You, Caesar, can boldly say that everything which has come into your
charge has been kept safe, and that the state has neither openly nor
secretly suffered any loss at your hands. You have coveted a glory
which is most rare, and which has been obtained by no emperor before
you, that of innocence. Your remarkable goodness is not thrown away,
nor is it ungratefully or spitefully undervalued. Men feel gratitude
toward you: no one person ever was so dear to another as you are to
the people of Rome, whose great and enduring benefit you are. You
have, however, taken upon yourself a mighty burden: no one any longer
speaks of the good times of the late Emperor Augustus, or the first
years of the reign of Tiberius, or proposes for your imitation any
model outside yourself: yours is a pattern reign. This would have been
difficult had your goodness of heart not been innate, but merely
adopted for a time; for no one can wear a mask for long, and
fictitious qualities soon give place to true ones. Those which are
founded upon truth, become greater and better as time goes on.
The Roman people were in a state of great hazard as long as it was
uncertain how your generous disposition would turn out: now, however,
the prayers of the community are sure of an answer, for there is no
fear that you should suddenly forget your own character. Indeed,
excess of happiness makes men greedy, and our desires are never so
moderate as to be bounded by what they have obtained: great successes
become the stepping-stones to greater ones, and those who have
obtained more than they hoped, entertain even more extravagant hopes
than before; yet by all your countrymen we hear it admitted that they
are now happy, and moreover, that nothing can be added to the
blessings that they enjoy, except that they should be eternal. Many
circumstances force this admission from them, altho it is the one
which men are least willing to make: we enjoy a profound and
prosperous peace, the power of the law has been openly asserted in the
sight of all men, and raised beyond the reach of any violent
interference: the form of our government is so happy, as to contain
all the essentials of liberty except the power of destroying itself.
It is nevertheless your clemency which is most especially admired by
the high and low alike: every man enjoys or hopes to enjoy the other
blessings of your rule according to the measure of his own personal
good fortune, whereas from your clemency all hope alike: no one has so
much confidence in his innocence, as not to feel glad that in your
presence stands a clemency which is ready to make allowance for human
errors....
Since I have made mention of the gods, I shall state the best model
on which a prince may mold his life to be, that he deal with his
countrymen as he would that the gods may deal with himself. Is it then
desirable that the gods should show no mercy upon sins and mistakes,
and that they should harshly pursue us to our ruin? In that case what
king will be safe? Whose limbs will not be torn asunder and collected
by the sooth-sayers If, on the other hand, the gods are placable and
kind, and do not at once avenge the crimes of the powerful with
thunderbolts, is it not far more just that a man set in authority over
other men should exercise his power in a spirit of clemency and should
consider whether the conditions of the world is more beauteous and
pleasant to the eyes on a fine calm day, or when everything is shaken
with frequent thunder-claps and when lightning flashes on all sides!
Yet the appearance of a peaceful and constitutional reign is the same
as that of the calm and brilliant sky. A cruel reign is disordered and
hidden in darkness, and while all shake with terror at the sudden
explosions, not even he who caused all this disturbance escapes
unharmed. It is easier to find excuses for private men who obstinately
claim their rights; possibly they may have been injured and their rage
may spring from their wrongs; besides this, they fear to be despised,
and not to return the injuries which they have received looks like
weakness rather than clemency; but one who can easily avenge himself,
if he neglects to do so, is certain to gain praise for goodness of
heart. Those who are born in a humble station may with greater freedom
exercise violence, go to law, engage in quarrels, and indulge their
angry passions; even blows count for little between two equals; but in
case of a king, even loud clamor and unmeasured talk are
unbecoming....
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 blest
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 marvelous because no one ever had the power of the
sword placed in his hands at an earlier age. Clemency, then, makes
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 short-lived? 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 can not help it....
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 colored 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 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 behavior 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 instruments, 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 can not have
a single moment free from alarm. Would any one endure to live such a
life as this, when he might enjoy all the privileges of his high
station to the general joy of all men, without 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 can not be stormed is the love of his
countrymen....
The reason why cruelty is the most hateful of all vices is that it
goes first beyond 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 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 neighbors 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....
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 afterward 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 praefect Burrus[83], 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 in 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 before a meeting of all mankind, whose words all kings
and princes ought to swear to and 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.