The miserable effects of rage.

The malevolent, and the envious, content themselves only to wish another man miserable; but it is the business of anger to make him so, and to wreak the mischief itself, not so much desiring the hurt of another, as to inflict it. Among the powerful it breaks out inte open war, and into a private one with the common people, but without force, or arms. It engages us in treacheries, perpetual troubles and contentions: it alters the very nature of a man, and punishes itself in the persecution of others. Humanity excites us to love, this to hatred; that to be beneficial to others; this to hurt them; beside that, though it proceeds from too high a conceit of ourselves, it is yet in effect, but a narrow and contemptible affection, especially when it meets with a mind that is hard, and impenetrable, and returns the dart upon the head of him that casts it.

To take a farther view now of the miserable consequences, and sanguinary effects of this hideous distemper, from hence come slaughters and poisons, wars and desolations, the razing and burning of cities, the unpeopling of nations, and the turning of populous countries into deserts, public massacres and regicides, princes led in triumph, some murdered in their bed-chambers, others stabbed in the senate, or cut off, in the security of their spectacles and pleasures. Some there are that take anger for a princely quality, as Darius, who in his expedition against the Scythians, being besought by a nobleman that had three sons, that he would vouchsafe to accept of two of them into his service, and leave the third at home for a comfort to his father. "I will do shall more for you than that," says Darius, "for you have them all three again:" so he ordered them to be

Irascible characters.

slain before his face, and left him their bodies. But Xerxes dealt a little better with Pythius, who had five sons, and desired only one of them for himself. Xerxes bid him take his choice and he named the eldest, whom he immediately commanded to be cut in halves, and one half of the body to be laid on each side of the way, when his army was to pass betwixt them. Undoubtedly a most auspicious sacrifice; but he came afterward to the end that he deserved, for he lived to see that prodigious power scattered and broken, and instead of military and victorious troops, to be encompassed with carcasses. But these, you will say, were only barbarous princes, that knew neither civility nor letters; and these savage cruelties will be imputed perchance to their rudeness of

manners and want of discipline. But what will you say then of Alexander the Great, that was trained up under the institution of Aristotle himself, and killed Clytus, his favourite and schoolfellow, with his own hand, under his own roof, and over the freedom of a cup of wine? And what was his crime? he was loth to degenerate from a Macedonian liberty in a Persian slavery, that is to say, he could not flatter. Lysimachus, another of his friends, he exposed to a lion; and this very Lysimachus after he had escaped this danger, was never the more merciful, when he came to reign himself; for he cut off the ears and nose of his friend Telesphorus, and when he had disfigured him, that he had no longer the face of a man, he threw him into a dungeon, and there kept him to be shewed for a monster, as a strange sight. The place was so low, that he was fain to creep upon all four, and his sides were galled too with the straitness of it. In this misery he lay half famished in his own

The cruelty of Sylla.

filth, so odious, so terrible, and so loathsome a spectacle, that the horror of his condition had even extinguished all pity for him. Nothing was ever so unlike a man, as the poor wretch that suffered this, saving the tyrant that acted it.

Nor did this merciless hardness only exercise itself among foreigners, but the fierceness of their outrages and punishments as well as their vices, brake in upon the Romans. C. Marius, that had his statue set up every where, and was adored as a god: L. Sylla commanded his bones to be broken, his eyes to be put out, his hands to be cut off, and, as if every wound had been a several death, his body to be torn in pieces, and Catiline was the executioner. A cruelty, that was only fit for Marius to suffer, Sylla to command, and Catiline to act; but most dishonourable and fatal to the commonwealth, to fall indifferently upon the sword's points both of citizens and of enemies.

It was a severe instance, that of Piso too: A soldier that had leave to go abroad with his comrade, came back to the camp at his time but without his companion; Piso condemns him to die, as if he had killed him, and appoints a centurion to see the execution. Just as the headsman was ready to do his office, the other soldier appeared, to the great joy of the whole field, and the centurion bid the executioner hold his hand: hereupon Piso, in a rage, mounts the tribunal, and sentences all three to death: the one because he was condemned, the other because it was for his sake that his fellow-soldier was condemned, and the centurion for not obeying the order of his superior. An ingenious piece of inhumanity, to contrive how to make three criminals,

The severity of Piso and others.

where effectually there were none.

There was a Per

sian king, that caused the noses of a whole nation to be cut off, and they were to thank him that he spared their heads. And this, perhaps, would have been the fate of the Macrobii (if Providence had not hindered it), for the freedom they used to Cambyses's ambassadors, in not accepting the slavish terms that were offered them. This put Cambyses into such a rage, that he presently listed into his service every man that was able to bear arms; and without either provisions, or guides, marched immediately through dry and barren deserts, and where never any man had passed before him, to take his revenge. Before he was a third part of the way his provisions failed him; his men, at first, made shift with the buds of trees, boiled leather, and the like, but soon after there was not so much as a root, or a plant, to be gotten, nor a living creature to be seen; and then, by lot, every tenth man was to die, for a nourishment to the rest, which was still worse than the famine; but yet this passionate king went on so far, until one part of his army was lost, and the other devoured, and until he feared that he himself might come to be served with the same sauce. So that at last he ordered a retreat, wanting no' delicates all this while for himself, while his soldiers were taking their chance who should die miserable, or live worse. Here was an anger taken up against a whole nation, that neither deserved any ill from him, nor was so much as known to him.

Occasions of anger considered.

THE ORDINARY GROUNDS AND OCCASIONS OF

ANGER.

In this wandering state of life we meet with many occasions of trouble and displeasure, both great and trivial, and not a day passes, but from men, or things, we have some cause or other for offence; as a man must expect to be jostled, dashed, and crowded, in a populous city. One man deceives our expectation, another delays it; and if every thing does not succeed to our wish, we presently fall out, either with the person, the business, the place, our fortune, or ourselves. Some men value themselves upon their wit, and will never forgive any one that pretends to lessen it; others are inflamed by wine; and some are distempered by sickness, weariness, watchings, love, care, &c. Some are prone to it by heat of constitution; but moist, dry, and cold complexions, are more liable to other affections, as suspicion, despair, fear, jealousy, &c. But most of our quarrels are of our own contriving. One while we suspect upon mistake, and another while we make a greater matter of trifles. To say the truth, most of those things that exasperate us, are rather subjects of disgust than of mischief. There is a large difference betwixt opposing a man's satisfaction, and not assisting it; betwixt taking away, and not giving; but we reckon upon denying and deferring as the same thing, and interpret another's being for himself, as if he were against us. Nay, we do many times entertain an ill opinion of well-doing, and a good one of the contrary: and we hate a man for doing that very thing which we should hate him for on the other side,