Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/126

104 certain equality and profundity, serving greatly to the management of affairs, whereby also it appeareth plainly that it is not long of the decaying strength of the body, by reason of declining age, neither yet of the own accord, that your hastiness and choleric passion is thus faded, but rather by means of good reasons and instructions well cured. And yet verily (for unto you I will be bold to say the truth) at the first I suspected and could not well believe Eros our familiar friend, when he made this report of you unto me; as doubting that he was ready to give this testimony of you in regard of affection and goodwill, bearing me in hand of those things which were not indeed in you, but ought to be in good and honest men: and yet (as you know well enough) he is not such a man, as for favour of any person, and for to please, can be easily persuaded and brought to say otherwise than he thinketh. But now as he is freed and acquit from the crime of bearing false witness: so you (since this journey and travel upon the way affordeth you good leisure) will (I doubt not) at my request, declare and recount unto us the order how you did this cure upon yourself; and namely what medicines and remedies you used, to make that choleric nature of yours so gentle, so tractable, so soft and supple, so obeisant (I say) and subject wholly to the rule of reason?

. But why do you not yourself (O Sylla), my dearest and most affectionate friend, take heed, that for the amity and goodwill which you bear unto me, you be not deceived and see one thing in me for another? As for Eros, who for his own part hath not always his anger steadfastly stayed with the cable and anchor of Homer's Peisa (that is, obedient and abiding firm in one place), but otherwhiles much moved and out of quiet, for the hatred that he hath of vice and vicious men it may very well be, and like it is that unto him I seem more mild and gentle than before: like as we see in changing and altering the notes of prick-song, or the gamut in music, certain netce or notes which are the trebles in one 8 being compared with other netcB more high and small, become hypatce, that is, the bases.

. It is neither so nor so (O Fundanus), but of all loves, do as I desire you, for my sake.

. Since it is so (Sylla), among many good advertisements of Musonius which come to my mind, this is one; That whosoever would live safe and in health, ought all their lifetime to look to themselves, and be as it were in continual physic. For I am not of this mind, neither do I think it convenient that like as elleborus, after it hath done the deed within a sick man's