Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
war and slaves bought for a price (how much more towards free-born,
respectable gentlemen?), and not to treat them with scornful brutality
as human chattels, but as persons somewhat below ourselves in
station, who have been placed under our protection rather than
assigned to us as servants. Slaves are allowed to run and take
sanctuary at the statue of a god, though the laws allows a slave
to be ill-treated to any extent, there are nevertheless some things
which the common laws of life forbid us to do to a human being. Who
does not hate Vedius Pollio[10] more even than his own slaves did,
because he used to fatten his lampreys with human blood, and ordered
those who had offended him in any way to be cast into his fish-pond,
or rather snake-pond? That {405} man deserved to die a thousand
deaths, both for throwing his slaves to be devoured by the lampreys
which he himself meant to eat, and for keeping lampreys that he
might feed them in such a fashion. Cruel masters are pointed at
with disgust in all parts of the city, and are hated and loathed;
the wrong-doings of kings are enacted on a wider theatre: their
shame and unpopularity endures for ages: yet how far better it would
have been never to have been born than to be numbered among those
who have been born to do their country harm!
XIX. Nothing can be imagined which is more becoming to a sovereign
than clemency, by whatever title and right he may be set over his
fellow citizens. The greater his power, the more beautiful and
admirable he will confess his clemency to be: for there is no reason
why power should do any harm, if only it be wielded in accordance
with the laws of nature. Nature herself has conceived the idea of
a king, as you may learn from various animals, and especially from
bees, among whom the king’s cell is the roomiest, and is placed in
the most central and safest part of the hive; moreover, he does no
work, but employs himself in keeping the others up to their work.
If the king be lost, the entire swarm disperses: they never endure
to have more than one king at a time, and find out which is the
better by making them fight with one another: moreover the king is
distinguished by his statelier appearance, being both larger and
more brilliantly coloured than the other bees. The most remarkable
distinction, however, is the following: bees are very fierce, and
for their size are the most pugnacious of creatures, and leave their
stings in the wounds which they make, but the king himself has no
sting: nature does not wish him to be savage or to seek revenge at
so dear a rate, and so has deprived him of his weapon and disarmed
his rage. She has offered him as a pattern to great sovereigns: for
she is wont to practise {406} herself in small matters, and to
scatter abroad tiny models of the hugest structures. We ought to
be ashamed of not learning a lesson in behaviour from these small
creatures, for a man, who has so much more power of doing harm than
they, ought to show a correspondingly greater amount of self-control.
Would that human beings were subject to the same law, and that their
anger destroyed itself together with its instrument, so that they
could only inflict a wound once, and would not make use of the
strength of others to carry out their hatreds: for their fury would
soon grow faint if it carried its own punishment with it, and could
only give rein to its violence at the risk of death. Even as it is,
however, no one can exercise it with safety, for he must needs feel
as much fear as he hopes to cause, he must watch every one’s
movements, and even when his enemies are not laying violent hands
upon him he must bear in mind that they are plotting to do so, and
he cannot have a single moment free from alarm. Would any one endure
to live such a life as this, when he might enjoy the privileges of
his high station to the general joy of all men, without injuring
any one, and for that very reason have no one to fear? for it is a
mistake to suppose that the king can be safe in a state where nothing
is safe from the king: he can only purchase a life without anxiety
for himself by guaranteeing the same for his subjects. He need not
pile up lofty citadels, escarp steep hills, cut away the sides of
mountains, and fence himself about with many lines of walls and
towers: clemency will render a king safe even upon an open plain.
The one fortification which cannot be stormed is the love of his
countrymen. What can be more glorious than a life which every one
spontaneously and without official pressure hopes may last long?
to excite men’s fears, not their hopes, if one’s health gives way
a little? to know that no one holds anything so dear that he would
not be glad to give it in exchange for the health of his sovereign?
“O, may {407} no evil befall him!” they would cry: “he must live
for his own sake, not only for ours: his constant proofs of goodness
have made him belong to the state instead of the state belonging
to him.” Who would dare to plot any danger to such a king? Who would
not rather, if he could, keep misfortune far from one under whom
justice, peace, decency, security and merit flourish, under whom
the state grows rich with an abundance of all good things, and looks
upon its ruler in the same spirit of adoration and respect with
which we should look upon the immortal gods, if they allowed us to
behold them as we behold him? Why! does not that man come very close
to the gods who acts in a god-like manner, and who is beneficent,
open-handed, and powerful for good? Your aim and your pride ought
to lie in being thought the best, as well as the greatest of mankind.
