Book III.

I. We will now, my Novatus, attempt to do that which you so especially

long to do, that is, to drive out anger from our minds, or at all

events to curb it and restrain its impulses. This may sometimes be

done openly and without concealment, when we are only suffering

from a slight attack of this mischief, and at other times it must

be done secretly, when our anger is excessively hot, and when every

obstacle thrown in its way increases it and makes it blaze higher.

It is important to know how great and how fresh its strength may

be, and whether it can be driven forcibly back and suppressed, or

whether we must give way to it until its first storm blow over,

lest it sweep away with it our remedies themselves. We must deal

with each case according to each man’s character: some yield to

entreaties, others are rendered arrogant and masterful by submission:

we may frighten some men out of their anger, while some may be

turned from their purpose by reproaches, some by acknowledging

oneself to be in the wrong, some by shame, and some by delay, a

tardy remedy for a hasty disorder, which we ought only to use when

all others have failed: {116} for other passions admit of having

their case put off, and may be healed at a later time; but the eager

and self-destructive violence of anger does not grow up by slow

degrees, but reaches its full height as soon as it begins. Nor does

it, like other vices, merely disturb men’s minds, but it takes them

away, and torments them till they are incapable of restraining

themselves and eager for the common ruin of all men, nor does it

rage merely against its object, but against every obstacle which

it encounters on its way. The other vices move our minds; anger

hurls them headlong. If we are not able to withstand our passions,

yet at any rate our passions ought to stand firm: but anger grows

more and more powerful, like lightning flashes or hurricanes, or

any other things which cannot stop themselves because they do not

proceed along, but fall from above. Other vices affect our judgment,

anger affects our sanity: others come in mild attacks and grow

unnoticed, but men’s minds plunge abruptly into anger. There is no

passion that is more frantic, more destructive to its own self; it

is arrogant if successful, and frantic if it fails. Even when

defeated it does not grow weary, but if chance places its foe beyond

its reach, it turns its teeth against itself. Its intensity is in

no way regulated by its origin: for it rises to the greatest heights

from the most trivial beginnings.

II. It passes over no time of life; no race of men is exempt from

it: some nations have been saved from the knowledge of luxury by

the blessing of poverty; some through their active and wandering

habits have escaped from sloth; those whose manners are unpolished

and whose life is rustic know not chicanery and fraud and all the

evils to which the courts of law give birth: but there is no race

which is not excited by anger, which is equally powerful with Greeks

and barbarians, and is just as ruinous among law-abiding folk as

among those whose only law is that of the {117} stronger. Finally,

the other passions seize upon individuals; anger is the only one

which sometimes possesses a whole state. No entire people ever fell

madly in love with a woman, nor did any nation ever set its affections

altogether upon gain and profit. Ambition attacks single individuals;

ungovernable rage is the only passion that affects nations. People

often fly into a passion by troops; men and women, old men and boys,

princes and populace all act alike, and the whole multitude, after

being excited by a very few words, outdoes even its exciter: men

betake themselves straightway to fire and sword, and proclaim a war

against their neighbours or wage one against their countrymen. Whole

houses are burned with the entire families which they contain, and

he who but lately was honoured for his popular eloquence now finds

that his speech moves people to rage. Legions aim their darts at

their commander; the whole populace quarrels with the nobles; the

senate, without waiting for troops to be levied or appointing a

general, hastily chooses leaders, for its anger chases well-born

men through the houses of Rome, and puts them to death with its own

hand. Ambassadors are outraged, the law of nations violated, and

an unnatural madness seizes the state. Without allowing time for

the general excitement to subside, fleets are straightway launched

and laden with a hastily enrolled soldiery. Without organization,

without taking any auspices, the populace rushes into the field

guided only by its own anger, snatches up whatever comes first to

hand by way of arms, and then atones by a great defeat for the

reckless audacity of its anger. This is usually the fate of savage

nations when they plunge into war: as soon as their easily excited

minds are roused by the appearance of wrong having been done them,

they straightway hasten forth, and, guided only by their wounded

feelings, fall like an avalanche upon our legions, without either

discipline, fear, or precaution, and wilfully seeking for danger.

They {118} delight in being struck, in pressing forward to meet the

blow, writhing their bodies along the weapon, and perishing by a

wound which they themselves make.

III. “No doubt,” you say, “anger is very powerful and ruinous: point

out, therefore, how it may be cured.” Yet, as I stated in my former

books, Aristotle stands forth in defence of anger, and forbids it

to be uprooted, saying that it is the spur of virtue, and that when

it is taken away, our minds become weaponless, and slow to attempt

great exploits. It is therefore essential to prove its unseemliness

and ferocity, and to place distinctly before our eyes how monstrous

a thing it is that one man should rage against another, with what

frantic violence he rushes to destroy alike himself and his foe,

and overthrows those very things whose fall he himself must share.

What, then? can any one call this man sane, who, as though caught

up by a hurricane, does not go but is driven, and is the slave of

a senseless disorder? He does not commit to another the duty of

revenging him, but himself exacts it, raging alike in thought and

deed, butchering those who are dearest to him, and for whose loss

he himself will ere long weep. Will any one give this passion as

an assistant and companion to virtue, although it disturbs calm

reason, without which virtue can do nothing? The strength which a

sick man owes to a paroxysm of disease is neither lasting nor

wholesome, and is strong only to its own destruction. You need not,

therefore, imagine that I am wasting time over a useless task in

defaming anger, as though men had not made up their minds about it,

when there is some one, and he, too, an illustrious philosopher,

who assigns it services to perform, and speaks of it as useful and

supplying energy for battles, for the management of business, and

indeed for everything which requires to be conducted with spirit.

Lest it should delude any one into thinking that on certain occasions

and in certain positions it may be useful, we must show its {119}

unbridled and frenzied madness, we must restore to it its attributes,

the rack, the cord, the dungeon, and the cross, the fires lighted

round men’s buried bodies, the hook[1] that drags both living men

and corpses, the different kinds of fetters, and of punishments,

the mutilations of limbs, the branding of the forehead, the dens

of savage beasts. Anger should be represented as standing among

these her instruments, growling in an ominous and terrible fashion,

herself more shocking than any of the means by which she gives vent

to her fury.

IV. There may be some doubt about the others, but at any rate no

passion has a worse look. We have described the angry man’s appearance

in our former books, how sharp and keen he looks, at one time pale

as his blood is driven inwards and backwards, at another with all

the heat and fire of his body directed to his face, making it

reddish-coloured as if stained with blood, his eyes now restless

and starting out of his head, now set motionless in one fixed gaze.

Add to this his teeth, which gnash against one another, as though

he wished to eat somebody, with exactly the sound of a wild boar

sharpening his tusks: add also the cracking of his joints, the

involuntary wringing of his hands, the frequent slaps he deals

himself on the chest, his hurried breathing and deep-drawn sighs,

his reeling body, his abrupt broken speech, and his trembling lips,

which sometimes he draws tight as he hisses some curse through them.

By Hercules, no wild beast, neither when tortured by hunger, or

with a weapon struck through its vitals, not even when it gathers

its last breath to bite its slayer, looks so shocking as a man

raging with anger. Listen, if you have leisure, to his words {120}

and threats: how dreadful is the language of his agonized mind!

Would not every man wish to lay aside anger when he sees that it

begins by injuring himself? When men employ anger as the most

powerful of agents, consider it to be a proof of power, and reckon

a speedy revenge among the greatest blessings of great prosperity,

would you not wish me to warn them that he who is the slave of his

own anger is not powerful, nor even free? Would you not wish me to

warn all the more industrious and circumspect of men, that while

other evil passions assail the base, anger gradually obtains dominion

over the minds even of learned and in other respects sensible men?

So true is that, that some declare anger to be a proof of

straight-forwardness, and it is commonly believed that the best-natured

people are prone to it.

V. You ask me, whither does all this tend? To prove, I answer, that

no one should imagine himself to be safe from anger, seeing that

it rouses up even those who are naturally gentle and quiet to commit

savage and violent acts. As strength of body and assiduous care of

the health avail nothing against a pestilence, which attacks the

strong and weak alike, so also steady and good-humoured people are

just as liable to attacks of anger as those of unsettled character,

and in the case of the former it is both more to be ashamed of and

more to be feared, because it makes a greater alteration in their

habits. Now as the first thing is not to be angry, the second to

lay aside our anger, and the third to be able to heal the anger of

others as well as our own, I will set forth first how we may avoid

falling into anger; next, how we may set ourselves free from it,

and, lastly, how we may restrain an angry man, appease his wrath,

and bring him back to his right mind. We shall succeed in avoiding

anger, if from time to time we lay before our minds all the vices

connected with anger, and estimate it at its real value: it must

be prosecuted {121} before us and convicted: its evils must be

thoroughly investigated and exposed. That we may see what it is,

let it be compared with the worst vices. Avarice scrapes together

and amasses riches for some better man to use: anger spends money;

few can indulge in it for nothing. How many slaves an angry master

drives to run away or to commit suicide! how much more he loses by

his anger than the value of what he originally became angry about!

Anger brings grief to a father, divorce to a husband, hatred to a

magistrate, failure to a candidate for office. It is worse than

luxury, because luxury enjoys its own pleasure, while anger enjoys

another’s pain. It is worse than either spitefulness or envy; for

they wish that some one may become unhappy, while anger wishes to

make him so: they are pleased when evil befalls one by accident,

but anger cannot wait upon Fortune; it desires to injure its victim

personally, and is not satisfied merely with his being injured.

Nothing is more dangerous than jealousy: it is produced by anger.

Nothing is more ruinous than war: it is the outcome of powerful

men’s anger; and even the anger of humble private persons, though

without arms or armies, is nevertheless war. Moreover, even if we

pass over its immediate consequences, such as heavy losses, treacherous

plots, and the constant anxiety produced by strife, anger pays a

penalty at the same moment that it exacts one: it forswears human

feelings. The latter urge us to love, anger urges us to hatred: the

latter bid us do men good, anger bids us do them harm. Add to this

that, although its rage arises from an excessive self-respect and

appears to show high spirit, it really is contemptible and mean:

for a man must be inferior to one by whom he thinks himself despised,

whereas the truly great mind, which takes a true estimate of its

own value, does not revenge an insult because it does not feel it.

