§ 1. Gentleness and clemency are twin virtues. They almost always advance with equal step and conspire toward one effect of human actions. Gentleness is the moderator of anger according to right reason; clemency, of punishments. Saint Thomas refers both, by a certain likeness, to temperance in Summa theologiae II-II, Question 157, Article 3. For just as temperance restrains pleasures within the circuit of reason and does not permit them to pass beyond the limits of honor, so gentleness mitigates that most ferocious beast, anger, confined with chains and in prison, and renders it tame, so that it not only does no injury but even contains itself within the lawful and prescribed bounds of justice.
Thus clemency is not that which abstains from raging through force and injustice, but that which inflicts milder punishments than the rigor of law. Clemency is the temperance of the mind in the power of taking vengeance; or the lenity of a superior toward an inferior in establishing punishments; or an inclination of the mind toward lenity in exacting punishment; or the virtue which remits something of a merited and owed punishment. These definitions are Seneca’s, from Book II, Chapter III of On Clemency. Clearer, and one which removes objections, is the definition of Lipsius in Book II, Chapter XII: “Clemency is the virtue which, with judgment, inclines the mind away from punishment or vengeance toward lenity.”
§ 2. Although they are the most excellent virtues and strengthen the throne of a kingdom, as is said in Proverbs 20:28, nevertheless a controversy concerning the status of both is raised by men who teach how to dispute rather than how to live. “Gentleness,” they say, “diminishes anger, and clemency punishments; but virtue consists in the mean. These virtues, however, supply less than what is due; therefore they stand short of the right and of those boundaries which the norm of virtue has fixed.”
But we must hold the teaching not only of the Sacred Scriptures but also of the more moderate philosophers and political writers: that gentleness and clemency are distinguished virtues, and indeed so honorable that the other virtues sometimes defer to them. Gentleness diminishes anger because, since an appetite for vengeance is innate in all and taking vengeance is sweet to an angry man, and since no one readily judges injuries inflicted upon himself to be small, a most noble virtue is engaged in a great contest.
Clemency indeed remits the punishment which legal justice demands according to the common law, yet is not unjust but benign. For according to right reason it remits the punishment owed, or a part of the punishment. It does this on account of certain particular circumstances, the consideration of which causes a departure from severity in punishing to be right. Therefore clemency is contrary neither to severity nor to justice, for no virtue is opposed to another virtue. Severity according to right reason exacts punishments when, from whom, and of what magnitude they are to be exacted. Clemency, led by the same reason, remits them in the proper place and time.
Thus ἐπιείκεια, equity, which benignly interprets the words of a rigid law according to the legislator’s intention and judges according to it, does not overthrow justice, but recalls the highest law—which is often the highest injustice—to equity, indeed, if we wish to confess the truth, to justice. “But if justice,” they say, “demands punishment, clemency cannot remit it unless it oppresses justice.” On the contrary, the common law demands punishment and gives the power of exacting it. Nevertheless, it does not prohibit pity, pardon, or mitigation for certain causes. Nor is any legislator, or ought any legislator to be, so tenacious of his laws that he does not sometimes leave a place for prayers and humanity.
Cruelty is opposed to clemency; it is atrocity of mind in exacting punishments. Seneca, Book II, Chapter IV of On Anger: “What, then, is opposed to clemency? Cruelty, which is nothing other than atrocity of mind in exacting punishments. But some do not exact punishments and nevertheless are cruel—as those who kill unknown persons whom they meet, not for profit but for the sake of killing. Not content to kill, they rage, as did Sinis and Procrustes and the pirates who scourge captives and place them alive upon the fire.
“This indeed is cruelty; but because it does not follow vengeance—for it was not injured—and does not grow angry at any sin—for no crime preceded it—it falls outside our definition, which contained intemperance of mind in exacting punishments. We can say that this is not cruelty but ferocity, whose pleasure is savagery; we can call it insanity, for its kinds are various, and none is more certain than that which arrives at the slaughter and mangling of human beings. Therefore I shall call cruel those who possess a cause for punishing but possess no measure.”
Cruelty therefore exasperates punishments. Sometimes it rages without cause, from the pleasure of another’s pain alone, by which many violate justice, charity, mercy, clemency, and every divine and human law. They are not human beings but savage beasts which bite more than they hunger.
§ 3. I shall treat three things in this chapter. First, I shall show that in very many kings anger has ruled in place of gentleness and cruelty in place of clemency. Second, I shall teach how necessary clemency is to the state and how harmful cruelty is. Third, I shall explain what the measure of clemency is, lest discipline and the force of laws be weakened.
§ 4. Among the other vices of the nations, the Apostle Paul enumerates in Romans 1:31 that they are ἀνελεήμονας, unmerciful, murderous, and therefore cruel. Stoic ἀπάθεια, apathy, inflamed those vices when the Stoics denied that pity and pardon belonged to a wise man. But Seneca errs with the Stoics. For mercy is a pain of the will, or displeasure, conceived according to right reason concerning another’s misery; there is no need for passion or grief which pour themselves out into lamentation and wailing. But that movement of the lower appetite—whether fellow-suffering or emotion—is not only not a vice if it is governed by right reason, but even serves true mercy, which resides in the will and is a virtue. The Apostle must be heard: “Weep with those who weep.”
