Who on thy malice ever could refine?[54]

You know what follows: for abuses are thrown out by these brothers with
great bitterness in every other verse; so that you may easily know them
for the sons of Atreus, of that Atreus who invented a new punishment
for his brother:

I who his cruel heart to gall am bent,
Some new, unheard-of torment must invent.

Now, what were these inventions? Hear Thyestes:

My impious brother fain would have me eat
My children, and thus serves them up for meat.

To what length now will not anger go? even as far as madness. Therefore
we say, properly enough, that angry men have given up their power, that
is, they are out of the power of advice, reason, and understanding; for
these ought to have power over the whole mind. Now, you should put
those out of the way whom they endeavor to attack till they have
recollected themselves; but what does recollection here imply but
getting together again the dispersed parts of their mind into their
proper place? or else you must beg and entreat them, if they have the
means of revenge, to defer it to another opportunity, till their anger
cools. But the expression of cooling implies, certainly, that there was
a heat raised in their minds in opposition to reason; from which
consideration that saying of Archytas is commended, who being somewhat
provoked at his steward, "How would I have treated you," said he, "if I
had not been in a passion?"

XXXVII. Where, then, are they who say that anger has its use? Can
madness be of any use? But still it is natural. Can anything be natural
that is against reason? or how is it, if anger is natural, that one
person is more inclined to anger than another? or that the lust of
revenge should cease before it has revenged itself? or that any one
should repent of what he had done in a passion? as we see that
Alexander the king did, who could scarcely keep his hands from himself,
when he had killed his favorite Clytus, so great was his compunction.
Now who that is acquainted with these instances can doubt that this
motion of the mind is altogether in opinion and voluntary? for who can
doubt that disorders of the mind, such as covetousness and a desire of
glory, arise from a great estimation of those things by which the mind
is disordered? from whence we may understand that every perturbation of
the mind is founded in opinion. And if boldness--that is to say, a firm
assurance of mind--is a kind of knowled