Book 1

1.1. I have resolved to write on mercy, Nero Caesar, so as to serve in a manner as a mirror, and to show you to yourself on the point of arriving at the greatest pleasure of all. For although the true reward of right conduct is to have done it, and no prize worthy of the virtues lies outside the virtues themselves, still it is a delight to inspect and to survey a good conscience, and then to cast the eyes over this vast and discordant multitude—mutinous, ungovernable, ready to riot alike to the ruin of others and of itself should it ever break this yoke—and to speak thus to oneself:

1.2. "Have I of all mortals found favour and been chosen to serve on earth in the place of the gods? I am the arbiter of life and death over the nations; what lot and condition each man holds lies placed in my hand; what fortune wishes given to each mortal, she pronounces through my mouth; from my reply peoples and cities conceive their grounds for rejoicing; no part of the world anywhere flourishes save by my will and favour; these so many thousands of swords, which my peace keeps sheathed, will be drawn at my nod; what nations are to be utterly destroyed, which to be transplanted, to whom liberty is to be given and from whom taken away, what kings are to be made slaves and whose heads are to be encircled with the royal crown, what cities are to fall and which to rise—this is the pronouncement of my law.

1.3. In all this command over affairs, anger has never driven me to unjust punishments, nor the impulse of youth, nor the rashness and obstinacy of men, which has often wrung patience even from the calmest breasts, nor that dread but, with great empires, frequent ambition of displaying one's power by means of terrors. With me the sword is stored away, nay buried, with the utmost sparing even of the cheapest blood; with me no man, though he lack all else, is without favour by virtue of the name of man alone.

1.4. Severity I keep hidden, but mercy ready at hand; I watch over myself as though I were to render account to the laws, which I have called forth from neglect and darkness into the light. By the early age of one I have been moved, by the last years of another; one I have spared for his rank, another for his lowliness; whenever I could find no ground for pity, I spared on my own account. Today I am ready, should the immortal gods demand a reckoning of me, to render up the whole human race."

1.5. This, Caesar, you can boldly proclaim: that all which has come into your trust and protection is kept safe, and that nothing is taken from the commonwealth through you, whether by force or in secret. You have coveted that rarest of praises, granted to no prince before now—guiltlessness. Your labour is not wasted, nor has that singular goodness of yours met with ungrateful or grudging judges. Gratitude is rendered to you; never was any one man so dear to another as you are to the Roman people, their great and lasting good. But you have laid upon yourself a heavy burden; no one now speaks of the deified Augustus,

1.6. nor of the early days of Tiberius Caesar, nor seeks outside of you a model that he would have you imitate; your principate is appraised by its first taste. This would have been hard, had your goodness not been natural to you but assumed for the occasion. For no one can wear a mask for long; feigned things soon fall back into their own nature, while those that have truth beneath them and grow, so to speak, from solid ground, advance with the very passage of time into something greater and better.

1.7. The Roman people was running a great hazard while it was uncertain in what direction that noble nature of yours would turn; now the public prayers are secure, for there is no danger that a sudden forgetfulness of yourself should seize you. Excessive prosperity does indeed make men greedy, and desires are never so temperate that they cease with what has fallen to them; men climb from the great to the greater, and those who have attained the unhoped-for embrace the most outrageous hopes. Yet from all your citizens this confession is now wrung—both that they are happy, and that nothing further can be added to these blessings except that they should be everlasting.

1.8. Many things compel them to this confession, than which none in man is more reluctant: deep and overflowing security, justice set above all wrong; before their eyes hovers the most joyful image of a commonwealth that lacks nothing of complete liberty save the licence to destroy itself.

1.9. Above all, however, admiration for your mercy has reached high and low alike; for other goods each man feels or expects in proportion to his own fortune, greater or less, but from mercy all hope the same; nor is there anyone so well pleased with his own innocence that he does not rejoice to see mercy standing ready in plain view for human errors.

2.1. I know, however, that there are some who think that mercy upholds none but the worst men, since, unless after a crime, it is superfluous, and is the one virtue that lies idle among the innocent. But first of all, just as the use of medicine is honoured among the sick yet also among the sound, so mercy, though those who deserve punishment invoke it, the innocent too revere. Next, it has its place even in the person of the innocent, because sometimes fortune stands in the place of guilt; nor does mercy come to the aid of innocence only, but often of virtue, since by the condition of the times certain things occur that might be punished though they deserved praise. Add that a great part of mankind is such as could return to innocence, if there were a remission of the penalty. Yet it is not fitting to pardon indiscriminately;

2.2. for where the distinction between the bad and the good is taken away, confusion follows and an outbreak of vices; therefore moderation must be applied, such as knows how to distinguish curable characters from desperate ones. We ought to have a mercy that is neither promiscuous and common nor cut off entirely; for to pardon all is as much cruelty as to pardon none. We ought to keep a mean; but since the right proportion is difficult, whatever is going to fall beyond the fair measure, let it incline toward the more humane side.

3.1. But these matters will be better treated in their proper place. For now I shall divide this whole subject into three parts. The first will concern remission of punishment; the second is to demonstrate the nature and disposition of mercy—for since there are certain vices that imitate the virtues, they cannot be told apart unless you have stamped upon them the marks by which they are distinguished; in the third place we shall inquire how the mind is led to this virtue, how it confirms it, and makes it its own by practice.

3.2. That no virtue of all is more becoming to man, since none is more humane, must necessarily be agreed not only among us, who hold that man is to be regarded as a social creature born for the common good, but even among those who give man over to pleasure, all of whose words and deeds look to their own advantages; for if a man seeks repose and leisure, he has lighted in this virtue upon one suited to his own nature, since it loves peace and stays the hand.