That movement of the mind serves reason when mercy is supplied in such a way that justice is preserved, whether something is given to the needy or pardon to the penitent. Nevertheless, that movement of the appetitive power is not necessary to mercy, for the will alone, aided by reason, can have mercy. Augustine therefore clearly refutes the Stoics in Book I, Chapter XXVII of On the Morals of the Catholic Church:
“Therefore all those who courteously and humanely supply the things by which evils or disadvantages of this kind are resisted are called merciful, even if they are wise to such a degree that they are now disturbed by no pain of mind. For who does not know that mercy is so named because it makes the heart miserable by fellow-suffering with another’s evil? And who would not concede that the wise man ought to be free from every misery when he assists the needy, supplies food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked, receives the stranger beneath a roof, frees the oppressed, and finally extends his humanity as far as the burial of the dead? Even if he does this with a tranquil mind, goaded by no stings of pain but led by the duty of goodness, he must nevertheless be called merciful. For the name does him no harm when misery is absent.
“But fools, when they avoid mercy as though a vice, because they cannot be sufficiently moved by duty if they are not also moved by a disturbance, are frozen rather by the cold of inhumanity than made serene by the tranquility of reason. Therefore God himself is said much more prudently to be merciful. How he is so called remains for those to understand who have made themselves fit by religion and study, lest, when we ineptly use the words of the learned, we make the souls of the unlearned grow hard by avoiding mercy before we make them grow gentle by seeking benignity. And, as mercy commands us to drive these disadvantages away from a human being, so innocence prohibits us from inflicting them.”
Therefore I altogether prefer a mercy which even makes the heart miserable and sorrowful, which burns when someone is scandalized, which cries out with David, “Absalom, my son, my son Absalom,” which with Christ lifts its eyes over Jerusalem and weeps, to that harsh philosophy which hardens minds to every inhumanity and inflames cruelty.
§ 5. Therefore all the dominions of the ancient nations fell into the highest cruelty just as into other vices. And properly that passion which Aristotle describes in Book VII, Chapter I of the Nicomachean Ethics is called θηριότης, bestiality. Thus, if—as they say—men become gods on account of the excellence and preeminence of virtue, that disposition of mind which is opposed to this bestial disposition will assuredly be such a disposition. For just as neither vice nor virtue belongs to a wild beast, so neither belongs to gods; but the divine disposition is something more excellent and honorable than virtue, while the other is another kind distinct from vice.
But since it very rarely happens that a divine man exists—as the Lacedaemonians are accustomed to call and salute as divine a man whom they greatly admire, saying, “O divine man”—so among human beings someone resembling wild beasts in nature is rarely found. Certain inhumanities of this kind, however, are produced by diseases and debilities of the limbs. And we call those human beings who excel others in vice savage and inhuman by a foul and infamous name. But something will have to be said later by us concerning this passion of mind.
And in Chapter VI: “But since some things are pleasant by nature, and of these some are pleasant simply and absolutely, others to diverse classes of living creatures and human beings; while other things are not pleasant by nature but become pleasant partly on account of debilities of bodies, partly on account of habit, and partly on account of vicious natures, it is possible in each of these to observe similar dispositions. I call inhuman and bestial dispositions such as that of the woman who, they say, was accustomed to cut open pregnant women who had reached full term and devour the children; or such things as certain savage peoples around Pontus are reported to delight in—some in raw flesh, others in human flesh, others in giving their children to one another for feasts; or such as that which is commonly said concerning Phalaris. These, then, are bestial dispositions.
“Others arise in some men on account of diseases and madnesses, such as the man who sacrificed and ate his mother and the man who ate the liver of his fellow-slave. Other diseased dispositions proceed from habit, such as pulling out hair, gnawing nails, and eating charcoal and earth; in addition, sexual intercourse with males. For these desires are natural to some and arise in others from habit, as in those who were accustomed to them from boyhood. And no one would call any of those for whom nature supplies the cause incontinent, just as no one calls women incontinent because in sexual intercourse they do not act but are acted upon. By the same reasoning, neither do we call those incontinent who have contracted by habit a vice similar to disease.
“To be tempted by each of these evils of the mind is to pass beyond the limits and boundaries of vice, just as by ferocity it is to approach very near the nature of beasts. But to be superior or inferior when tempted and affected by these things is not simple continence or incontinence, but is so by resemblance; just as we ought not to call that man incontinent in respect of this disturbance who is so affected in anger that he is conquered by it.
“For every viciousness exceeding measure—madness, timidity, intemperance, and savagery—is either bestial or diseased.”
Aristotle speaks rightly in the remaining things, but altogether badly in this: that he recognizes few men, and only among the barbarians, as θηριώδεις, bestial and inhuman. I must demonstrate the contrary, so that from this part at least it may appear what Christian piety has conferred upon the world.
§ 6. The most ancient vice of the human race is to rage against the associates of one’s own kind. While his brother was alive, the world seemed narrow to Cain. The giants before the flood were avaricious, cruel, and lustful. Scarcely had the world been restored when Nimrod seized tyranny; and while Abraham was alive, and Noah, Shem, and others were still mourning, kings prepared distant wars, Genesis 13. Moses shows in many places that the custom of lusting and raging existed when he writes that Abraham asked Sarah to say that she was his sister, lest perhaps she should be seized and, after her husband had been killed, an empty marriage-bed should be allotted to the ravisher. They judged homicide a lesser evil than adultery. So cheap was human blood to a human being while the world was still empty.
