On the Control of Anger (5-6)

FUNDANUS. For the first way, my friend, to dethrone temper as you would a tyrant, is not to oey or hearken when it bids us cry aloud and look fierce and beat our breasts, but to keep quiet and not intensify the passion, as we would a disease, by tossing about and making a clamour. It is quite true that lovers’ practices, such as serenading in concert or alone and crowning the beloved’s door with garlands, do in some way or other bring an alleviation that is not without charm or grace:

I came, but did not shout your name or race;

I merely kissed the door. If this be sin, Then I have sinned.[*]

So too the surrender of mourners to weeping and wailing carries away much of their grief together with their tears. But temper is the more readily fanned into flame by what people in that state do and say.

FUNDANUS. The best course, therefore, is for us to compose ourselves, or else to run away and conceal ourselves, and anchor ourselves in a calm harbour, as though we perceived a fit of epilepsy coming on,[*] so that we may not fall, or rather may not fall upon others; and we are especially likely to fall most often upon our friends. For we do not love or envy or fear everyone indiscriminately, but there is nothing that temper will not touch and assail: we grow angry with enemies and friends, with children and parents, yes, even with the gods, with wild beasts and soulless implements, as Thamyris did:

Breaking the lyre-arms, overlaid with gold, Breaking his melodious, taut-strung lyre[*];

and Pandarus, who invoked a curse on himself if he did not break with his hands [*] his bow and burn it. And Xerxes not only branded and lashed the sea,[*] but also sent a letter to Mount Athos[*]: Noble Athos, whose summit reaches heaven, do not put in the way of my deeds great stones difficult to work. Else I shall hew you down and cast you into the sea. For temper can do many terrible things, and likewise many that are ridiculous; therefore it is both the most hated and the most despised of the passions. It will be useful to consider it in both of these aspects.

FUNDANUS. As for me - whether rightly I do not know - I made this start in the treatment of my anger: I began to observe the passion in others, just as the Spartans used to observe in the Helots[*] what a thing drunkenness is. And first, as Hippocrates[*] says that the most severe disease is that in which the countenance of the sufferer is most unlike itself, so I observed that those who are transported by anger also change most in countenance, colour, gait, and voice,[*] and thus formed for myself a picture of that passion and was exceedingly uncomfortable to think that I should ever appear so terrible and deranged to my friends and my wife and daughters, not merely savage and unfamiliar to their sight, but also speaking with so harsh and rough a voice as were others of my intimate friends whom I used to meet at times when anger had made them unable to preserve their character or bearing or grace of speech or their winning and affable manners. The ease of Gaius Gracchus[*] the orator will serve as illustration. He was not only severe in his disposition, but spoke too passionately; so he caused a pitch-pipe to be made of the sort which musicians use to lead the voice up and down the scales to the proper note; with this in hand his servant used to stand behind him as he spoke and give him a decorous and gentle tone which enabled Gracchus to remit his loud cries and remove from his voice the harsh and passionate element; just as the shepherds’

Wax-joined pipe, clear sounding,

Drones a slumberous strain,[*]

so did he charm and lay to rest the rage of the orator. But as for me, if I had some attentive and clever companion, I should not be vexed if he held a mirror[*] up to me during my moments of rage, as they do for some persons after bathing, though to no useful purpose. For to see oneself in a state which nature did not intend, with one’s features all distorted, contributes in no small degree toward discrediting that passion. In fact, those who delight in pleasant fables tell us that when Athena[*] played on the pipes, she was rebuked by the satyr and would give no heed:

That look becomes you not; lay by your pipes

And take your arms and put your cheeks to rights[*];

but when she saw her face in a river, she was vexed and threw her pipes away. Yet art makes melody some consolation for unsightliness. And Marsyas,[*] it seems, by a mouthpiece and cheek-bands repressed the violence of his breath and tricked up and concealed the distortion of his face:

He fitted the fringe of his temples with gleaming gold

And his greedy mouth he fitted with thongs bound behind[*];

but anger, which puffs up and distends the face in an unbecoming way, utters a voice still more ugly and unpleasant,

Stirring the heart-strings never stirred before.[*]

For when the sea is disturbed by the winds and casts up tangle and seaweed, they say that it is being cleansed; but the intemperate, bitter, and vulgar words which temper casts forth when the soul is disturbed defile the speakers of them first of all and fill them with disrepute, the implication being that they have always had these traits inside of them and are full of them, but that their inner nature is now laid bare by their anger. Hence for a mere word, the lightest of things, as Plato[*] says, they incur the heaviest of punishments, being esteemed as hostile, slanderous, and malicious.