from envy it gets its property of malignity—and it is even worse than envy,19 for it does not mind its own suffering if it can only implicate another in misery—and the most unlovely kind of desire is innate in it, namely the appetite for injuring another. So when we go to the houses of spendthrifts we hear a flute-playing girl early in the morning, and see "the dregs of wine," as one said, and fragments of garlands, and the servants at the doors reeking of yesterday's debauch; but for tokens of savage and peevish masters these you will see by the faces, and marks, and manacles of their servants: for in the house of an angry man
stewards being beaten within, and maids tortured, so that the spectators even in their jollity and pleasure pity these victims of passion.
§ xvi. Moreover those to whom it happens through their genuine hatred of what is bad to be frequently overtaken by anger, can abate its excess and acerbity by giving up their excessive confidence in their intimates. For nothing swells the anger more, than when a good man is detected of villainy, or one who we thought loved us falls out and jangles with us. As for my own disposition, you know of course how mightily it inclines to goodwill and belief in mankind. As then people walking on empty space,20 the more confidently I believe in anybody's affection, the more sorrow and distress do I feel if my estimate is a mistaken one. And indeed I could never divest myself of my ardour and zeal in affection, but as to trusting people I could perhaps use Plato's caution as a curb. For he said he so praised Helicon the mathematician, because he was by nature a changeable animal, but that he was afraid of those that were well educated in the city, lest, being human beings and the seed of human beings, they should reveal by some trait or other the weakness of human nature. But Sophocles' line,
seems to trample on human nature and lower its merits too much. Still such a peevish and condemnatory verdict as this has a tendency to make people milder in their rage, for it is the sudden and unexpected that