n a
miserable estate that wants enemies: [4013]it is a thing not to be avoided,
and therefore with more patience to be endured. Cato Censorius, that
upright Cato of whom Paterculus gives that honourable eulogium, _bene fecit
quod aliter facere non potuit_, was [4014]fifty times indicted and accused
by his fellow citizens, and as [4015]Ammianus well hath it, _Quis erit
innocens si clam vel palam accusasse sufficiat_? if it be sufficient to
accuse a man openly or in private, who shall be free? If there were no
other respect than that of Christianity, religion and the like, to induce
men to be long-suffering and patient, yet methinks the nature of injury
itself is sufficient to keep them quiet, the tumults, uproars, miseries,
discontents, anguish, loss, dangers that attend upon it might restrain the
calamities of contention: for as it is with ordinary gamesters, the gains
go to the box, so falls it out to such as contend; the lawyers get all; and
therefore if they would consider of it, _aliena pericula cantos_, other
men's misfortunes in this kind, and common experience might detain them.
[4016]The more they contend, the more they are involved in a labyrinth of
woes, and the catastrophe is to consume one another, like the elephant and
dragon's conflict in Pliny; [4017]the dragon got under the elephant's
belly, and sucked his blood so long, till he fell down dead upon the
dragon, and killed him with the fall, so both were ruined. 'Tis a hydra's
head, contention; the more they strive, the more they may: and as
Praxiteles did by his glass, when he saw a scurvy face in it, brake it in
pieces: but for that one he saw many more as bad in a moment: for one
injury done they provoke another _cum foenore_, and twenty enemies for one.
_Noli irritare crabrones_, oppose not thyself to a multitude: but if thou
hast received a wrong, wisely consider of it, and if thou canst possibly,
compose thyself with patience to bear it. This is the safest course, and
thou shalt find greatest ease to be quiet.

[4018]I say the same of scoffs, slanders, contumelies, obloquies,
defamations, detractions, pasquilling libels, and the like, which may tend
any way to our disgrace: 'tis but opinion; if we could neglect, contemn, or
with patience digest them, they would reflect on them that offered them at
first. A wise citizen, I know not whence, had a scold to his wife: when she
brawled, he played on his drum, and by that means madded her more, because
she s