lows: 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 endeavour 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 favourite
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
knowledge and serious opinion, not hastily taken up: t