As weapons rebound from a hard surface, and solid substances hurt

{122} those who strike them, so also no insult can make a really

great mind sensible of its presence, being weaker than that against

which it is aimed. How far more glorious is it to throw back all

wrongs and insults from oneself, like one wearing armour of proof

against all weapons, for revenge is an admission that we have been

hurt. That cannot be a great mind which is disturbed by injury. He

who has hurt you must be either stronger or weaker than yourself.

If he be weaker, spare him: if he be stronger, spare yourself.

VI. There is no greater proof of magnanimity than that nothing which

befalls you should be able to move you to anger. The higher region

of the universe, being more excellently ordered and near to the

stars, is never gathered into clouds, driven about by storms, or

whirled round by cyclones: it is free from all disturbance: the

lightnings flash in the region below it. In like manner a lofty

mind, always placid and dwelling in a serene atmosphere, restraining

within itself all the impulses from which anger springs, is modest,

commands respect, and remains calm and collected: none of which

qualities will you find in an angry man: for who, when under the

influence of grief and rage, does not first get rid of bashfulness?

who, when excited and confused and about to attack some one, does

not fling away any habits of shamefacedness he may have possessed?

what angry man attends to the number or routine of his duties? who

uses moderate language? who keeps any part of his body quiet? who

can guide himself when in full career? We shall find much profit

in that sound maxim of Democritus which defines peace of mind to

consist in not labouring much, or too much for our strength, either

in public or private matters. A man’s day, if he is engaged in many

various occupations, never passes so happily that no man or no thing

should give rise to some offence which makes the mind ripe for

anger. Just as when one hurries through the crowded parts of the

city {123} one cannot help jostling many people, and one cannot

help slipping at one place, being hindered at another, and splashed

at another, so when one’s life is spent in disconnected pursuits

and wanderings, one must meet with many troubles and many accusations.

One man deceives our hopes, another delays their fulfilment, another

destroys them: our projects do not proceed according to our intention.

No one is so favoured by Fortune as to find her always on his side

if he tempts her often: and from this it follows that he who sees

several enterprises turn out contrary to his wishes becomes

dissatisfied with both men and things, and on the slightest provocation

flies into a rage with people, with undertakings, with places, with

fortune, or with himself. In order, therefore, that the mind may

be at peace, it ought not to be hurried hither and thither, nor,

as I said before, wearied by labour at great matters, or matters

whose attainment is beyond its strength. It is easy to fit one’s

shoulder to a light burden, and to shift it from one side to the

other without dropping it: but we have difficulty in bearing the

burdens which others’ hands lay upon us, and when overweighted by

them we fling them off upon our neighbours. Even when we do stand

upright under our load, we nevertheless reel beneath a weight which

is beyond our strength.

VII. Be assured that the same rule applies both to public and private

life: simple and manageable undertakings proceed according to the

pleasure of the person in charge of them, but enormous ones, beyond

his capacity to manage, are not easily undertaken. When he has got

them to administer, they hinder him, and press hard upon him, and

just as he thinks that success is within his grasp, they collapse,

and carry him with them: thus it comes about that a man’s wishes

are often disappointed if he does not apply himself to easy tasks,

yet wishes that the tasks which he undertakes may be easy. Whenever

you would attempt anything, first {124} form an estimate both of

your own powers, of the extent of the matter which you are undertaking,

and of the means by which you are to accomplish it: for if you have

to abandon your work when it is half done, the disappointment will

sour your temper. In such cases, it makes a difference whether one

is of an ardent or of a cold and unenterprising temperament: for

failure will rouse a generous spirit to anger, and will move a

sluggish and dull one to sorrow. Let our undertakings, therefore,

be neither petty nor yet presumptuous and reckless: let our hopes

not range far from home: let us attempt nothing which if we succeed

will make us astonished at our success.

VIII. Since we know not how to endure an injury, let us take care

not to receive one: we should live with the quietest and easiest-tempered

persons, not with anxious or with sullen ones: for our own habits

are copied from those with whom we associate, and just as some

bodily diseases are communicated by touch, so also the mind transfers

its vices to its neighbours. A drunkard leads even those who reproach

him to grow fond of wine: profligate society will, if permitted,

impair the morals even of robust-minded men: avarice infects those

nearest it with its poison. Virtues do the same thing in the opposite

direction, and improve all those with whom they are brought in

contact: it is as good for one of unsettled principles to associate

with better men than himself as for an invalid to live in a warm

country with a healthy climate. You will understand how much may

be effected this way, if you observe how even wild beasts grow tame

by dwelling among us, and how no animal, however ferocious, continues

to be wild, if it has long been accustomed to human companionship:

all its savageness becomes softened, and amid peaceful scenes is

gradually forgotten. We must add to this, that the man who lives

with quiet people is not only improved by their example, but also

by the fact that he finds no reason for anger and does not practise

his {125} vice: it will, therefore, be his duty to avoid all those

who he knows will excite his anger. You ask, who these are: many

will bring about the same thing by various means; a proud man will

offend you by his disdain, a talkative man by his abuse, an impudent

man by his insults, a spiteful man by his malice, a quarrelsome man

by his wrangling, a braggart and liar by his vain-gloriousness: you

will not endure to be feared by a suspicious man, conquered by an

obstinate one, or scorned by an ultra-refined one: Choose

straightforward, good-natured, steady people, who will not provoke

your wrath, and will bear with it. Those whose dispositions are

yielding, polite and suave, will be of even greater service, provided

they do not flatter, for excessive obsequiousness irritates

bad-tempered men. One of my own friends was a good man indeed, but

too prone to anger, and it was as dangerous to flatter him as to

curse him. Caelius the orator, it is well known, was the worst-tempered

man possible. It is said that once he was dining in his own chamber

with an especially long-suffering client, but had great difficulty

when thrown thus into a man’s society to avoid quarrelling with

him. The other thought it best to agree to whatever he said, and

to play second fiddle, but Caelius could not bear his obsequious

agreement, and exclaimed, “Do contradict me in something, that there

may be two of us!” Yet even he, who was angry at not being angry,

soon recovered his temper, because he had no one to fight with. If,

then, we are conscious of an irascible disposition, let us especially

choose for our friends those who will look and speak as we do: they

will pamper us and lead us into a bad habit of listening to nothing

that does not please us, but it will be good to give our anger

respite and repose. Even those who are naturally crabbed and wild

will yield to caresses: no creature continues either angry or

frightened if you pat him. Whenever a controversy seems likely to

be longer or more keenly disputed than usual, let us check its first

beginnings, before it gathers strength. {126} A dispute nourishes

itself as it proceeds, and takes hold of those who plunge too deeply

into it: it is easier to stand aloof than to extricate oneself from

a struggle.

IX. Irascible men ought not to meddle with the more serious class

of occupations, or, at any rate, ought to stop short of weariness

in the pursuit of them; their mind ought not to be engaged upon

hard subjects, but handed over to pleasing arts: let it be softened

by reading poetry, and interested by legendary history: let it be

treated with luxury and refinement. Pythagoras used to calm his

troubled spirit by playing upon the lyre: and who does not know

that trumpets and clarions are irritants, just as some airs are

lullabies and soothe the mind? Green is good for wearied eyes, and

some colours are grateful to weak sight, while the brightness of

others is painful to it. In the same way cheerful pursuits soothe

unhealthy minds. We must avoid law courts, pleadings, verdicts, and

everything else that aggravates our fault, and we ought no less to

avoid bodily weariness; for it exhausts all that is quiet and gentle

in us, and rouses bitterness. For this reason those who cannot trust

their digestion, when they are about to transact business of

importance always allay their bile with food, for it is peculiarly

irritated by fatigue, either because it draws the vital heat into

the middle of the body, and injures the blood and stops its circulation

by the clogging of the veins, or else because the worn-out and

weakened body reacts upon the mind: this is certainly the reason

why those who are broken by ill-health or age are more irascible

than other men. Hunger also and thirst should be avoided for the

same reason; they exasperate and irritate men’s minds: it is an old

saying that “a weary man is quarrelsome “: and so also is a hungry

or a thirsty man, or one who is suffering from any cause whatever:

for just as sores pain one at the slightest touch, and afterwards

even at the fear of being touched, so an unsound mind takes offence

at the slightest things, so that even a {127} greeting, a letter,

a speech, or a question, provokes some men to anger.

X. That which is diseased can never bear to be handled without

complaining: it is best, therefore, to apply remedies to oneself

as soon as we feel that anything is wrong, to allow oneself as

little licence as possible in speech, and to restrain one’s

impetuosity: now it is easy to detect the first growth of our

passions: the symptoms precede the disorder. Just as the signs of

storms and rain come before the storms themselves, so there are

certain forerunners of anger, love, and all the storms which torment

our minds. Those who suffer from epilepsy know that the fit is

coming on if their extremities become cold, their sight fails, their

sinews tremble, their memory deserts them, and their head swims:

they accordingly check the growing disorder by applying the usual

remedies: they try to prevent the loss of their senses by smelling

or tasting some drug; they battle against cold and stiffness of

limbs by hot fomentations; or, if all remedies fail, they retire

apart, and faint where no one sees them fall. It is useful for a

man to understand his disease, and to break its strength before it

becomes developed. Let us see what it is that especially irritates

us. Some men take offence at insulting words, others at deeds: one

wishes his pedigree, another his person, to be treated with respect.

This man wishes to be considered especially fashionable, that man

to be thought especially learned: one cannot bear pride, another

cannot bear obstinacy. One thinks it beneath him to be angry with

his slaves, another is cruel at home, but gentle abroad. One imagines

that he is proposed for office because he is unpopular, another

thinks himself insulted because he is not proposed. People do not

all take offence in the same way; you ought then to know what your

own weak point is, that you may guard it with especial care.

XI. It is better not to see or to hear everything: many causes of

offence may pass by us, most of which are disregarded {128} by the

man who ignores them. Would you not be irascible? then be not

inquisitive. He who seeks to know what is said about him, who digs

up spiteful tales even if they were told in secret, is himself the

destroyer of his own peace of mind. Some stories may be so construed

as to appear to be insults: wherefore it is best to put some aside,

to laugh at others, and to pardon others. There are many ways in

which anger may be checked; most things may be turned into jest.