Nor was Pharaoh gentler toward the infants of the Jews; nor was the utmost cruelty absent from the most ancient wars of the Emim, Horites, Zamzummim, and Cappadocians, when entire nations were destroyed. What happened in Palestine? Did not seventy kings, the extremities of their hands and feet having been amputated, gather crumbs beneath the table of Adoni-bezek? But most cruelties of very ancient times lie hidden because men were lacking who might transmit them to posterity.
Let us look upon the cruelty of the four most celebrated monarchies, for in them we shall find the human race raging. The first is called either Assyrian or Chaldaean, for they are customarily joined. Habakkuk describes the Chaldaeans for us, Chapter 1:6: “For behold, I shall raise up the Chaldaeans, a bitter and swift nation, walking over the breadth of the earth to possess dwellings not its own. It is horrible and terrible; from itself its judgment and burden shall go forth. Its horses are lighter than leopards and swifter than evening wolves, and its horsemen shall be spread abroad; for its horsemen shall come from far away; they shall fly like an eagle hastening to eat. All shall come for plunder; their faces are a burning wind, and it shall gather captivity like sand. It shall triumph over kings, and tyrants shall be its mockery. It shall laugh at every fortification, heap up an embankment, and take it.”
And Isaiah 14:5: “He has broken the staff of the wicked, the rod of rulers, which struck peoples in indignation with an incurable wound, which subjected nations in fury, which pursued cruelly.” And verse 12: “Have you fallen to the earth, you who wounded the nations?” And verse 17: “Is this the man who disturbed the earth, who shook kingdoms, who made the world a desert and destroyed its cities, who did not open the prison to his captives?” And verse 20: “For you have destroyed your land; you have killed your people. The seed of the wicked shall not be named forever. Prepare his sons for slaughter.” Daniel too says that he killed those whom he wished.
The administration of that kingdom was therefore grievous and tyrannical. Daniel 7:4 compares it to a lioness: “The first was like a lioness and had wings like an eagle.” Jerome says that it is called a lioness, לביא, on account of luxury and cruelty, for the female is more savage than the male. Those who have written concerning the natures of beasts say that lionesses are more ferocious, especially if they nourish cubs, and always eager for intercourse. Cruelty and womanizing are perpetually connected.
Moreover, the lioness is swift with an eagle’s wings, as Habakkuk too describes it. The hunger of a lion is more savage because it never returns to the remains of prey but always threatens warm blood. The tyranny of eagles too is celebrated, for Olaus says in Book XIX, Chapter VII that one pair requires a broad territory for plundering. He then relates how much profit northern farmers make from two chicks which they compel to hunger, while their anxious parents carry every kind of game into the nests. Therefore the Chaldaean monarchy is a γρυπαετὸς ἀγκυλοχείλης, a crooked-beaked griffin-eagle; and I judge that the tale concerning the griffin-eagle arose from Daniel and that report. Thus that eagle in Jeremiah 48:40 brings extreme calamity upon the Moabites: “Behold, like an eagle he shall fly and extend his hands against Moab.” And Lamentations 4:19: “Our persecutors were swifter than the eagles of heaven, and they pursued us over the mountains.” This, therefore, was the cruelty of the Chaldaeans and Assyrians.
§ 7. But that of the Medes and Persians was much greater. Daniel speaks thus concerning the second monarchy, Chapter 7, verse 5: “And behold another beast like a bear; it stood upon one part, and there were three rows in its order and in its teeth, and thus they said to it: ‘Arise, eat very much flesh.’” The bear is a beast of foul and ignoble savagery:
Do not, though ruined by its rabid mouth,
Try the nose of a bear steaming with wine;
Though it be placid and lick your fingers and hands,
If pain and bile, if just anger should compel it,
It will be a bear.
It is an omnivorous and faithless animal. It surpasses all beasts in ferocity, as Philostratus says. But the most rabid of bears are in Persia. “Persian bears rage beyond all madness,” says Marcellinus. The three rows of teeth indicate this, and so does that incitement: “Arise, eat very much flesh.” They devoured very many kingdoms; and among them Babylon first experienced their ferocity and raw hunger. Whoever reads its most wretched destruction will recognize the work of the Medes and Persians. Isaiah 13:17: “Behold, I shall raise up against them the Medes, who do not seek silver nor desire gold; but with arrows they shall kill little children, shall not pity the wombs of nursing mothers, and their eye shall not spare sons.”
Ammianus says in Book XXX that the Persian nation always exercised a cruel variety of punishments. Hence the flaying of the living, in the same author’s Book XXXIII; hence the deaths of relatives in Xenophon, Book III of the Ἀνάβασις, Anabasis; hence the burying of living persons in Herodotus, Books VIII and IV; burning men alive in Ctesias’s fragments. See also Heliodorus, Book VIII of the Aethiopian History, Socrates, Book I, Chapter XXII, and Procopius, Book I of the Persian War, witnesses of the utmost and savage inhumanity.
Cyrus himself, greedy for blood, paid the penalty for cruelty with blood. What Darius did against the seven nobles is related both by others and briefly by Valerius in Book VI. But Ochus, who was afterward called Darius, was bound by the oath most sacred among the Persians not to kill by poison, sword, any violence, or deprivation of food any of the conspirators who had overthrown the seven Magi with him. He devised a crueller manner of death by which he might remove those burdensome to him without breaking the bond of religion. He enclosed a place with high walls and filled it with ashes, and, after setting up a projecting beam, placed upon it men benignly received with food and drink; when overcome by sleep, they fell from it into that treacherous heap.