3.3. Yet of all men mercy becomes none more than a king or a prince. For great power is glorious and an ornament only if its might is wholesome; since to be strong for doing harm is a power that breeds destruction. His greatness alone is stable and well-founded whom all men know to be as much above them as he is for them, whose vigilance they daily experience keeping watch over the safety of each and of all, at whose coming they do not scatter, as though some evil or noxious beast had sprung from its lair, but flock eagerly to him as to a bright and beneficent star. Most ready to throw themselves before him against the daggers of assassins, and to lay their own bodies beneath him should his path to safety have to be built over a heap of human slaughter, they guard his sleep with nightly watches, defend his flanks by surrounding and shielding him, and set themselves against the perils that rush upon him.

3.4. Not without reason is there among peoples and cities this agreement so to protect and love their kings, and to fling away themselves and what is theirs wherever the safety of their ruler has required it; nor is this any cheapening of themselves or madness, that for one person so many thousands should take the sword and ransom one life—sometimes that of an old and feeble man—with many deaths.

3.5. Just as the whole body is the servant of the mind, and though it is so much larger and more comely, while the mind remains hidden, slight, and uncertain in what seat it lurks, yet the hands, feet, and eyes do its business, this skin protects it, at its bidding we lie still or run restlessly about; when it has commanded, if it is a greedy master, we ransack the sea for the sake of gain, if an ambitious one, we have long since thrust our right hand into the flames or leaped of our own accord into the earth—so this immense multitude, encircling a single soul, is ruled by its breath and bent by its reason, and would crush and shatter itself by its own strength if it were not held up by guidance.

4.1. They love, therefore, their own security when for the sake of one man they lead ten legions into the line of battle, when they rush to the front rank and bear their breasts toward the wounds, that the standards of their commander be not turned in flight. For he is the bond by which the commonwealth holds together, he the vital breath which these so many thousands draw—who would themselves be nothing but a burden and a prey, were that guiding mind of empire withdrawn. While the king is safe, all have one mind; once he is lost, they break their faith.

4.2. This calamity will be the destruction of the Roman peace; this will drive the fortune of so great a people into ruin. This people will be free of that peril just so long as it knows how to bear the reins; but if ever it has snapped them, or, when they have been struck off by some accident, will not suffer them to be put back, then this unity and this fabric of the mightiest empire will fly apart into many fragments, and the same will be the end of this city's ruling as of its obeying.

4.3. Hence it is no wonder that princes and kings, and the guardians of the public state under whatever other name, are loved beyond even private ties; for if to men of sound mind the public good is preferred to their private goods, it follows that he too is the dearer in whom the commonwealth has its centre. For long ago Caesar so wrapped himself up in the commonwealth that neither could be parted from the other without the ruin of both; for the one has need of strength, the other of a head.

5.1. My discourse seems to have wandered rather far from the point, yet, by Hercules, it bears hard upon the matter itself. For if, as it has so far gathered, you are the mind of your commonwealth and it your body, you see, I think, how necessary mercy is; for you spare yourself when you seem to spare another. We must therefore spare even citizens who deserve censure, no otherwise than ailing limbs; and if ever there is need to let blood, the hand must be held back, that it cut no deeper than necessary.

5.2. Mercy is, then, as I was saying, in accord with nature for all men, yet it is most becoming to commanders, by so much as it has among them more to preserve and appears upon a greater field. For how little harm a private man's cruelty does! A prince's savagery is war.

5.3. But although among the virtues there is concord, and no one is better or more honourable than another, yet certain virtues are more fitting to certain persons. Greatness of soul becomes any mortal whatsoever, even him below whom there is nothing; for what is greater or braver than to beat back ill fortune? This greatness of soul, however, has a freer field in good fortune, and shows to better advantage on the judgment-seat than on the level ground.

5.4. Mercy, into whatever house it enters, will make it happy and tranquil; but in a palace, the rarer it is, the more wonderful. For what is more memorable than that a man whose anger nothing can resist, to whose harsher sentence the very victims assent, whom no one will interrupt—nay, if he has blazed up too fiercely, no one will even entreat—that such a man should lay hands upon himself and use his power toward what is better and gentler, thinking this very thought: "Anyone can kill against the law; I alone can save"?

5.5. A great soul befits great fortune, and unless it raises itself to her level and stands above her, it drags her too downward to the ground; but it is the property of a great soul to be calm and tranquil and to look down from above upon injuries and offences. It is womanish to rage in anger, and the mark even of beasts—and not of noble ones at that—to bite and worry those who lie prostrate. Elephants and lions pass by what they have struck down; obstinacy is the trait of the base beast.

5.6. Savage and inexorable anger does not become a king, for he does not stand much above the man to whom by his anger he makes himself equal; but if he grants life, if he grants rank to those in peril of losing it deservedly, he does what is permitted to none but the master of affairs; for life is taken even from a superior, but is given only to an inferior.

5.7. To save is the property of surpassing fortune, which is never more to be admired than when it has come to be able to do the same as the gods, by whose kindness we are brought into the light, the good as well as the bad. Therefore let the prince, claiming for himself the spirit of the gods, look gladly upon some of his citizens because they are useful and good, and leave others to make up the number; let him rejoice that some exist, and put up with others.

6.1. Consider that in this city, in which the throng, flowing without intermission along the widest streets, is crushed whenever something has stood in the way to delay its course as if it were a rushing torrent, in which seats are demanded in three theatres at the same time, in which is consumed all that is ploughed in every land—consider how great would be the solitude and desolation if nothing were left but what a strict judge would acquit.

