cusing or even
defending a client without he is spurred on by anger. And though this
anger should not be real, still they think his words and gestures ought
to wear the appearance of it, so that the action of the orator may
excite the anger of his hearer. And they deny that any man has ever
been seen who does not know what it is to be angry; and they name what
we call lenity by the bad appellation of indolence. Nor do they commend
only this lust (for anger is, as I defined it above, the lust of
revenge), but they maintain that kind of lust or desire to be given us
by nature for very good purposes, saying that no one can execute
anything well but what he is in earnest about. Themistocles used to
walk in the public places in the night because he could not sleep; and
when asked the reason, his answer was, that Miltiades's trophies kept
him awake. Who has not heard how Demosthenes used to watch, who said
that it gave him pain if any mechanic was up in a morning at his work
before him? Lastly, they urge that some of the greatest philosophers
would never have made that progress in their studies without some
ardent desire spurring them on.--We are informed that Pythagoras,
Democritus, and Plato visited the remotest parts of the world; for they
thought that they ought to go wherever anything was to be learned. Now,
it is not conceivable that these things could be effected by anything
but by the greatest ardor of mind.

XX. They say that even grief, which we have already said ought to be
avoided as a monstrous and fierce beast, was appointed by nature, not
without some good purpose, in order that men should lament when they
had committed a fault, well knowing they had exposed themselves to
correction, rebuke, and ignominy; for they think that those who can
bear ignominy and infamy without pain have acquired a complete impunity
for all sorts of crimes; for with them reproach is a stronger check
than conscience. From whence we have that scene in Afranius borrowed
from common life; for when the abandoned son saith, "Wretched that I
am!" the severe father replies,

Let him but grieve, no matter what the cause.

And they say the other divisions of sorrow have their use; that pity
incites us to hasten to the assistance of others, and to alleviate the
calamities of men who have undeservedly fallen into them; that even
envy and detraction are not without their use, as when a man sees that
another person has attained what he canno