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FUNDANUS. Whenever, therefore, I have become engaged in these reflections, at the same time I try to do away with some part of my inquisitiveness. For to search I out with great precision and detect and drag into the light every little concern of a slave, every action of a friend, every pastime of a son, every whisper of a wife, produces frequent, or rather continual and daily, fits of anger, of which the sum total is a morose and intractable disposition. It may be, as EuripidesNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. 2, p. 675, Frag. 974; quoted also in Moralia, 811 d. Cf. Lucan, v. 340 ff.; and perhaps Horace, Ars Poetica, 191-192. says, that God Will intervene in matters grown too great, But small things he lets pass and leaves to Fate; but I am of the opinion that a man of sense should commit nothing to Fate, nor overlook anything at all, but should trust and use for some things his wife, for others servants, for others friends, as a ruler makes use of overseers and accountants and administrators, but himself keeps under his own control the most important and weighty matters by the use of reason. For as small writing strains the eyes, so do trifling matters, by causing a greater strain, prick and stir up anger, Cf. Seneca, De Ira, ii. 26; iii. 11. which becomes a bad habit that affects more important matters.