6.2. How few of the examining magistrates are there who are not themselves liable under that very law by which they conduct the inquiry? How few accusers are free of fault? And I rather think that no one is harder to grant pardon than the man who has more than once deserved to ask for it.

6.3. We have all sinned—some grievously, some more lightly; some of set purpose, some carried away by chance impulse or led astray by another's wickedness; some of us have stood too feebly in our good resolves and have lost our innocence against our will and while still clinging to it; nor have we only done wrong, but we shall go on doing wrong to the very end of our days.

6.4. Even if anyone has by now so purified his mind that nothing can any longer trouble it or deceive it, still it was by sinning that he arrived at innocence.

7.1. Since I have made mention of the gods, I shall set up for the prince this best of models, on which he is to be shaped: that he should wish to be such toward his citizens as he would wish the gods to be toward himself. Is it then expedient that there be deities inexorable toward sins and errors, expedient that they be hostile to the point of utter ruin? And what king will be safe whose limbs the soothsayers may not be left to gather up?

7.2. But if the gods, placable and just, do not at once pursue with their thunderbolts the offences of the powerful, how much more just it is that a man set over men should wield his command with a gentle spirit, and consider which condition of the world is the more pleasing and more beautiful to the eye—a clear and bright day, or one in which with frequent crashing all things are shaken and fires flash from this side and that? And yet there is no other aspect to a calm and orderly empire than to a serene and shining sky.

7.3. A cruel reign is stormy and dark with shadows, and amid men who tremble and start at every sudden sound, not even he is unshaken who throws all into confusion. Private men are more easily pardoned when they avenge themselves stubbornly; for they can be injured, and their resentment springs from a wrong; moreover, they fear contempt, and not to have repaid those who hurt them seems weakness, not mercy; but the man for whom vengeance is easy wins certain praise for clemency by foregoing it.

7.4. Those placed in a lowly station may more freely exercise their hands, quarrel, rush into a brawl, and indulge their anger; among equals blows are light; but for a king even loud outcry and intemperance of speech is beneath his majesty.

8.1. You think it a grievous thing that the right of free speech, which the humblest possess, should be taken from kings. "That," you say, "is slavery, not sovereignty." What? Do you not find that this is sovereignty for us, but slavery for you? Different is the condition of those who lie hidden in the crowd which they do not rise above, whose virtues must struggle long to be seen and whose vices have their darkness; but rumour seizes upon your deeds and words, and therefore none have more cause to care what reputation they bear than those who, whatever they have deserved, are bound to have a great one.

8.2. How many things are not permitted to you, which to us are permitted by your favour! I can walk alone without fear in any quarter of the city, though no attendant follow, though there be no sword at home or at my side; you, amid your own peace, must live under arms. You cannot stray from your fortune; it besets you, and wherever you go down, follows you with great pomp.

8.3. This is the slavery of supreme greatness—that it cannot become less; but this very necessity you share with the gods. For heaven too holds them bound, and it is no more granted to them to come down than it is safe for you; you are fixed to your pinnacle.

8.4. Our movements few people notice; we are free to come forth and withdraw and change our dress without the public being aware; you can no more lie hidden than the sun. Much light is about you, the eyes of all are turned upon it. You think you come forth? You rise like the sun.

8.5. You cannot speak but that the nations, wherever they are, catch up your voice; you cannot be angry but that all things tremble, because you can strike down no one without everything around being shaken. As thunderbolts fall to the peril of few but the terror of all, so the punishments of great powers terrify more widely than they harm, and not without reason; for in him who can do all things one considers not how much he has done, but how much he is going to do.

8.6. Add now that, whereas the endurance of injuries received makes private men more open to receiving injuries, for kings security is more assured from gentleness, because frequent vengeance crushes the hatred of a few but provokes that of all.

8.7. The will to be savage ought to fail before its occasion does; otherwise, just as trees that have been cut back sprout again with many branches, and many kinds of plants are pruned so that they may rise the thicker, so a king's cruelty increases the number of his enemies by removing them; for the parents and children of those who have been slain, and their kinsmen and friends, step into the place of each.

9.1. How true this is, I wish to remind you by an example from your own house. The deified Augustus was a gentle prince, if anyone should begin to judge him from his principate; in the common quarrel of the commonwealth he wielded the sword. When he was at the age that you now are, having passed his eighteenth year, he had already hidden daggers in the bosoms of friends, had already aimed at the side of the consul Mark Antony by treachery, had already been a colleague in proscription.

9.2. But when he had passed his fortieth year and was lingering in Gaul, information was brought to him that Lucius Cinna, a man of dull wit, was plotting an ambush against him; he was told both where and when and in what manner he meant to make his attack; one of the accomplices was the informer.

9.3. He resolved to avenge himself upon the man and ordered a council of his friends to be summoned. The night was a restless one for him, as he reflected that a young nobleman—apart from this charge, blameless, the grandson of Gnaeus Pompey—must be condemned; he could no longer bring himself to kill one man, he to whom Mark Antony had dictated the edict of proscription over dinner.

9.4. Groaning, he kept uttering various and self-contradictory cries: "What then? Shall I suffer my assassin to walk about secure while I am full of anxiety? Shall he then go unpunished, who, after my head was sought in vain through so many civil wars, after I came safe through so many battles by sea and land, now that peace is established on land and sea, has resolved not to kill but to sacrifice me?"—for it had been arranged to attack him while he was sacrificing.

9.5. Then, after a silence, he was angry with himself far more loudly than with Cinna: "Why do you live, if it is to the interest of so many that you should perish? What end will there be of punishments? What end of bloodshed? I am a head set up as a mark for noble youths to whet their swords upon; life is not worth so much, if, that I may not perish, so many must be destroyed."

