Plutarch, Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores
W. C. Helmbold, Ed.

As, therefore, the storm that prevents a sailor from putting into port is more dangerous than that which does not allow him to sail, so those storms of the soul are more serious which do not allow a man to compose or to calm his disturbed reason ; but pilotless and without ballast, in confusion and aimless wandering, rushing headlong in oblique and reeling courses, he suffers a terrible shipwreck, as it were, and ruins his life. Consequently for this reason also it is worse to be sick in soul than in body ; for men afflicted in body only suffer, but those afflicted in soul both suffer and do ill.¹

But why need I recount the multitude of the soul's maladies? The present occasion of itself brings them to mind. Do you see this vast and promiscuous crowd which jostles and surges in confusion here about the tribunal and the market-place? These persons have come together, not to sacrifice to their country's gods, not to share in each other's family rites, not bringing ‘to Ascraean Zeus² the first-fruits [p. 391] of Lydian harvests,’ ³ nor, in honour of Dionysus, to celebrate his mystic festival on sacred nights with common revellings, but, as it were, a mighty pestilence drives them together here with yearly visitations stirring up Asia, which must come for law-suits and litigation at certain stated times ; and the overwhelming multitude, like streams flowing together, has inundated this one market-place and boils with fury and dashes together in a tumult ‘of destroyers and destroyed.’ ⁴ What fevers, what agues, have brought this about? What stoppages, or irruptions of blood,⁵ or distemperature of heat, or overflow of humours, have caused this? If you examine every law-suit, as though it were a person, to discover what gave rise to it and whence it came, you will find that obstinate anger begat one, frantic ambition another, unjust desire a third . . .