Book 2

1.1. That I should write on mercy, Nero Caesar, one saying of yours above all impelled me—one which I remember to have heard not without admiration when it was spoken, and afterward to have related to others—a noble saying, of a great soul, of great gentleness, which, not composed nor given for other men's ears, broke out on the sudden and brought your goodness, at strife with your fortune, into the open.

1.2. When Burrus, your prefect—an outstanding man, and born for you as prince—was about to punish two brigands, he was pressing you to write down against whom and on what charge you wished punishment to be inflicted; this, often put off, he was urging that it might at last be done. When, reluctant himself, he had brought out the paper to a reluctant hand and was handing it over, you cried out: "Would that I did not know how to write!"

1.3. O saying worthy to be heard by all the nations that dwell within the Roman empire, and those who lie near it in doubtful liberty, and those who raise themselves against it in strength or in spirit! O saying to be sent forth into the assembly of all mortals, in whose words princes and kings should swear! O saying worthy of the public innocence of the human race, to which that ancient age might be given back!

1.4. Now in truth it would have been fitting that men should agree upon the fair and the good, that the greed for what is another's, from which every evil of the mind arises, should be driven out, and that piety and integrity, with faith and modesty, should rise again, and that the vices, having abused a long reign, should at last yield place to a happy and pure age.

2.1. That this will come to pass, Caesar, it is in great part a delight to hope and to be confident. That gentleness of your spirit will be handed on and will spread little by little through the whole body of the empire, and all things will be moulded into your likeness. From the head comes sound health; from it all things are vigorous and erect, or sunk in languor, according as their spirit lives or wastes away. There will be citizens, there will be allies worthy of this goodness, and throughout the whole world right morals will return; everywhere your hands will be spared.

2.2. Suffer me to linger here a while longer, not so as to flatter your ears—for this is not my way; I had rather offend with truths than please by adulation. What is it, then? Besides that I desire you to be as familiar as possible with your own good deeds and words, so that what is now nature and impulse may become considered judgment, I reflect within myself that many sayings, great but detestable, have come down into human life and are commonly current—such as that, "Let them hate, provided they fear," to which is like the Greek verse that bids the earth be mingled with fire when its author is dead, and others of this stamp.

2.3. And, I know not how, men of genius, in monstrous and hateful material, have expressed violent and stirring sentiments with a more favourable utterance; I have not yet heard a spirited saying that came from a good and gentle source. What then? As you must rarely, reluctantly, and with great hesitation, so must you sometimes write that which has brought letters into your hatred—but, as you do, with great hesitation, with many delays.

3.1. And lest perchance the specious name of mercy should at some time deceive us and lead us into its opposite, let us see what mercy is, of what sort it is, and what its limits are. Mercy is the self-restraint of the mind in the power of avenging, or the leniency of a superior toward an inferior in fixing penalties. It is safer to put forward several definitions, lest a single one fail to comprehend the matter and, so to speak, lose its case on a technicality; and so it may also be called an inclination of the mind toward leniency in exacting punishment.

3.2. That definition will meet with objections, however closely it approaches the truth, if we say that mercy is a moderation which remits something of a deserved and owed penalty: the cry will be raised that no virtue does less for anyone than is due. And yet all men understand mercy to be that which bends short of what might deservedly be appointed.

4.1. The unskilled think severity contrary to it; but no virtue is contrary to a virtue. What then is opposed to mercy? Cruelty, which is nothing else than an atrocity of mind in exacting punishments. "But certain men do not exact punishments, and yet are cruel—such as those who kill unknown men they chance upon, not for gain, but for the sake of killing, and, not content to kill, vent their savagery, like the famous Busiris and Procrustes and the pirates, who flog their captives and put them living into the fire." This is indeed cruelty;

4.2. but because it neither follows upon vengeance (for it has not been injured) nor is angry at any offence (for no crime preceded), it falls outside our definition; for the definition embraced an intemperance of mind in exacting punishments. We may say that this is not cruelty, but ferocity, to which savagery is a pleasure; we may call it madness: for there are various kinds of it, and none more certain than that which reaches the point of slaughtering and mangling men.

4.3. Those, then, I shall call cruel who have a cause for punishing but no measure, as in the case of Phalaris, who, they say, raged—not indeed against innocent men, but beyond the human and reasonable measure. We can escape the quibble and so define it that cruelty be an inclination of the mind toward harsher measures. This mercy repels, bidding it stand far off from her; with severity she is in accord.

4.4. It is to the purpose to inquire in this place what pity is; for most men praise it as a virtue and call a good man compassionate. This too is a vice of the mind. Both lie close beside severity and beside mercy, which we ought to shun; for through the show of severity we fall into cruelty, through the show of mercy into pity. In the latter we err with lighter danger, but the error is equal—we depart from the truth.

5.1. Therefore, just as religion worships the gods while superstition profanes them, so all good men will display mercy and gentleness but will shun pity; for it is a vice of a petty mind that sinks at the sight of others' ills. And so it is most familiar to the worst sort; old women and weak females it is who are moved by the tears of the most guilty, who, if they were allowed, would break open the prison. Pity regards not the cause but the fortune; mercy comes over to reason.

5.2. I know that among the unskilled the sect of the Stoics is in ill repute, as too hard and least of all likely to give good counsel to princes and kings; it is objected to it that it says the wise man does not feel pity, does not pardon. These doctrines, if set down by themselves, are hateful; for they seem to leave no hope for human errors, but to bring all offences to punishment.

5.3. But if that were so, what kind of knowledge is this, which bids us unlearn humanity and closes against fortune, by mutual aid, the surest harbour? But no sect is kinder and gentler, none more loving of men and more attentive to the common good, so that its very aim is to be of use and help, and to take thought not for itself alone, but for all and for each.