Concerning the other Ochus: the cruelty of another Ochus, surnamed Artaxerxes, was more open and more loathsome. He buried alive Ocha, his sister and at the same time his mother-in-law; and he fixed his paternal uncle, together with more than one hundred sons and grandsons, with javelins in an empty, abandoned enclosure. He had been provoked by no injury, but saw that among the Persians the greatest praise for probity and courage consisted in these things.
Among their cruel punishments was σκαφισμός, scaphism, by which Mithridates died in Plutarch’s Artaxerxes; it lasted seventeen days, while his body was almost devoured by worms. Memnon—in Book II of Xenophon’s Ἀνάβασις—αἰκισθεὶς ἐνιαυτόν, was tortured for an entire year. Nor is this novel: a royal woman tortured her sister’s physician in this way.
But what sort were they toward enemies? Justin relates in Book X that eight hundred men met Alexander after suffering servitude with part of the body truncated. Were so many mutilated together in one place? Things not dissimilar are found in Curtius, Book III. Diodorus Siculus speaks concerning the same men in Book XVIII:
Ἠκρωτηριασμένοι πάντες, οἱ μὲν χεῖρας, οἱ δὲ πόδας, οἱ ὦτα, καὶ ῥῖνας.
All had their extremities mutilated: some their hands, others their feet, others their ears and noses. Let the deeds of Cambyses in Egypt be seen in Herodotus, Book III. The calamity of the Rhinocolura came from a Persian king according to Seneca, Book III, Chapter XX of On Anger. Diodorus in Book I, Chapter II of the Library and Strabo in Book XVI attribute it to the king of the Ethiopians.
Plutarch, in his book Which Animals Are More Clever, recalls how they hunted human beings; Herodotus explains the method in Book VI:
ὁ δὲ ναυτικὸς στρατὸς ὁ Περσέων χειμερίσας περὶ Μίλητον, τῷ δευτέρῳ ἔτεϊ ὡς ἀνέπλωσε, αἱρέει εὐπετέως τὰς νήσους τὰς πρὸς τῇ ἠπείρῳ κειμένας, Χίον καὶ Λέσβον καὶ Τένεδον. ὅκως δὲ λάβοι τινὰ τῶν νήσων, ὡς ἑκάστην αἱρέοντες οἱ βάρβαροι ἐσαγήνευον τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. σαγηνεύουσι δὲ τόνδε τὸν τρόπον· ἀνὴρ ἀνδρὸς ἁψάμενος τῆς χειρὸς ἐκ θαλάσσης τῆς βορηίης ἐπὶ τὴν νοτίην διήκουσι, καὶ ἔπειτα διὰ πάσης τῆς νήσου διέρχονται ἐκθηρεύοντες τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. αἵρεον δὲ καὶ τὰς ἐν τῇ ἠπείρῳ πόλιας τὰς Ἰάδας κατὰ ταὐτά, πλὴν οὐκ ἐσαγήνευον τοὺς ἀνθρώπους· οὐ γὰρ οἷά τʼ ἦν.
The Persian naval army, after wintering around Miletus, in the second year, when it sailed up, quickly occupied the islands situated near the mainland: Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos. After the barbarians occupied each of the islands, they caught the human beings with a dragnet. They caught them with a dragnet in this manner: man grasping man’s hand, they extended from the northern shore to the southern, and then passed through the whole island, hunting the human beings. They also took the Ionian cities on the mainland, but did not enclose the human beings in a dragnet, for it could not be done.
§ 8. Lest you hope for milder things, the leopard avenges the cruelty of the bear. The kingdom of Greece chastises Persian savagery with another barbarity. For thus Daniel 7:6 says: “After this I looked, and behold another beast like a leopard; and it had four wings like a bird upon itself, and four heads were upon the beast, and power was given to it.” Four wings, that it may surpass the lion; four heads, that it may tear apart the bear. It is the swiftest animal and overtakes wild beasts by three or four bounds. Pollux says that the leopard’s body is ὑγρὸν εὐέλικτον παγκτικὸν, ἁλτικόν, εὔπαλες: moist, flexible, fit for assaults, and pugnacious.
Alexander cast down the bear in the course of a few victories; afterward he himself died, the leading men who had lived with him were quickly removed, and the rest languished. But the leopard’s ferocity must be discussed. Alexander, after overthrowing Thebes and oppressing Greece, inaugurated the Persian War with the slaughter of brothers and relatives. He sent an entire nation as funeral victims to Hephaestion. He himself—which is an indication of great cruelty—was more desirous of wine than all mortals and therefore in this part too was a leopard, for leopards also are devoted to wine and were generally captured through drunkenness, as Oppian relates.
Cruelty is the companion of drunkenness, as Seneca truly says in Epistle LXXXIII: “This thing rendered him an enemy of the state, this rendered him unequal to his enemies, this rendered him cruel: when the heads of the leading men of the state were brought to him while he dined; when, amid the most elaborate feasts and royal luxury, he identified the faces and hands of proscribed men; when, heavy with wine, he nevertheless thirsted for blood. What he did when drunk was intolerable even if he had done it when sober; how much more intolerable that he did these things amid drunkenness itself? Cruelty generally follows vinousness, for the sanity of the mind is violated and exasperated. Just as lingering diseases render eyes difficult even at the smallest offense of a sunbeam, so continual bouts of drunkenness render minds savage. For since they are frequently not in possession of themselves, vices hardened by the habit of insanity and conceived in wine have force even without it.”
