"Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes"
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Anger is framed here as bad medicine: a reflex that promises relief but actually deepens the fever. Sophocles doesn’t moralize in the abstract; he uses the language of diagnosis and craft. Trouble is an illness you didn’t choose, but your response is a treatment you do. Get it wrong, and you’re not just suffering misfortune, you’re practicing malpractice on your own life.
The jab lands in the phrase “physician unskilled about misfortunes.” It assumes that hardship is inevitable, almost routine, and that competence is measured by composure under pressure. Sophocles is writing out of a tragic worldview where the gods, the city, and the family can all become engines of collision. You can’t out-argue fate, and you can’t litigate your way out of grief; what you can do is avoid adding a self-inflicted toxin to the injury. Anger, in Greek tragedy, is rarely a clean emotion. It metastasizes into pride, rash speech, vendetta, and then public catastrophe. Think of how quickly private outrage becomes a civic problem when rulers or heroes take their feelings as evidence.
The subtext is quietly political: people who can’t govern their temper can’t govern anything else, whether it’s a household, a chorus of citizens, or a kingdom. Sophocles’ intent isn’t to praise serenity as a personality trait; it’s to argue that emotional self-control is practical intelligence, the only kind that still works when the world refuses to.
The jab lands in the phrase “physician unskilled about misfortunes.” It assumes that hardship is inevitable, almost routine, and that competence is measured by composure under pressure. Sophocles is writing out of a tragic worldview where the gods, the city, and the family can all become engines of collision. You can’t out-argue fate, and you can’t litigate your way out of grief; what you can do is avoid adding a self-inflicted toxin to the injury. Anger, in Greek tragedy, is rarely a clean emotion. It metastasizes into pride, rash speech, vendetta, and then public catastrophe. Think of how quickly private outrage becomes a civic problem when rulers or heroes take their feelings as evidence.
The subtext is quietly political: people who can’t govern their temper can’t govern anything else, whether it’s a household, a chorus of citizens, or a kingdom. Sophocles’ intent isn’t to praise serenity as a personality trait; it’s to argue that emotional self-control is practical intelligence, the only kind that still works when the world refuses to.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anger |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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