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FUNDANUS. For although there are barbarians who poison their steel, true bravery has no need of bitter gall,The poison of anger. for it has been dipped in reason; but rage and fury are rotten and easily broken. At any rate the Spartans Cf. Moralia, 238 b, with Nachstädt ad loc. use the playing of pipes to remove from their fighting men the spirit of anger, and they sacrifice to the Muses before battle in order that reason may remain constant within them; and when they have routed the enemy, they do not pursue, Cf. Pausanias, iv. 8. 11. but sound the recall to their high spirits, which, like small daggers, Cf. Seneca, De Ira, ii. 35. 1: tale ira telum est: vix retrahitur. are manageable and can be easily withdrawn. Yet wrath has slain thousands before its revenge was accomplished, as, for instance, Cyrus t and Pelopidas the Theban.Probably Cyrus the Younger, Cf. Xenophon, Anabasis, i. 8. 26-27; but Cyrus the Great may be meant, cf. Seneca, De Ira, iii. 21, which is not, however, quite in point; nor is Herodotus, i. 205 ff. But Agathocles Cf. Moralia, 176 e; Diodorus, xx. 63. Agathocles was the son of a potter. endured with mildness the revilings of those he was besieging, and when one of them cried out, Potter, how will you get pay for your mercenaries?, Agathocles laughed and said, If I take this town. And there is the case of Antigonus,The One=eyed; Cf. Seneca, De Ira, iii. 22. 4-5; related of Agathocles in Moralia, 176 e-f. who, when some men on the wall of a town jeered at him because of his deformity, said to them, Why, I thought my face was handsome! But when he took the town he sold as slaves those who jeered at him, protesting that he would have speech with their masters if they reviled him again.