Certainly Alexander’s drunkenness destroyed more friends than the many battles which he entered. The leopard’s peculiar characteristic, however, is malicious and raw deceit. For if its attack is cheated of its prey, it turns against the hunter. Therefore those who use it in hunting always keep sheep, lambs, and other things at hand with which they appease the fury from which the greater beast escaped. Nothing is more like the cruelty of the Greek monarchy. Alexander’s fellow-soldiers first, and then his successors, turned their arms against one another. Nowhere were there more or more atrocious crimes and slaughters than among the Seleucids, Ptolemies, and Macedonians. For there were perpetual butcheries of nations in Greece, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and the outcomes of royal families were horrible and mournful.
§ 9. While the third beast rages, a fourth grows for its destruction, namely the Roman Empire, which Daniel describes thus: “After this I looked in a vision of the night, and behold a fourth beast, terrible and wondrous and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth, eating and breaking in pieces and trampling the remainder with its feet.”
First, he calls it terrible, which properly belongs to inhumanity; for animals are feared not on account of their size, however vast they may be, but because they are cruel and bloodthirsty. The Hebrew names it דחילה, dechila, a word used of great terror; thus דחלן, dechalan. Among the Chaldaeans demons are so called because they are greatly feared. Second, it is wondrous; the Septuagint names it ἔκθαμβον, because it renders men astonished with terror. Third, it is strong in treasury and cities. Fourth, its iron teeth are strong emperors, armies, and fleets. Fifth, it eats and breaks in pieces the forces of enemies and the spoils of provinces. For it was not enough to enrich one king: so many patricians, proconsuls, and governors had to be filled from the wretched provinces; new colonies had to be received; land had to be yielded.
How great was Rome itself? Lipsius, in Books I, Chapters II and III of On Roman Greatness, says that in the time of Augustus there were more than 320,000 poorer citizens who lived from the public treasury—that is, from the sweat and blood of the provinces. And not only they: from the same plunder the rich, the equestrian order, and senators lived luxuriously. Add to these wives, children, and little slaves, and you will make an entire nation. It was customary to draw along great armies of slaves. Crassus maintained five hundred craftsmen in his household; others maintained more. The number of slaves at Rome was immense. When it was once discussed in the senate that slaves should use one kind of clothing and free persons another, it was understood how dangerous it would be
if slaves began to count the free, as Seneca teaches. The same man in the Consolation to Helvia indicates that the crowd of foreigners at Rome was greater than that of citizens. The courts of the Caesars contained up to one hundred thousand. Now weigh the distributions, games, public banquets, and other insanities, and you will understand that so voracious a beast could not exist without the blood of many animals.
These things, therefore, are cruel; but the Holy Spirit indicates in those words a distinguished inhumanity not used so furiously by the other monarchies: “And trampling the remainder with its feet.” A ferocious and bloodthirsty beast for which it is too little to feed, grow fat, and be distended upon the deaths of the weak unless, through savagery and most arrogant contempt, it also insults the perishing.
There were two things grievous to the whole world. The first was the Roman games: Circensian, theatrical, and others. The preparations for trifles were immense. In the Agamemnon there were six hundred mules. A theater was covered with gold by Nero for one day. Caesar at his father’s funeral made the equipment of the stage silver, and he was not yet Caesar, had not yet plundered Gaul or the city. In Pliny’s time silver stages existed everywhere in colonies and municipalities. I have spoken above concerning Heliogabalus, who exhibited naval Circensian games in canals full of wine. These had to be long and broad so that ships might run in them; I judge that scarcely one year’s wine was enough for so great a madness.
Add not only the preparation and sails floating over the full theater, but also the things cast among the people—namely, that at Rome the Arabs were drenched by their own rains. Tiraquellus in Octavius: “Things of every kind were scattered and cast among the people: on every day, each day a thousand birds; a manifold store of every kind; vouchers for grain, clothing, gold, silver, gems, pearls, painted panels, beasts of burden, and even tame wild beasts; finally ships, islands, and estates.”
But the chief point of cruelty was in the amphitheater, where human beings died solely for the pleasure of the spectators. Let the reader consult the Saturnalia of the most learned Justus if this matter is his concern. In individual years the arena consumed two hundred thousand—or rather three hundred thousand—human beings in the most cruel pleasures. Caesar presented hunts for five days, and finally a battle was joined on each side with five hundred infantrymen, twenty elephants, and thirty horsemen. Tranquillus, Julius, Chapter XXXIX. The same man brought forward biremes, triremes, and quadriremes in a naval battle with a great number of fighters. Tranquillus speaks concerning Augustus in Chapter XLIII and Claudius in Chapter XXI, who joined twelve triremes on each side; one part was called the Sicilian fleet, the other the Rhodian. This was the pleasure of one day, upon which many thousands were expended.
Hadrian consumed several thousands over three days; Gordian over an entire year. Titus consumed gladiators, hunts, and naval battles over one hundred days. Trajan consumed ten thousand over one hundred and twenty-three days. These things happened at Rome and belonged to the Caesars; but there were more spectacles. Consuls, praetors, aediles, and priests gave games. Emperors made immense expenditures. At the adoption of Commodus Hadrian said, “We have lost four thousand times one hundred thousand sesterces”—that is, ten millions. You truly lost them upon trifles; you truly lost them most cruelly upon the deaths of wretched human beings and pleasures more wretched than deaths.
