As for me - whether rightly I do not know - I
made this start in the treatment of my anger : I
began to observe the passion in others, just as the
Spartans used to observe in the Helots
1 what a thing
drunkenness is. And first, as Hippocrates
2 says that
the most severe disease is that in which the
countenance of the sufferer is most unlike itself, so I
observed that those who are transported by anger
also change most in countenance, colour, gait, and
voice,
3 and thus formed for myself a picture of that
passion and was exceedingly uncomfortable to think
that I should ever appear so terrible and deranged to
my friends and my wife and daughters, not merely
savage and unfamiliar to their sight, but also speaking with so harsh and rough a voice as were others
of my intimate friends whom I used to meet at times
when anger had made them unable to preserve their
character or bearing or grace of speech or their
[p. 111]
winning and affable manners. The ease of Gaius
Gracchus
4 the orator will serve as illustration. He
was not only severe in his disposition, but spoke too
passionately; so he caused a pitch-pipe to be made
of the sort which musicians use to lead the voice up
and down the scales to the proper note; with this
in hand his servant used to stand behind him as he
spoke and give him a decorous and gentle tone which
enabled Gracchus to remit his loud cries and remove
from his voice the harsh and passionate element; just
as the shepherds'
Wax-joined pipe, clear sounding,
Drones a slumberous strain,5
so did he charm and lay to rest the rage of the orator.
But as for me, if I had some attentive and clever
companion, I should not be vexed if he held a mirror
6
up to me during my moments of rage, as they do for
some persons after bathing, though to no useful purpose. For to see oneself in a state which nature did
not intend, with one's features all distorted, contributes in no small degree toward discrediting that
passion. In fact, those who delight in pleasant fables
tell us that when Athena
7 played on the pipes, she
was rebuked by the satyr and would give no heed :
That look becomes you not; lay by your pipes
And take your arms and put your cheeks to rights8;
but when she saw her face in a river, she was vexed
and threw her pipes away. Yet art makes melody
[p. 113]
some consolation for unsightliness. And Marsyas,
9
it seems, by a mouthpiece and cheek-bands repressed
the violence of his breath and tricked up and concealed the distortion of his face :
He fitted the fringe of his temples with gleaming gold
And his greedy mouth he fitted with thongs bound behind10;
but anger, which puffs up and distends the face in an
unbecoming way, utters a voice still more ugly and
unpleasant,
Stirring the heart-strings never stirred before.11
For when the sea is disturbed by the winds and casts
up tangle and seaweed, they say that it is being
cleansed ; but the intemperate, bitter, and vulgar
words which temper casts forth when the soul is
disturbed defile the speakers of them first of all and
fill them with disrepute, the implication being that
they have always had these traits inside of them and
are full of them, but that their inner nature is now
laid bare by their anger. Hence for a mere word,
the ‘lightest of things,’ as Plato
12 says, they incur
the ‘heaviest of punishments,’ being esteemed as
hostile, slanderous, and malicious.