How much better it is to perceive its first beginnings — how slight, how harmless they are! You will find that the same thing happens with a man which you observe in dumb animals; we are ruffled by silly and petty things. The bull is aroused by a red color, the asp strikes at a shadow, bears and lions are irritated by a handkerchief; all creatures by nature wild and savage are alarmed by trifles. The same is true of men, whether they are by nature restless or inert. They are smitten with suspicions, so powerfully, even, that they sometimes call moderate benefits injuries; these are the most common, certainly the most bitter, source of anger. For we become angry at our dearest friends because they have bestowed less than we anticipated, and less than they conferred upon another; and yet for both troubles there is a ready remedy. More favor has been shown another; then let us without making comparison be pleased with what we have. That man will never be happy whom the sight of a happier man tortures. I may have less than I hoped for; but perhaps I hoped for more than I ought. It is from this direction that we have most to fear; from this springs the anger that is most destructive, that will assail all that is most holy.
Among those who dispatched the divine Julius there were more friends than enemies — friends whose insatiate hopes he had failed to satisfy. He wished indeed to do so — for no man ever made a more generous use of victory, from which he claimed nothing for himself except the right to give away — but how could he gratify such unconscionable desires, since every one of them coveted as much as any one could possibly covet? And so he saw his fellow-soldiers around his chair with their swords drawn — Tillius Cimber, a little while before the boldest defender of his cause, and others who, after Pompey was no more, had at length become Pompeians.15 It is this that turns against kings their own weapons, and drives their most trusted followers to the point of planning for the death of those for whom and before whom they had vowed to die.