Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
is not as silent as the wilderness? You have ears, not merely that
you may listen to musical sounds, softly and sweetly drawn out and
harmonized: you ought to hear laughter and weeping, coaxing and
quarrelling, joy and sorrow, the human voice and the roaring and
barking of animals. Miserable one! why do you shudder at the noise
of a slave, at the rattling of brass or the banging of a door? you
cannot help hearing the thunder, however refined you may be. You
may apply these remarks about your ears with equal truth to your
eyes, which are just as dainty, if they have been badly schooled:
they are shocked at stains and {154} dirt, at silver plate which
is not sufficiently bright, or at a pool whose water is not clear
down to the bottom. Those same eyes which can only endure to see
the most variegated marble, and that which has just been scoured
bright, which will look at no table whose wood is not marked with
a network of veining, and which at home are loth to tread upon
anything that is not more precious than gold, will, when out of
doors, gaze most calmly upon rough and miry paths, will see unmoved
that the greater number of persons that meet them are shabbily
dressed, and that the walls of the houses are rotten, full of cracks,
and uneven. What, then, can be the reason that they are not distressed
out of doors by sights which would shock them in their own home,
unless it be that their temper is placid and long-suffering in one
case, sulky and fault-finding in the other?
XXXVI. All our senses should be educated into strength: they are
naturally able to endure much, provided that the spirit forbears
to spoil them. The spirit ought to be brought up for examination
daily. It was the custom of Sextius when the day was over, and he
had betaken himself to rest, to inquire of his spirit: “What bad
habit of yours have you cured to-day? what vice have you checked?
in what respect are you better?” Anger will cease, and become more
gentle, if it knows that every day it will have to appear before
the judgment seat. What can be more admirable than this fashion of
discussing the whole of the day’s events? how sweet is the sleep
which follows this self-examination? how calm, how sound, and
careless is it when our spirit has either received praise or
reprimand, and when our secret inquisitor and censor has made his
report about our morals? I make use of this privilege, and daily
plead my cause before myself: when the lamp is taken out of my
sight, and my wife, who knows my habit, has ceased to talk, I pass
the whole day in review before myself, and repeat all that I have
said and done: I conceal nothing {155} from myself, and omit nothing:
for why should I be afraid of any of my shortcomings, when it is
in my power to say, “I pardon you this time: see that you never do
that any more? In that dispute you spoke too contentiously: do not
for the future argue with ignorant people: those who have never
been taught are unwilling to learn. You reprimanded that man with
more freedom than you ought, and consequently you have offended him
instead of amending his ways: in dealing with other cases of the
kind, you should look carefully, not only to the truth of what you
say, but also whether the person to whom you speak can bear to be
told the truth.” A good man delights in receiving advice: all the
worst men are the most impatient of guidance.
XXXVII. At the dinner-table some jokes and sayings intended to give
you pain have been directed against you: avoid feasting with low
people. Those who are not modest even when sober become much more
recklessly impudent after drinking. You have seen your friend in a
rage with the porter of some lawyer or rich man, because he has
sent him back when about to enter, and you yourself on behalf of
your friend have been in a rage with the meanest of slaves. Would
you then be angry with a chained housedog? Why, even he, after a
long bout of barking, becomes gentle if you offer him food. So draw
back and smile; for the moment your porter fancies himself to be
somebody, because he guards a door which is beset by a crowd of
litigants; for the moment he who sits within is prosperous and
happy, and thinks that a street-door through which it is hard to
gain entrance is the mark of a rich and powerful man; he knows not
that the hardest door of all to open is that of the prison. Be
prepared to submit to much. Is any one surprised at being cold in
winter? at being sick at sea? or at being jostled in the street?
The mind is strong enough to bear those evils for which it is
prepared. When {156} you are not given a sufficiently distinguished
place at table you have begun to be angry with your fellow-guests,
with your host, and with him who is preferred above you. Idiot!
What difference can it make what part of the couch you rest upon?
Can a cushion give you honour or take it away? You have looked
askance at somebody because he has spoken slightingly of your
talents; will you apply this rule to yourself? If so, Ennius, whose
poetry you do not care for, would have hated you. Hortensius, if
you had found fault with his speeches, would have quarrelled with
you, and Cicero, if you had laughed at his poetry, would have been
your enemy. A candidate for office, will you resent men’s votes?
XXXVIII. Some one has offered you an insult? Not a greater one,
probably, than was offered to the Stoic philosopher Diogenes, in
whose face an insolent young man spat just when he was lecturing
upon anger. He bore it mildly and wisely. “I am not angry,” said
he, “but I am not sure that I ought not to be angry.” Yet how much
better did our Cato behave? When he was pleading, one Lentulus,
whom our fathers remember as a demagogue and passionate man, spat
all the phlegm he could muster upon his forehead. Cato wiped his
face, and said, “Lentulus, I shall declare to all the world that
men are mistaken when they say that you are wanting in cheek.”
