ntion to him, yet afterwards when she saw her
face in a river, she felt vexed and threw her pipes away, although art
had made melody a compensation for her unsightliness. And Marsyas, it
seems, by a sort of mouthpiece forcibly repressed the violence of his
breath, and tricked up and hid the contortion of his face,

"Around his shaggy temples put bright gold,
And o'er his open mouth thongs tied behind."

Now anger, that puffs up and distends the face so as to look ugly,
utters a voice still more harsh and unpleasant,

"Moving the mind's chords undisturbed before."

They say that the sea is cleansed when agitated by the winds it throws
up tangle and seaweed; but the intemperate and bitter and vain words,
which the mind throws up when the soul is agitated, defile the speakers
of them first of all and fill them with infamy, as always having those
thoughts within their bosom and being defiled with them, but only giving
vent to them in anger. And so for a word which is, as Plato styles it,
"a very small matter," they incur a most heavy punishment, for they get
reputed to be enemies, and evil speakers, and malignant in disposition.

Sec. VII. Seeing and observing all this, it occurs to me to take it as a
matter of fact, and record it for my own general use, that if it is good
to keep the tongue soft and smooth in a fever, it is better to keep it
so in anger. For if the tongue of people in a fever be unnatural, it is
a bad sign, but not the cause of their malady; but the tongue of angry
people, being rough and foul, and breaking out into unseemly speeches,
produces insults that work irremediable mischief, and argue deep-rooted
malevolence within. For wine drunk neat does not exhibit the soul in so
ungovernable and hateful a condition as temper does: for the outbreaks
of the one smack of laughter and fun, while those of the other are
compounded with gall: and at a drinking-bout he that is silent is
burdensome to the company and tiresome, whereas in anger nothing is more
highly thought of than silence, as Sappho advises,

"When anger's busy in the brain
Thy idly-barking tongue restrain."

Sec. VIII. And not only does the consideration of all this naturally arise
from observing ourselves in the moments of anger, but we cannot help
seeing also the other properties of rage, how ignoble it is, how
unmanly, how devoid of dignity and greatness of mind! And yet to most
people its noise seems vigour, its threatening co