nfidence, and its
obstinacy force of character; some even not wisely entitle its
savageness magnanimity, and its implacability firmness, and its morosity
hatred of what is bad. For their actions and motions and whole demeanour
argue great littleness and meanness, not only when they are fierce with
little boys, and peevish with women, and think it right to treat dogs
and horses and mules with harshness, as Otesiphon the pancratiast
thought fit to kick back a mule that had kicked him, but even in the
butcheries that tyrants commit their littleness of soul is apparent in
their savageness, and their suffering in their action, so that they are
like the bites of serpents, that, when they are burnt and smart with
pain, violently thrust their venom on those that have hurt them. For as
a swelling is produced in the flesh by a heavy blow, so in softest souls
the inclination to hurt others gets its greater strength from greater
weakness. Thus women are more prone to anger than men, and people ill
than people well, and old men than men in their prime, and the
unfortunate than the prosperous; the miser is most prone to anger with
his steward, the glutton with his cook, the jealous man with his wife,
the vain man when he is spoken ill of; and worst of all are those "men
who are too eager in states for office, or to head a faction, a manifest
sorrow," to borrow Pindar's words. So from the very great pain and
suffering of the soul there arises mainly from weakness anger, which is
not like the nerves of the soul, as some one defined it, but like its
strainings and convulsions when it is excessively vehement in its thirst
for revenge.

Sec. IX. Such bad examples as these were not pleasant to look at but
necessary, but I shall now proceed to describe people who have been mild
and easy in dealing with anger, conduct gratifying either to see or hear
about, being utterly disgusted[690] with people who use such language
as,

"You have a man wronged: shall a man stand this?"

and,

"Put your heel upon his neck, and dash his head against
the ground,"

and other provoking expressions such as these, by which some not well
have transferred anger from the woman's side of the house to the man's.
For manliness in all other respects seems to resemble justice, and to
differ from it only in respect to gentleness, with which it has more
affinities. For it sometimes happens to worse men to govern better ones,
but to erect a trophy in the so