It is said that Socrates when he was given a box on the ear, merely

said that it was a pity a man could not tell when he ought to wear

his helmet out walking. It does not so much matter how an injury

is done, as how it is borne; and I do not see how moderation can

be hard to practise, when I know that even despots, though success

and impunity combine to swell their pride, have sometimes restrained

their natural ferocity. At any rate, tradition informs us that once,

when a guest in his cups bitterly reproached Pisistratus, the despot

of Athens, for his cruelty, many of those present offered to lay

hands on the traitor, and one said one thing and one another to

kindle his wrath, he bore it coolly, and replied to those who were

egging him on, that he was no more angry with the man than he should

be with one who ran against him blindfold.

XII. A large part of mankind manufacture their own grievances either

by entertaining unfounded suspicions or by exaggerating trifles.

Anger often comes to us, but we often go to it. It ought never to

be sent for: even when it falls in our way it ought to be flung

aside. No one says to himself, “I myself have done or might have

done this very thing which I am angry with another for doing.” No

one considers the intention of the doer, but merely the thing done:

yet we ought to think about him, and whether he did it intentionally

or accidentally, under compulsion or under a mistake, whether he

did it out of hatred for us, or to gain something for himself,

whether he did it to please himself {129} or to serve a friend. In

some cases the age, in others the worldly fortunes of the culprit

may render it humane or advantageous to bear with him and put up

with what he has done. Let us put ourselves in the place of him

with whom we are angry: at present an overweening conceit of our

own importance makes us prone to anger, and we are quite willing

to do to others what we cannot endure should be done to ourselves.

No one will postpone his anger: yet delay is the best remedy for

it, because it allows its first glow to subside, and gives time for

the cloud which darkens the mind either to disperse or at any rate

to become less dense. Of these wrongs which drive you frantic, some

will grow lighter after an interval, not of a day, but even of an

hour: some will vanish altogether. Even if you gain nothing by your

adjournment, still what you do after it will appear to be the result

of mature deliberation, not of anger. If you want to find out the

truth about anything, commit the task to time: nothing can be

accurately discerned at a time of disturbance. Plato, when angry

with his slave, could not prevail upon himself to wait, but straightway

ordered him to take off his shirt and present his shoulders to the

blows which he meant to give him with his own hand: then, when he

perceived that he was angry, he stopped the hand which he had raised

in the air, and stood like one in act to strike. Being asked by a

friend who happened to come in, what he was doing, he answered: “I

am making an angry man expiate his crime.” He retained the posture

of one about to give way to passion, as if struck with astonishment

at its being so degrading to a philosopher, forgetting the slave,

because he had found another still more deserving of punishment.

He therefore denied himself the exercise of authority over his own

household, and once, being rather angry at some fault, said,

“Speusippus, will you please to correct that slave with stripes;

for I am in a rage.” He would not strike him, for the very reason

for which another man would have struck him. “I am in a rage,” said

{130} he; “I should beat him more than I ought: I should take more

pleasure than I ought in doing so: let not that slave fall into the

power of one who is not in his own power.” Can any one wish to grant

the power of revenge to an angry man, when Plato himself gave up

his own right to exercise it? While you are angry, you ought not

to be allowed to do anything. “Why?” do you ask? Because when you

are angry there is nothing that you do not wish to be allowed to

do.

XIII. Fight hard with yourself and if you cannot conquer anger, do

not let it conquer you: you have begun to get the better of it if

it does not show itself, if it is not given vent. Let us conceal

its symptoms, and as far as possible keep it secret and hidden. It

will give us great trouble to do this, for it is eager to burst

forth, to kindle our eyes and to transform our face; but if we allow

it to show itself in our outward appearance, it is our master. Let

it rather be locked in the innermost recesses of our breast, and

be borne by us, not bear us: nay, let us replace all its symptoms

by their opposites; let us make our countenance more composed than

usual, our voice milder, our step slower. Our inward thoughts

gradually become influenced by our outward demeanour. With Socrates

it was a sign of anger when he lowered his voice, and became sparing

of speech; it was evident at such times that he was exercising

restraint over himself. His friends, consequently, used to detect

him acting thus, and convict him of being angry; nor was he displeased

at being charged with concealment of anger; indeed, how could he

help being glad that many men should perceive his anger, yet that

none should feel it? they would however, have felt it had not he

granted to his friends the same right of criticizing his own conduct

which he himself assumed over theirs. How much more needful is it

for us to do this? let us beg all our best friends to give us their

opinion with the greatest freedom at the very time when we can bear

it least, and never to be compliant with us {131} when we are angry.

While we are in our right senses, while we are under our own control,

let us call for help against so powerful an evil, and one which we

regard with such unjust favour. Those who cannot carry their wine

discreetly, and fear to be betrayed into some rash and insolent

act, give their slaves orders to take them away from the banquet

when they are drunk; those who know by experience how unreasonable

they are when sick give orders that no one is to obey them when

they are in ill health. It is best to prepare obstacles beforehand

for vices which are known, and above all things so to tranquilize

our mind that it may bear the most sudden and violent shocks either

without feeling anger, or, if anger be provoked by the extent of

some unexpected wrong, that it may bury it deep, and not betray its

wound. That it is possible to do this will be seen, if I quote a

few of an abundance of examples, from which we may learn both how

much evil there is in anger, when it exercises entire dominion over

men in supreme power, and how completely it can control itself when

overawed by fear.

XIV. King Cambyses[2] was excessively addicted to wine. Praexaspes

was the only one of his closest friends who advised him to drink

more sparingly, pointing out how shameful a thing drunkenness was

in a king, upon whom all eyes and ears were fixed. Cambyses answered,

“That you may know that I never lose command of myself, I will

presently prove to you that both my eyes and my hands are fit for

service after I have been drinking.” Hereupon he drank more freely

than usual, using larger cups, and when heavy and besotted with

wine ordered his reprover’s son to go beyond the threshold and stand

there with his left hand raised above his head; then he bent his

bow and pierced the youth’s heart, at which he had said that he

aimed. He {132} then had his breast cut open, showed the arrow

sticking exactly into the heart, and, looking at the boy’s father,

asked whether his hand was not steady enough. He replied, that

Apollo himself could not have taken better aim. God confound such

a man, a slave in mind, if not in station! He actually praised an

act which he ought not to have endured to witness. He thought that

the breast of his son being torn assunder, and his heart quivering

with its wound, gave him an opportunity of making a complimentary

speech. He ought to have raised a dispute with him about his success,

and have called for another shot, that the king might be pleased

to prove upon the person of the father that his hand was even

steadier than when he shot the son. What a savage king! what a

worthy mark for all his follower’s arrows! Yet though we curse him

for making his banquet end in cruelty and death, still it was worse

to praise that arrow-shot than to shoot it. We shall see hereafter

how a father ought to bear himself when standing over the corpse

of his son, whose murder he had both caused and witnessed: the

matter which we are now discussing, has been proved, I mean, that

anger can be suppressed. He did not curse the king, he did not so

much as let fall a single inauspicious word, though he felt his own

heart as deeply wounded as that of his son. He may be said to have

done well in choking down his words; for though he might have spoken

as an angry man, yet he could not have expressed what he felt as a

father. He may, I repeat, be thought to have behaved with greater

wisdom on that occasion than when he tried to regulate the drink

of one who was better employed in drinking wine than in drinking

blood, and who granted men peace while his hands were busy with the

winecup. He, therefore, added one more to the number of those who

have shown to their bitter cost how little kings care for their

friends’ good advice.

{133}

XV. I have no doubt that Harpagus must have given some such advice

to the king of the Persians and of himself, in anger at which the

king placed Harpagus’s own children before him on the dinner-table

for him to eat, and asked him from time to time, whether he liked

the seasoning. Then, when he saw that he was satiated with his own

misery, he ordered their heads to be brought to him, and asked him

how he liked his entertainment. The wretched man did not lose his

readiness of speech; his face did not change. “Every kind of dinner,”

said he, “is pleasant at the king’s table.” What did he gain by

this obsequiousness? He avoided being invited a second time to

dinner, to eat what was left of them. I do not forbid a father to

blame the act of his king, or to seek for some revenge worthy of

so bloodthirsty a monster, but in the meanwhile I gather from the

tale this fact, that even the anger which arises from unheard of

outrages can be concealed, and forced into using language which is

the very reverse of its meaning. This way of curbing anger is

necessary, at least for those who have chosen this sort of life and

who are admitted to dine at a king’s table; this is how they must

eat and drink, this is how they must answer, and how they must laugh

at their own deaths. Whether life is worth having at such a price,

we shall see hereafter; that is another question. Let us not console

so sorry a crew, or encourage them to submit to the orders of their

butchers; let us point out that however slavish a man’s condition

may be, there is always a path to liberty open to him, unless his

mind be diseased. It is a man’s own fault if he suffers, when by

putting an end to himself he can put an end to his misery. To him

whose king aimed arrows at the breasts of his friends, and to him

whose master gorged fathers with the hearts of their children, I

would say “Madman, why do you groan? for what are you waiting? for

some enemy to avenge you by the destruction of your {134} entire

nation, or for some powerful king to arrive from a distant land?

Wherever you turn your eyes you may see an end to your woes. Do you

see that precipice? down that lies the road to liberty; do you see

that sea? that river? that well? Liberty sits at the bottom of them.

Do you see that tree? stunted, blighted, dried up though it be, yet

liberty hangs from its branches. Do you see your own throat, your

own neck, your own heart? they are so many ways of escape from

slavery. Are these modes which I point out too laborious, and needing

much strength and courage? do you ask what path leads to liberty?

I answer, any vein[3] in your body.

XVI. As long, however, as we find nothing in our life so unbearable

as to drive us to suicide, let us, in whatever position we may be,

set anger far from us: it is destructive to those who are its slaves.

All its rage turns to its own misery, and authority becomes all the

more irksome the more obstinately it is resisted. It is like a wild

animal whose struggles only pull the noose by which it is caught

tighter; or like birds who, while flurriedly trying to shake

themselves free, smear birdlime on to all their feathers. No yoke

is so grievous as not to hurt him who struggles against it more

than him who yields to it: the only way to alleviate great evils

is to endure them and to submit to do what they compel. This control

of our passions, and especially of this mad and unbridled passion

of anger, is useful to subjects, but still more useful to kings.

