1These things Augustus did as an old man, or when his years were already verging on old age; 1in youth he was hot-headed, he blazed with anger, he did many things on which he turned back his eyes unwillingly. 1No one will dare to compare the deified Augustus with your gentleness, even if he brings a more than ripe old age into contest with youthful years; 1grant that he was moderate and merciful: yes, after the sea at Actium was stained with Roman blood, yes, after fleets, his own and others', were wrecked off Sicily, yes, after the altars of Perusia and the proscriptions. 2For my part, I do not call weary cruelty clemency; 2this is it.
2Caesar, the true clemency, which you display, which did not begin from remorse for savagery: to have no stain, never to have shed citizens' blood; 2this is, in the greatest power, the truest self-control of the mind and an all-embracing love of the human race as of oneself, not corrupted by any desire, by any rashness of temper, by the examples of earlier princes, so as to test by experiment how far it may go against its own citizens, but rather to blunt the edge of its power. 3You have given us, Caesar, a state unstained by blood, and this, of which you have boasted with great spirit, that you have shed not a drop of human blood in the whole world, is all the greater and more wonderful because no one was ever entrusted with the sword sooner.
4Clemency, then, makes rulers not only more honoured but safer, and is at once the ornament of empires and their surest safety. 4For why is it that kings have grown old and handed down their kingdoms to children and grandchildren, while the power of tyrants is accursed and brief? 4What difference is there between a tyrant and a king (for the outward show of their fortune and their licence are equal), except that tyrants are savage for pleasure, kings only for a reason and from necessity?