but making Agamemnon grow angry slowly and need many words to inflame
him, so that, if these had been stopped and forbidden when they began,
the contest had never grown to that degree and greatness which it did.
Wherefore Socrates, as oft as he perceived any fierceness of spirit
to rise within him towards any of his friends, setting himself like a
promontory to break the waves, would speak with a lower voice, bear
a smiling countenance, and look with a more gentle eye; and thus, by
bending the other way and moving contrary to the passion, he kept
himself from falling or being worsted.
5. For the first way, my friend, to suppress anger, as you would a
tyrant, is not to obey or yield to it when it commands us to speak
high, to look fiercely, and to beat ourselves; but to be quiet, and
not increase the passion, as we do a disease, by impatient tossing and
crying out. It is true that lovers’ practices, such as revelling,
singing, crowning the door with garlands, have a kind of alleviation in
them which is neither rude nor unpleasing:—
Coming, I asked not who or whose she was,
But kissed her door full sweetly,—that I wot;
If this be sin, to sin I can but choose.
So the weeping and lamentation which we permit in mourners doubtless
carry forth much of the grief together with the tears. But anger, quite
on the contrary, is more inflamed by what the angry persons say or do.
The best course then is for a man to compose himself, or else to run
away and hide himself and retreat into quiet, as into an haven, as if
he perceived a fit of epilepsy coming on, lest he fall, or rather fall
upon others; and truly we do most and most frequently fall upon our
friends. For we neither love all, nor envy all, nor fear all men; but
there is nothing untouched and unset upon by anger. We are angry with
our foes and with our friends; with our own children and our parents;
nay, with the Gods above, and the very beasts below us, and instruments
that have no life, as Thamyras was,—
His horn, though bound with gold, he brake in’s ire,
He brake his melodious and well-strung lyre;[19]
and Pandarus, wishing a curse upon himself if he did not burn his bow.