All is lost when a man’s position enables him to carry out whatever

anger prompts him to do; nor can power long endure if it be exercised

to the injury of many, for it becomes endangered as soon as common

fear draws together those who bewail themselves separately. Many

kings, therefore, have fallen victims, some to single individuals,

others to entire peoples, {135} who have been forced by general

indignation to make one man the minister of their wrath. Yet many

kings have indulged their anger as though it were a privilege of

royalty, like Darius, who, after the dethronement of the Magian,

was the first ruler of the Persians and of the greater part of the

East: for when he declared war[4] against the Scythians who bordered

on the empire of the East, Oeobazus, an aged noble, begged that one

of his three sons might be left at home to comfort his father, and

that the king might be satisfied with the services of two of them.

Darius promised him more than he asked for, saying that he would

allow all three to remain at home, and flung their dead bodies

before their father’s eyes. He would have been harsh, had he taken

them all to the war with him. How much more good-natured was

Xerxes,[5] who, when Pythias, the father of five sons, begged for

one to be excused from service, permitted him to choose which he

wished for. He then tore the son whom the father had chosen into

two halves, placed one on each side of the road, and, as it were,

purified his army by means of this propitiatory victim. He therefore

had the end which he deserved, being defeated, and his army scattered

far and wide in utter rout, while he in the midst of it walked among

the corpses of his soldiers, seeing on all sides the signs of his

own overthrow.

XVII. So ferocious in their anger were those kings who had no

learning, no tincture of polite literature: now I will show you

King Alexander (the Great), fresh from the lap of Aristotle, who

with his own hand while at table stabbed Clitus, his dearest friend,

who had been brought up with him, because he did not flatter him

enough, and was too slow in transforming himself from a free man

and a Macedonian into a Persian slave. Indeed he shut up {136}

Lysimachus,[6] who was no less his friend than Clitus, in a cage

with a lion; yet did this make Lysimachus, who escaped by some happy

chance from the lion’s teeth, any gentler when he became a king?

Why, he mutilated his own friend, Telesphorus the Rhodian, cutting

off his nose and ears, and kept him for a long while in a den, like

some new and strange animal, after the hideousness of his hacked

and disfigured face had made him no longer appear to be human,

assisted by starvation and the squalid filth of a body left to

wallow in its own dung! Besides this, his hands and knees, which

the narrowness of his abode forced him to use instead of his feet,

became hard and callous, while his sides were covered with sores

by rubbing against the walls, so that his appearance was no less

shocking than frightful, and his punishment turned him into so

monstrous a creature that he was not even pitied. Yet, however

unlike a man he was who suffered this, even more unlike was he who

inflicted it.

XVIII. Would to heaven that such savagery had contented itself with

foreign examples, and that barbarity in anger and punishment had

not been imported with other outlandish vices into our Roman manners!

Marcus Marius, to whom the people erected a statue in every street,

to whom they made offerings of incense and wine, had, by the command

of Lucius Sulla, his legs broken, his eyes pulled out, his hands

cut off, and his whole body gradually torn to pieces limb by limb,

as if Sulla killed him as many times as he wounded him. Who was it

who carried out Sulla’s orders? who but Catiline, already practising

his hands in every sort of wickedness? He tore him to pieces before

the tomb of Quintus Catulus, an unwelcome burden to the ashes of

that gentlest of men, above which one who was no doubt a criminal,

yet nevertheless {137} the idol of the people, and who was not

undeserving of love, although men loved him beyond all reason, was

forced to shed his blood drop by drop. Though Marius deserved such

tortures, yet it was worthy of Sulla to order them, and of Catiline

to execute them; but it was unworthy of the State to be stabbed by

the swords of her enemy and her avenger alike. Why do I pry into

ancient history? quite lately Gaius Caesar flogged and tortured

Sextus Papinius, whose father was a consular, Betilienus Bassus,

his own quaestor, and several others, both senators and knights,

on the same day, not to carry out any judicial inquiry, but merely

to amuse himself. Indeed, so impatient was he of any delay in

receiving the pleasure which his monstrous cruelty never delayed

in asking, that when walking with some ladies and senators in his

mother’s gardens, along the walk between the colonnade and the

river, he struck off some of their heads by lamplight. What did he

fear? what public or private danger could one night threaten him

with? how very small a favour it would have been to wait until

morning, and not to kill the Roman people’s senators in his slippers?

XIX. It is to the purpose that we should know how haughtily his

cruelty was exercised, although some one might suppose that we are

wandering from the subject and embarking on a digression; but this

digression is itself connected with unusual outbursts of anger. He

beat senators with rods; he did it so often that he made men able

to say, “It is the custom.” He tortured them with all the most

dismal engines in the world, with the cord, the boots, the rack,

the fire, and the sight of his own face. Even to this we may answer,

“To tear three senators to pieces with stripes and fire like criminal

slaves was no such great crime for one who had thoughts of butchering

the entire Senate, who was wont to wish that the Roman people had

but one neck, that he might concentrate {138} into one day and one

blow all the wickedness which he divided among so many places and

times. Was there ever anything so unheard-of as an execution in the

night-time? Highway robbery seeks for the shelter of darkness, but

the more public an execution is, the more power it has as an example

and lesson. Here I shall be met by: “This, which you are so surprised

at, was the daily habit of that monster; this was what he lived

for, watched for, sat up at night for.” Certainly one could find

no one else who would have ordered all those whom he condemned to

death to have their mouths closed by a sponge being fastened in

them, that they might not have the power even of uttering a sound.

What dying man was ever forbidden to groan? He feared that the last

agony might find too free a voice, that he might hear what would

displease him. He knew, moreover, that there were countless crimes,

with which none but a dying man would dare to reproach him. When

sponges were not forthcoming, he ordered the wretched men’s clothes

to be torn up, and the rags stuffed into their mouths. What savagery

was this? Let a man draw his last breath: give room for his soul

to escape through: let it not be forced to leave the body through

a wound. It becomes tedious to add to this that in the same night

he sent centurions to the houses of the executed men and made an

end of their fathers also, that is to say, being a compassionate-minded

man, he set them free from sorrow: for it is not my intention to

describe the ferocity of Gaius, but the ferocity of anger, which

does not merely vent its rage upon individuals, but rends in pieces

whole nations, and even lashes cities, rivers, and things which

have no sense of pain.

XX. Thus, the king of the Persians cut off the noses of a whole

nation in Syria, wherefore the place is called Rhinocolura. Do you

think that he was merciful, because he did not cut their heads off

altogether? no, he was delighted at {139} having invented a new

kind of punishment. Something of the same kind would have befallen

the Aethiopians,[7] who on account of their prodigiously long lives

are called Macrobiotae; for, because they did not receive slavery

with hands uplifted to heaven in thankfulness, and sent an embassy

which used independent, or what kings call insulting language,

Cambyses became wild with rage, and, without any store of provisions,

or any knowledge of the roads, started with all his fighting men

through an arid and trackless waste, where during the first day’s

march the necessaries of life failed, and the country itself furnished

nothing, being barren and uncultivated, and untrodden by the foot

of man. At first the tenderest parts of leaves and shoots of trees

relieved their hunger, then hides softened by fire, and anything

else that their extremity drove them to use as food. When as they

proceeded neither roots nor herbs were to be found in the sand, and

they found a wilderness destitute even of animal life, they chose

each tenth man by lot and made of him a meal which was more cruel

than hunger. Rage still drove the king madly forwards, until after

he had lost one part of his army and eaten another he began to fear

that he also might be called upon to draw the lot for his life;

then at last he gave the order for retreat. Yet all the while his

well-bred hawks were not sacrificed, and the means of feasting were

carried for him on camels, while his soldiers were drawing lots for

who should miserably perish, and who should yet more miserably live.

XXI. This man was angry with an unknown and inoffensive nation,

which nevertheless was able to feel his wrath; but Cyrus[8] was

angry with a river. When hurrying to besiege Babylon, since in

making war it is above all things important to seize one’s opportunity,

he tried to ford the wide-spread river Gyndes, which it is hardly

safe to {140} attempt even when the river has been dried up by the

summer heat and is at its lowest. Here one of the white horses which

drew the royal chariot was washed away, and his loss moved the king

to such violent rage, that he swore to reduce the river which had

carried off his royal retinue to so low an ebb that even women

should walk across it and trample upon it. He thereupon devoted all

the resources of his army to this object, and remained working until

by cutting one hundred and eighty channels across the bed of the

river he divided it into three hundred and sixty brooks, and left

the bed dry, the waters flowing through other channels. Thus he

lost time, which is very important in great operations, and lost,

also, the soldiers’ courage, which was broken by useless labour,

and the opportunity of falling upon his enemy unprepared, while he

was waging against the river the war which he had declared against

his foes. This frenzy, for what else can you call it, has befallen

Romans also, for G. Caesar destroyed a most beautiful villa at

Herculaneum because his mother was once imprisoned in it, and has

thus made the place notorious by its misfortune; for while it stood,

we used to sail past it without noticing it, but now people inquire

why it is in ruins.

XXII. These should be regarded as examples to be avoided, and what

I am about to relate, on the contrary, to be followed, being examples

of gentle and lenient conduct in men who both had reasons for anger

and power to avenge themselves. What could have been easier than

for Antigonus to order those two common soldiers to be executed who

leaned against their king’s tent while doing what all men especially

love to do, and run the greatest danger by doing, I mean while they

spoke evil of their king. Antigonus heard all they said, as was

likely, since there was only a piece of cloth between the speakers

and the listener, who gently raised it, and said “Go a little {141}

further off, for fear the king should hear you.” He also on one

night, hearing some of his soldiers invoking everything that was

evil upon their king for having brought them along that road and

into that impassable mud, went to those who were in the greatest

difficulties, and having extricated them without their knowing who

was their helper, said, “Now curse Antigonus, by whose fault you

have fallen into this trouble, but bless the man who has brought

you out of this slough.” This same Antigonus bore the abuse of his

enemies as good-naturedly as that of his countrymen; thus when he

was besieging some Greeks in a little fort, and they, despising

their enemy through their confidence in the strength of their

position, cut many jokes upon the ugliness of Antigonus, at one

time mocking him for his shortness of stature, at another for his

broken nose, he answered, “I rejoice, and expect some good fortune

because I have a Silenus in my camp.” After he had conquered these

witty folk by hunger, his treatment of them was to form regiments

of those who were fit for service, and sell the rest by public

auction; nor would he, said he, have done this had it not been

better that men who had such evil tongues should be under the control

of a master.

