Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/139

117 with foolish threats and menaces among, that savour of no wit at all: By which means it fareth with them afterwards as with little children in running of a race, who for feebleness being not able to hold out, fall down before they come unto the goal, whereunto they made such ridiculous and foolish haste. And therefore in my conceit, it was not an improper answer which a certain Rhodian made unto one of the lictors and officers of a Roman general or lord praetor, who with wide mouth bawled at him, and made a glorious bragging and boasting. I pass not (quoth he) one whit what thou sayst; I care rather for that which he thinketh there, that saith nothing. In like manner Sophocles, when he had brought in Eurypylus and Neoptolemus all armed, speaketh bravely in their commendation thus:

And verily, some barbarous nations there are who use to poison their swords and other weapons of iron; but valour hath no need at all of the venom of choler, for dipped it is in reason and judgment; whereas whatsoever is corrupted with ire and fury is brittle, rotten, and easy to be broken into pieces. Which is the reason that the Lacedaemonians do allay the choler of their soldiers, when they are fighting, with the melodious sound of flutes and pipes; whose manner is also, before they go to battle, to sacrifice unto the Muses, to the end that their reason and right wits may remain in them still, and that they may have use thereof: yea, and when they have put their enemies to flight, they never pursue after nor follow the chase, but reclaim and hold their furious anger within compass, which they are able to wield and manage as they list; no less than these daggers or cutlasses, which are of a mean size and reasonable length.

Contrariwise, anger hath been the cause that many thousands have come short of the execution of vengeance, and miscarried by the way. As, for example, Cyrus and Pelopidas the Theban among the rest. But Agathocles endured patiently to hear himself reproached and reviled by those whom he besieged: and when one of them said: You potter there! Hear you? Where will you have silver to pay your mercenary soldiers and strangers their wages? He laughed again and made answer; Even out of this city when I have once forced it. Some there