9.6. At last his wife Livia broke in upon him: "Will you," she said, "admit a woman's counsel? Do what the physicians are wont to do, who, when the usual remedies do not succeed, try the contrary. By severity you have so far gained nothing; Salvidienus was followed by Lepidus, Lepidus by Murena, Murena by Caepio, Caepio by Egnatius, to say nothing of the others whose daring is too shameful to name. Now try how clemency may answer you; pardon Lucius Cinna. He has been caught; he can no longer do you harm, but he can do good to your reputation."

9.7. Glad to have found an advocate, he thanked his wife, ordered word to be sent at once to the friends whom he had asked to council, and summoned Cinna alone to him; and when he had dismissed everyone from the chamber and had ordered a second chair to be set for Cinna, he said: "This first I ask of you, that you not interrupt me while I speak, that you not cry out in the midst of my discourse; you shall be given free time to speak.

9.8. I, Cinna, when I had found you in the enemy's camp—not made my enemy, but born so—saved you and granted you all your patrimony. Today you are so prosperous and so rich that the victors envy the vanquished. When you sought a priesthood, I gave it you, passing over many whose fathers had served with me in war; though I have so deserved of you, you have resolved to kill me."

9.9. When at this word Cinna cried out that such madness was far from him, Augustus said: "You do not keep faith, Cinna; it was agreed that you should not interrupt. You are preparing, I say, to kill me"; and he added the place, the confederates, the day, the order of the plot, and to whom the steel had been entrusted.

9.10. And when he saw him fixed and now silent not by the agreement but from a guilty conscience, he said: "With what intent do you do this? That you yourself may be prince? By Hercules, it goes ill with the Roman people if I alone stand in the way of your ruling. You cannot protect your own house; lately you were worsted in a private suit by the influence of a freedman; clearly there is nothing you can do more easily than to bring an action against Caesar. Come, if I alone block your hopes, will Paulus and Fabius Maximus and the Cossi and the Servilii put up with you, and that great band of nobles who display not empty names but men who do honour to their own ancestral images?"

9.11. Lest by repeating his whole speech I should take up a great part of the volume—for it is agreed that he spoke for more than two hours, drawing out this penalty, with which alone he was going to be content—he said: "Your life, Cinna, I give you a second time, first as an enemy, now as a plotter and parricide. From this day let friendship begin between us; let us strive whether I have given you your life with the better faith, or you owe it me." After this he of his own accord conferred the consulship upon him, complaining that he had not dared to seek it. He found him most friendly and most faithful, and was made his sole heir. He was attacked by no further plots from anyone.

10.1. Your great-great-grandfather pardoned the conquered; for had he not pardoned, over whom would he have ruled? He enrolled from the camp of his adversaries Sallustius and the Cocceii and the Deillii and the whole corps of the first audience; already he owed to his own mercy the Domitii, the Messalae, the Asinii, the Ciceros—all the flower there was in the state. How long he suffered Lepidus himself to live! For many years he allowed him to retain the insignia of a prince, and suffered the office of chief pontiff to be transferred to himself only at the other's death; for he preferred to have it called an honour rather than a spoil. This mercy led him to safety and security;

10.2. this made him welcome and popular, although he had laid his hand upon the necks of the Roman people while they were not yet subdued; this even today secures him a fame that scarcely serves living princes.

10.3. We believe him to be a god, not because we are commanded to; we confess that Augustus was a good prince and that the name of father well befitted him, for no other reason than that even his own insults—which are wont to be more bitter to princes than wrongs—he avenged with no cruelty; that he smiled at abusive things said against him; that he plainly paid a penalty himself when he exacted one; and that, of all those whom he had condemned for adultery with his daughter, so far from killing them, he gave passports to those he dismissed, that they might be the safer.

10.4. This is to pardon: to know that there will be many who will be born on your behalf and will do you a favour with another's blood—not merely to grant safety, but to bestow it.

11.1. Thus acted Augustus when old, or already inclining with his years toward old age; in youth he burned, he blazed with anger, he did many things on which he looked back with reluctant eyes. No one will dare to compare the deified Augustus with your gentleness, even if he should set a more than ripe old age in contest with your years of youth; granted that he was moderate and merciful—but only, surely, after the sea off Actium had been stained with Roman blood, only after fleets had been wrecked off Sicily, his own and others', only after the altars of Perusia and the proscriptions.

11.2. But for my part I do not call clemency a cruelty grown weary; this, Caesar, is true clemency, which you display, which began not from repentance of savagery, which has no stain, which has never shed the blood of fellow citizens; this is, in the greatest power, the truest self-restraint of the mind and a love of the human race as of oneself—not corrupted by any greed, by no rashness of temper, by no examples of former princes into testing by experiment how much may be permitted against one's citizens, but rather blunting the edge of one's own command.

11.3. You have given, Caesar, a bloodless state, and this, on which you have gloried with a great spirit, that you have not in the whole world shed one drop of human blood, is the greater and more wonderful in that the sword was never entrusted to anyone earlier than to you.

11.4. Clemency therefore renders men not only more honourable but more safe, and is at once the ornament of empires and their surest preservation. For what is the reason that kings have grown old and handed down their kingdoms to children and grandchildren, while the power of tyrants is accursed and brief? What is the difference between a tyrant and a king—for the outward appearance of their fortune and their licence is equal—except that tyrants are savage for their pleasure, kings only from cause and necessity?

12.1. "What then? Do not kings too commonly kill?" But only when the public good persuades it should be done; to tyrants savagery is dear to the heart. Now a tyrant differs from a king by his deeds, not by his name; for both Dionysius the Elder can rightly and deservedly be preferred to many kings, and what forbids Lucius Sulla to be called a tyrant, for whom only the lack of enemies set an end to killing?