5.4. Pity is a sickness of the mind at the sight of others' miseries, or a sadness contracted from another's ills, which it believes befall the undeserving; but sickness does not befall the wise man; his mind is serene, and nothing can occur to cloud it. And nothing so becomes a man as greatness of soul; but the same man cannot be both great and sorrowful. Sorrow crushes the mind, casts it down, contracts it;

5.5. this will not happen to the wise man even in his own calamities, but he will beat back all the anger of fortune and break it before himself; he will always keep the same countenance, calm, unshaken—which he could not do if he admitted sadness.

6.1. Add that the wise man both foresees and has his counsel ready at hand; but nothing clear and pure ever comes from what is troubled. Sadness is unfit for discerning things, for devising what is useful, for avoiding what is dangerous, for weighing what is fair; therefore he does not feel pity, because that does not happen without a misery of the mind.

6.2. All the rest that those who feel pity wish to do, he too will do gladly and with a lofty mind; he will succour another's tears, but not be overcome by them; he will give his hand to the shipwrecked, hospitality to the exile, alms to the needy—not that insulting alms which the greater part of those who wish to seem compassionate fling down, who loathe those they help and fear to be touched by them, but as one man gives to another out of their common stock; he will restore a son to a mother's tears and order the chains to be loosed and rescue a man from the gladiatorial school and bury even a criminal's corpse—but he will do these things with a tranquil mind and with his own countenance unchanged.

6.3. Therefore the wise man will not feel pity, but will succour, will be of profit, since he is born for the common help and the public good, of which he will give to each a share. He will extend his goodness even to the unfortunate, and, in due proportion, to those who deserve blame and need amendment; but to the afflicted and those labouring under chance misfortune he will come to the rescue far more gladly. As often as he can, he will intervene against fortune; for where will he better employ his resources or his strength than in restoring what mischance has overthrown? He will not, indeed, cast down his face or his mind at anyone's withered limb, or squalid emaciation, or old age leaning upon a staff; but he will profit all the deserving, and after the manner of the gods will look graciously upon the unfortunate.

6.4. Pity is the neighbour of misery; for it has and draws something from it. You may know that those eyes are weak which themselves grow moist at another's inflammation, just as it is a disease, by Hercules, and not cheerfulness, always to laugh with those who laugh, and to gape one's own mouth too at everyone's yawning; pity is a vice of minds too fearful of misery, and if anyone demands it of the wise man, it is much as if he demanded lamentation and groans at the funerals of strangers.

7.1. "But why will he not pardon?" Come, let us now also determine what pardon is, and we shall know that it ought not to be granted by the wise man. Pardon is the remission of a deserved penalty. Why the wise man ought not to grant this, those who have made this their aim give the reason at greater length; I, to speak briefly as though in another's case: "Pardon is granted to one who ought to have been punished; but the wise man does nothing that he ought not, omits nothing that he ought; therefore the penalty which he ought to exact he does not remit.

7.2. But that which you wish to obtain by pardon, he will grant you by a more honourable way; for the wise man will spare, will take counsel, and will correct; he will do the same that he would do if he pardoned, yet he will not pardon, since he who pardons confesses that he has omitted something that ought to have been done. He will admonish some by words only, and will not afflict them with punishment, regarding their age as capable of amendment; another, plainly labouring under the odium of his crime, he will order to go unharmed, because he was deceived, because he slipped through wine; he will dismiss enemies unharmed, sometimes even with praise, if they were summoned to war for honourable causes—for loyalty, for a treaty, for liberty.

7.3. All these are the works not of pardon, but of mercy. Mercy has free judgment; it judges not by the letter of the formula, but according to what is fair and good; it may both acquit and assess the suit at whatever it wishes. It does none of these things as though it had done less than was just, but as though what it has determined were most just of all. But to pardon is not to punish one whom you judge ought to be punished; pardon is the remission of a due penalty. Mercy first of all secures this—that of those whom it dismisses it pronounces that they ought to have suffered nothing further; it is fuller than pardon, more honourable.

7.4. As I think, the dispute is about a word; about the thing itself there is agreement. The wise man will remit much; he will save many of an unsound but curable nature. He will imitate good husbandmen, who tend not only the straight and tall trees; to those too which some cause has bent they apply props by which they may be straightened; some they prune, lest the branches check the height; some, weak from the fault of their soil, they nourish; to some, labouring under another's shade, they open the sky.

7.5. He will see what nature is to be handled in what way, by what means crooked things may be brought straight. [gap]

frag. [Fragment: testimonia of lost portions, preserved in Hildebert of Le Mans, Letter 1.3 (Migne, vol. 171, col. 145).] Of mercy too Seneca composed brief precepts for princes, in which he loved a brevity not obscure, that those occupied with great affairs might not weary of reading them. These, then, undertaken for you and addressed to you, take up, and call to mind what you have long since learned of yourself and through yourself. They are few: It belongs to mercy to take something from the avenging sentence. Whoever leaves no charge unpunished, himself does wrong. It is a fault to pursue a fault to the uttermost. He proclaims himself merciless to whom whatever is permitted is also a pleasure. [gap] It is a glorious virtue in a prince to punish short of what is permitted. It is virtue to be drawn to vengeance by necessity, not to come to it by will. He who, though offended, is merciful, savours of something great and divine. [gap] Likewise: A good prince punishes no one without a penalty, proscribes no one without grief. A good prince so pursues a crime that he remembers the man whom he punishes. [gap] Likewise: A good prince is master of himself, servant of his people; he holds no man's blood cheap. He deals with an enemy, but with one who can become a friend; with a guilty man, but with a man. Whosesoever it be, because he could not give it, he counts it a crime to take life away. Therefore, as often as blood is shed, he is confounded.