Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
passed a disturbed night, reflecting that he would be obliged to
condemn to death a youth of noble birth, who was guilty of no crime
save this one, and who was the grandson of Gnaeus Pompeius. He, who
had sat at dinner and heard M. Antonius[6] read aloud his edict for
the proscription, could not now bear to put one single man to death.
With groans he kept at intervals making various inconsistent
exclamations:—“What! shall I allow my assassin to walk about at his
ease while I am racked by fears? Shall the man not be punished who
has plotted not merely to slay but actually to sacrifice at the
altar” (for the conspirators intended to attack him when he was
sacrificing), “now when there is peace by land and sea, that life
which so many civil wars have sought in vain, which has passed
unharmed through so many battles of fleets and armies?”
Then, after an interval of silence, he would say to himself in a
far louder, angrier tone than he had used to Cinna, “Why do you
live, if it be to so many men’s advantage that you should die? Is
there no end to these executions? to this bloodshed? I am a figure
set up for nobly-born youths to sharpen their swords on. Is life
worth having, if so many must perish to prevent my losing it?” At
last his wife Livia interrupted him, saying: “Will you take a woman’s
{393} advice? Do as the physicians do, who, when the usual remedies
fail, try their opposites. Hitherto you have gained nothing by harsh
measures: Salvidienus has been followed by Lepidus, Lepidus by
Muraena, Muraena by Caepio, and Caepio by Egnatius, not to mention
others of whom one feels ashamed of their having dared to attempt
so great a deed. Now try what effect clemency will have: pardon
Lucius Cinna. He has been detected, he cannot now do you any harm,
and he can do your reputation much good.” Delighted at finding some
one to support his own view of the case, he thanked his wife,
straightway ordered his friends, whose counsel he had asked for,
to be told that he did not require their advice, and summoned Cinna
alone. After ordering a second seat to be placed for Cinna, he sent
every one else out of the room, and said:—“The first request which
I have to make of you is, that you will not interrupt me while I
am speaking to you: that you will not cry out in the middle of my
address to you: you shall be allowed time to speak freely in answer
to me. Cinna, when I found you in the enemy’s camp, you who had not
become but were actually born my enemy, I saved your life, and
restored to you the whole of your father’s estate. You are now so
prosperous and so rich, that many of the victorious party envy you,
the vanquished one: when you were a candidate for the priesthood I
passed over many others whose parents had served with me in the
wars, and gave it to you: and now, after I have deserved so well
of you, you have made up your mind to kill me.” When at this word
the man exclaimed that he was far from being so insane, Augustus
replied, “You do not keep your promise, Cinna; it was agreed upon
between us that you should not interrupt me. I repeat, you are
preparing to kill me.” He then proceeded to tell him of the place,
the names of his accomplices, the day, the way in which they had
arranged to do the deed, and which of them was to give the fatal
stab. {394} When he saw Cinna’s eyes fixed upon the ground, and
that he was silent, no longer because of the agreement, but from
consciousness of his guilt, he said, “What is your intention in
doing this? is it that you yourself may be emperor? The Roman people
must indeed be in a bad way if nothing but my life prevents your
ruling over them. You cannot even maintain the dignity of your own
house: you have recently been defeated in a legal encounter by the
superior influence of a freedman: and so you can find no easier
task than to call your friends to rally round you against Caesar.
Come, now, if you think that I alone stand in the way of your
ambition; will Paulus and Fabius Maximus, will the Cossi and the
Servilii and all that band of nobles, whose names are no empty
pretence, but whose ancestry really renders them illustrious—will
they endure that you should rule over them?” Not to fill up the
greater part of this book by repeating the whole of his speech—for
he is known to have spoken for more than two hours, lengthening out
this punishment, which was the only one which he intended to
inflict—he said at last: “Cinna, I grant you your life for the
second time: when I gave it you before you were an open enemy, you
are now a secret plotter and parricide.[7] From this day forth let
us be friends: let us try which of us is the more sincere, I in
giving you your life, or you in owing your life to me.” After this
he of his own accord bestowed the consulship upon him, complaining
of his not venturing to offer himself as a candidate for that office,
and found him ever afterwards his most grateful and loyal adherent.
Cinna made the emperor his sole heir, and no one ever again formed
any plot against him.
