complain of the
state having lost the freedom which you have destroyed in your own
house: then again if he is silent when you question him, you call
it sullen obstinacy. Let him both speak and be silent, and laugh
too. “In the presence of his master?” you ask. Nay, say rather “in
the presence of the house-father.” Why do you shout? why do you
storm? why do you in the middle of dinner call for a whip, because
the slaves are talking, because a crowd as large as a public meeting
is not as silent as the wilderness? You have ears, not merely that
you may listen to musical sounds, softly and sweetly drawn out and
harmonized: you ought to hear laughter and weeping, coaxing and
quarrelling, joy and sorrow, the human voice and the roaring and
barking of animals. Miserable one! why do you shudder at the noise
of a slave, at the rattling of brass or the banging of a door? you
cannot help hearing the thunder, however refined you may be. You
may apply these remarks about your ears with equal truth to your
eyes, which are just as dainty, if they have been badly schooled:
they are shocked at stains and dirt, at silver plate which
is not sufficiently bright, or at a pool whose water is not clear
down to the bottom. Those same eyes which can only endure to see
the most variegated marble, and that which has just been scoured
bright, which will look at no table whose wood is not marked with
a network of veining, and which at home are loth to tread upon
anything that is not more precious than gold, will, when out of
doors, gaze most calmly upon rough and miry paths, will see unmoved
that the greater number of persons that meet them are shabbily
dressed, and that the walls of the houses are rotten, full of cracks,
and uneven. What, then, can be the reason that they are not distressed
out of doors by sights which would shock them in their own home,
unless it be that their temper is placid and long-suffering in one
case, sulky and fault-finding in the other?

All our senses should be educated into strength: they are
naturally able to endure much, provided that the spirit forbears
to spoil them. The spirit ought to be brought up for examination
daily. It was the custom of Sextius when the day was over, and he
had betaken himself to rest, to inquire of his spirit: “What bad
habit of yours have you cured to-day? what vice have you checked?
in what respect are you better?” Anger will cease, and become more
gentle, if it knows that every day it will have to appear before
the judgment seat. What can be more admirable than this fashion of
discussing the whole of the day’s events? how sweet is the sleep
which follows this self-examination? how calm, how sound, and
careless is it when our spirit has either received praise or
reprimand, and when our secret inquisitor and censor has made his
report about our morals? I make use of this privilege, and daily
plead my cause before myself: when the lamp is taken out of my
sight, and my wife, who knows my habit, has ceased to talk, I pass
the whole day in review before myself, and repeat all that I have
said and done: I conceal nothing from myself, and omit nothing:
for why should I be afraid of any of my shortcomings, when it is
in my power to say, “I pardon you this time: see that you never do
that any more? In that dispute you spoke too contentiously: do not
for the future argue with ignorant people: those who have never
been taught are unwilling to learn. You reprimanded that man with
more freedom than you ought, and consequently you have offended him
instead of amending his ways: in dealing with other cases of the
kind, you should look carefully, not only to the truth of what you
say, but also whether the person to whom you speak can bear to be
told the truth.” A good man delights in receiving advice: all the
worst men are the most impatient of guidance.

At the dinner-table some jokes and sayings intended to give
you pain have been directed against you: avoid feasting with low
people. Those who are not modest even when sober become much more
recklessly impudent after drinking. You have seen your friend in a
rage with the porter of some lawyer or rich man, because he has
sent him back when about to enter, and you yourself on behalf of
your friend have been in a rage with the meanest of slaves. Would
you then be angry with a chained housedog? Why, even he, after a
long bout of barking, becomes gentle if you offer him food. So draw
back and smile; for the moment your porter fancies himself to be
somebody, because he guards a door which is beset by a crowd of
litigants; for the moment he who sits within is prosperous and
happy, and thinks that a street-door through which it is hard to
gain entrance is the mark of a rich and powerful man; he knows not
that the hardest door of all to open is that of the prison. Be
prepared to submit to much. Is any one surprised at being cold in
winter? at being sick at sea? or at being jostled in the street?
The mind is strong enough to bear those evils for which it is
prepared. When you are not given a sufficiently distinguished
place at table you have begun to be angry with your fellow-guests,
with your host, and with him who is preferred above you. Idiot!
What difference can it make what part of the couch you rest upon?
Can a cushion give you honour or take it away? You have looked
askance at somebody because he has spoken slightingly of your
talents; will you apply this rule to yourself? If so, Ennius, whose
poetry you do not care for, would have hated you. Hortensius, if
you had found fault with his speeches, would have quarrelled with
you, and Cicero, if you had laughed at his poetry, would have been
your enemy. A candidate for office, will you resent men’s votes?

