Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
if a man is in equal peril whether he sits still or takes action,
he will feel actual pleasure in risking his life, and will fling
it away as lightly as though it were not his own.
XIII. A calm and peaceful king trusts his guards, because he makes
use of them to ensure the common safety of all his subjects, and
his soldiers, who see that the security of the state depends upon
their labours, cheerfully undergo the severest toil and glory in
being the protectors of the father of their country: whereas your
harsh and murderous tyrant must needs be disliked even by his own
janissaries. No man can expect willing and loyal service from those
whom he uses like the rack and the axe, as instruments of torture
and death, to whom he casts men as he would cast them to wild beasts.
No prisoner at the bar is so full of agony and anxiety as a tyrant;
for while he dreads both gods and men because they have witnessed,
{399} and will avenge his crimes, he has at the same time so far
committed himself to this course of action that he is not able to
alter it. This is perhaps the very worst quality of cruelty: a man
must go on exercising it, and it is impossible for him to retrace
his steps and start in a better path; for crimes must be safeguarded
by fresh crimes. Yet who can be more unhappy than he who is actually
compelled to be a villain? How greatly he ought to be pitied: I
mean, by himself, for it would be impious for others to pity a man
who has made use of his power to murder and ravage, who has rendered
himself mistrusted by every one at home and abroad, who fears the
very soldiers to whom he flees for safety, who dare not rely upon
the loyalty of his friends or the affection of his children: who,
whenever he considers what he has done, and what he is about to do,
and calls to mind all the crimes and torturings with which his
conscience is burdened, must often fear death, and yet must often
wish for it, for he must be even more hateful to himself than he
is to his subjects. On the other hand, he who takes an interest in
the entire state, who watches over every department of it with more
or less care, who attends to all the business of the state as well
as if it were his own, who is naturally inclined to mild measures,
and shows, even when it is to his advantage to punish, how unwilling
he is to make use of harsh remedies; who has no angry or savage
feelings, but wields his authority calmly and beneficially, being
anxious that even his subordinate officers shall be popular with
his countrymen, who thinks his happiness complete if he can make
the nation share his prosperity, who is courteous in language, whose
presence is easy of access, who looks obligingly upon his subjects,
who is disposed to grant all their reasonable wishes, and does not
treat their unreasonable wishes with harshness—such a prince is
loved, protected, and worshipped by his whole empire. Men talk of
such a one in private in the same {400} words which they use in
public: they are eager to bring up families under his reign, and
they put an end to the childlessness which public misery had
previously rendered general: every one feels that he will indeed
deserve that his children should be grateful to him for having
brought them into so happy an age. Such a prince is rendered safe
by his own beneficence; he has no need of guards, their arms serve
him merely as decorations.
XIV. What, then, is his duty? It is that of good parents, who
sometimes scold their children goodnaturedly, sometimes threaten
them, and sometimes even flog them. No man in his senses disinherits
his son for his first offence: he does not pass this extreme sentence
upon him unless his patience has been worn out by many grievous
wrongs, unless he fears that his son will do something worse than
that which he punishes him for having done; before doing this he
makes many attempts to lead his son’s mind into the right way while
it is still hesitating between good and evil and has only taken its
first steps in depravity; it is only when its case is hopeless that
he adopts this extreme measure. No one demands that people should
be executed until after he has failed to reform them. This which
is the duty of a parent, is also that of the prince whom with no
unmeaning flattery we call “The Father of our Country.” Other names
are given as titles of honour: we have styled some men “The Great,”
“The Fortunate,” or “The August,” and have thus satisfied their
passion for grandeur by bestowing upon them all the dignity that
we could: but when we style a man “The Father of his Country” we
give him to understand that we have entrusted him with a father’s
power over us, which is of the mildest character, for a father takes
thought for his children and subordinates his own interests to
theirs. It is long before a father will cut off a member of his own
body: even after he has cut it off he longs to replace it, and in
cutting it off he laments {401} and hesitates much and long: for
he who condemns quickly is not far from being willing to condemn;
and he who inflicts too great punishment comes very near to punishing
unjustly.