XXIII. This man’s grandson[9] was Alexander, who used to hurl his

lance at his guests, who, of the two friends which I have mentioned

above, exposed one to the rage of a wild beast, and the other to

his own; yet of these two men, he who was exposed to the lion

survived. He did not derive this vice from his grandfather, nor

even from his father; for it was an especial virtue of Philip’s to

endure insults patiently, and was a great safeguard of his kingdom.

Demochares, who was surnamed Parrhesiastes on account of his unbridled

and impudent tongue, came on an embassy to him with other ambassadors

from Athens. After graciously {142} listening to what they had to

say, Philip said to them, “Tell me, what can I do that will please

the Athenians? “Demochares took him up, and answered, “Hang yourself.”

All the bystanders expressed their indignation at so brutal an

answer, but Philip bade them be silent, and let this Thersites

depart safe and sound. “But do you,” said he, “you other ambassadors,

tell the Athenians that those who say such things are much more

arrogant than those who hear them without revenging themselves.”

The late Emperor Augustus also did and said many memorable things,

which prove that he was not under the dominion of anger. Timagenes,

the historical writer, made some remarks upon him, his wife, and

his whole family: nor did his jests fall to the ground, for nothing

spreads more widely or is more in people’s mouths than reckless

wit. Caesar often warned him to be less audacious in his talk, and

as he continued to offend, forbade him his house. Timagenes after

this passed the later years of his life as the guest of Asinius

Pollio, and was the favourite of the whole city: the closing of

Caesar’s door did not close any other door against him. He read

aloud the history which he wrote after this, but burned the books

which contained the doings of Augustus Caesar. He was at enmity

with Caesar, but yet no one feared to be his friend, no one shrank

from him as though he were blasted by lightning: although he fell

from so high a place, yet some one was found to catch him in his

lap. Caesar, I say, bore this with patience, and was not even

irritated by the historian’s having laid violent hands upon his own

glories and acts: he never complained of the man who afforded his

enemy shelter, but merely said to Asinius Pollio “You are keeping

a wild beast:” then, when the other would have excused his conduct,

he stopped him, and said “Enjoy, my Pollio, enjoy his friendship.”

When Pollio said, “If you order me, Caesar, I will straightway

forbid him my house,” he {143} answered, “Do you think that I am

likely to do this, after having made you friends again?” for formerly

Pollio had been angry with Timagenes, and ceased to be angry with

him for no other reason than that Caesar began to be so.

XXIV. Let every one, then, say to himself, whenever he is provoked,

“Am I more powerful than Philip? yet he allowed a man to curse him

with impunity. Have I more authority in my own house than the Emperor

Augustus possessed throughout the world? yet he was satisfied with

leaving the society of his maligner. Why should I make my slave

atone by stripes and manacles for having answered me too loudly or

having put on a stubborn look, or muttered something which I did

not catch? Who am I, that it should be a crime to shock my ears?

Many men have forgiven their enemies: shall I not forgive men for

being lazy, careless, and gossipping?” We ought to plead age as an

excuse for children, sex for women, freedom for a stranger, familiarity

for a house-servant. Is this his first offence? think how long he

has been acceptable. Has he often done wrong, and in many other

cases? then let us continue to bear what we have borne so long. Is

he a friend? then he did not intend to do it. Is he an enemy? then

in doing it he did his duty. If he be a sensible man, let us believe

his excuses; if a fool, let us grant him pardon; whatever he may

be, let us say to ourselves on his behalf, that even the wisest of

men are often in fault, that no one is so alert that his carefulness

never betrays itself, that no one is of so ripe a judgment that his

serious mind cannot be goaded by circumstances into some hotheaded

action, that, in fine, no one, however much he may fear to give

offence, can help doing so even while he tries to avoid it.

XXV. As it is a consolation to a humble man in trouble that the

greatest are subject to reverses of fortune, and a man weeps more

calmly over his dead son in the corner of {144} his hovel if he

sees a piteous[10] funeral proceed out of the palace as well; so

one bears injury or insult more calmly if one remembers that no

power is so great as to be above the reach of harm. Indeed, if even

the wisest do wrong, who cannot plead a good excuse for his faults?

Let us look back upon our own youth, and think how often we then

were too slothful in our duty, too impudent in our speech, too

intemperate in our cups. Is anyone angry? then let us give him

enough time to reflect upon what he has done, and he will correct

his own self. But suppose he ought to pay the penalty of his deeds:

well, that is no reason why we should act as he does. It canot be

doubted that he who regards his tormentor with contempt raises

himself above the common herd and looks down upon them from a loftier

position: it is the property of true magnanimity not to feel the

blows which it may receive. So does a huge wild beast turn slowly

and gaze at yelping curs: so does the wave dash in vain against a

great cliff. The man who is not angry remains unshaken by injury:

he who is angry has been moved by it. He, however, whom I have

described as being placed too high for any mischief to reach him,

holds as it were the highest good in his arms: he can reply, not

only to any man, but to fortune herself: “Do what you will, you are

too feeble to disturb my serenity: this is forbidden by reason, to

whom I have entrusted the guidance of my life: to become angry would

do me more harm than your violence can do me. ‘More harm?’ say you.

Yes, certainly: I know how much injury you have done me, but I

cannot tell to what excesses anger might not carry me.”

XXVI. You say, “I cannot endure it: injuries are hard to bear.” You

lie; for how can any one not be able to bear injury, if he can bear

to be angry? Besides, what you {145} intend to do is to endure both

injury and anger. Why do you bear with the delirium of a sick man,

or the ravings of a madman, or the impudent blows of a child?

Because, of course, they evidently do not know what they are doing:

if a man be not responsible for his actions, what does it matter

by what malady he became so: the plea of ignorance holds equally

good in every case. “What then?” say you, “shall he not be punished?”

He will be, even supposing that you do not wish it: for the greatest

punishment for having done harm is the sense of having done it, and

no one is more severely punished than he who is given over to the

punishment of remorse. In the next place, we ought to consider the

whole state of mankind, in order to pass a just judgment on all the

occurrences of life: for it is unjust to blame individuals for a

vice which is common to all. The colour of an Aethiop is not

remarkable amongst his own people, nor is any man in Germany ashamed

of red hair rolled into a knot. You cannot call anything peculiar

or disgraceful in a particular man if it is the general characteristic

of his nation. Now, the cases which I have quoted are defended only

by the usage of one out-of-the-way quarter of the world: see now,

how far more deserving of pardon those crimes are which are spread

abroad among all mankind. We all are hasty and careless, we all are

untrustworthy, dissatisfied, and ambitious: nay, why do I try to

hide our common wickedness by a too partial description? we all are

bad. Every one of us therefore will find in his own breast the vice

which he blames in another. Why do you remark how pale this man,

or how lean that man is? there is a general pestilence. Let us

therefore be more gentle one to another: we are bad men, living

among bad men: there is only one thing which can afford us peace,

and that is to agree to forgive one another. “This man has already

injured me,” say you, “and I have not yet injured him.” No, but you

have probably injured some one else, and you will injure {146} him

some day. Do not form your judgment by one hour, or one day: consider

the whole tendency of your mind: even though you have done no evil,

yet you are capable of doing it.

XXVII. How far better is it to heal an injury than to avenge it?

Revenge takes up much time, and throws itself in the way of many

injuries while it is smarting under one. We all retain our anger

longer than we feel our hurt: how far better it were to take the

opposite course and not meet one mischief by another. Would any one

think himself to be in his perfect mind if he were to return kicks

to a mule or bites to a dog?” These creatures,” you say, “know not

that they are doing wrong.” Then, in the first place, what an unjust

judge you must be if a man has less chance of gaining your forgiveness

than a beast! Secondly, if animals are protected from your anger

by their want of reason, you ought to treat all foolish men in the

like manner: for if a man has that mental darkness which excuses

all the wrong-doings of dumb animals, what difference does it make

if in other respects he be unlike a dumb animal? He has sinned.

Well, is this the first time, or will this be the last time? Why,

you should not believe him even if he said, “Never will I do so

again.” He will sin, and another will sin against him, and all his

life he will wallow in wickedness. Savagery must be met by kindness:

we ought to use, to a man in anger, the argument which is so effective

with one in grief, that is, “Shall you leave off this at some time,

or never? If you will do so at some time, how better is it that you

should abandon anger than that anger should abandon you? Or, will

this excitement never leave you? Do you see to what an unquiet life

you condemn yourself? for what will be the life of one who is always

swelling with rage?” Add to this, that after you have worked yourself

up into a rage, and have from time to time renewed the causes of

your {147} excitement, yet your anger will depart from you of its

own accord, and time will sap its strength: how much better then

is it that it should be overcome by you than by itself?

XXVIII. If you are angry, you will quarrel first with this man, and

then with that: first with slaves, then with freedmen: first with

parents, then with children: first with acquaintances, then with

strangers: for there are grounds for anger in every case, unless

your mind steps in and intercedes with you: your frenzy will drag

you from one place to another, and from thence to elsewhere, your

madness will constantly meet with newly-occurring irritants, and

will never depart from you. Tell me, miserable man, what time you

will have for loving? O, what good time you are wasting on an evil

thing! How much better it would be to win friends, and disarm

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

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

enjoyment, be misapplied in grieving and torturing others? Life is

a matter which does not admit of waste, and we have no spare time

to throw away. Why do we rush into the fray? why do we go out of

our way to seek disputes? why do we, forgetful of the weakness of

our nature, undertake mighty feuds, and, frail though we be, summon

up all our strength to cut down other men? Ere long, fever or some

other bodily ailment will make us unable to carry on this warfare

of {160} hatred which we so implacably wage: death will soon part

the most vigorous pair of combatants. Why do we make disturbances

and spend our lives in rioting? fate hangs over our heads, scores

up to our account the days as they pass, and is ever drawing nearer

and nearer. The time which you have marked for the death of another

perhaps includes your own.”

XLIII. Instead of acting thus, why do you not rather draw together

what there is of your short life, and keep it peaceful for others

and for yourself? why do you not rather make yourself beloved by

every one while you live, and regretted by every one when you die?