12.2. Though he may have stepped down from his dictatorship and given himself back to the toga, yet what tyrant ever drank human blood so greedily as that man who ordered seven thousand Roman citizens to be butchered, and, when, sitting nearby at the temple of Bellona, he had heard the cry of so many thousands groaning beneath the sword, said to the terrified senate: "Let us attend to our business, conscript fathers; a few seditious men are being killed by my order"?

12.3. In this he did not lie; to Sulla they seemed few. But of Sulla more presently, when we inquire how one ought to be angry with enemies—especially if citizens, broken off from the same body, have gone over to the name of enemy; meanwhile, as I was saying, clemency brings it about that there is a great difference between a king and a tyrant, though both alike are walled round with arms; but the one has arms which he uses for the defence of peace, the other to keep down great hatreds by great fear, and even those very hands to which he has committed himself he does not regard with an untroubled mind.

12.4. He is driven by contraries into contraries; for since he is hated because he is feared, he wishes to be feared because he is hated, and he makes use of that accursed verse which has sent many headlong: "Let them hate, provided they fear"—not knowing what madness arises when hatreds have grown beyond measure. For moderate fear restrains men's minds, but constant, sharp fear, bringing them to the last extremity, rouses those who lie low to boldness and urges them to attempt everything.

12.5. Thus a cord and feathers may hold wild beasts hemmed in; let a mounted hunter assail these same beasts from behind with darts, and they will attempt flight through the very things they fled before, and trample down their terror underfoot. The keenest courage is that which utmost necessity hammers out. Fear ought to leave something untouched, and to hold out far more of hope than of dangers; otherwise, when one who keeps quiet has as much to fear as one who acts, it is a pleasure to rush upon dangers and to make away with another's life.

13.1. To a calm and tranquil king his own aids are faithful, since he employs them for the common safety, and the soldier, glorious (for he sees that he is giving his effort to the public security), gladly endures every labour as the guardian of a parent; but the bitter and bloody king his attendants must needs hate.

13.2. No one can have ministers of good and faithful will whom he uses as instruments of torture—a rack and irons made ready for death—to whom he throws men no otherwise than to wild beasts. He is more wretched and anxious than all the accused, in that he fears men and gods as the witnesses and avengers of his crimes, brought to such a pass that he cannot change his ways. For this, among other things, is the very worst feature of cruelty: one must persevere, and there lies open no return to better courses; crimes must be guarded by crimes. But what is more unhappy than the man who now must needs be wicked?

13.3. O the pitiable man—to himself, at least! For others it would be a sin to pity him, who has exercised his power by slaughters and robberies, who has made all things suspect to himself, foreign and domestic alike, who, while he dreads arms, flees to arms, trusting neither the loyalty of friends nor the devotion of his children; who, when he has looked round upon what he has done and what he is going to do, and has laid open his conscience full of crimes and torments, often fears death, more often longs for it, more hateful to himself than to those who serve him.

13.4. On the contrary, the man who cares for the whole, who guards some things more, some less, who nourishes no part of the commonwealth as not his own, inclined toward gentler measures, even when it is expedient to punish, showing how reluctantly he sets his hand to the harsh remedy,

13.5. in whose mind there is nothing hostile, nothing savage, who exercises his power calmly and wholesomely, desiring that his commands be approved by his citizens, thinking himself abundantly happy if he has shared his fortune with the public, affable in speech, easy of approach and access, lovable in a countenance which especially wins over peoples, favourable to just requests and not harsh even to unjust ones—such a man is loved, defended, and reverenced by the whole state.

13.6. Men say the same things of him in private as in public. They desire to raise children, and the barrenness once imposed by public ills is unlocked; each man does not doubt that he will deserve well of his own children, to whom he has shown such an age. This prince, safe by his own benefits, needs no guards; he keeps arms for ornament's sake.

14.1. What then is his duty? That of good parents, who are wont to chide their children sometimes gently, sometimes with threats, and now and then to admonish them even with blows. Does anyone in his right mind disinherit a son at the first offence? Unless great and many wrongs have overcome his patience, unless there is more that he fears than that he condemns, he does not come to the decisive pen; he tries many things first, by which he may recall a doubtful character now set in a worse place; and as soon as it is given up for lost, he tries the last resort. No one comes to exacting punishments save he who has used up the remedies.

14.2. What a parent must do, a prince too must do, whom we have called Father of his Country, not led by empty flattery. For the other titles were given for honour; we have spoken of men as Great and Fortunate and Augustus, and have heaped upon ambitious majesty all the titles we could, conferring them upon such men; but Father of his Country we have called him, that he might know there was given him a father's power, which is most temperate, taking thought for the children and setting its own concerns after theirs.

14.3. Let a father be slow to cut off his own limbs, and, even when he has cut them off, wish to put them back, and in the cutting let him groan, having hesitated long and much; for he is near to condemning gladly who condemns quickly, near to punishing unjustly who punishes excessively.

15.1. Tricho, a Roman knight, within our own memory, because he had killed his son with floggings, the people in the forum stabbed through with their styluses; scarcely did the authority of Augustus Caesar snatch him from the angry hands alike of fathers and of sons.

15.2. Tarius, who, having heard the case, condemned a son caught in a plot of parricide, everyone admired, because, content with exile—and a comfortable exile—he confined the parricide at Massilia and allowed him as much yearly as he had been wont to allow him when innocent; this generosity brought it about that, in a state where the worse sort never lacks a patron, no one doubted that the accused had been deservedly condemned, since that father had been able to condemn him whom he could not bring himself to hate.

