On the Control of Anger (10)

FUNDANUS. Just as, then, someone said of Philip[*] when he had razed Olynthus to the ground, But he could not possibly repeople a city so large, so one may address Anger and say, You are able to overturn and destroy and throw down, but to raise up and preserve and spare and forbear is the work of mildness and forgiveness and moderation in passion, the work of a Camillus or a Metellus[*] or an Aristeides or a Socrates; but to attach oneself to the wound and to sting is the part of an ant or a horse-fly. [*] As I study, however, anger’s method of defending itself, I find it for the most part ineffectual, since it spends itself in biting the lips[*] and gnashing the teeth, in vain attacks and railings coupled with senseless threats, and eventually resembles children[*] running races, who, through lack of self-control, fall down ridiculously before they reach the goal toward which they are hastening. Therefore there was point in what the Rhodian said to the Roman general’s servant who was shouting and talking insolently: What you say, said the Rhodian, matters nothing to me, but what your master doesn’t say. And Sophocles,[*] when he has armed Neoptolemus and Eurypylus, says

Without a vaunt, without reviling, they

Have rushed within the ring of brazen arms.

FUNDANUS. For although there are barbarians who poison their steel, true bravery has no need of bitter gall,[*] for it has been dipped in reason; but rage and fury are rotten and easily broken. At any rate the Spartans[*] use the playing of pipes to remove from their fighting men the spirit of anger, and they sacrifice to the Muses before battle in order that reason may remain constant within them; and when they have routed the enemy, they do not pursue,[*] but sound the recall to their high spirits, which, like small daggers,[*] are manageable and can be easily withdrawn. Yet wrath has slain thousands before its revenge was accomplished, as, for instance, Cyrus t and Pelopidas the Theban.[*] But Agathocles[*] endured with mildness the revilings of those he was besieging, and when one of them cried out, Potter, how will you get pay for your mercenaries?, Agathocles laughed and said, If I take this town. And there is the case of Antigonus,[*] who, when some men on the wall of a town jeered at him because of his deformity, said to them, Why, I thought my face was handsome! But when he took the town he sold as slaves those who jeered at him, protesting that he would have speech with their masters if they reviled him again.

FUNDANUS. I observe also that both advocates and orators commit serious mistakes because of anger; and Aristotle[*] relates that the friends of Satyrus the Samian, when he was to plead, stopped up his ears with wax, that he might not spoil his case through temper at the insults of his enemies. And as for ourselves, does it not happen often that the punishment of a delinquent slave eludes our power? For slaves are made afraid by threatening words and run away.[*] The words, therefore, which nurses use with children, Stop crying and you shall have it! may, not without benefit, be applied to temper: Stop hurrying and shouting and making haste, and you shall have what you want better and more easily! For if a father sees his son trying to cut something in two or to make a notch in it with a knife, he takes the knife himself and does it; so likewise, if reason takes upon itself the punishment which temper would inflict, it chastises the person who deserves it safely and harmlessly and for that person’s good, and does not, as temper often does, punish itself instead.[*]