XV. Within my own recollection the people stabbed in the forum with
their writing-styles a Roman knight named Tricho, because he had
flogged his son to death: even the authority of Augustus Caesar
could hardly save him from the angry clutches of both fathers and
sons: but every one admired Tarius, who, on discovering that his
son meditated parricide, tried him, convicted him, and was then
satisfied with punishing him by exile, and that, too, to that
pleasant place of exile, Marseilles, where he made him the same
yearly allowance which he had done while he was innocent: the result
of this generosity was that even in a city where every villain finds
some one to defend him, no one doubted that he was justly condemned,
since even the father who was unable to hate him, nevertheless had
condemned him. In this very same instance I will give you an example
of a good prince, which you may compare with a good father. Tarius,
when about to sit in judgement on his son, invited Augustus Caesar
to assist in trying him: Augustus came into his private house, sat
beside the father, took part in another man’s family council, and
did not say, “Nay, let him rather come to my house,” because if he
had done so, the trial would have been conducted by Caesar and not
by the father. When the cause had been heard, after all that the
young man pleaded in his own defence and all that was alleged against
him had been thoroughly discussed, the emperor begged that each man
would write his sentence (instead of pronouncing it aloud), in order
that they might not all follow Caesar in giving sentence: then,
before the tablets were opened, he declared that if Tarius, who was
a rich man, made him his heir, he would not accept the bequest. One
might say “It showed a paltry mind in him {402} to fear that people
would think that he condemned the son in order to enable himself
to inherit the estate.” I am of a contrary opinion—any one of us
ought to have sufficient trust in the consciousness of his own
integrity to defend him against calumny, but princes must take great
pains to avoid even the appearance of evil. He swore that he would
not accept the property. On that day Tarius lost two heirs to his
estate, but Caesar gained the liberty of forming an unbiassed
judgement: and when he had proved that his severity was disinterested,
a point of which a prince should never lose sight, he gave sentence
that the son should be banished to whatever place the father might
choose. He did not sentence him to the sack and the snakes, or to
prison, because he thought, not of who it was upon whom he was
passing sentence, but of who it was with whom he was sitting in
judgement: he said that a father ought to be satisfied with the
mildest form of punishment for his stripling son, who had been
seduced into a crime which he had attempted so faintheartedly as
to be almost innocent of it, and that he ought to be removed from
Rome and out of his father’s sight.
XVI. How worthy was he to be invited by fathers to join their family
councils: how worthy to be made co-heir with innocent children!
This is the sort of clemency which befits a prince; wherever he
goes, let him make every one more charitable. In the king’s sight,
no one ought to be so despicable that he should not notice whether
he lives or dies: be his character what it may, he is a part of the
empire. Let us take examples for great kingdoms from smaller ones.
There are many forms of royalty: a prince reigns over his subjects,
a father over his children, a teacher over his scholars, a tribune
or centurion over his soldiers. Would not he, who constantly punished
his children by beating them for the most trifling faults, be thought
the worst of fathers? Which is worthier to impart {403} a liberal
education: he who flays his scholars alive if their memory be weak,
or if their eyes do not run quickly along the lines as they read,
or he who prefers to improve and instruct them by kindly warnings
and moral influence? If a tribune or a centurion is harsh, he will
make men deserters, and one cannot blame them for desertion. It is
never right to rule a human being more harshly and cruelly than we
rule dumb animals; yet a skilled horse-breaker will not scare a
horse by frequent blows, because he will become timid and vicious
if you do not soothe him with pats and caresses. So also a huntsman,
both when he is teaching puppies to follow the tracks of wild
animals, and when he uses dogs already trained to drive them from
their lairs and hunt them, does not often threaten to beat them,
for, if he does, he will break their spirit, and make them stupid
and currish with fear; though, on the other hand, he will not allow
them to roam and range about unrestrained. The same is the case
with those who drive the slower draught cattle, which, though brutal
treatment and wretchedness is their lot from their birth, still,
by excessive cruelty may be made to refuse to draw.
XVII. No creature is more self-willed, requires more careful
management, or ought to be treated with greater indulgence than
man. What, indeed, can be more foolish than that we should blush
to show anger against dogs or beasts of burden, and yet wish one
man to be most abominably ill-treated by another? We are not angry
with diseases, but apply remedies to them: but this also is a disease
of the mind, and requires soothing medicine and a physician who is
anything but angry with his patient. It is the part of a bad physician
to despair of effecting a cure: he, to whom the care of all men’s
well-being is entrusted, ought to act like a good physician, and
not be in a hurry to give up hope or to declare that the symptoms
are mortal: he should wrestle with vices, withstand them, reproach
{404} some with their distemper, and deceive others by a soothing
mode of treatment, because he will cure his patient more quickly
and more thoroughly if the medicines which he administers escape
his notice: a prince should take care not only of the recovery of
his people, but also that their scars should be honourable. Cruel
punishments do a king no honour: for who doubts that he is able to
inflict them? but, on the other hand, it does him great honour to
restrain his powers, to save many from the wrath of others, and
sacrifice no one to his own.
XVIII. It is creditable to a man to keep within reasonable bounds
in his treatment of his slaves. Even in the case of a human chattel
one ought to consider, not how much one can torture him with impunity,
but how far such treatment is permitted by natural goodness and
justice, which prompts us to act kindly towards even prisoners of