15.3. By this very example I shall give you, to compare with a good father, a good prince. When Tarius was about to hear the case of his son, he called Caesar Augustus into his council; he came into a private household, sat down, was part of another man's council, and did not say, "Nay, let him come into my house"—for had that been done, the inquiry would have been Caesar's, not the father's.

15.4. The case heard and all things sifted, both what the young man had said in his own defence and the matters of which he was accused, Augustus asked that each man write down his own opinion, lest that should become the opinion of all which had been Caesar's; then, before the tablets were opened, he swore that he would not enter upon the inheritance of Tarius, a wealthy man.

15.5. Someone will say: "He feared, with a petty spirit, lest he should seem to wish to open a way for his own hopes by the son's condemnation." I think the opposite; any one of us ought to have had, against malicious opinions, enough confidence in a good conscience, but princes must grant much even to reputation. He swore he would not enter upon the inheritance.

15.6. Tarius indeed on that same day lost a second heir as well, but Caesar redeemed the freedom of his judgment; and after he had proved that his severity was disinterested—which a prince must always take care for—he said the son should be relegated to wherever the father thought best.

15.7. He decreed neither the sack nor the serpents nor the prison, mindful not of him on whom he was passing sentence, but of him in whose council he was; he said the father ought to be content with the gentlest kind of penalty in the case of a young son driven into a crime in which he had acted timidly—which was next door to innocence; that he should be removed from the city and from his father's sight.

16.1. O man worthy to be summoned by fathers into their council! O man worthy to be written down as co-heir with innocent children! This is the mercy that becomes a prince; wherever he comes, let him make all things gentler. Let no one be so worthless to a king that the king does not feel his loss, whatever part of the empire he is.

16.2. For great commands let us take our example from lesser ones. There is not one kind of ruling: a prince rules his citizens, a father his children, a teacher his pupils, a tribune or centurion his soldiers.

16.3. Will not that father seem the worst who restrains his children with constant blows even for the slightest causes? And which teacher is the worthier of liberal studies—he who will torture his pupils if their memory has failed them or their eye, too little nimble in reading, has stuck, or he who would rather correct and instruct by admonitions and a sense of shame? Give me a savage tribune or centurion: he will make deserters—who are nevertheless pardoned.

16.4. Is it then fair that a man be ruled more harshly and severely than dumb animals are ruled? And yet the master skilled in breaking does not frighten a horse with frequent blows; for it will become timid and stubborn, unless you have soothed it with a caressing touch.

16.5. The same does the hunter, both he who trains his pups to follow the trail and he who uses those already trained to start up or pursue the wild beasts; he neither threatens them often—for he would break their spirits, and whatever there is of natural quality would be shattered by a base trembling—nor grants them licence to roam and wander at large. To these you may add the slow-moving beasts of burden, which, though born for ill-usage and miseries, are driven by excessive savagery to shake off the yoke.

17.1. No creature is more troublesome to handle, none must be handled with greater art, than man, none must be more spared. For what is more foolish than, while in the case of beasts of burden and dogs we blush to vent our anger, that a man should be in the worst condition under a man? We treat diseases with medicine and are not angry at them; and yet this too is a disease of the mind; it requires a gentle remedy and a healer least of all hostile to the sick man.

17.2. It is the part of a bad physician to despair of curing; the same in the case of those whose minds are diseased ought he to do to whom the safety of all has been entrusted—not quickly to cast aside hope, nor to pronounce the signs mortal; let him struggle with the vices, resist them, reproach some with their disease, beguile others with a gentle treatment, to heal them the more quickly and better by remedies that deceive; let the prince take thought not only for safety, but for an honourable scar.

17.3. There is no glory for a king from savage punishment—for who doubts that he can inflict it?—but, on the contrary, the greatest glory if he restrains his own might, if he has rescued many from another's anger and spent none upon his own.

18.1. To rule slaves with moderation is praiseworthy. Even in the case of a chattel one must consider, not how much it could suffer with impunity, but how much the nature of right and good permits you, which bids us spare even captives and those bought with a price. How much more justly does it bid us not to abuse free men, the freeborn, the honourable as chattels, but to treat them as those whom you surpass in degree and whose ownership has not been handed over to you, but their guardianship. Slaves are permitted to flee to the statue of a god for refuge;

18.2. though all things are permitted against a slave, there is something which the common law of living creatures forbids to be permitted against a man. Who did not hate Vedius Pollio worse than his own slaves did, because he fattened his lampreys on human blood and ordered those who had given him any offence to be thrown into the pool—what else than of serpents? O man worthy of a thousand deaths, whether he threw his slaves to be devoured by the lampreys he meant to eat, or kept those lampreys only to feed them so.

18.3. Just as cruel masters are pointed out throughout the whole city and are hateful and detestable, so the wrong of kings extends more widely, and their infamy and odium are handed down to the ages; how much better not to have been born than to be reckoned among those born for the public ill!

19.1. No one will be able to devise anything more becoming to a ruler than mercy, in whatever manner and by whatever right he is set over the rest. The more so, of course, shall we confess this to be the fairer and more glorious the greater the power in which it is displayed—power which ought not to be harmful, if it is ordered by the law of nature.

19.2. For nature has devised a king, as one may learn both from the other animals and from the bees; whose king has the most spacious cell, in the central and safest place; moreover, he is free from work, an exactor of others' labours, and when the king is lost the whole swarm disperses, nor do they ever endure more than one, and they seek the better by combat; besides, the king's form is distinguished and unlike the rest both in size and in lustre. By this, however, he is most of all marked off:

19.3. bees are most irascible and, for the capacity of their bodies, most given to fighting, and leave their stings in the wound, but the king himself is without a sting; nature did not wish him to be savage, nor to seek a vengeance that would cost dear, and took away his weapon and left his anger unarmed. This is a mighty pattern for great kings; for it is nature's way to train herself in small things and to scatter in the least matters the proofs of the greatest.