Magistrates at Rome and in the provinces did the same things. Augustus gave games twenty-four times in his own name, and twenty-three times in the names of others who were absent or unable. Herod, in the Holy Land itself, established theaters in almost every town and joined seven hundred pairs at once. This custom also existed at funerals, for we read that heirs, if they had not done so, were condemned to provide one hundred pairs of gladiators. The banquets themselves and the feasts themselves were sprinkled with cruel blood. All funerals of magnates were rendered more deadly by gladiatorial funeral offerings; all weddings and banquets of nobles were loathsome with barbaric cruelty.
§ 10. The preparation itself cost no less blood. Pompey presented more than four hundred lions, as did others. Gordian presented one hundred Libyan wild beasts in one day and one thousand bears in one day. Under Augustus a show completed three thousand five hundred wild beasts in a single set of games, as the Ancyran stone, a witness of immense cruelty, confesses. Vopiscus says in his Probus that he presented one thousand ostriches, one thousand stags, and one thousand boars. And lest you think these few, Statilius Taurus built a stone theater in the Campus Martius for hunts. But Severus, despising it, discovered new kinds of cruelty lest he should ever be capable of being satiated; for from a collapsible ship he released four hundred lions in one moment. Carinus introduced the sea and swimming monsters. It is wearisome to relate the remaining things which trustworthy histories transmit concerning Nero and others.
Let us consider this beast, the subduer of all beasts. First, so many gladiators are matched against one another in amphitheaters, at funerals, and at banquets throughout all the provinces. Then they are cast to wild beasts. For how many little human beings could be equal to four hundred lions? But cruelty does not stop here. There is greater cruelty in the hunting of wild beasts. See entire provinces in Africa, Asia, and Mesopotamia occupied with hunting beasts at danger to life. Scarcely one lion is captured without wounds; here four hundred are to perish in one day. How much labor is needed to capture them?
If they were captured so that forests might be safe for gentle animals and so that they would not infest the fields, this could seem a recompense for danger and labor. But now they are captured, and care is taken that they be captured alive, so that, brought to Rome over tracts of lands and seas and fed at great expense, they may mangle a human being. This is most inhuman: for a human being to favor a beast against a human being. Then, that they should mangle a human being for a human being’s pleasure is now beyond every madness of savagery. For few beasts rage except for the sake of food; the human being casts a human being to beasts because he seeks the pain of a human being and a variety of delight from a variety of punishment. Not one or another man does these things, but the whole empire—indeed, almost the whole more cultivated world—does, praises, commands, and demands them. These things surpass every crime of inhumanity.
As much was expended upon lions, tigers, bears, and devourers of human beings as upon whole armies. There were other public and cruel customs: to kill monstrous offspring without penalty; to expose the weak and maimed; to sell rejected slaves to the gladiatorial school, the beasts, and the mines; to exercise the savage right of masters over slaves.
§ 11. After that public cruelty of the whole people, what can be said concerning the inhumanity and savagery of individuals is a small thing. It is established concerning Augustus that, when his cruelty was now weary, he laid aside the sword. Tiberius did nothing other than exhibit a slaughterhouse. Dio speaks thus concerning Caligula: “Since Gaius could not be filled with blood, he took care that as many as possible should fight one another and sometimes ordered them to engage in pairs, at other times crowded together as in a battle-line, so that twenty-six knights were slain in one day. For so great was his cruelty that, when those condemned to the beasts had run out, he ordered certain men from that
crowd which sat upon the benches to be seized and cast to the beasts, and ordered their tongues cut out so that they could not speak or accuse anyone.”
Seneca is graver than Dio in Book III, Chapter XIX of On Anger: “Just now Gaius Caesar, on one day, cut down with scourges and tortured Sextus Papinius, whose father had been consul; Bassus, his quaestor and the son of his procurator; other senators; and Roman knights—not for the sake of an inquiry, but for the sake of his disposition. Then he was so impatient of deferring the pleasure which immense cruelty demanded without delay that, while walking in the promenade of his mother’s gardens which separates the portico from the riverbank, he decapitated some of them by lamplight in the company of matrons and other senators. What was pressing? What private or public danger did a single night threaten? How small a thing was it to wait for daylight? Finally, was it necessary that, wearing slippers, he should kill senators of the Roman people?
“It pertains to the matter to know how arrogant his cruelty was, although we may seem to wander elsewhere and go astray. But this very thing will be part of anger raging beyond its accustomed measure. He had beaten senators with scourges; he himself brought it about that it could be said, ‘It commonly happens.’ He had tortured them by all the things which are most grievous in the nature of things: cords, plates, the rack, fire, and his own countenance. At this point the answer will be: ‘A great matter, if he divided three senators, like worthless slaves, among blows and flames!’—a man who considered slaughtering the entire senate and wished that the Roman people had one neck, so that he might gather his crimes, drawn out over so many places and times, into one blow and one day.”
Claudius was more savage without inspecting the charges. Nero too, amid the softest beginnings of his reign, prepared poison for Britannicus, impatient of a slow crime. Tacitus, Book XIII. Afterward he was equally savage against his mother, his teacher, the Apostles, and everyone. Severus Antoninus contrived his father’s death through physicians, but, because they had insufficiently obeyed him, after his parent was dead he slaughtered them all, together with his father’s friends, not leaving even one. Thus before him the elder Severus had slaughtered all the friends of Niger.
