1Cruelty is the least human of evils and unworthy of so gentle a mind; 1it is the madness of a beast to delight in blood and wounds and, casting off humanity, to change into a creature of the woods. 1For what difference does it make, I ask you, Alexander, whether you throw Lysimachus to a lion or tear him with your own teeth? 1That mouth is yours, that savagery is yours. 1Oh, how you would wish that you rather had the claws, you the gaping jaws able to devour men! 1We do not ask of you that that hand of yours, the surest destruction of your friends, should bring safety to anyone, or that that fierce spirit, the insatiable bane of nations, should be sated short of blood and slaughter; 1it is now called clemency when, to kill a friend, an executioner is chosen from among men.
2This is why savagery is to be abhorred above all, because it goes beyond first the usual bounds, then human ones, hunts out new punishments, summons ingenuity to devise instruments by which pain may be varied and prolonged, and delights in men's sufferings; 2then that dreadful disease of the mind reaches the utmost insanity, when cruelty has turned into pleasure and to kill a man is now a delight. 3Soon such a man is pursued from behind by aversion, hatred, poison, swords; 3he is attacked by as many dangers as the many to whom he himself is a danger, and he is beset sometimes by private plots, at other times by public uprising.
3For slight and private harm does not stir whole cities; 3what has begun to rage far and wide and attacks everyone is pierced from every side. 4Little snakes escape notice and are not hunted down by public effort; 4when one exceeds the usual size and has grown into a monster, when it poisons springs with its spittle and, if it breathes on anything, scorches and crushes it wherever it goes, it is attacked with ballistae. 4Petty evils can deceive us and escape; huge ones are met head-on. 5So one sick man does not even disturb a household; 5but when frequent deaths have shown that there is a plague, there is an outcry in the city and flight, and fists are shaken at the gods themselves.
5A flame has appeared under some single roof: the household and the neighbours pour on water; 5but a vast conflagration that has already devoured many houses is smothered with part of the city.