X. Your great-great-grandfather spared the vanquished: for whom
could he have ruled over, had he not spared them? He recruited
Sallustius, the Cocoeii, the Deillii, and the whole {395} inner
circle of his court from the camp of his opponents. Soon afterwards
his clemency gave him a Domitius, a Messala, an Asinius, a Cicero,
and all the flower of the state. For what a long time he waited for
Lepidus to die: for years he allowed him to retain all the insignia
of royalty, and did not allow the office of pontifex maximus to be
conferred upon himself until after Lepidus’s death; for he wished
it to be called a honourable office rather than a spoil stripped
from a vanquished foe. It was this clemency which made him end his
days in safety and security: this it was which rendered him popular
and beloved, although he had laid his hands on the neck of the
Romans when they were still unused to bearing the yoke: this gives
him even at the present day a reputation such as hardly any prince
has enjoyed during his own lifetime. We believe him to be a god,
and not merely because we are bidden to do so. We declare that
Augustus was a good emperor, and that he was well worthy to bear
his parent’s name, for no other reason than because he did not even
show cruelty in avenging personal insults, which most princes feel
more keenly than actual injuries; because he smiled at scandalous
jests against himself, because it was evident that he himself
suffered when he punished others, because he was so far from putting
to death even those whom he had convicted of intriguing with his
daughter, that when they were banished he gave them passports to
enable them to travel more safely. When you know that there will
be many who will take your quarrel upon themselves, and will try
to gain your favour by the murder of your enemies, you do indeed
pardon them if you not only grant them their lives but ensure that
they shall not lose them.
XI. Such was Augustus when an old man, or when growing old: in his
youth he was hasty and passionate, and did many things upon which
he looked back with regret. No one will venture to compare the rule
of the {396} blessed Augustus to the mildness of your own, even if
your youth be compared with his more than ripe old age: he was
gentle and placable, but it was after he had dyed the sea at Actium
with Roman blood; after he had wrecked both the enemy’s fleet and
his own at Sicily; after the holocaust of Perusia and the proscriptions.
But I do not call it clemency to be wearied of cruelty; true clemency,
Caesar, is that which you display, which has not begun from remorse
at its past ferocity, on which there is no stain, which has never
shed the blood of your countrymen: this, when combined with unlimited
power, shows the truest self-control and all-embracing love of the
human race as of one’s self, not corrupted by any low desires, any
extravagant ideas, or any of the bad examples of former emperors
into trying, by actual experiment, how great a tyranny you would
be allowed to exercise over his countrymen, but inclining rather
to blunting your sword of empire. You, Caesar, have granted us the
boon of keeping our state free from bloodshed, and that of which
you boast, that you have not caused one single drop of blood to
flow in any part of the world, is all the more magnanimous and
marvellous because no one ever had the power of the sword placed
in his hands at an earlier age. Clemency, then, makes princes safer
as well as more respected, and is a glory to empires besides being
their most trustworthy means of preservation. Why have legitimate
sovereigns grown old on the throne, and bequeathed their power to
their children and grandchildren, while the sway of despotic usurpers
is both hateful and shortlived l? What is the difference between
the tyrant and the king—for their outward symbols of authority and
their powers are the same—except it be that tyrants take delight
in cruelty, whereas kings are only cruel for good reasons and because
they cannot help it.[8]
{397}
XII. “What, then,” say you, “do not kings also put men to death?”
They do, but only when that measure is recommended by the public
advantage: tyrants enjoy cruelty. A tyrant differs from a king in
deeds, not in title: for the elder Dionysius deserves to be preferred
before many kings, and what can prevent our styling Lucius Sulla a
tyrant, since he only left off slaying because he had no more enemies
to slay? Although he laid down his dictatorship and resumed the
garb of a private citizen, yet what tyrant ever drank human blood
as greedily as he, who ordered seven thousand Roman citizens to be
butchered, and who, on hearing the shrieks of so many thousands
being put to the sword as he sat in the temple of Bellona, said to
the terror-stricken Senate, “Let us attend to our business, Conscript
Fathers; it is only a few disturbers of the public peace who are
being put to death by my orders.” In saying this he did not lie:
they really seemed few to Sulla. But we shall speak of Sulla
presently, when we consider how we ought to feel anger against our
enemies, at any rate when our own countrymen, members of the same
community as ourselves, have been torn away from it and assumed the
name of enemies: in the meanwhile, as I was saying, clemency is
what makes the great distinction between kings and tyrants. Though
each of them may be equally fenced around by armed soldiers,
nevertheless the one uses his troops to safeguard the peace of his
kingdom, the other uses them to quell great hatred by great terror:
and yet he does not look with any confidence upon those to whose
hands he entrusts himself. He is driven in opposite directions by
conflicting passions: for since he is hated because he is feared,
he wishes to be feared because he is {398} hated: and he acts up
to the spirit of that odious verse, which has cast so many headlong
from their thrones—
“Why, let them hate me, if they fear me too!”—
not knowing how frantic men become when their hatred becomes
excessive: for a moderate amount of fear restrains men, but a
constant and keen apprehension of the worst tortures rouses up even
the most grovelling spirits to deeds of reckless courage, and causes
them to hesitate at nothing. Just so a string stuck full of feathers[9]
will prevent wild beasts escaping: but should a horseman begin to
shoot at them from another quarter, they will attempt to escape
over the very thing that scared them, and will trample the cause
of their alarm underfoot. No courage is so great as that which is
born of utter desperation. In order to keep people down by terror,
you must grant them a certain amount of security, and let them see
that they have far more to hope for than to fear: for otherwise,