I therefore, whether rightly or not I know not,
began this cure with learning the nature of anger by beholding it in other men, as the Lacedaemonians learned what
drunkenness was by seeing it in the Helots. And, in the
first place, as Hippocrates said that that was the most dangerous disease which made the sick man's countenance
most unlike to what it was, so I observed that men transported with anger also exceedingly change their visage,
color, gait, and voice. Accordingly I formed a kind of
image of that passion to myself, withal conceiving great in
dignation against myself if I should at any time appear to
my friends, or to my wife and daughters, so terrible and discomposed, not only with so wild and strange a look, but also
with so fierce and harsh a voice, as I had met with in some
others of my acquaintance, who by reason of anger were
not able to observe either good manners or countenance or
graceful speech, or even their persuasiveness and affability
in conversation.
Wherefore Caius Gracchus, the orator, being of a rugged
disposition and a passionate kind of speaker, had a pipe
made for him, such as musicians use to vary their voice
higher or lower by degrees; and with this pipe his servant stood behind him while he pronounced, and gave him
a mild and gentle note, whereby he took him down from
his loudness, and took off the harshness and angriness of
his voice, assuaging and charming the anger of the orator,
As their shrill wax-joined reed who herds do keep
Sounds forth sweet measures, which invite to sleep.
1
For my own part, had I a careful and pleasant companion who would show me my angry face in a glass, I should
not at all take it ill. In like manner, some are wont to
[p. 41]
have a looking-glass held to them after they have bathed,
though to little purpose; but to behold one's self unnaturally
disguised and disordered will conduce not a little to the
impeachment of anger. For those who delight in pleasant fables tell us, that Minerva herself, playing on a pipe,
was thus admonished by a satyr:—
That look becomes you not, lay down your pipes,
And take your arms, and set your cheeks to rights;
but would not regard it; yet, when by chance she beheld
the mien of her countenance in a river, she was moved with
indignation, and cast her pipes away; and yet here art had
the delight of melody to comfort her for the deformity.
And Marsyas, as it seems, did with a kind of muzzle and
mouth-piece restrain by force the too horrible eruption of
his breath when he played, and so corrected and concealed
the distortion of his visage:—
With shining gold he girt his temples rough,
And his wide mouth with thongs that tied behind.
Now anger doth swell and puff up the countenance very indecently, and sends forth a yet more indecent and unpleasant
voice,—
Moving the heart-strings, which should be at rest.
For when the sea is tossed and troubled with winds,
and casts up moss and sea-weed, they say it is purged; but
those impure, bitter, and vain words which anger throws up
when the soul has become a kind of whirlpool, defile the
speakers, in the first place, and fill them with dishonor, arguing them to have always had such things in them and
to be full of them, only now they are discovered to have them
by their anger. So for a mere word, the lightest of things (as
Plato says), they undergo the heaviest of punishments, being
ever after accounted enemies, evil speakers, and of a malignant disposition.
