Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
Filial affection soon perished, for since that time we have seen
more men punished by the sack than by the cross. Where men are
seldom punished innocence becomes the rule, and is encouraged as a
public benefit. If a state thinks itself innocent, it will be
innocent: it will be all the more angry with those who corrupt the
general simplicity of manners if it sees that they are few in number.
Believe me, it is a dangerous thing to show a state how great a
majority of bad men it contains.
XXIV. A proposal was once made in the Senate to distinguish slaves
from free men by their dress: it was then discovered how dangerous
it would be for our slaves to be able to count our numbers. Be
assured that the same thing would be the case if no one’s offence
is pardoned: it will quickly be discovered how far the number of
bad men exceeds that of the good. Many executions are as disgraceful
to a sovereign as many funerals are to a physician: {411} one who
governs less strictly is better obeyed. The human mind is naturally
self-willed, kicks against the goad, and sets its face against
authority; it will follow more readily than it can be led. As
well-bred and high-spirited horses are best managed with a loose
rein, so mercy gives men’s minds a spontaneous bias towards innocence,
and the public think that it is worth observing. Mercy, therefore,
does more good than severity.
XXV, Cruelty is far from being a human vice, and is unworthy of
man’s gentle mind: it is mere bestial madness to take pleasure in
blood and wounds, to cast off humanity and transform oneself into
a wild beast of the forest. Pray, Alexander, what is the difference
between your throwing Lysimachus into a lion’s den and tearing his
flesh with your own teeth? it is you that have the lion’s maw, and
the lion’s fierceness. How pleased you would be if you had claws
instead of nails, and jaws that were capable of devouring men! We
do not expect of you that your hand, the sure murderer of your best
friends, should restore health to any one; or that your proud spirit,
that inexhaustible source of evil to all nations, should be satisfied
with anything short of blood and slaughter: we rather call it mercy
that your friend should have a human being chosen to be his butcher.
The reason why cruelty is the most hateful of all vices is that it
goes first beyond the ordinary limits, and then beyond those of
humanity; that it devises new kinds of punishments, calls ingenuity
to aid it in inventing devices for varying and lengthening men’s
torture, and takes delight in their sufferings: this accursed disease
of the mind reaches its highest pitch of madness when cruelty itself
turns into pleasure, and the act of killing a man becomes enjoyment.
Such a ruler is soon cast down from his throne; his life is attempted
by poison one day and by the sword the next; he is exposed to as
many dangers as there are men to whom he is dangerous, and he {412}
is sometimes destroyed by the plots of individuals, and at others
by a general insurrection. Whole communities are not roused to
action by unimportant outrages on private persons; but cruelty which
takes a wider range, and from which no one is safe, becomes a mark
for all men’s weapons. Very small snakes escape our notice, and the
whole country does not combine to destroy them; but when one of
them exceeds the usual size and grows into a monster, when it poisons
fountains with its spittle, scorches herbage with its breath, and
spreads ruin wherever it crawls, we shoot at it with military
engines. Trifling evils may cheat us and elude our observation, but
we gird up our loins to attack great ones. One sick person does not
so much as disquiet the house in which he lies; but when frequent
deaths show that a plague is raging, there is a general outcry, men
take to flight and shake their fists angrily at the very gods
themselves. If a fire breaks out under one single roof, the family
and the neighbours pour water upon it; but a wide conflagration
which has consumed many houses must be smothered under the ruins
of a whole quarter of a city.
XXVI. The cruelty even of private men has sometimes been revenged
by their slaves in spite of the certainty that they will be crucified:
whole kingdoms and nations when oppressed by tyrants or threatened
by them, have attempted their destruction. Sometimes their own
guards have risen in revolt, and have used against their master all
the deceit, disloyalty, and ferocity which they have learned from
him. What, indeed, can he expect from those whom he has taught to
be wicked? A bad man will not long be obedient, and will not do
only as much evil as he is ordered. But even if the tyrant may be
cruel with safety, how miserable his kingdom must be: it must look
like a city taken by storm, like some frightful scene of general
panic. Everywhere sorrow, anxiety, disorder; men dread even their
own pleasures; they cannot even dine with one another in safety
{413} when they have to keep watch over their tongues even when in
their cups, nor can they safely attend the public shows when informers
are ready to find grounds for their impeachment in their behaviour
there. Although the spectacles be provided at an enormous expense,
with royal magnificence and with world-famous artists, yet who cares
for amusement when he is in prison? Ye gods! what a miserable life
it is to slaughter and to rage, to delight in the clanking of chains,
and to cut off one’s countrymen’s heads, to cause blood to flow
freely wherever one goes, to terrify people, and make them flee
away out of one’s sight! It is what would happen if bears or lions
were our masters, if serpents and all the most venomous creatures
were given power over us. Even these animals, devoid of reason as
they are, and accused by us of cruel ferocity, spare their own kind,
and wild beasts themselves respect their own likeness: but the fury
of tyrants does not even stop short at their own relations, and
they treat friends and strangers alike, only becoming more violent
the more they indulge their passions. By insensible degrees he
proceeds from the slaughter of individuals to the ruin of nations,
and thinks it a sign of power to set roofs on fire and to plough
up the sites of ancient cities: he considers it unworthy of an
emperor to order only one or two people to be put to death, and
thinks that his cruelty is unduly restrained if whole troops of
wretches are not sent to execution together. True happiness, on the
other hand; consists in saving many men’s lives, in calling them
back from the very gates of death, and in being so merciful as to
deserve a civic crown.[12] No decoration is more worthy or more
becoming to a prince’s rank than that crown “for saving the lives
of fellow-citizens”: not trophies torn from a vanquished enemy, not
{414} chariots wet with their savage owner’s blood, not spoils
captured in war. This power which saves men’s lives by crowds and
by nations, is godlike: the power of extensive and indiscrimate
massacre is the power of downfall and conflagration.
