1Even the cruelty of private men has been avenged by the hands of slaves, despite the certain danger of the cross; 1that of tyrants nations and peoples, both those to whom it was an evil and those over whom it hung, have set out to root out. 1At times their own guards have risen against them, and have practised on them the treachery, impiety and savagery, and whatever else they had learned from them. 1For what can anyone hope from one whom he has taught to be wicked? 1Wickedness does not stay obedient long, nor sin only as much as it is ordered. 2But suppose cruelty were safe: what is its reign like?
2Nothing other than the appearance of captured cities and the terrible faces of public fear. 2Everything is gloomy, fearful, confused; 2pleasures themselves are feared; 2men do not go to banquets free of care, where even the drunk must guard their tongues anxiously, nor to shows, from which material for charges and danger is sought. 2Though they be furnished at great expense, with royal wealth and with artists of choice renown, whom yet would games in prison delight? 3What evil is this, good gods, to kill, to rage, to delight in the clank of chains and to cut off the heads of citizens, to shed much blood wherever one goes, to terrify and put to flight by one's very appearance?
3What other life would there be if lions and bears reigned, if power over us were given to serpents and to every most harmful animal? 4Those creatures, devoid of reason and condemned by us on the charge of savagery, spare their own kind, and likeness is a safeguard even among wild beasts; 4but the madness of these men does not hold back even from their nearest, but holds strangers and their own as equal, more inflamed the more it exercises itself. 4From the slaughter of individuals it then creeps on to the destruction of nations, and thinks it power to set roofs on fire and drive the plough over ancient cities; 4and it thinks it too little like a ruler to order one or two to be killed; 4unless at the same moment a herd of wretches has stood beneath the blow, it thinks its cruelty has been reduced to the ranks.
5True happiness is to give safety to many, to call them back to life from death itself, and to earn the civic crown by clemency. 5No ornament is more worthy of a prince's eminence or more beautiful than that crown for saving citizens; not enemy arms stripped from the vanquished, not chariots stained with barbarian blood, not spoils won in war. 5This is godlike power, to save men in throngs and on a public scale; 5but to kill many indiscriminately is the power of fire and collapse.