minutely, and
to overhaul every business of a servant, or action of a friend, or
pastime of a son, or whisper of a wife, produces frequent, indeed daily,
fits of anger, caused entirely by peevishness and harshness of
character. Euripides says that the Deity

"In great things intervenes, but small things leaves
To fortune;"[707]

but I am of opinion that a prudent man should commit nothing to fortune,
nor neglect anything, but should put some things in his wife's hands to
manage, others in the hands of his servants, others in the hands of his
friends, (as a governor has his stewards, and financiers, and
controllers), while he himself superintends the most important and
weighty matters. For as small writing strains the eyes, so small matters
even more strain and bother people, and stir up their anger, which
carries this evil habit to greater matters. Above all I thought that
saying of Empedocles, "Fast from evil,"[708] a great and divine one, and
I approved of those promises and vows as not ungraceful or
unphilosophical, to abstain for a year from wine and Venus, honouring
the deity by continence, or for a stated time to give up lying, taking
great heed to ourselves to be truthful always whether in play or
earnest. With these I compared my own vow, as no less pleasing to the
gods and holy, first to abstain from anger for a few days, like spending
days without drunkenness or even without wine at all, offering as it
were wineless offerings of honey.[709] Then I tried for a month or two,
and so in time made some progress in forbearance by earnest resolve, and
by keeping myself courteous and without anger and using fair language,
purifying myself from evil words and absurd actions, and from passion
which for a little unlovely pleasure pays us with great mental
disturbance and the bitterest repentance. In consequence of all this my
experience, and the assistance of the deity, has made me form the view,
that courtesy and gentleness and kindliness are not so agreeable, and
pleasant, and delightful, to any of those we live with as to ourselves,
that have those qualities.[710]

[676] Homer, "Iliad," xxii. 373.

[677] Alluded to again "On the tranquillity of the
mind," Sec. i.

[678] The allusion is to Homer's "Odyssey," xx. 23.

[679] Reading [Greek: ex heautou] with Reiske.

[680] Euripides, "Orestes," 72.

[681] Euripides, "Orestes," 99.

[682] Fragment 361.

[683] Homer, "