Some one has offered you an insult? Not a greater one,
probably, than was offered to the Stoic philosopher Diogenes, in
whose face an insolent young man spat just when he was lecturing
upon anger. He bore it mildly and wisely. “I am not angry,” said
he, “but I am not sure that I ought not to be angry.” Yet how much
better did our Cato behave? When he was pleading, one Lentulus,
whom our fathers remember as a demagogue and passionate man, spat
all the phlegm he could muster upon his forehead. Cato wiped his
face, and said, “Lentulus, I shall declare to all the world that
men are mistaken when they say that you are wanting in cheek.”

We have now succeeded, my Novatus, in properly regulating
our own minds: they either do not feel anger or are above it: let
us next see how we may soothe the wrath of others, for we do not
only wish to be whole, but to heal.

You should not attempt to allay the first burst of anger by words:
it is deaf and frantic: we must give it scope; our remedies will
only be effective when it slackens. We do not meddle with men’s
eyes when they are swollen, because we should only irritate their
hard stiffness by touching them, nor do we try to cure other
diseases when at their height: the best treatment in the first stage
of illness is rest. “Of how very little value,” say you, “is your
remedy, if it appeases anger which is subsiding of its own accord?”
In the first place, I answer, it makes it end quicker: in the next,
it prevents a relapse. It can render harmless even the violent
impulse which it dares not soothe: it will put out of the way all
weapons which might be used for revenge: it will pretend to be
angry, in order that its advice may have more weight as coming from
an assistant and comrade in grief. It will invent delays, and
postpone immediate punishment while a greater one is being sought
for: it will use every artifice to give the man a respite from his
frenzy. If his anger be unusually strong, it will inspire him with
some irresistible feeling of shame or of fear: if weak, it will
make use of conversation on amusing or novel subjects, and by playing
upon his curiosity lead him to forget his passion. We are told that
a physician, who was forced to cure the king’s daughter, and could
not without using the knife, conveyed a lancet to her swollen breast
concealed under the sponge with which he was fomenting it. The same
girl, who would have shrunk from the remedy if he had applied it
openly, bore the pain because she did not expect it. Some diseases
can only be cured by deceit.

To one class of men you will say, “Beware, lest your anger give
pleasure to your foes:” to the other, “Beware lest your greatness
of mind and the reputation it bears among most people for strength
become impaired. I myself, by Hercules, am scandalized at your
treatment and am grieved beyond measure, but we must wait for a
proper opportunity. He shall pay for what he has done; be well
assured of that: when you are able you shall return it to him with
interest.” To reprove a man when he is angry is to add to his anger
by being angry oneself. You should approach him in different
ways and in a compliant fashion, unless perchance you be so great
a personage that you can quash his anger, as the Emperor Augustus
did when he was dining with Vedius Pollio.[15] One of the slaves
had broken a crystal goblet of his: Vedius ordered him to be led
away to die, and that too in no common fashion: he ordered him to
be thrown to feed the muraenae, some of which fish, of great size,
he kept in a tank. Who would not think that he did this out of
luxury? but it was out of cruelty. The boy slipped through the hands
of those who tried to seize him, and flung himself at Caesar’s feet
in order to beg for nothing more than that he might die in some
different way, and not be eaten. Caesar was shocked at this novel
form of cruelty, and ordered him to be let go, and, in his place,
all the crystal ware which he saw before him to be broken, and the
tank to be filled up. This was the proper way for Caesar to reprove
his friend: he made a good use of his power. What are you, that
when at dinner you order men to be put to death, and mangled by an
unheard-of form of torture? Are a man’s bowels to be torn asunder
because your cup is broken? You must think a great deal of yourself,
if even when the emperor is present you order men to be executed.

If any one’s power is so great that he can treat anger with
the tone of a superior let him crush it out of existence, but only
if it be of the kind of which I have just spoken, fierce, inhuman,
bloodthirsty, and incurable save by fear of something more powerful
than itself . . . . . . . . let us give the mind that peace which
is given by constant meditation upon wholesome maxims, by good
actions, and by a mind directed to the pursuit of honour alone. Let
us set our own conscience fully at rest, but make no efforts to
gain credit for ourselves: so long as we deserve well, let
us be satisfied, even if we should be ill spoken of. “But the common
herd admires spirited actions, and bold men are held in honour,
while quiet ones are thought to be indolent.” True, at first sight
they may appear to be so: but as soon as the even tenor of their
life proves that this quietude arises not from dullness but from
peace of mind, then that same populace respects and reverences them.
There is, then, nothing useful in that hideous and destructive
passion of anger, but on the contrary, every kind of evil, fire and
sword. Anger tramples self-restraint underfoot, steeps its hands
in slaughter, scatters abroad the limbs of its children: it leaves
no place unsoiled by crime, it has no thoughts of glory, no fears
of disgrace, and when once anger has hardened into hatred, no
amendment is possible.

