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Again, an unruffled temper is certainly the mark of a wise man. Thus Socrates once, when a bold and impudent youth had kicked him, observed that the bystanders were so indignant and so violently moved as to wish to follow up the offender; but he only said: If an ass had kicked me, should you have thought it proper to kick him in return? That youth, however, did not by any means get off scot-free, but as everybody jeered at him, and nicknamed him Kicker, he ended by hanging himself.
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And when Aristophanes brought out the Clouds, and heaped all manner of abuse upon Socrates in every possible way, one of those who had been present said to Socrates, Are you not indignant, Socrates, that he used you as he did in the play? No indeed, he replied; when they break a jest upon me in the theatre I feel as if I were at a big party of good friends. What Archytas of Tarentum and Plato did will be seen to be closely akin to this. For Archytas, on his return from the war (where he had been general) found his land gone to waste. He summoned his overseer and said, You should be sorry for this, if I were not in too great a temper. And Plato, provoked at a gluttonous and impudent slave, called his sister’s son, Speusippus, and said as he withdrew, Beat this fellow, for I am too much provoked. But it may be urged that such actions are difficult and hard to imitate. I know that myself. But the effort must be made, by employing the actions of such men as standards as far as possible, to abate a great part of our unbridled and furious temper; for in other respects also we are not comparable with them either in experience or in magnanimity. Yet we, no less than they, feeling ourselves to be the high priests of God’s mysteries and torch-bearers of wisdom, do attempt, so far as lies in our power, to imitate and to get a little taste of such conduct for ourselves.
