Plutarch's Morals
Lay down your pipes, and do compose your cheeks,"
and though she paid no attention to him, yet afterwards when she saw her
face in a river, she felt vexed and threw her pipes away, although art
had made melody a compensation for her unsightliness. And Marsyas, it
seems, by a sort of mouthpiece forcibly repressed the violence of his
breath, and tricked up and hid the contortion of his face,
"Around his shaggy temples put bright gold,
And o'er his open mouth thongs tied behind."
Now anger, that puffs up and distends the face so as to look ugly,
utters a voice still more harsh and unpleasant,
"Moving the mind's chords undisturbed before."
They say that the sea is cleansed when agitated by the winds it throws
up tangle and seaweed; but the intemperate and bitter and vain words,
which the mind throws up when the soul is agitated, defile the speakers
of them first of all and fill them with infamy, as always having those
thoughts within their bosom and being defiled with them, but only giving
vent to them in anger. And so for a word which is, as Plato styles it,
"a very small matter," they incur a most heavy punishment, for they get
reputed to be enemies, and evil speakers, and malignant in disposition.
Sec. VII. Seeing and observing all this, it occurs to me to take it as a
matter of fact, and record it for my own general use, that if it is good
to keep the tongue soft and smooth in a fever, it is better to keep it
so in anger. For if the tongue of people in a fever be unnatural, it is
a bad sign, but not the cause of their malady; but the tongue of angry
people, being rough and foul, and breaking out into unseemly speeches,
produces insults that work irremediable mischief, and argue deep-rooted
malevolence within. For wine drunk neat does not exhibit the soul in so
ungovernable and hateful a condition as temper does: for the outbreaks
of the one smack of laughter and fun, while those of the other are
compounded with gall: and at a drinking-bout he that is silent is
burdensome to the company and tiresome, whereas in anger nothing is more
highly thought of than silence, as Sappho advises,
"When anger's busy in the brain
Thy idly-barking tongue restrain."
Sec. VIII. And not only does the consideration of all this naturally arise
from observing ourselves in the moments of anger, but we cannot help
seeing also the other properties of rage, how ignoble it is, how
unmanly, how devoid of dignity and greatness of mind! And yet to most
people its noise seems vigour, its threatening confidence, and its
obstinacy force of character; some even not wisely entitle its
savageness magnanimity, and its implacability firmness, and its morosity
hatred of what is bad. For their actions and motions and whole demeanour
argue great littleness and meanness, not only when they are fierce with
little boys, and peevish with women, and think it right to treat dogs
and horses and mules with harshness, as Otesiphon the pancratiast
thought fit to kick back a mule that had kicked him, but even in the
butcheries that tyrants commit their littleness of soul is apparent in
their savageness, and their suffering in their action, so that they are
like the bites of serpents, that, when they are burnt and smart with
pain, violently thrust their venom on those that have hurt them. For as
a swelling is produced in the flesh by a heavy blow, so in softest souls
the inclination to hurt others gets its greater strength from greater
weakness. Thus women are more prone to anger than men, and people ill
than people well, and old men than men in their prime, and the
unfortunate than the prosperous; the miser is most prone to anger with
his steward, the glutton with his cook, the jealous man with his wife,
the vain man when he is spoken ill of; and worst of all are those "men
who are too eager in states for office, or to head a faction, a manifest
sorrow," to borrow Pindar's words. So from the very great pain and
suffering of the soul there arises mainly from weakness anger, which is
not like the nerves of the soul, as some one defined it, but like its
strainings and convulsions when it is excessively vehement in its thirst
for revenge.
Sec. IX. Such bad examples as these were not pleasant to look at but
necessary, but I shall now proceed to describe people who have been mild
and easy in dealing with anger, conduct gratifying either to see or hear
about, being utterly disgusted[690] with people who use such language
as,
"You have a man wronged: shall a man stand this?"
and,
"Put your heel upon his neck, and dash his head against
the ground,"
and other provoking expressions such as these, by which some not well
have transferred anger from the woman's side of the house to the man's.