Let us be free from this evil, let us clear our minds of it,
and extirpate root and branch a passion which grows again wherever
the smallest particle of it finds a resting-place. Let us not
moderate anger, but get rid of it altogether: what can moderation
have to do with an evil habit? We shall succeed in doing this, if
only we exert ourselves. Nothing will be of greater service than
to bear in mind that we are mortal: let each man say to himself and
to his neighbour, “Why should we, as though we were born to live
for ever, waste our tiny span of life in declaring anger against
any one? why should days, which we might spend in honourable
enjoyment, be misapplied in grieving and torturing others? Life is
a matter which does not admit of waste, and we have no spare time
to throw away. Why do we rush into the fray? why do we go out of
our way to seek disputes? why do we, forgetful of the weakness of
our nature, undertake mighty feuds, and, frail though we be, summon
up all our strength to cut down other men? Ere long, fever or some
other bodily ailment will make us unable to carry on this warfare
of hatred which we so implacably wage: death will soon part
the most vigorous pair of combatants. Why do we make disturbances
and spend our lives in rioting? fate hangs over our heads, scores
up to our account the days as they pass, and is ever drawing nearer
and nearer. The time which you have marked for the death of another
perhaps includes your own.”

Instead of acting thus, why do you not rather draw together
what there is of your short life, and keep it peaceful for others
and for yourself? why do you not rather make yourself beloved by
every one while you live, and regretted by every one when you die?
Why do you wish to tame that man’s pride, because he takes too lofty
a tone with you? why do you try with all your might to crush that
other who snaps and snarls at you, a low and contemptible wretch,
but spiteful and offensive to his betters? Master, why are you angry
with your slave? Slave, why are you angry with your master? Client,
why are you angry with your patron? Patron, why are you angry with
your client? Wait but a little while. See, here comes death, who
will make you all equals. We often see at a morning performance in
the arena a battle between a bull and a bear, fastened together,
in which the victor, after he has torn the other to pieces, is
himself slain. We do just the same thing: we worry some one who is
connected with us, although the end of both victor and vanquished
is at hand, and that soon. Let us rather pass the little remnant
of our lives in peace and quiet: may no one loathe us when we lie
dead. A quarrel is often brought to an end by a cry of “Fire!” in
the neighbourhood, and the appearance of a wild beast parts the
highwayman from the traveller: men have no leisure to battle with
minor evils when menaced by some overpowering terror. What have we
to do with fighting and ambuscades? do you want anything more than
death to befall him with whom you are angry? well, even though
you sit quiet, he will be sure to die. You waste your pains: you
want to do what is certain to be done. You say, “I do not wish
necessarily to kill him, but to punish him by exile, or public
disgrace, or loss of property.” I can more easily pardon one who
wishes to give his enemy a wound than one who wishes to give him a
blister: for the latter is not only bad, but petty-minded. Whether
you are thinking of extreme or slighter punishments, how very short
is the time during which either your victim is tortured or you enjoy
an evil pleasure in another’s pain? This breath that we hold so
dear will soon leave us: in the meantime, while we draw it, while
we live among human beings, let us practise humanity: let us not
be a terror or a danger to any one. Let us keep our tempers in spite
of losses, wrongs, abuse or sarcasm, and let us endure with magnanimity
our shortlived troubles: while we are considering what is due to
ourselves, as the saying is, and worrying ourselves, death will be
upon us.

[1] The hook alluded to was fastened to the neck of condemned
criminals, and by it they were dragged to the Tiber. Also the bodies
of dead gladiators were thus dragged out of the arena. The hook by
which the dead bull is drawn away at a modern Spanish bull-fight
is probably a survival of this custom.

[2] Hdt. iii, 34, 35,

[3] Seneca’s own death, by opening his veins, gives a melancholy interest to this passage.

[4] Hdt. iv. 84.

[5] Hdt. vii. 38, 39.

[6] Plut. Dem. 27.

[7] Hdt. iii. 17, _sqq._

[8] Hdt. i. 189, 190.

[9] A mistake: Antigonus (Monophthalmus) was one of Alexander’s generals.

[10] _Acerbum_ = ἄωρυν; the funeral of one who has been cut off in the flower of his youth.

[11] In point of time.

[12] _Consul ordinarius_, a regular consul, one who administered
in office from the first of January, in opposition to _consul
suffectus_, one chosen in the course of the year in the place of
one who had died. The consul ordinarius gave his name to the year.

[13] It seems inconceivable that so small an interest, 1 1/5 per cent, per an., can be meant.

[14] _Captatis_, Madvig. Adv. II. 394.

[15] See “On Clemency,” i. 18, 2.