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Séneca contra Iram
ANNA LYDIA MOTTO
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. PROVERBS 16:32
In Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), M. Jourdain wishes to quickly learn how to become a gentleman. But his “instructors,” the Music Teacher, the Dancing Instructor, and the Fencing Master get into a sordid quarrel amongst themselves about who is the more professional and important. Another professor, The Philosopher, enters and rebukes them for such bickering.
Hé quoi? Messieurs, faut-il s’emporter de la sorte? et n’avez vous point lu le docte traité que Sénèque a composé de la colère? Y a-t-il rien de plus bas et de plus honteux que cette passion, que fait d’un homme une bête feroce?1
1 Act II, scene iii, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 2.724.
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