1Vengeance usually achieves one of two things: either it brings solace to the one who has received the injury, or security for the future. 1A prince's fortune is too great to need solace, and his power too evident to seek a reputation for strength through another's harm. 1I say this when he has been attacked and violated by inferiors; 1for if he sees beneath him those whom he once had as equals, he is avenged enough. 1A slave has killed a king, and a serpent, and an arrow; 1but no one has ever saved one except a man greater than the one he saved. 2So one who has power to give and take away life ought to use so great a gift of the gods in a lofty spirit.
2Especially in the case of those whom he knows to have once held a pinnacle equal to his own, once he has gained this power over them he has fulfilled and completed his vengeance, as far as was enough for true punishment; 2for he has lost his life who owes it, and whoever, cast down from on high at his enemy's feet, has awaited another's sentence on his life and throne lives on to the glory of his preserver, and contributes more to his name by being unharmed than if he had been removed from sight. 2For he is a lasting spectacle of another's virtue; 2in a triumph he would quickly have passed by.
3But if his kingdom too could safely be left with him and he be restored to the place from which he had fallen, the praise of the man who was content to take nothing from a conquered king but glory rises with a vast increase. 3This is to triumph even over one's own victory, and to bear witness that one has found nothing among the conquered worthy of the conqueror. 4With citizens, and with the unknown and humble, one must act with all the more moderation, the less it counts to have crushed them. 4Some you may gladly spare; from others you may disdain to avenge yourself, and the hand must be drawn back just as from small creatures that soil the one who crushes them; 4but in the case of those who will be spared or punished before the eyes of the state, the opportunity for a conspicuous clemency must be used.