19.4. Let us be ashamed not to draw our manners from tiny creatures, since the mind of man ought to be the more moderate by as much as it does the more violent harm. Would indeed that the same law held for man, and that his anger broke off together with its weapon, and that it were not permitted to harm more than once, nor to exercise his hatreds by another's strength! For his fury would easily tire, if it satisfied itself by itself and poured out its violence at the risk of death.

19.5. But even as it is, his course is not safe; for he must needs fear as much as he has wished to be feared, and watch the hands of all, and even at the very time when he is not being lain in wait for, judge himself the target, and have no moment free from fear. Does anyone endure to lead this life, when he might handle, with all men rejoicing, the wholesome right of power, harmless to others and for this reason secure? For a man is mistaken if he thinks a king safe there where nothing is safe from the king; security must be bargained for by mutual security.

19.6. There is no need to build up citadels rising on high, nor to fortify hills steep for the ascent, nor to cut away the sides of mountains, nor to hedge oneself with manifold walls and towers: mercy will keep a king safe in the open. There is one impregnable defence—the love of his citizens.

19.7. What is fairer than to live with all men wishing it, and uttering their prayers not under a guard? that, if his health has wavered a little, men's hope should not be roused, but their fear? that nothing should be so precious to anyone that he would not wish to exchange it for the safety of his protector?

19.8. O happy he, to whom it falls that he should owe it to himself also to go on living; who has proved, by constant proofs of his goodness, not that the commonwealth is his, but that he is the commonwealth's! Who would dare to contrive any peril for this man? Who would not, if he could, wish to ward off even ill fortune from him under whom justice, peace, modesty, security, and dignity flourish, under whom the wealthy state abounds with a plenty of all good things? Nor does it look upon its ruler with any other feeling than, if the immortal gods should grant the power of beholding them, we should look upon them, venerating and reverencing. And what of this?

19.9. Does not the man who bears himself after the nature of the gods—beneficent and bounteous and powerful for the better—hold the place next to them? This it is fitting to strive after, this to imitate: so to be held the greatest that at the same time you may be held the best.

20.1. From two causes a prince is wont to punish: if he avenges either himself or another. First I shall discuss that part which touches himself; for it is harder to be moderate where vengeance is owed to resentment than where it is owed to example.

20.2. It is superfluous in this place to admonish him not to believe readily, to sift the truth, to favour innocence, and to know that—so that it may be plain—the case of the man in peril is no smaller a matter than that of the judge; for this belongs to justice, not to mercy. Now I exhort him that, when manifestly injured, he should keep his mind in his own power and, if he safely can, remit the penalty; if not, temper it, and be far more open to entreaty in his own wrongs than in another's.

20.3. For just as he is not great-souled who is generous with what belongs to another, but he who, when he gives to another, takes from himself, so I shall call merciful not the man who is easy in another's pain, but him who, though he is goaded by his own stings, does not leap forth—who understands that it is the mark of a great soul to bear injuries in the height of power, and that nothing is more glorious than a prince injured with impunity.

21.1. Vengeance is wont to render two things: it either brings consolation to him who has received the injury, or security for the time to come. A prince's fortune is greater than to need consolation, and his power more manifest than to seek for itself a reputation for strength by another's harm. This I say of when he has been attacked and violated by his inferiors; for if he sees those whom he once had as equals beneath him, he is sufficiently avenged. A king even a slave can kill, and a serpent, and an arrow; but no one has ever saved another save one greater than him whom he saved.

21.2. Therefore he who has the power of granting and taking away life ought to make a spirited use of so great a gift of the gods. In the case especially of those whom he knows once to have held a rank equal to his own, having obtained this discretion he has fulfilled his vengeance and accomplished as much as was enough for true punishment; for he who owes his life has lost it, and whoever, cast down from on high to the feet of his enemy, has awaited another's sentence upon his life and kingdom, lives to the glory of his preserver, and confers more upon his name by surviving than if he had been removed from sight. For he is a constant spectacle of another's virtue; in a triumph he would soon have passed by.

21.3. But if his kingdom too could safely be left with him and restored to the place from which he had fallen, the praise of the man rises with a vast increase who was content to take from a conquered king nothing but glory. This is to triumph even over one's own victory, and to bear witness that one has found among the vanquished nothing worthy of the victor.

21.4. With fellow citizens, and with the obscure and the lowly, one must deal the more moderately, by how much it is of less account to have crushed them. Some you may gladly spare; from some you may disdain to avenge yourself, and no otherwise than from small creatures which defile one who crushes them must the hand be drawn back; but in the case of those who will be saved or punished in the sight of the state, the occasion for famous clemency must be seized.

22.1. Let us pass to the wrongs done to others, in the avenging of which the law has followed these three aims, which a prince too ought to follow: either to amend the man whom he punishes, or that his punishment make the rest better, or that, with the wicked removed, the rest may live more secure. The men themselves you will more easily amend with a lighter penalty; for he lives more carefully who has something of his standing left intact. No one spares a dignity already ruined; it is a kind of impunity to have no longer any room for punishment.

22.2. But the morals of a state are better corrected by a sparing use of punishments; for a multitude of offenders makes offending a habit, and the brand is less heavy which a throng of condemnations lightens, and severity, which has the greatest remedial power, loses its authority by constant use.