Why do you wish to tame that man’s pride, because he takes too lofty

a tone with you? why do you try with all your might to crush that

other who snaps and snarls at you, a low and contemptible wretch,

but spiteful and offensive to his betters? Master, why are you angry

with your slave? Slave, why are you angry with your master? Client,

why are you angry with your patron? Patron, why are you angry with

your client? Wait but a little while. See, here comes death, who

will make you all equals. We often see at a morning performance in

the arena a battle between a bull and a bear, fastened together,

in which the victor, after he has torn the other to pieces, is

himself slain. We do just the same thing: we worry some one who is

connected with us, although the end of both victor and vanquished

is at hand, and that soon. Let us rather pass the little remnant

of our lives in peace and quiet: may no one loathe us when we lie

dead. A quarrel is often brought to an end by a cry of “Fire!” in

the neighbourhood, and the appearance of a wild beast parts the

highwayman from the traveller: men have no leisure to battle with

minor evils when menaced by some overpowering terror. What have we

to do with fighting and ambuscades? do you want anything more than

death to befall {161} him with whom you are angry? well, even though

you sit quiet, he will be sure to die. You waste your pains: you

want to do what is certain to be done. You say, “I do not wish

necessarily to kill him, but to punish him by exile, or public

disgrace, or loss of property.” I can more easily pardon one who

wishes to give his enemy a wound than one who wishes to give him a

blister: for the latter is not only bad, but petty-minded. Whether

you are thinking of extreme or slighter punishments, how very short

is the time during which either your victim is tortured or you enjoy

an evil pleasure in another’s pain? This breath that we hold so

dear will soon leave us: in the meantime, while we draw it, while

we live among human beings, let us practise humanity: let us not

be a terror or a danger to any one. Let us keep our tempers in spite

of losses, wrongs, abuse or sarcasm, and let us endure with magnanimity

our shortlived troubles: while we are considering what is due to

ourselves, as the saying is, and worrying ourselves, death will be

upon us.

[1] The hook alluded to was fastened to the neck of condemned

criminals, and by it they were dragged to the Tiber. Also the bodies

of dead gladiators were thus dragged out of the arena. The hook by

which the dead bull is drawn away at a modern Spanish bull-fight

is probably a survival of this custom.

[2] Hdt. iii, 34, 35,

[3] Seneca’s own death, by opening his veins, gives a melancholy

interest to this passage.

[4] Hdt. iv. 84.

[5] Hdt. vii. 38, 39.

[6] Plut. Dem. 27.

[7] Hdt. iii. 17, _sqq._

[8] Hdt. i. 189, 190.

[9] A mistake: Antigonus (Monophthalmus) was one of Alexander’s

generals.

[10] _Acerbum_ = ἄωρυν; the funeral of one who has been cut off in

the flower of his youth.

[11] In point of time.

[12] _Consul ordinarius_, a regular consul, one who administered

in office from the first of January, in opposition to _consul

suffectus_, one chosen in the course of the year in the place of

one who had died. The consul ordinarius gave his name to the year.

[13] It seems inconceivable that so small an interest, 1 1/5 per

cent, per an., can be meant.

[14] _Captatis_, Madvig. Adv. II. 394.

[15] See “On Clemency,” i. 18, 2.

{162}

THE SIXTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO

MARCIA.

OF CONSOLATION.

I. Did I not know, Marcia, that you have as little of a woman’s

weakness of mind as of her other vices, and that your life was

regarded as a pattern of antique virtue, I should not have dared

to combat your grief, which is one that many men fondly nurse and

embrace, nor should I have conceived the hope of persuading you to

hold fortune blameless, having to plead for her at such an unfavorable

time, before so partial a judge, and against such an odious charge.

I derive confidence, however, from the proved strength of your mind,

and your virtue, which has been proved by a severe test. All men

know how well you behaved towards your father, whom you loved as

dearly as your children in all respects, save that you did not wish

him to survive you: indeed, for all that I know you may have wished

that also: for great affection ventures to break some of the golden

rules of life. You did all that lay in your power to avert the death

of your father, Aulus Cremutius Cordus;[1] but when it became clear

that, surrounded as he was by the myrmidons of Sejanus, there was

no other way of escape from slavery, you did not {163} indeed approve

of his resolution, but gave up all attempts to oppose it; you shed

tears openly, and choked down your sobs, yet did not screen them

behind a smiling face; and you did all this in the present century,

when not to be unnatural towards one’s parents is considered the

height of filial affection. When the changes of our times gave you

an opportunity, you restored to the use of man that genius of your

father for which he had suffered, and made him in real truth immortal

by publishing as an eternal memorial of him those books which that

bravest of men had written with his own blood. You have done a great

service to Roman literature: a large part of Cordus’s books had

been burned; a great service to posterity, who will receive a true

account of events, which cost its author so dear; and a great service

to himself, whose memory flourishes and ever will flourish, as long

as men set any value upon the facts of Roman history, as long as

any one lives who wishes to review the deeds of our fathers, to

know what a true Roman was like—one who still remained unconquered

when all other necks were broken in to receive the yoke of Sejanus,

one who was free in every thought, feeling, and act. By Hercules,

the state would have sustained a great loss if you had not brought

him forth from the oblivion to which his two splendid qualities,

eloquence and independence, had consigned him: he is now read, is

popular, is received into men’s hands and bosoms, and fears no old

age: but as for those who butchered him, before long men will cease

to speak even of their crimes, the only things by which they are

remembered. This greatness of mind in you has forbidden me to take

into consideration your sex or your face, still clouded by the

sorrow by which so many years ago it was suddenly overcast. See; I

shall do nothing underhand, nor try to steal away your sorrows: I

have reminded you of old hurts, and to prove that your present wound

may be healed, I have {164} shown you the scar of one which was

equally severe. Let others use soft measures and caresses; I have

determined to do battle with your grief, and I will dry those weary

and exhausted eyes, which already, to tell you the truth, are weeping

more from habit than from sorrow. I will effect this cure, if

possible, with your goodwill: if you disapprove of my efforts, or

dislike them, then you must continue to hug and fondle the grief

which you have adopted as the survivor of your son. What, I pray

you, is to be the end of it? All means have been tried in vain: the

consolations of your friends, who are weary of offering them, and

the influence of great men who are related to you: literature, a

taste which your father enjoyed and which you have inherited from

him, now finds your ears closed, and affords you but a futile

consolation, which scarcely engages your thoughts for a moment.

Even time itself, nature’s greatest remedy, which quiets the most

bitter grief, loses its power with you alone. Three years have

already passed, and still your grief has lost none of its first

poignancy, but renews and strengthens itself day by day, and has

now dwelt so long with you that it has acquired a domicile in your

mind, and actually thinks that it would be base to leave it. All

vices sink into our whole being, if we do not crush them before

they gain a footing; and in like manner these sad, pitiable, and

discordant feelings end by feeding upon their own bitterness, until

the unhappy mind takes a sort of morbid delight in grief. I should

have liked, therefore, to have attempted to effect this cure in the

earliest stages of the disorder, before its force was fully developed;

it might have been checked by milder remedies, but now that it has

been confirmed by time it cannot be beaten without a hard struggle.

In like manner, wounds heal easily when the blood is fresh upon

them: they can then be cleared out and brought to the surface, and

admit of being probed by the finger: when disease {165} has turned

them into malignant ulcers, their cure is more difficult. I cannot

now influence so strong a grief by polite and mild measures: it

must be broken down by force.

II. I am aware that all who wish to give any one advice begin with

precepts, and end with examples: but it is sometimes useful to alter

this fashion, for we must deal differently with different people.

Some are guided by reason, others must be confronted with authority

and the names of celebrated persons, whose brilliancy dazzles their

mind and destroys their power of free judgment. I will place before

your eyes two of the greatest examples belonging to your sex and

your century: one, that of a woman who allowed herself to be entirely

carried away by grief; the other, one who, though afflicted by a

like misfortune, and an even greater loss, yet did not allow her

sorrows to reign over her for a very long time, but quickly restored

her mind to its accustomed frame. Octavia and Livia, the former

Augustus’s sister, the latter his wife, both lost their sons when

they were young men, and when they were certain of succeeding to

the throne. Octavia lost Marcellus, whom both his father-in-law and

his uncle had begun to depend upon, and to place upon his shoulders

the weight of the empire—a young man of keen intelligence and firm

character, frugal and moderate in his desires to an extent which

deserved especial admiration in one so young and so wealthy, strong

to endure labour, averse to indulgence, and able to bear whatever

burden his uncle might choose to lay, or I may say to pile upon his

shoulders. Augustus had well chosen him as a foundation, for he

would not have given way under any weight, however excessive. His

mother never ceased to weep and sob during her whole life, never

endured to listen to wholesome advice, never even allowed her

thoughts to be diverted from her sorrow. She remained during her

whole life just as she was during the funeral, with all the {166}

strength of her mind intently fixed upon one subject. I do not say

that she lacked the courage to shake off her grief, but she refused

to be comforted, thought that it would be a second bereavement to

lose her tears, and would not have any portrait of her darling son,

nor allow any allusion to be made to him. She hated all mothers,

and raged against Livia with especial fury, because it seemed as

though the brilliant prospect once in store for her own child was

now transferred to Livia’s son. Passing all her days in darkened

rooms and alone, not conversing even with her brother, she refused

to accept the poems which were composed in memory of Marcellus, and

all the other honours paid him by literature, and closed her ears

against all consolation. She lived buried and hidden from view,

neglecting her accustomed duties, and actually angry with the

excessive splendour of her brother’s prosperity, in which she shared.

Though surrounded by her children and grandchildren, she would not

lay aside her mourning garb, though by retaining it she seemed to

put a slight upon all her relations, in thinking herself bereaved

in spite of their being alive.

