On the Control of Anger (12)

FUNDANUS. However this, perhaps, will not appear to be a cure for anger, but a temporary reprieve and prophylactic[*] against those errors which some men commit in anger. And yet, though the swelling of the spleen is but a symptom of fever, reducing it assuages the fever, as Hieronymus says. But when I contemplated the origin of anger itself, I observed that different persons are liable to anger from different causes; yet in the case of practically all of them there is present a belief that they are being despised or neglected.[*] For this reason we should assist those who endeavour to avoid anger, by removing as far as possible the act that rouses wrath from any suspicion of contempt or arrogance and by imputing it to ignorance or necessity or emotion or mischance. So Sophocles[*]:

O king, not even the reason Nature gives

Stays with the unfortunate, but goes astray;

and so likewise Agamemnon[*] ascribes the taking away of Briseis to divine infatuation:

I wish again to make amends, to give

You countless ransom.

Supplication, indeed, is the act of one who does not despise; and when he that has done an injury shows himself humble, he removes all notion of contempt. But the man in a rage should not wait for such humility, but should take to himself the reply of Diogenes[*]: when someone said to him, They are laughing at you, Diogenes, he answered, But I am not laughed down. Just so the angry man should not consider himself despised, but rather despise the man who gave the offence as acting from weakness or rashness, carelessness or illiberality, dotage or childishness. But such a notion must not on any account be entertained toward servants or friends; for our servants presume on our upright character, our friends on our affection, and both disregard us, not as being impotent or ineffectual, but because of our reasonableness or our goodwill. As it is, thinking ourselves despised, we not only treat harshly wife and slaves and friends, but also through rage often fall out with innkeepers and sailors and drunken muleteers; we even rage against dogs that bark at us and asses that jostle us,[*] like the man who wished to beat the assdriver, but when the driver cried out, I am an Athenian, indicated the ass and said, You at any rate are not an Athenian, and fell to beating it with many blows.