22.3. A prince establishes good morals in his state and washes away its vices if he is tolerant of them—not as though he approved them, but as though he came to chastise reluctantly and with great anguish. The very mercy of the ruler makes men ashamed to offend; a penalty seems far heavier which is appointed by a gentle man.

23.1. Moreover, you will see those things often committed which are often punished. Your father sewed up more men in the sack within five years than we hear were sewn up in all the ages. Children far less dared to commit the ultimate impiety so long as the crime was without a law. For with the highest prudence those loftiest men, most skilled in the nature of things, chose rather to pass over a crime, as if incredible and set beyond audacity, than, while avenging it, to show that it could be done; and so parricides began with the law, and the punishment pointed out to them the deed; but filial devotion stood in the worst case after we saw more sacks than crosses.

23.2. In a state where men are rarely punished, an agreement arises in favour of innocence, and indulgence is granted as if to a public good. Let a state think itself innocent, and it will be; it will be the more angry with those who depart from the common frugality if it sees that they are few. It is dangerous, believe me, to show a state how many the wicked are.

24.1. A motion was once made in the senate that slaves should be distinguished from free men by their dress; then it appeared what danger would threaten if our slaves began to count us. Know that the same is to be feared if no one is pardoned; it will soon appear how far the worse part of the state outweighs the rest. Excessive executions are no less disgraceful to a prince than many funerals to a physician; a more lenient ruler is the better obeyed.

24.2. The human mind is by nature stubborn, and strives toward the contrary and the difficult, and follows more readily than it is led; and as high-bred and noble horses are better governed by an easy rein, so voluntary innocence follows mercy of its own impulse, and the state thinks it worth saving for itself. More is therefore accomplished by this way.

25.1. Cruelty is least of all a human evil and unworthy of so gentle a spirit; that is a beast's rage, to rejoice in blood and wounds, and, casting off the man, to pass over into a creature of the forest. For what difference is there, I ask you, Alexander, whether you throw Lysimachus to the lion or tear him yourself with your teeth? That maw is yours, that savagery yours. O how you would wish that you yourself had claws, that you yourself had that gaping jaw capable of devouring men! We do not demand of you that this hand, the most certain destruction of your intimates, be wholesome to anyone; that this fierce spirit, the insatiable curse of the nations, be satisfied short of blood and slaughter; it is already called mercy when, to kill a friend, an executioner is chosen from among men.

25.2. This is why savagery above all is to be abominated, because it oversteps first its accustomed bounds, then the human; it seeks out new punishments, calls in invention to devise instruments by which pain may be varied and prolonged, and takes delight in men's sufferings; then that dread disease of the soul reaches the utmost madness, when cruelty has been turned into pleasure and now to kill a man is a joy.

25.3. Hard upon such a man's heels follow aversion, hatreds, poisons, swords; he is assailed by as many perils as he is the peril of many, and he is beset sometimes by private plots, at other times by a public uprising. For a slight and private destruction does not stir whole cities; but what has begun to rage widely and attacks all is shot at from every side.

25.4. Tiny serpents go unnoticed and are not hunted down by the public; but when one of them passes the usual measure and has grown into a monster, when it infects the springs with its spittle and, if it has breathed upon a thing, scorches it and tramples it down wherever it has gone, it is assailed with engines of war. Petty evils can elude us and slip away; the great are met head on.

25.5. Thus one sick man does not even throw a household into confusion; but when by frequent deaths it has appeared that there is a plague, there is an outcry of the state and a flight, and hands are raised even against the gods themselves. Under some one roof a flame has appeared: the household and the neighbours pour on water; but a vast conflagration, which has already fed upon many houses, is buried under a part of the city.

26.1. The cruelty even of private men the hands of slaves have avenged at the certain peril of the cross; the cruelty of tyrants whole nations and peoples—both those whose evil it was and those over whom it impended—have set themselves to root out. Sometimes their own guards have risen up against them, and have practised upon them the treachery and impiety and savagery and whatever else they had learned from them. For what can anyone hope from one whom he has taught to be wicked? Wickedness does not long remain obedient, nor does it sin only so far as it is bidden.

26.2. But suppose that cruelty were safe—what sort of reign is that? Nothing other than the look of captured cities and the terrible faces of public dread. All things mournful, fearful, confused; the very pleasures are feared; men do not enter banquets without anxiety, where the tongue must be carefully guarded even by the drunken, nor the spectacles, from which matter for accusation and peril is sought. Though they be furnished at great expense and with royal resources and the choicest names of artists, yet whom would games delight in a prison?

26.3. What an evil is this, good gods, to kill, to be savage, to delight in the sound of chains and in cutting off the heads of citizens, to shed much blood wherever one comes, to terrify and put to flight by one's mere look? What other life would there be if lions and bears reigned, if power were given to serpents and to every most noxious creature over us?

26.4. Those creatures, devoid of reason and condemned by us on the charge of monstrousness, abstain from their own kind, and even among wild beasts likeness is a safeguard; but the rage of these men does not spare even their own kin, but holds the stranger and his own in equal account, and the more it exercises itself, the more frenzied it grows. Then from the slaughter of individuals it creeps on to the destruction of nations, and it counts as power to throw fire upon roofs and to draw the plough over ancient cities; and to order one man or another killed it thinks too little of an emperor; unless at the same time a herd of wretches has stood beneath the stroke, it thinks its cruelty cramped within bounds.

26.5. That is true felicity: to give safety to many, and to call back many to life from the very brink of death, and by mercy to earn the civic crown. No ornament is worthier or fairer for a prince's eminence than that crown for citizens preserved—not hostile arms stripped from the vanquished, not chariots stained with barbarian blood, not the spoils won in war. This is the divine power: to save by whole companies and as a public act; to kill many and without distinction is the power of fire and ruin.