III. Livia lost her son Drusus, who would have been a great emperor,

and was already a great general: he had marched far into Germany,

and had planted the Roman standards in places where the very existence

of the Romans was hardly known. He died on the march, his very foes

treating him with respect, observing a reciprocal truce, and not

having the heart to wish for what would do them most service. In

addition to his dying thus in his country’s service, great sorrow

for him was expressed by the citizens, the provinces, and the whole

of Italy, through which his corpse was attended by the people of

the free towns and colonies, who poured out to perform the last sad

offices to him, till it reached Rome in a procession which resembled

a triumph. His mother was not permitted to {167} receive his last

kiss and gather the last fond words from his dying lips: she followed

the relics of her Drusus on their long journey, though every one

of the funeral pyres with which all Italy was glowing seemed to

renew her grief, as though she had lost him so many times. When,

however, she at last laid him in the tomb, she left her sorrow there

with him, and grieved no more than was becoming to a Caesar or due

to a son. She did not cease to make frequent mention of the name

of her Drusus, to set up his portrait in all places, both public

and private, and to speak of him and listen while others spoke of

him with the greatest pleasure: she lived with his memory; which

none can embrace and consort with who has made it painful to

himself.[2] Choose, therefore, which of these two examples you think

the more commendable: if you prefer to follow the former, you will

remove yourself from the number of the living; you will shun the

sight both of other people’s children and of your own, and even of

him whose loss you deplore; you will be looked upon by mothers as

an omen of evil; you will refuse to take part in honourable,

permissible pleasures, thinking them unbecoming for one so afflicted;

you will be loth to linger above ground, and will be especially

angry with your age, because it will not straightway bring your

life abruptly to an end. I here put the best construction on what

is really most contemptible and foreign to your character. I mean

that you will show yourself unwilling to live, and unable to die.

If, on the other hand, showing a milder and better regulated spirit,

you try to follow the example of the latter most exalted lady, you

will not be in misery, nor will you wear your life out with suffering.

Plague on it! what madness this is, to punish one’s self because

one is unfortunate, and not to lessen, but to increase one’s ills!

You ought to display, in this {168} matter also, that decent behaviour

and modesty which has characterised all your life: for there is

such a thing as self-restraint in grief also. You will show more

respect for the youth himself, who well deserves that it should

make you glad to speak and think of him, if you make him able to

meet his mother with a cheerful countenance, even as he was wont

to do when alive.

IV. I will not invite you to practise the sterner kind of maxims,

nor bid you bear the lot of humanity with more than human philosophy;

neither will I attempt to dry a mother’s eyes on the very day of

her son’s burial. I will appear with you before an arbitrator: the

matter upon which we shall join issue is, whether grief ought to

be deep or unceasing. I doubt not that you will prefer the example

of Julia Augusta, who was your intimate friend: she invites you to

follow her method: she, in her first paroxysm, when grief is

especially keen and hard to bear, betook herself for consolation

to Areus, her husband’s teacher in philosophy, and declared that

this did her much good; more good than the thought of the Roman

people, whom she was unwilling to sadden by her mourning; more than

Augustus, who, staggering under the loss of one of his two chief

supporters, ought not to be yet more bowed down by the sorrow of

his relatives; more even than her son Tiberius, whose affection

during that untimely burial of one for whom whole nations wept made

her feel that she had only lost one member of her family. This was,

I imagine, his introduction to and grounding in philosophy of a

woman peculiarly tenacious of her own opinion:—“Even to the present

day, Julia, as far as I can tell—and I was your husband’s constant

companion, and knew not only what all men were allowed to know, but

all the most secret thoughts of your hearts— you have been careful

that no one should find anything to blame in your conduct; not only

in matters of importance, {169} but even in trifles you have taken

pains to do nothing which you could wish common fame, that most

frank judge of the acts of princes, to overlook. Nothing, I think,

is more admirable than that those who are in high places should

pardon many shortcomings in others, and have to ask it for none of

their own. So also in this matter of mourning you ought to act up

to your maxim of doing nothing which you could wish undone, or done

otherwise.

V. “In the next place, I pray and beseech you not to be self-willed

and beyond the management of your friends. You must be aware that

none of them know how to behave, whether to mention Drusus in your

presence or not, as they neither wish to wrong a noble youth by

forgetting him, nor to hurt you by speaking of him. When we leave

you and assemble together by ourselves, we talk freely about his

sayings and doings, treating them with the respect which they

deserve: in your presence deep silence is observed about him, and

thus you lose that greatest of pleasures, the hearing the praises

of your son, which I doubt not you would be willing to hand down

to all future ages, had you the means of so doing, even at the cost

of your own life. Wherefore endure to listen to, nay, encourage

conversation of which he is the subject, and let your ears be open

to the name and memory of your son. You ought not to consider this

painful, like those who in such a case think that part of their

misfortune consists in listening to consolation. As it is, you have

altogether run into the other extreme, and, forgetting the better

aspects of your lot, look only upon its worse side: you pay no

attention to the pleasure you have had in your son’s society and

your joyful meetings with him, the sweet caresses of his babyhood,

the progress of his education: you fix all your attention upon that

last scene of all: and to this, as though it were not shocking

enough, you add every horror you can. Do not, I implore you, take

a perverse pride in appearing {170} the most unhappy of women: and

reflect also that there is no great credit in behaving bravely in

times of prosperity, when life glides easily with a favouring

current: neither does a calm sea and fair wind display the art of

the pilot: some foul weather is wanted to prove his courage. Like

him, then, do not give way, but rather plant yourself firmly, and

endure whatever burden may fall upon you from above, scared though

you may have been at the first roar of the tempest. There is nothing

that fastens such a reproach[3] on Fortune as resignation.” After

this he points out to her the son who is yet alive: he points out

grandchildren from the lost one.

VI. It is your trouble, Marcia, which has been dealt with here: it

is beside your couch of mourning that Areus has been sitting: change

the characters, and it is you whom he has been consoling. But, on

the other hand, Marcia, suppose that you have sustained a greater

loss than ever mother did before you: see, I am not soothing you

or making light of your misfortune: if fate can be overcome by

tears, let us bring tears to bear upon it: let every day be passed

in mourning, every night be spent in sorrow instead of sleep: let

your breast be torn by your own hands, your very face attacked by

them, and every kind of cruelty be practised by your grief, if it

will profit you. But if the dead cannot be brought back to life,

however much we may beat our breasts, if destiny remains fixed and

immoveable for ever, not to be changed by any sorrow, however great,

and death does not loose his hold of anything that he once has taken

away, then let our futile grief be brought to an end. Let us, then,

steer our own course, and no longer allow ourselves to be driven

to leeward by the force of our misfortune. He is a sorry pilot who

lets the waves wring his rudder from his grasp, who leaves the sails

to fly loose, and abandons the ship to the storm: but he who {171}

boldly grasps the helm and clings to it until the sea closes over

him, deserves praise even though he be shipwrecked.

VII. “But,” say you, “sorrow for the loss of one’s own children is

natural.” Who denies it? provided it be reasonable? for we cannot

help feeling a pang, and the stoutest-hearted of us are cast down

not only at the death of those dearest to us, but even when they

leave us on a journey. Nevertheless, the mourning which public

opinion enjoins is more than nature insists upon. Observe how intense

and yet how brief are the sorrows of dumb animals: we hear a cow

lowing for one or two days, nor do mares pursue their wild and

senseless gallops for longer: wild beasts after they have tracked

their lost cubs throughout the forest, and often visited their

plundered dens, quench their rage within a short space of time.

Birds circle round their empty nests with loud and piteous cries,

yet almost immediately resume their ordinary flight in silence; nor

does any creature spend long periods in sorrowing for the loss of

its offspring, except man, who encourages his own grief, the measure

of which depends not upon his sufferings, but upon his will. You

may know that to be utterly broken down by grief is not natural,

by observing that the same bereavement inflicts a deeper wound upon

women than upon men, upon savages than upon civilised and cultivated

persons, upon the unlearned than upon the learned: yet those passions

which derive their force from nature are equally powerful in all

men: therefore it is clear that a passion of varying strength cannot

be a natural one. Fire will burn all people equally, male and female,

of every rank and every age: steel will exhibit its cutting power

on all bodies alike: and why? Because these things derive their

strength from nature, which makes no distinction of persons. Poverty,

grief, and ambition,[4] are {172} felt differently by different

people, according as they are influenced by habit: a rooted prejudice

about the terrors of these things, though they are not really to

be feared, makes a man weak and unable to endure them.

VIII. Moreover, that which depends upon nature is not weakened by

delay, but grief is gradually effaced by time. However obstinate

it may be, though it be daily renewed and be exasperated by all

attempts to soothe it, yet even this becomes weakened by time, which

is the most efficient means of taming its fierceness. You, Marcia,

have still a mighty sorrow abiding with you, nevertheless it already

appears to have become blunted: it is obstinate and enduring, but

not so acute as it was at first: and this also will be taken from

you piecemeal by succeeding years. Whenever you are engaged in other

pursuits your mind will be relieved from its burden: at present you

keep watch over yourself to prevent this. Yet there is a great

difference between allowing and forcing yourself to grieve. How

much more in accordance with your cultivated taste it would be to

put an end to your mourning instead of looking for the end to come,

and not to wait for the day when your sorrow shall cease against

your will: dismiss it of your own accord.

IX. “Why then,” you ask, “do we show such persistence in mourning

for our friends, if it be not nature that bids us do so?” It is

because we never expect that any evil will befall ourselves before

it comes, we will not be taught by seeing the misfortunes of others

that they are the common inheritance of all men, but imagine that

the path which we have begun to tread is free from them and less

beset by dangers than that of other people. How many funerals pass

our houses? yet we do not think of death. How many untimely deaths?

we think only of our son’s coming of age, of his service in the

army, or of his succession to his father’s estate. How many rich

men suddenly {173} sink into poverty before our very eyes, without

its ever occurring to our minds that our own wealth is exposed to

exactly the same risks? When, therefore, misfortune befalls us, we

cannot help collapsing all the more completely, because we are

struck as it were unawares: a blow which has long been foreseen

falls much less heavily upon us. Do you wish to know how completely

exposed you are to every stroke of fate, and that the same shafts

which have transfixed others are whirling around yourself? then

imagine that you are mounting without sufficient armour to assault

some city wall or some strong and lofty position manned by a great

host, expect a wound, and suppose that all those stones, arrows,

and darts which fill the upper air are aimed at your body: whenever

any one falls at your side or behind your back, exclaim, “Fortune,

you will not outwit me, or catch me confident and heedless: I know

what you are preparing to do: you have struck down another, but you

aimed at me.” Who ever looks upon his own affairs as though he were

at the point of death? which of us ever dares to think about

banishment, want, or mourning? who, if advised to meditate upon

these subjects, would not reject the idea like an evil omen, and

bid it depart from him and alight on the heads of his enemies, or

even on that of his untimely adviser? “I never thought it would

happen!” How can you think that anything will not happen, when you

know that it may happen to many men, and has happened to many? That

is a noble verse, and worthy of a nobler source than the stage:—

“What one hath suffered may befall us all.”