What sort of portent was it, and whence did these things proceed? Gallienus wrote to Verianus: “You will not satisfy me if you kill only armed men whom the chance of war too could have killed. Every person of the male sex must be destroyed—if old men and the immature could also be killed without our censure. Whoever has spoken badly against me, against the son of Valerian, against the father and brother of so many princes, must be killed. Ingenuus has been made emperor. Tear apart, kill, cut down. You can understand my spirit. Be angry with my mind, you who know that I have written these things with my own hand.” Thus Trebellius in the Thirty Tyrants.
Maximinus, in addition to the cruelty exercised against Christians, was proclaimed emperor from the post of prefect of recruits and, at the very beginning, slaughtered four thousand of Alexander’s friends. Julius Capitolinus describes his cruelty: “But amid these virtues he was so cruel that some called him Cyclops, others Busiris, others Sciron, some Phalaris, many Typhon or Gyges. The senate feared him so much that prayers were made publicly and privately in the temples—even by women with their children—that he might never see the city of Rome. For they heard that some were raised upon the cross, others enclosed in recently slaughtered animals, others cast to wild beasts, and others crushed with clubs; and all these things without regard to dignity, since he seemed to wish to govern military discipline, by whose example he wished also to correct civil affairs. This does not befit a prince who wishes to be loved. For he was persuaded that dominion could not be held except by cruelty.”
Trebellius Pollio agrees with Capitolinus: “He was, however, of excessive cruelty toward the soldiers, for he killed three thousand and four thousand soldiers on individual days.”
Macrinus was a grave and just avenger of crimes—if he had not himself been the most criminal man. He drove soldiers onto crosses, enclosed them in oxen for fornication, killed a tribune because he had permitted the watches to be abandoned, and represented the punishments of Mezentius.
Aurelian, coming to Rome, avenged a sedition with so much blood that he almost filled the city with funerals.
§ 12. Now let us turn our eyes and mind toward our state, to which, before all things, clemency and rarity and sparingness of punishments are fitting. It altogether befits a prince to be clement. Human beings have entrusted life and fortunes to you; it befits you not to betray the trust of so many faithful persons. It was said by an ancient sage: “Spare another’s blood as your own.” Judge that this was said to you, O prince: spare another’s blood as Christ’s. For if they are your fellow-servants and members of Christ, the blood of his members cannot be foreign to Christ. It befits all who have been appointed to preserve human beings to be benevolent toward all and to confer benefits upon those upon whom they can. Even the man conscious in himself of no fault should judge nothing more beautiful for himself than to grant pardon for many things and seek it for none. But the man who himself possesses something which ought to be pardoned cannot, without the highest disgrace, be cruel toward others.
In this matter imitate God, who is beneficent toward all. Saint Cyprian says in On the Good of Patience: “We see that, with the inseparable equality of patience, at God’s command the seasons obey the guilty and the innocent, the religious and impious, the grateful and ungrateful; the elements serve; the winds blow; springs flow; the abundance of crops grows; the fruits of vineyards ripen; orchards overflow with fruit; groves grow leafy; meadows flower. And although God is exasperated by frequent—indeed, continual—offenses, he tempers his indignation and patiently awaits the day of retribution once appointed. And although vengeance is in his power, he prefers to preserve patience for a long time, bearing clemently and deferring, so that, if it can be, prolonged malice may at some time be changed, and a human being wallowing in the contagion of errors and crimes may even late be converted to the Lord, as he himself admonishes and says: ‘I do not desire the death of the dying, only that he return and live.’”
§ 13. Thus a human being was born for the assistance of human beings, and, in addition to nature, the very office of a prince requires this. Seneca speaks with the same mind in Book I, Chapter V of On Clemency: “A great spirit befits great fortune. Unless it has raised itself to that fortune and stands higher, it also draws that fortune beneath the earth. But it is proper to a great spirit to be placid and tranquil and to look down from above upon injuries and offenses. It is womanish to rage in anger; it belongs to wild beasts—and not even noble ones—to bite and press those cast down. Elephants and lions pass by what they have struck down; persistence belongs to an ignoble beast.
“Savage and inexorable anger does not befit a king, for he rises little above the man with whom he makes himself equal by growing angry. But if he gives life, if he gives dignity to those in danger and deserving to lose it, he does what is permitted to none except one who possesses mastery of affairs. For life is taken away even from a superior; it is never given except to an inferior. To preserve is proper to exalted fortune, which ought never to be more admired than when it happens to possess the same power as the gods, by whose beneficence we are brought forth into the light, the good and evil alike.”
§ 14. Just as Christian princes are accustomed to celebrate the day of the Resurrection and the other feasts of the most holy religion by a release of condemned persons, so that, although they dwell in filth and darkness, they may nevertheless rejoice in some light and fruit of redemption, so Constantine the Great wished there to be many places of refuge
for the afflicted in holy churches. Nor will good princes celebrate their birthday bloodily with slaughter in the amphitheater; for why should so many die on the day on which you were born? Rather, by beneficence they will make it lovable and awaited by the peoples. Constantine pardoned all on account of the birth of Crispus and on account of Helena’s delivery, except poisoners, murderers, and adulterers. With this disposition in a prince, how many prayers, we may suppose, will be offered for the safety of his children?