[1] _Nobilis_.
[2] The text is corrupt. I have followed Gertz’s conjectural
emendation, _mansuefactionis_, but I believe that Lipsius is right
in thinking that a great deal more than one word has been lost here.
[3] _Pace_.
[4] Tutum.
[5] Gertz reads _sexagesimum_, his sixtieth year, which he calls
“the not very audacious conjecture of Wesseling,” and adds that he
does so because of the words at the beginning of chap. xi. and the
authority of Dion Cassius. The ordinary reading is _quadragesimum_,
“his fortieth year,” and this is the date to which Cinna’s conspiracy
is referred to by Merivale, “History of the Romans under the Empire,”
vol. iv. ch, 37. “A plot,” he says, “was formed for his destruction,
at the head of which was Cornelius Cinna, described as a son of
Faustus Sulla by a daughter of the Great Pompeius.” The story of
Cinna’s conspiracy is told by Seneca, de Clem, i, 9, and Dion iv.
14, foll. They agree in the main fact; but Seneca is our authority
for the details of the interview between Augustus and his enemy,
while Dion has doubtless invented his long conversation between the
emperor and Livia. Seneca, however, calls the conspirator Lucius,
and places the event in the fortieth year of Augustus (A.D. 731),
the scene in Gaul: Dion, on the other, gives the names of Gnaeus,
and supposes the circumstances to have occured twenty-six years
later, and at Rome. It may be observed that a son of Faustus Sulla
must have been at least fifty at this latter date, nor do we know
why he should bear the name of Cinna, though an adoption is not
impossible.
[6] See Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” Act IV, Sc. 1.
[7] In allusion to the title of “Father of his country,” bestowed
by the Senate upon Augustus. See Merivale, ch. 33.
[8] This whole comparison, which reads so meaninglessly both in
Latin and in English, is borrowed from the eternal declamations of
Plutarch and the Greek philosophers about βασιλεῖς and τύραννοι.
See Plutarch, Lives of Philopoemen and Aratus, Plato, Gorgias and
Politicus; Arnold, “Appendix to Thucydides,” vol. i., and “Dictionary
of Antiquities,” _s.v._
[9] De lra, ii. 11.
[10] Vedius Pollio had a villa on the mountain now called Punta di
Posilippo, which projects into the sea between Naples and Puteoli,
which he left to Augustus, and which was afterwards possessed by
the Emperor Trajan. He was a freedman by birth, and remarkable for
nothing except his riches and his cruelty. Cf. Dion Cassius, liv.
23; Pliny, H. N. ix. 23; and Seneca, “On Anger,” iii. 40, 2.
[11] The conquered princes who were led through Rome in triumphs
were as a rule put to death when the procession was over.
[12] The “civic” crown of oak-leaves was bestowed on him who had
saved the life of a fellow-citizen in war. It was bestowed upon
Augustus, and after him upon the other emperors, as preservers of
the state.
{415}
THE SECOND BOOK OF THE DIALOGUE OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO
NERO CAESAR.
ON CLEMENCY.
I. I have been especially led to write about clemency, Nero Caesar,
by a saying of yours, which I remember having heard with admiration
and which I afterwards told to others: a noble saying, showing a
great mind and great gentleness, which suddenly burst from you
without premeditation, and was not meant to reach any ears but your
own, and which displayed the conflict which was raging between your
natural goodness and your imperial duties. Your prefect Burrus, an
excellent man who was born to be the servant of such an emperor as
you are, was about to order two brigands to be executed, and was
pressing you to write their names and the grounds on which they
were to be put to death: this had often been put off, and he was
insisting that it should then be done. When he reluctantly produced
the document and put it into your equally reluctant hands, you
exclaimed: “Would that I had never learned my letters!” O what a
speech, how worthy to be heard by all nations, both those who dwell
within the Roman Empire, those who enjoy a debatable independence
upon its borders, and those who either in will or in deed fight
against it! It is a speech which ought to be spoken {416} before a
meeting of all mankind, whose words all kings and princes ought to
swear to obey: a speech worthy of the days of human innocence, and
worthy to bring back that golden age. Now in truth we ought all to
agree to love righteousness and goodness; covetousness, which is
the root of all evil, ought to be driven away, piety and virtue,
good faith and modesty ought to resume their interrupted reign, and
the vices which have so long and so shamefully ruled us ought at
last to give way to an age of happiness and purity.
II. To a great extent, Caesar, we may hope and expect that this