1My discourse seems to have strayed rather far from its purpose, but, by Hercules, it is pressing on the very matter. 1For if, as the argument so far concludes, you are the soul of your commonwealth and it is your body, you see, I think, how necessary clemency is; 1for you are sparing yourself when you seem to spare another. 1Even citizens who deserve censure must therefore be spared, just as diseased limbs are, and if ever there is need to let blood, the hand must be held back, lest it cut further than is necessary. 2Clemency, then, as I was saying, is in accordance with nature for all men, but most becoming for rulers, inasmuch as among them it has more to save and shows itself in a greater field.
2For how little harm private cruelty does! 2The savagery of princes is war. 3But although the virtues are in harmony with one another and none is better or more honourable than another, yet one is more suited to certain persons than to others. 3Greatness of soul befits any mortal, even one beneath whom there is nothing; 3for what is greater or braver than to beat back ill fortune? 3Yet this greatness of soul has wider scope in good fortune and is better seen on the tribunal than on level ground. 4Clemency will make whatever house it enters happy and tranquil, but in a palace it is the more wonderful the rarer it is.
4For what is more remarkable than that one whose anger nothing hinders, whose harsher sentence those who perish themselves accept, whom no one will interrupt, nay, if he has blazed up too fiercely, whom no one will even entreat, should lay a restraining hand on himself and use his power for better and gentler ends, thinking just this: 'Anyone can kill in breach of the law; no one but I can save'? 5A great fortune befits a great soul, which, unless it raises itself up to that fortune and stands above it, drags the fortune too down to the ground; 5but it is the mark of a great soul to be calm and tranquil and to look down from above on injuries and offences.
5It is womanish to rage in anger, and the mark of wild beasts, and not even noble ones, to bite and worry the fallen. 5Elephants and lions pass over what they have struck down; 5persistence is the mark of an ignoble beast. 6Savage and inexorable anger does not befit a king, for he does not rise far above the man to whom he makes himself equal by being angry; 6but if he grants life, if he grants rank to those who are in peril and deserve to lose it, he does what is permitted to none but the master of affairs; 6for life can be taken even from a superior, but is never given except to an inferior.
7To save is the special mark of an exalted fortune, which ought never to be more looked up to than when it has been granted the same power as the gods, by whose kindness we are brought into the light, good and bad alike. 7So let a prince, claiming for himself the mind of the gods, look gladly on some of his citizens because they are useful and good, and leave others to make up the number; 7let him rejoice that some exist, and endure others.