148 THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.furious, lose its energy? What! do you imagine that

Hercules, whom the very courage which you would try to represent as anger raised to heaven, was angry when he engaged the Erymanthian boar, or the Nemjean lion? Or was Theseus in a passion when he seized on the horns of the Marathonian bull ? Take care how you make courage to depend in the least on rage. For anger is altogetlu-r irrational, and that is not courage which is void of reason. XXIII. We ought to hold all things here in contempt ; death is to be looked on with indifference; pains and la bors must be considered as easily supportable. And when these sentiments are established on judgment and convic tion, then will that stout and firm courage take place ; unless you attribute to anger whatever is done with ve hemence, alacrity, and spirit. To me, indeed, that very Scipio 1 who was chief priest, that favorer of the saying of the Stoics, " That no private man could be a wise man," does not seem to be angry with Tiberius Gracchus, even when he left the consul in a hesitating frame of mind, and, though a private man himself, commanded, with the au thority of a consul, that all who meant well to the repub lic should follow him. I do not know whether I have done anything in the republic that has the appearance of cour age ; but if I have, I certainly did not do it in wrath. Doth anything come nearer madness than anger? And indeed Ennius has well defined it as the beginning of mad ness. The changing color, the alteration of our voice, the look of our eyes, our manner of fetching our breath, the little command we have over our words and actions, how little do all these things indicate a sound mind ! What can make a worse appearance than Homer's Achilles, or Agamemnon, during the quarrel? And as to Ajax, anger drove him into downright madness, and was the occasion of his death. Courage, therefore, does not want the as sistance of anger; it is sufficiently provided, armed, and prepared of itself. We may as well say that drunkenness or madness is of service to courage, because those who

Cicero means Scipio Nasica, who, in the riots consequent on the re 

election of Tiberius Gracchus to the tribunate, 133 B.C., having called in vain on the consul, Mucius Scaevola, to save the republic, attacked

Gracchus himself, lio was slain in the tumult.