Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
enemies: to serve the state, or to busy oneself with one’s private
affairs, rather than to cast about for what harm you can do to
somebody, what wound you can inflict either upon his social position,
his fortune, or his person, although you cannot succeed in doing
so without a struggle and risk to yourself, even if your antagonist
be inferior to you. Even supposing that he were handed over to you
in chains, and that you were at liberty to torture him as much as
you please, yet even then excessive violence in striking a blow
often causes us to dislocate a joint, or entangles a sinew in the
teeth which it has broken. Anger makes many men cripples, or invalids,
even when it meets with an unresisting victim: and besides this,
no creature is so weak that it can be destroyed without any danger
to its destroyer: sometimes grief, sometimes chance, puts the weakest
on a level with the strongest. What shall we say of the fact that
the greater part of the things which enrage us are insults, not
injuries? It makes a great difference whether a man thwarts my
wishes or merely fails to carry them out, whether he robs me or
does not give me anything: yet we count it all the same whether a
{148} man takes anything from us or refuses to give anything to us,
whether he extinguishes our hope or defers it, whether his object
be to hinder us or to help himself, whether he acts out of love for
some one or out of hatred for us. Some men are bound to oppose us
not only on the ground of justice, but of honour: one is defending
his father, another his brother, another his country, another his
friend: yet we do not forgive men for doing what we should blame
them for not doing; nay, though one can hardly believe it, we often
think well of an act, and ill of the man who did it. But, by Hercules,
a great and just man looks with respect at the bravest of his
enemies, and the most obstinate defender of his freedom and his
country, and wishes that he had such a man for his own countryman
and soldier.
XXIX. It is shameful to hate him whom you praise: but how much more
shameful is it to hate a man for something for which he deserves
to be pitied? If a prisoner of war, who has suddenly been reduced
to the condition of a slave, still retains some remnants of liberty,
and does not run nimbly to perform foul and toilsome tasks, if,
having grown slothful by long rest, he cannot run fast enough to
keep pace with his master’s horse or carriage, if sleep overpowers
him when weary with many days and nights of watching, if he refuses
to undertake farm work, or does not do it heartily when brought
away from the idleness of city service and put to hard labour, we
ought to make a distinction between whether a man cannot or will
not do it: we should pardon many slaves, if we began to judge them
before we began to be angry with them: as it is, however, we obey
our first impulse, and then, although we may prove to have been
excited about mere trifles, yet we continue to be angry, lest we
should seem to have begun to be angry without cause; and, most
unjust of all, the injustice of our anger makes us persist in it
all the more; for we {149} nurse it and inflame it, as though to
be violently angry proved our anger to be just.
XXX. How much better is it to observe how trifling, how inoffensive
are the first beginnings of anger? You will see that men are subject
to the same influences as dumb animals: we are put out by trumpery,
futile matters. Bulls are excited by red colour, the asp raises its
head at a shadow, bears or lions are irritated at the shaking of a
rag, and all creatures who are naturally fierce and wild are alarmed
at trifles. The same thing befalls men both of restless and of
sluggish disposition; they are seized by suspicions, sometimes to
such an extent that they call slight benefits injuries: and these
form the most common and certainly the most bitter subject for
anger: for we become angry with our dearest friends for having
bestowed less upon us than we expected, and less than others have
received from them: yet there is a remedy at hand for both these
grievances. Has he favoured our rival more than ourselves? then let
us enjoy what we have without making any comparisons. A man will
never be well off to whom it is a torture to see any one better off
than himself. Have I less than I hoped for? well, perhaps I hoped
for more than I ought. This it is against which we ought to be
especially on our guard: from hence arises the most destructive
anger, sparing nothing, not even the holiest. The Emperor Julius
was not stabbed by so many enemies as by friends whose insatiable
hopes he had not satisfied. He was willing enough to do so, for no
one ever made a more generous use of victory, of whose fruits he
kept nothing for himself save the power of distributing them; but
how could he glut such unconscionable appetites, when each man
coveted as much as any one man could possess? This was why he saw
his fellow-soldiers standing round his chair with drawn swords,
Tillius Cimber, though he had a short time before been the keenest
defender of his party, {150} and others who only became Pompeians
after Pompeius was dead. This it is which has turned the arms of
kings against them, and made their trustiest followers meditate the
death of him for whom and before whom[11] they once would have been
glad to die.
