Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶56 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶56

Now, what were these inventions? Hear Thyestes: My impious brother fain would have me eat My children, and thus serves them up for meat. To what length now will not anger go? even as far as madness. Therefore we say, properly enough, that angry men have given up their power, that is, they are out of the power of advice, reason, and understanding—for these ought to have power over the whole mind. Now, you should put those out of the way, whom they endeavor to attack, till they have recollected themselves. But what does recollection here imply but getting together again the dispersed parts of their mind into their proper place? or else you must beg and entreat them, if they have the means of revenge, to defer it to another opportunity, till their anger cools. But the expression of cooling implies, certainly, that there was a heat raised in their minds in opposition to reason, from which consideration that saying of Archytas is commended, who being somewhat provoked at his steward, “How would I have treated you,” said he, “if I had not been in a passion?”