Concerning the cure of anger: a dialogue (6)

FUNDANUS.I therefore, whether rightly or not I know not, began this cure with learning the nature of anger by beholding it in other men, as the Lacedaemonians learned what drunkenness was by seeing it in the Helots. And, in the first place, as Hippocrates said that that was the most dangerous disease which made the sick man’s countenance most unlike to what it was, so I observed that men transported with anger also exceedingly change their visage, color, gait, and voice. Accordingly I formed a kind of image of that passion to myself, withal conceiving great in dignation against myself if I should at any time appear to my friends, or to my wife and daughters, so terrible and discomposed, not only with so wild and strange a look, but also with so fierce and harsh a voice, as I had met with in some others of my acquaintance, who by reason of anger were not able to observe either good manners or countenance or graceful speech, or even their persuasiveness and affability in conversation.

Wherefore Caius Gracchus, the orator, being of a rugged disposition and a passionate kind of speaker, had a pipe made for him, such as musicians use to vary their voice higher or lower by degrees; and with this pipe his servant stood behind him while he pronounced, and gave him a mild and gentle note, whereby he took him down from his loudness, and took off the harshness and angriness of his voice, assuaging and charming the anger of the orator,

As their shrill wax-joined reed who herds do keep

Sounds forth sweet measures, which invite to sleep.

[*]

For my own part, had I a careful and pleasant companion who would show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill. In like manner, some are wont to have a looking-glass held to them after they have bathed, though to little purpose; but to behold one’s self unnaturally disguised and disordered will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger. For those who delight in pleasant fables tell us, that Minerva herself, playing on a pipe, was thus admonished by a satyr:—

That look becomes you not, lay down your pipes,

And take your arms, and set your cheeks to rights;

but would not regard it; yet, when by chance she beheld the mien of her countenance in a river, she was moved with indignation, and cast her pipes away; and yet here art had the delight of melody to comfort her for the deformity. And Marsyas, as it seems, did with a kind of muzzle and mouth-piece restrain by force the too horrible eruption of his breath when he played, and so corrected and concealed the distortion of his visage:—

With shining gold he girt his temples rough,

And his wide mouth with thongs that tied behind.

Now anger doth swell and puff up the countenance very indecently, and sends forth a yet more indecent and unpleasant voice,—

Moving the heart-strings, which should be at rest.

For when the sea is tossed and troubled with winds, and casts up moss and sea-weed, they say it is purged; but those impure, bitter, and vain words which anger throws up when the soul has become a kind of whirlpool, defile the speakers, in the first place, and fill them with dishonor, arguing them to have always had such things in them and to be full of them, only now they are discovered to have them by their anger. So for a mere word, the lightest of things (as Plato says), they undergo the heaviest of punishments, being ever after accounted enemies, evil speakers, and of a malignant disposition.