That man has lost his children: you may lose yours. That man has

been convicted: your innocence is in peril. We are deceived and

weakened by this delusion, when we suffer what we never foresaw

that we possibly could suffer: but by looking forward to the coming

of our sorrows we take the sting out of them when they come.

{174}

X. My Marcia, all these adventitious circumstances which glitter

around us, such as children, office in the state, wealth, large

halls, vestibules crowded with clients seeking vainly for admittance,

a noble name, a well-born or beautiful wife, and every other thing

which depends entirely upon uncertain and changeful fortune, are

but furniture which is not our own, but entrusted to us on loan:

none of these things are given to us outright: the stage of our

lives is adorned with properties gathered from various sources, and

soon to be returned to their several owners: some of them will be

taken away on the first day, some on the second, and but few will

remain till the end. We have, therefore, no grounds for regarding

ourselves with complacency, as though the things which surround us

were our own: they are only borrowed: we have the use and enjoyment

of them for a time regulated by the lender, who controls his own

gift: it is our duty always to be able to lay our hands upon what

has been lent us with no fixed date for its return, and to restore

it when called upon without a murmur: the most detestable kind of

debtor is he who rails at his creditor. Hence all our relatives,

both those who by the order of their birth we hope will outlive

ourselves, and those who themselves most properly wish to die before

us, ought to be loved by us as persons whom we cannot be sure of

having with us for ever, nor even for long. We ought frequently to

remind ourselves that we must love the things of this life as we

would what is shortly to leave us, or indeed in the very act of

leaving us. Whatever gift Fortune bestows upon a man, let him think

while he enjoys it, that it will prove as fickle as the goddess

from whom it came. Snatch what pleasure you can from your children,

allow your children in their turn to take pleasure in your society,

and drain every pleasure to the dregs without any delay. We cannot

reckon on to-night, nay, I have allowed too long a delay, {175} we

cannot reckon on this hour: we must make haste: the enemy presses

on behind us: soon that society of yours will be broken up, that

pleasant company will be taken by assault and dispersed. Pillage

is the universal law: unhappy creatures, know you not that life is

but a flight? If you grieve for the death of your son, the fault

lies with the time when he was born, for at his birth he was told

that death was his doom: it is the law under which he was born, the

fate which has pursued him ever since he left his mother’s womb.

We have come under the dominion of Fortune, and a harsh and

unconquerable dominion it is: at her caprice we must suffer all

things whether we deserve them or not. She maltreats our bodies

with anger, insult, and cruelty: some she burns, the fire being

sometimes applied as a punishment and sometimes as a remedy: some

she imprisons, allowing it to be done at one time by our enemies,

at another by our countrymen: she tosses others naked on the changeful

seas, and after their struggle with the waves will not even cast

them out upon the sand or the shore, but will entomb them in the

belly of some huge sea-monster: she wears away others to a skeleton

by divers kinds of disease, and keeps them long in suspense between

life and death: she is as capricious in her rewards and punishments

as a fickle, whimsical, and careless mistress is with those of her

slaves.

XI. Why need we weep over parts of our life? the whole of it calls

for tears: new miseries assail us before we have freed ourselves

from the old ones. You, therefore, who allow them to trouble you

to an unreasonable extent ought especially to restrain yourselves,

and to muster all the powers of the human breast to combat your

fears and your pains. Moreover, what forgetfulness of your own

position and that of mankind is this? You were born a mortal, and

you have given birth to mortals: yourself a weak and fragile body,

liable to all diseases, can you have hoped to {176} produce anything

strong and lasting from such unstable materials? Your son has died:

in other words he has reached that goal towards which those whom

you regard as more fortunate than your offspring are still hastening:

this is the point towards which move at different rates all the

crowds which are squabbling in the law courts, sitting in the

theatres, praying in the temples. Those whom you love and those

whom you despise will both be made equal in the same ashes. This

is the meaning of that command, KNOW THYSELF, which is written on

the shrine of the Pythian oracle. What is man? a potter’s vessel,

to be broken by the slightest shake or toss: it requires no great

storm to rend you asunder: you fall to pieces wherever you strike.

What is man? a weakly and frail body, naked, without any natural

protection, dependent on the help of others, exposed to all the

scorn of Fortune; even when his muscles are well trained he is the

prey and the food of the first wild beast he meets, formed of weak

and unstable substances, fair in outward feature, but unable to

endure cold, heat, or labour, and yet falling to ruin if kept in

sloth and idleness, fearing his very victuals, for he is starved

if he has them not, and bursts if he has too much. He cannot be

kept safe without anxious care, his breath only stays in the body

on sufferance, and has no real hold upon it; he starts at every

sudden danger, every loud and unexpected noise that reaches his

ears. Ever a cause of anxiety to ourselves, diseased and useless

as we are, can we be surprised at the death of a creature which can

be killed by a single hiccup? Is it a great undertaking to put an

end to us? why, smells, tastes, fatigue and want of sleep, food and

drink, and the very necessaries of life, are mortal. Whithersoever

he moves he straightway becomes conscious of his weakness, not being

able to bear all climates, falling sick after drinking strange

water, breathing an air to which he is not accustomed, or {177}

from other causes and reasons of the most trifling kind, frail,

sickly, entering upon his life with weeping: yet nevertheless what

a disturbance this despicable creature makes! what ideas it conceives,

forgetting its lowly condition! It exercises its mind upon matters

which are immortal and eternal, and arranges the affairs of its

grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while death surprises it in

the midst of its far-reaching schemes, and what we call old age is

but the round of a very few years.

XII. Supposing that your sorrow has any method at all, is it your

own sufferings or those of him who is gone that it has in view? Why

do you grieve over your lost son? is it because you have received

no pleasure from him, or because you would have received more had

he lived longer? If you answer that you have received no pleasure

from him you make your loss more endurable: for men miss less when

lost what has given them no enjoyment or gladness. If, again, you

admit that you have received much pleasure, it is your duty not to

complain of that part which you have lost, but to return thanks for

that which you have enjoyed. His rearing alone ought to have brought

you a sufficient return for your labours, for it can hardly be that

those who take the greatest pains to rear puppies, birds, and such

like paltry objects of amusement derive a certain pleasure from the

sight and touch and fawning caresses of these dumb creatures, and

yet that those who rear children should not find their reward in

doing so. Thus, even though his industry may have gained nothing

for you, his carefulness may have saved nothing for you, his foresight

may have given you no advice, yet you found sufficient reward in

having owned him and loved him. “But,” say you, “it might have

lasted longer.” True, but you have been better dealt with than if

you had never had a son, for, supposing you were given your choice,

which is the better lot, to be happy for a short time or not at

all? {178} It is better to enjoy pleasures which soon leave us than

to enjoy none at all. Which, again, would you choose? to have had

one who was a disgrace to you, and who merely filled the position

and owned the name of your son, or one of such noble character as

your son’s was? a youth who soon grew discreet and dutiful, soon

became a husband and a father, soon became eager for public honours,

and soon obtained the priesthood, winning his way to all these

admirable things with equally admirable speed. It falls to scarcely

any one’s lot to enjoy great prosperity, and also to enjoy it for

a long time: only a dull kind of happiness can last for long and

accompany us to the end of our lives. The immortal gods, who did

not intend to give you a son for long, gave you one who was straightway

what another would have required long training to become. You cannot

even say that you have been specially marked by the gods for

misfortune because you have had no pleasure in your son. Look at

any company of people, whether they be known to you or not: everywhere

you will see some who have endured greater misfortunes than your

own. Great generals and princes have undergone like bereavements:

mythology tells us that the gods themselves are not exempt from

them, its aim, I suppose, being to lighten our sorrow at death by

the thought that even deities are subject to it. Look around, I

repeat, at every one: you cannot mention any house so miserable as

not to find comfort in the fact of another being yet more miserable.

I do not, by Hercules, think so ill of your principles as to suppose

that you would bear your sorrow more lightly were I to show you an

enormous company of mourners: that is a spiteful sort of consolation

which we derive from the number of our fellow-sufferers: nevertheless

I will quote some instances, not indeed in order to teach you that

this often befalls men, for it is absurd to multiply examples of

man’s mortality, but to let you know that there have {179} been

many who have lightened their misfortunes by patient endurance of

them. I will begin with the luckiest man of all. Lucius Sulla lost

his son, yet this did not impair either the spitefulness or the

brilliant valour which he displayed at the expense of his enemies

and his countrymen alike, nor did it make him appear to have assumed

his well-known title untruly that he did so after his son’s death,

fearing neither the hatred of men, by whose sufferings that excessive

prosperity of his was purchased, nor the ill-will of the gods, to

whom it was a reproach that Sulla should be so truly The Fortunate.

What, however, Sulla’s real character was may pass among questions

still undecided: even his enemies will admit that he took up arms

with honour, and laid them aside with honour: his example proves

the point at issue, that an evil which befalls even the most

prosperous cannot be one of the first magnitude.

XIII. That Greece cannot boast unduly of that father who, being in

the act of offering sacrifice when he heard the news of his son’s

death, merely ordered the flute-player to be silent, and removed

the garland from his head, but accomplished all the rest of the

ceremony in due form, is due to a Roman, Pulvillus the high priest.

When he was in the act of holding the doorpost[5] and dedicating

the Capitol the news of his son’s death was brought to him. He

pretended not to hear it, and pronounced the form of words proper

for the high priest on such an occasion, without his prayer being

interrupted by a single groan, begging that Jupiter would show

himself gracious, at the very instant that he heard his son’s name

mentioned as dead. Do you imagine that this man’s mourning knew no

end, if the first day and the first shook could not drive him,

though a father, away {180} from the public altar of the state, or

cause him to mar the ceremony of dedication by words of ill omen?

Worthy, indeed, of the most exalted priesthood was he who ceased

not to revere the gods even when they were angry. Yet he, after he

had gone home, filled his eyes with tears, said a few words of

lamentation, and performed the rites with which it was then customary

to honour the dead, resumed the expression of countenance which he

had worn in the Capitol.