XXXI. No man is satisfied with his own lot if he fixes his attention
on that of another: and this leads to our being angry even with the
gods, because somebody precedes us, though we forget of how many
we take precedence, and that when a man envies few people, he must
be followed in the background by a huge crowd of people who envy
him. Yet so churlish is human nature, that, however much men may
have received, they think themselves wronged if they are able to
receive still more. “He gave me the praetorship. Yes, but I had
hoped for the consulship. He bestowed the twelve axes upon me: true,
but he did not make me a regular[12] consul. He allowed me to give
my name to the year, but he did not help me to the priesthood. I
have been elected a member of the college: but why only of one? He
has bestowed upon me every honour that the state affords: yes, but
he has added nothing to my private fortune. What he gave me he was
obliged to give to somebody: he brought out nothing from his own
pocket.” Rather than speak thus, thank him for what you have received:
wait for the rest, and be thankful that you are not yet too full
to contain more: there is a pleasure in having something left to
hope for. Are you preferred to every one? then rejoice at holding
the first place in the thoughts of your friend. Or are many others
preferred before you? then think how many more are below you than
there are {151} above you. Do you ask, what is your greatest fault?
It is, that you keep your accounts wrongly: you set a high value
upon what you give, and a low one upon what you receive.
XXXII. Let different qualities in different people keep us from
quarrelling with them: let us fear to be angry with some, feel
ashamed of being angry with others, and disdain to be angry with
others. We do a fine thing, indeed, when we send a wretched slave
to the workhouse! Why are we in such a hurry to flog him at once,
to break his legs straightway? we shall not lose our boasted power
if we defer its exercise. Let us wait for the time when we ourselves
can give orders: at present we speak under constraint from anger.
When it has passed away we shall see what amount of damage has been
done; for this is what we are especially liable to make mistakes
about: we use the sword, and capital punishment, and we appoint
chains, imprisonment, and starvation to punish a crime which deserves
only flogging with a light scourge. “In what way,” say you, “do you
bid us look at those things by which we think ourselves injured,
that we may see how paltry, pitiful, and childish they are?” Of all
things I would charge you to take to yourself a magnanimous spirit,
and behold how low and sordid all these matters are about which we
squabble and run to and fro till we are out of breath; to any one
who entertains any lofty and magnificent ideas, they are not worthy
of a thought.
XXXIII. The greatest hullabaloo is about money: this it is which
wearies out the law-courts, sows strife between father and son,
concocts poisons, and gives swords to murderers just as to soldiers:
it is stained with our blood: on account of it husbands and wives
wrangle all night long, crowds press round the bench of magistrates,
kings rage and plunder, and overthrow communities which it has taken
the labour of centuries to build, that they may seek for gold and
{152} silver in the ashes of their cities. Do you like to look at
your money-bags lying in the corner? it is for these that men shout
till their eyes start from their heads, that the law-courts ring
with the din of trials, and that jurymen brought from great distances
sit to decide which man’s covetousness is the more equitable. What
shall we say if it be not even for a bag of money, but for a handful
of coppers or a shilling scored up by a slave that some old man,
soon to die without an heir, bursts with rage? what if it be an
invalid money-lender whose feet are distorted by the gout, and who
can no longer use his hands to count with, who calls for his interest
of one thousandth a month,[13] and by his sureties demands his pence
even during the paroxysms of his disease? If you were to bring to
me all the money from all our mines, which we are at this moment
sinking, if you were to bring to-night all that is concealed in
hoards, where avarice returns money to the earth from whence it
came, and pity that it ever was dug out—all that mass I should not
think worthy to cause a wrinkle on the brow of a good man. What
ridicule those things deserve which bring tears into our eyes!
XXXIV. Come now, let us enumerate the other causes of anger: they
are food, drink, and the showy apparatus connected with them, words,
insults, disrespectful movements of the body, suspicions, obstinate
cattle, lazy slaves, and spiteful construction put upon other men’s
words, so that even the gift of language to mankind becomes reckoned
among the wrongs of nature. Believe me, the things which cause us
such great heat are trifles, the sort of things that children fight
and squabble over: there is nothing serious, nothing important in
all that we do with such gloomy faces. It is, I repeat, the setting
a great value on trifles that is the cause of your anger and madness.
This {153} man wanted to rob me of my inheritance, that one has
brought a charge against me before persons[14] whom I had long
courted with great expectations, that one has coveted my mistress.
A wish for the same things, which ought to have been a bond of
friendship, becomes a source of quarrels and hatred. A narrow path
causes quarrels among those who pass up and down it; a wide and
broadly spread road may be used by whole tribes without jostling.
Those objects of desire of yours cause strife and disputes among
those who covet the same things, because they are petty, and cannot
be given to one man without being taken away from another.
XXXV. You are indignant at being answered back by your slave, your
freedman, your wife, or your client: and then you complain of the
state having lost the freedom which you have destroyed in your own
house: then again if he is silent when you question him, you call
it sullen obstinacy. Let him both speak and be silent, and laugh
too. “In the presence of his master?” you ask. Nay, say rather “in
the presence of the house-father.” Why do you shout? why do you
storm? why do you in the middle of dinner call for a whip, because
the slaves are talking, because a crowd as large as a public meeting