How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers)

by Seneca

“We’re just wicked people living among wicked people. Only one thing can give us peace, and that’s a pact of mutual leniency.”

tis true. share later

Seneca brought all his formidable rhetorical powers to bear in On Anger, sometimes chilling his readers with tales of grotesque cruelty, other times uplifting them with exhortations toward mercy, and finally leaving them haunted by the specter of death, the grim absolute that was never far from his thoughts (see How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life in this series). He deploys his famously seductive prose style, rendered here only with very partial fidelity, to keep us hanging on every word. (The passages in this volume do not represent “every word” but constitute less than one-third of On Anger; the whole may be read in Robert Kaster’s translation in the University of Chicago volume Anger, Mercy, Revenge.)

come back to this

There’s that very famous saying of a man who had grown old serving under monarchs. When someone asked him how he’d obtained that thing which is most rare at court—old age—he said “By accepting hurts and saying thank you.”

There’s nothing more unjust than for someone to become the heir of hatred incurred by his father.

Someone gets angry; have at him with your good deeds. The quarrel immediately drops away if abandoned by either side; there’s no fight unless on equal terms. Anger flares up on both sides and there’s a clash: the better party is the one that steps back first; it’s the “winner” who’s defeated.

get stuck in the wound and be unable to withdraw from the blow. But anger is a weapon of just this type; it’s hard to draw it back. We look for weapons that will serve us well, a sword that’s well-fitted and easy to hold; won’t we then steer clear of mental impulses that are weighty, burdensome, and unable to be pulled back?

Sextius

Sex. Haw haw

People are not all wounded in the same spot. It behooves you to know what part of you is vulnerable so you can protect it most of all.

My unmatched perspicacity coupled with sheer indefatigability makes me a feared opponent in any realm of human endeavor

Nothing would have been easier for King Antigonus53 than to order the execution of two of his soldiers; while leaning against the king’s tent, they were doing what people do with great delight, even though it’s very dangerous, bad-mouthing their own king. Antigonus heard it all, as there was only a piece of cloth between the talkers and the listener. He moved that cloth gently aside and said, “Move further off, so the king won’t hear you.”

Missed killing opportunity

The mind is strong against things it has prepared for.

Dem some heavy words

Hold back a bit; look, here’s death, arriving to make you equal with them.”

wow. dem some heavy words