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FUNDANUS. Furthermore it is especially selfishness and peevishness, together with luxury and softness, which beget in us those continuous or oft-recurring fits of anger that are gathered together in the soul little by little, like a swarm of bees or wasps. And so there is nothing more conducive to gentleness than graciousness and simplicity toward servants and wife and friends if a man is able to get along with what comforts he has and is in no need of many superfluities: But he who liked his meat not overdone Nor underdone, nor medium, nor boiled Too much; and liked no food enough to praiseKock, Com. Att. Frag., iii. p. 472, ades. 343. who will drink no wine if there is no snow with it, Cf. Seneca, De Ira, ii. 25. 4. nor eat bread purchased in the market, nor touch food served on cheap or earthenware dishes, nor sleep upon a bed that does not billow like the sea stirred to its depths; he who with rods and blows makes his servants at table hasten about running and crying out and sweating as though they were bringing poultices for boils,A matter evidently requiring urgent haste. such a man is enslaved to an impotent, querulous, and discontented mode of life. His many shocks of anger are like a chronic cough by which he reduces himself to a condition where anger becomes a running sore. We must, therefore, accustom the body to contentment by plain living and to self-sufficiency, for those who need but little are not disappointed of much.
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FUNDANUS. And, to begin with our food, it is no great hardship if we partake in silence of whatever is set before us and do not, by being repeatedly choleric and peevish, thrust upon ourselves and our friends the worst sauce for meat, anger. No more unpleasant supper could there beHomer, Od., xx. 392. than that wherein servants are beaten and wife is reviled because something is burned or smoked or not salted enough, or because the bread is too cold. Cf. Seneca, De Ira, ii. 25.