For manliness in all other respects seems to resemble justice, and to
differ from it only in respect to gentleness, with which it has more
affinities. For it sometimes happens to worse men to govern better ones,
but to erect a trophy in the soul against anger (which Heraclitus says
it is difficult to contend against, for whatever it wishes is bought at
the price of the soul), is a proof of power so great and victorious as
to be able to apply the judgement as if it were nerves and sinews to the
passions. So I always try to collect and peruse the remarks on this
subject not only of the philosophers, who foolish[691] people say had no
gall in their composition, but still more of kings and tyrants. Such was
the remark of Antigonus to his soldiers, when they were abusing him near
his tent as if he were not listening, so he put his staff out, and said,
"What's to do? can you not go rather farther off to run me down?" And
when Arcadio the Achaean, who was always railing against Philip, and
advising people to flee
"Unto a country where they knew not Philip,"
visited Macedonia afterwards on some chance or other, the king's friends
thought he ought to be punished and the matter not looked over; but
Philip treated him kindly, and sent him presents and gifts, and
afterwards bade inquiry to be made as to what sort of account of him
Arcadio now gave to the Greeks; and when all testified that the fellow
had become a wonderful praiser of the king, Philip said, "You see I knew
how to cure him better than all of you." And at the Olympian games when
there was defamation of Philip, and some of his suite said to him, that
the Greeks ought to smart for it, because they railed against him when
they were treated well by him, he replied, "What will they do then if
they are treated badly by me?" Excellent also was the behaviour of
Pisistratus to Thrasybulus, and of Porsena to Mucius, and of Magas to
Philemon. As to Magas, after he had been publicly jeered at by Philemon
in one of his comedies at the theatre in the following words,
"Magas, the king hath written thee a letter,
Unhappy Magas, since thou can'st not read,"
after having taken Philemon, who had been cast on shore by a storm at
Paraetonium, he commanded one of his soldiers only to touch his neck with
the naked sword and then to go away quietly, and dismissed him, after
sending him a ball and some dice as if he were a silly boy. And Ptolemy
on one occasion, flouting a grammarian for his ignorance, asked him who
was the father of Peleus, and he answered, "I will tell you, if you tell
me first who was the father of Lagus." This was a jeer at the obscure
birth of the king, and all his courtiers were indignant at it as an
unpardonable liberty; but Ptolemy said, "If it is not kingly to take a
flout, neither is it kingly to give one." And Alexander was more savage
than usual in his behaviour to Callisthenes and Clitus. So Porus, when
he was taken captive, begged Alexander to use him as a king. And on his
inquiring, "What, nothing more?" he replied "No. For everything is
included in being used as a king." So they call the king of the gods
Milichius,[692] while they call Ares Maimactes;[693] and punishment and
torture they assign to the Erinnyes and to demons, not to the gods or
Olympus.
Sec. X. As then a certain person passed the following remark on Philip when
he had razed Olynthus to the ground, "He certainly could not build such
another city," so we may say to anger, "You can root up, and destroy,
and throw down, but to raise up and save and spare and tolerate is the
work of mildness and moderation, the work of a Camillus, a Metellus, an
Aristides, a Socrates; but to sting and bite is to resemble the ant and
horse-fly. For, indeed, when I consider revenge, I find its angry method
to be for the most part ineffectual, since it spends itself in biting
the lips and gnashing the teeth, and in vain attacks, and in railings
coupled with foolish threats, and eventually resembles children running
races, who from feebleness ridiculously tumble down before they reach
the goal they are hastening to. So that speech of the Rhodian to a
lictor of the Roman praetor who was shouting and talking insolently was
not inapt, "It is no matter to me what you say, but what your master
thinks."[694] And Sophocles, when he had introduced Neoptolemus and
Eurypylus as armed for the battle, gives them this high
commendation,[695]
"They rushed into the midst of armed warriors,"
Some barbarians indeed poison their steel, but bravery has no need of
gall, being dipped in reason, but rage and fury are not invincible but
rotten. And so the Lacedaemonians by their pipes turn away the anger of
their warriors, and sacrifice to the Muses before commencing battle,
that reason may abide with them, and when they have routed a foe do not
follow up the victory,[696] but relax their rage, which like small
daggers they can easily take back. But anger kills myriads before it is
glutted with revenge, as happened in the case of Cyrus and Pelopidas the
Theban. But Agathocles bore mildly the revilings of those he was
besieging, and when one of them cried out, "Potter, how are you going to
get money to pay your mercenaries?" he replied laughingly, "Out of your
town if I take it." And when some of those on the wall threw his
ugliness into the teeth of Antigonus, he said to them, "I thought I was
rather a handsome fellow." But after he had taken the town, he sold for
slaves those that had flouted him, protesting that, if they insulted him
again, he would bring the matter before their masters. I have noticed
also that hunters and orators are very unsuccessful when they give way
to anger.[697] And Aristotle tells us that the friends of Satyrus
stopped up his ears with wax when he was to plead a cause, that he might
not make any confusion in the case through rage at the abuse of his
enemies. And does it not frequently happen with ourselves that a slave
who has offended escapes punishment, because they abscond in fear of our
threats and harsh words? What nurses then say to children, "Give up
crying, and you shall have it," may usefully be applied to anger, thus,
"Do not be in a hurry, or bawl out, or be vehement, and you will sooner
and better get what you want." For a father, seeing his boy trying to
cut or cleave something with a knife, takes the knife from him and does
it himself: and similarly a person, taking revenge out of the hand of
passion, does himself safely and usefully and without harm punish the
person who deserves punishment, and not himself instead, as anger often
does.
Sec. XI. Now though all the passions need such discipline as by exercise
shall tame and subdue their unreasoning and disobedient elements, yet
there is none which we ought to keep under by such discipline so much as
the exhibition of anger to our servants. For neither envy, nor fear, nor
rivalry come into play between them and us; but our frequent displays of
anger to them, creating many offences and faults, make us to slip as if