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But a cheerful disposition in some circumstances is helpful, others it adorns, and still others it helps to sweeten; by its gentleness it overcomes both anger and all moroseness. Thus Eucleides,
2
when his brother said to him after a quarrel,
Damned if I don’t get even with you! answered,
But as for me, may I be damned if I don’t convince you! and so at once turned him from his purpose and won him over. And Polemon, when a man who was fond of precious stones and quite mad about expensive seal-rings reviled him, made no answer, but fixed his gaze on one of the seal-rings and eyed it closely. The man, accordingly, was pleased and said to him,
Do not look at it in this light, Polemon, but under the sun’s rays, and it will appear to you far more beautiful. Aristippus, again, when anger had arisen between him and Aeschines and someone said,
Where now, Aristippus, is the friendship of you two? replied,
It is asleep, but I shall awaken it; and, going to Aeschines, he said,
Do I appear to you so utterly unfortunate and incurable as not to receive correction from you? And Aeschines replied,
No wonder if you, who are naturally superior to me in all things, should in this matter also have discerned before I did the right thing to do.
But we who tame wild beasts and make them gentle and carry about in our arms young wolves and lions’ cubs,
4
then under the impulse of rage cast off children, friends, and companions and let loose our wrath, like some wild beast, on servants and fellow-citizens - we, I say, do not well to use a cozening word for our anger by calling it
righteous indignation,
5
but it is with anger, I believe, as with the other passions and diseases of the soul: we can rid ourselves of none of them by calling one
foresight, another
liberality, another
piety.
FUNDANUS.
Surely we should allow no place to anger even in jest, for that brings enmity in where friendliness was; nor in learned discussions, for that turns love of learning into strife; nor when rendering judgement, for that adds insolence to authority; nor in teaching, for that engenders discouragement and hatred of learning; nor in prosperity, for that increases envy; nor in adversity, for that drives away compassion when men become irritable and quarrel with those who sympathize with them, as Priam 1 did:Be gone, you wretched, shameful men! Have you
No cause for grief at home that you have come
To trouble me?
For not a woman only, even a child,
Tickling the bristly boar with tender hand,
May throw him easier than a wrestler might.
3
De cohibenda ira. Plutarch. William Clark Helmbold (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1939.
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