XXXIX. We have now succeeded, my Novatus, in properly regulating
our own minds: they either do not feel anger or are above it: let
us next see how we may soothe the wrath of others, for we do not
only wish to be whole, but to heal.
You should not attempt to allay the first burst of anger by words:
it is deaf and frantic: we must give it scope; our remedies will
only be effective when it slackens. We do not meddle with men’s
eyes when they are swollen, because we should only irritate their
hard stiffness by {157} touching them, nor do we try to cure other
diseases when at their height: the best treatment in the first stage
of illness is rest. “Of how very little value,” say you, “is your
remedy, if it appeases anger which is subsiding of its own accord?”
In the first place, I answer, it makes it end quicker: in the next,
it prevents a relapse. It can render harmless even the violent
impulse which it dares not soothe: it will put out of the way all
weapons which might be used for revenge: it will pretend to be
angry, in order that its advice may have more weight as coming from
an assistant and comrade in grief. It will invent delays, and
postpone immediate punishment while a greater one is being sought
for: it will use every artifice to give the man a respite from his
frenzy. If his anger be unusually strong, it will inspire him with
some irresistible feeling of shame or of fear: if weak, it will
make use of conversation on amusing or novel subjects, and by playing
upon his curiosity lead him to forget his passion. We are told that
a physician, who was forced to cure the king’s daughter, and could
not without using the knife, conveyed a lancet to her swollen breast
concealed under the sponge with which he was fomenting it. The same
girl, who would have shrunk from the remedy if he had applied it
openly, bore the pain because she did not expect it. Some diseases
can only be cured by deceit.
XL. To one class of men you will say, “Beware, lest your anger give
pleasure to your foes:” to the other, “Beware lest your greatness
of mind and the reputation it bears among most people for strength
become impaired. I myself, by Hercules, am scandalized at your
treatment and am grieved beyond measure, but we must wait for a
proper opportunity. He shall pay for what he has done; be well
assured of that: when you are able you shall return it to him with
interest.” To reprove a man when he is angry is to add to his anger
by being angry oneself. You {158} should approach him in different
ways and in a compliant fashion, unless perchance you be so great
a personage that you can quash his anger, as the Emperor Augustus
did when he was dining with Vedius Pollio.[15] One of the slaves
had broken a crystal goblet of his: Vedius ordered him to be led
away to die, and that too in no common fashion: he ordered him to
be thrown to feed the muraenae, some of which fish, of great size,
he kept in a tank. Who would not think that he did this out of
luxury? but it was out of cruelty. The boy slipped through the hands
of those who tried to seize him, and flung himself at Caesar’s feet
in order to beg for nothing more than that he might die in some
different way, and not be eaten. Caesar was shocked at this novel
form of cruelty, and ordered him to be let go, and, in his place,
all the crystal ware which he saw before him to be broken, and the
tank to be filled up. This was the proper way for Caesar to reprove
his friend: he made a good use of his power. What are you, that
when at dinner you order men to be put to death, and mangled by an
unheard-of form of torture? Are a man’s bowels to be torn asunder
because your cup is broken? You must think a great deal of yourself,
if even when the emperor is present you order men to be executed.
XLI. If any one’s power is so great that he can treat anger with
the tone of a superior let him crush it out of existence, but only
if it be of the kind of which I have just spoken, fierce, inhuman,
bloodthirsty, and incurable save by fear of something more powerful
than itself . . . . . . . . let us give the mind that peace which
is given by constant meditation upon wholesome maxims, by good
actions, and by a mind directed to the pursuit of honour alone. Let
us set our own conscience fully at rest, but make no efforts to
gain credit for ourselves: so long as we {159} deserve well, let
us be satisfied, even if we should be ill spoken of. “But the common
herd admires spirited actions, and bold men are held in honour,
while quiet ones are thought to be indolent.” True, at first sight
they may appear to be so: but as soon as the even tenor of their
life proves that this quietude arises not from dullness but from
peace of mind, then that same populace respects and reverences them.
There is, then, nothing useful in that hideous and destructive
passion of anger, but on the contrary, every kind of evil, fire and
sword. Anger tramples self-restraint underfoot, steeps its hands
in slaughter, scatters abroad the limbs of its children: it leaves
no place unsoiled by crime, it has no thoughts of glory, no fears
of disgrace, and when once anger has hardened into hatred, no
amendment is possible.
XLII. Let us be free from this evil, let us clear our minds of it,
and extirpate root and branch a passion which grows again wherever
the smallest particle of it finds a resting-place. Let us not
moderate anger, but get rid of it altogether: what can moderation
have to do with an evil habit? We shall succeed in doing this, if
only we exert ourselves. Nothing will be of greater service than
to bear in mind that we are mortal: let each man say to himself and
to his neighbour, “Why should we, as though we were born to live
for ever, waste our tiny span of life in declaring anger against
any one? why should days, which we might spend in honourable