Concerning the cure of anger: a dialogue (9)

FUNDANUS.Indeed such evil examples as these afford us speculations which are necessary, though not pleasant. But now, from those who have carried themselves mildly and gently in their anger, I shall present you with most excellent sayings and beautiful contemplations; and I begin to contemn such as say, You have wronged a man inded, and is a man to bear this?—Stamp on his neck, tread him down in the dirt,—and such like provoking speeches, whereby some do very unhandsomely translate and remove anger from the women’s to the men’s apartment. For fortitude, which in other respects agrees with justice, seems only to disagree in respect of mildness, which she claims as more properly her own. For it sometimes befalls even worser men to bear rule over those who are better than themselves; but to erect a trophy in the soul against anger (which Heraclitus says it is an hard thing to fight against, because whatever it resolves to have, it buys at no less a price than the soul itself) is that which none but a great and victorious power is able to achieve, since that alone can bind and curb the passions by its decrees, as with nerves and tendons.

Wherefore I always strive to collect and read not only the sayings and deeds of philosophers, who (wise men say) had no gall in them, but especially those of kings and tyrants. Of this sort was the saying of Antigonus to his soldiers, when, as some were reviling him near his tent, supposing that he had not heard them, he stretched his staff out of the tent, and said: What! will you not stand somewhere farther off, while you revile me? So was that of Arcadio the Achaean, who was ever speaking ill of Philip, exhorting men to flee

Till they should come where none would Philip know.

When afterwards by some accident he appeared in Macedonia, Philip’s friends were of opinion that he ought not to be suffered, but be punished; but Philip meeting him and speaking courteously to him, and then sending him gifts, particularly such as were wont to be given to strangers, bade him learn for the time to come what to speak of him to the Greeks. And when all testified that the man was become a great praiser of Philip, even to admiration, You see, said Philip, I am a better physician than you. And when he had been reproached at the Olympic solemnities, and some said it was fit to make the Grecians smart and rue it for reviling Philip, who had dealt well with them, What then, said he, will they do, if I make them smart? Those things also which Pisistratus did to Thrasybulus, and Porsena to Mutius, were bravely done; and so was that of Magas to Philemon, for having been by him exposed to laughter in a comedy on the public stage, in these words:—

Magas, the king hath sent thee letters:

Unhappy Magas, thou dost know no letters.

And having taken Philemon as he was by a tempest cast on shore at Paraetonium, he commanded a soldier only to touch his neck with his naked sword and to go quietly away; and then having sent him a ball and huckle-bones, as if he were a child that wanted understanding, he dismissed him. Ptolemy was once jeering a grammarian for his want of learning, and asked him who was the father of Peleus: I will answer you (quoth he) if you will tell me first who was the father of Lagus. This jeer gave the king a rub for the obscurity of his birth, whereat all were moved with indignation, as a thing not to be endured. But, said Ptolemy, if it is not fit for a king to be jeered, then no more is it fit for him to jeer others. But Alexander was more severe than he was wont in his carriage towards Calisthenes and Clitus. Wherefore Porus, being taken captive by him, desired him to treat him like a king; and when Alexander asked him if he desired no more, he answered, When I say like a king, I have comprised all. And hence it is that they call the king of the Gods Meilichius, while the Athenians, I think, call him Maimactes; but the office of punishing they ascribe to the Furies and evil Genii, never giving it the epithet of divine or heavenly.