Concerning the cure of anger: a dialogue (5)

FUNDANUS.For the first way, my friend, to suppress anger, as you would a tyrant, is not to obey or yield to it when it commands us to speak high, to look fiercely, and to beat ourselves; but to be quiet, and not increase the passion, as we do a disease, by impatient tossing and crying out. It is true that lovers’ practices, such as revelling, singing, crowning the door with garlands, have a kind of alleviation in them which is neither rude nor unpleasing:—

Coming, I asked not who or whose she was,

But kissed her door full sweetly,—that I wot;

If this be sin, to sin I can but choose.

So the weeping and lamentation which we permit in mourners doubtless carry forth much of the grief together with the tears. But anger, quite on the contrary, is more inflamed by what the angry persons say or do.

The best course then is for a man to compose himself, or else to run away and hide himself and retreat into quiet, as into an haven, as if he perceived a fit of epilepsy coming on, lest he fall, or rather fall upon others; and truly we do most and most frequently fall upon our friends. For we neither love all, nor envy all, nor fear all men; but there is nothing untouched and unset upon by anger. We are angry with our foes and with our friends; with our own children and our parents; nay, with the Gods above, and the very beasts below us, and instruments that have no life, as Thamyras was,—

His horn, though bound with gold, he brake in’s ire,

He brake his melodious and well-strung lyre;

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and Pandarus, wishing a curse upon himself if he did not burn his bow,

First broken by his hands.

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But Xerxes dealt blows and marks of his displeasure to the sea itself, and sent his letters to the mountain in the style ensuing: O thou wretched Athos, whose top now reaches to the skies, I charge thee, put not in the way of my works stones too big and difficult to be wrought. If thou do, I will cut thee into pieces, and cast thee into the sea.

For anger hath many terrible effects, and many also that are ridiculous; and therefore of all passions, this of anger is most hated and most contemned, and it is good to consider it in both respects.