XX. A prince generally inflicts punishment for one of two reasons:
he wishes either to assert his own rights or those of another. I
will first discuss the case in which he is personally concerned,
for it is more difficult for him to act with moderation when he
acts under the impulse of actual pain than when he merely does so
for the sake of the example. It is unnecessary in this place to
remind him to be slow to believe what he hears, to ferret out the
truth, to show favour to innocence, and to bear in mind that to
prove it is as much the business of the judge as that of the prisoner;
for these considerations are connected with justice, not with
clemency: what we are now encouraging him to do is not to lose
control over his feelings when he receives an unmistakeable injury,
and to forego punishing it if he possibly can do so with safety,
if not, to moderate the severity of the punishment, and to show
himself far more unwilling to forgive wrongs done to others than
those done to himself: for, just as the truly generous man is not
he who gives away what belongs to others, but he who deprives himself
of what he gives to another, so also I should not call a prince
clement {408} who looked goodnaturedly upon a wrong done to someone
else, but one who is unmoved even by the sting of a personal injury,
who understands how magnanimous it is for one whose power is unlimited
to allow himself to be wronged, and that there is no more noble
spectacle than that of a sovereign who has received an injury without
avenging it.
XXI. Vengeance effects two purposes: it either affords compensation
to the person to whom the wrong was done, or it ensures him against
molestation for the future. A prince is too rich to need compensation,
and his power is too evident for him to require to gain a reputation
for power by causing any one to suffer. I mean, when he is attacked
and injured by his inferiors, for if he sees those who once were
his equals in a position of inferiority to himself he is sufficiently
avenged. A king may be killed by a slave, or a serpent, or an arrow:
but no one can be saved except by some one who is greater than him
whom he saves. He, therefore, who has the power of giving and of
taking away life ought to use such a great gift of heaven in a
spirited manner. Above all, if he once obtains this power over those
who he knows were once on a level with himself, he has completed
his revenge, and done all that he need to towards the punishment
of his adversary: for he who owes his life to another must have
lost it, and he who has been cast down from on high and lies at his
enemy’s feet with his kingdom and his life depending upon the
pleasure of another, adds to the glory of his preserver if he be
allowed to live, and increases his reputation much more by remaining
unhurt than if he were put out of the way. In the former case he
remains as an everlasting testimony to the valour of his conqueror;
whereas if led in the procession of a triumph he would have soon
passed out of sight.[11] If, however, his kingdom also may be safely
left in his hands {409} and he himself replaced upon the throne
from which he has fallen, such a measure confers an immense increase
of lustre on him who scorned to take anything from a conquered king
beyond the glory of having conquered him. To do this is to triumph
even over one’s own victory, and to declare that one has found
nothing among the vanquished which it was worth the victor’s while
to take. As for his countrymen, strangers, and persons of mean
condition, he ought to treat them with all the less severity because
it costs so much less to overcome them. Some you would be glad to
spare, against some you would disdain to assert your rights, and
would forbear to touch them as you would to touch little insects
which defile your hands when you crush them: but in the case of men
upon whom all eyes are fixed, whether they be spared or condemned,
you should seize the opportunity of making your clemency widely
known.
XXII. Let us now pass on to the consideration of wrongs done to
others, in avenging which the law has aimed at three ends, which
the prince will do well to aim at also: they are, either that it
may correct him whom it punishes, or that his punishment may render
other men better, or that, by bad men being put out of the way, the
rest may live without fear. You will more easily correct the men
themselves by a slight punishment, for he who has some part of his
fortune remaining untouched will behave less recklessly; on the
other hand, no one cares about respectability after he has lost it:
it is a species of impunity to have nothing left for punishment to
take away. It is conducive, however, to good morals in a state,
that punishment should seldom be inflicted: for where there is a
multitude of sinners men become familiar with sin, shame is less
felt when shared with a number of fellow-criminals, and severe
sentences, if frequently pronounced, lose the influence which
constitutes their chief power as remedial measures. A good king
establishes a good standard of morals for his {410} kingdom and
drives away vices if he is long-suffering with them, not that he
should seem to encourage them, but to be very unwilling and to
suffer much when he is forced to chastise them. Clemency in a
sovereign even makes men ashamed to do wrong: for punishment seems
far more grievous when inflicted by a merciful man.
XXIII. Besides this, you will find that sins which are frequently
punished are frequently committed. Your father sewed up more
parricides in sacks during five years, than we hear of in all
previous centuries. As long as the greatest of crimes remained
without any special law, children were much more timid about
committing it. Our wise ancestors, deeply skilled in human nature,
preferred to pass over this as being a wickedness too great for
belief, and beyond the audacity of the worst criminal, rather than
teach men that it might be done by appointing a penalty for doing
it: parricides, consequently, were unknown until a law was made
against them, and the penalty showed them the way to the crime.