nd stays firm, but all their balance lose."[698]

And so Agamemnon, ascribing to Ate his carrying off Briseis, yet says to
Achilles,

"I wish to please you in return, and give
Completest satisfaction."[699]

For suing is not the action of one who shews his contempt, and when he
that has done an injury is humble he removes all idea of slighting one.
But the angry person must not expect this, but rather take to himself
the answer of Diogenes, who, when it was said to him, "These people
laugh at you," replied, "But I am not one to be laughed at," and not
think himself despised, but rather despise the person who gave the
offence, as acting from weakness, or error, or rashness, or
heedlessness, or illiberality, or old age, or youth. Nor must we
entertain such notions with regard to our servants and friends. For they
do not despise us as void of ability or energy, but owing to our
evenness and good-nature, some because we are mild, and others presuming
on our affection for them. But as it is we not only fly into rages with
wife and slaves and friends, as if we were slighted by them, but we also
frequently, from forming the same idea of being slighted, fall foul of
innkeepers and sailors and muleteers, and are vexed at dogs that bark
and asses that are in our way: like the man who was going to beat an
ass-driver, but when he cried out he was an Athenian, he said to the
ass, "You are not an Athenian anyway," and beat it with many stripes.

Sec. XIII. Moreover those continuous and frequent fits of anger that gather
together in the soul by degrees, like a swarm of bees or wasps, are
generated within us by selfishness and peevishness, luxury and softness.
And so nothing causes us to be mild to our servants and wife and friends
so much as easiness and simplicity, and the learning to be content with
what we have, and not to require a quantity of superfluities.

"He who likes not his meat if over-roast
Or over-boiled, or under-roast or under-boiled,
And never praises it however dressed,"

but will not drink unless he have snow to cool his drink, nor eat bread
purchased in the market, nor touch food served on cheap or earthenware
plates, nor sleep upon any but a feather bed that rises and falls like
the sea stirred up from its depths, and with rods and blows hastens his
servants at table, so that they run about and cry out and sweat as if
they were bringing poultices to sores, he is slave to a weak querulous
and di