Moreover, clemency is of correspondingly greater importance in the state and its magistrates the more widely it extends and the greater the material it has upon which to act. Seneca too, the best teacher of clemency but the master of most cruel pupils, teaches this in Book I, Chapter V: “Accordingly, even citizens who are to be condemned must be spared, no differently from diseased limbs; and if at any time there is need to let blood, one must refrain from cutting beyond what is necessary. Therefore, as I was saying, clemency is indeed in accordance with nature for all human beings, but is most becoming to commanders, inasmuch as it has more to preserve among them and appears upon a greater field. For how very little harm private cruelty does! The savagery of princes is war. Although, moreover, there is concord among the virtues, and no one of them is better or more honorable than another, nevertheless a certain virtue is more suited to certain persons. Magnanimity becomes every mortal, even him beneath whom there is nothing. For what is greater or braver than to beat back evil fortune? Yet this magnanimity has a wider place in good fortune and is seen better upon a tribunal than upon level ground. Into whatever house clemency comes, it will render it happy and tranquil; but in a royal house, the rarer it is, the more marvelous. For what is more marvelous than that he whose anger nothing obstructs, to whose graver sentence even those who perish assent, whom no one will question—indeed, if he has flared up more violently, whom no one will even entreat—should himself lay a hand upon himself and employ his power for what is better and milder?” But this is rare; for although one person is sometimes spared, unjust death is nevertheless inflicted upon many thousands.
Alas, how often has that gentle piety of the Christians lamented these things? Cyprian, Epistle II: “Observe the roads closed by robbers, the seas beset by pirates, and wars everywhere divided by the bloody horror of camps. The world is wet with mutual blood; and when individuals commit homicide, it is a crime, but it is called a virtue when it is done publicly. Not the consideration of innocence, but the magnitude of savagery, obtains impunity for crimes. Now turn your eyes and countenance toward the cities themselves: you will encounter a crowded spectacle more mournful than every solitude. A gladiatorial game is prepared so that blood may delight the lust of cruel eyes. The body is filled with richer foods for nourishment, and the robust mass of limbs grows fat with layers of grease, so that, fattened for punishment, it may perish at a dearer price. A human being is killed for a human being’s pleasure; and that anyone should be able to kill is expertise, practice, and art. The crime is not only committed but also taught. What more inhuman, what more bitter can be spoken? It is a discipline that a man should be able to destroy, and a glory that he does destroy. I ask you, what kind of thing is that, when they cast to wild beasts men whom no one has condemned? In the fullness of youth, with sufficiently honorable appearance and costly clothing, living young men are adorned for a voluntary funeral; the wretched glory in their own evils. They fight against beasts not because of a crime but because of madness. Fathers watch their sons; a brother is in the arena, and his sister is present.”
Tertullian, however, pursues these matters in Chapter XXI of On the Spectacles: “And he who shudders at the corpse of a human being who has died by the common law of nature, this same man in the amphitheater bends down from above with most enduring eyes over bodies torn apart and scattered and fouled in their own blood. Indeed, he who comes to the spectacle to approve the punishment of a murderer, this same man with scourges and rods drives an unwilling gladiator to murder. And he who demands the lion for some more notorious murderer, this same man seeks the release-rod for an atrocious gladiator and bestows the cap as a reward. But he also calls back the man already finished for the spectacle of his pleasure, more gladly recognizing close at hand the man whom he wished to kill from afar—so much the harder if he did not wish it.”
How can those who live in this way accuse the cruelty of their own princes—how can they accuse that of tyrants? You shudder at Gaius’s saying when he wishes that the Roman people had one neck. You are all citizens worthy of Gaius; nothing is cheaper to you than a human being, in whose blood alone a spectacle is sought. A human being kills a human being—not angry, not afraid, not hoping, seeking nothing, but merely in order to watch. Nor is a single death discharged by one blow; pain is not deceived by a sword which kills before it is felt, but mutilation, disembowelment, and the throbbing of the dying man are the spectators’ delights. Even those who raved condemned those spectacles. Seneca, Epistle XCV: “We rage not only privately but publicly. We restrain homicides and individual killings; but what of wars and the glorious crime of slaughtered nations? Neither avarice nor cruelty knows a limit; and so long as those things are done furtively and by individuals, they are less harmful and less monstrous. Crimes are practiced by decrees of the senate and resolutions of the people, and what is forbidden privately is publicly commanded. Certain deeds would be expiated with one’s head if committed privately; the same deeds, because men wearing military cloaks have done them, we praise. Human beings, the gentlest race, are not ashamed to rejoice in one another’s blood, to wage wars, and to hand wars down to their children, although peace exists even among dumb and savage beasts. Against so powerful and widely unfolded a madness philosophy has become more laborious, and it has assumed as much strength for itself as has accrued to the things against which it was being prepared. It was an easy matter to rebuke men indulging in wine and seeking more delicate food; a mind which had departed only a little from frugality did not have to be brought back by great force.”
§ 15. Very well, O Seneca: you rage publicly. For that cruelty was public, and it was entrusted to magistrates not only in the amphitheater but by law, by custom, or by an eagerness to please. You accuse Tiberius, Gaius, Nero, Claudius, Domitian, Severus, and Commodus as savage toward certain senators and knights out of fear, hatred, or mere inclination. But what will those accusers of another’s cruelty determine concerning themselves, who lavished so much blood of innocent men upon their own pleasures? What is more just than that those who ordered so many thousands of contracted gladiators to die by the turning of a thumb should be cast before the savagery of bloodthirsty princes? What wonder is it, while God’s avenging eye keeps watch, that those men die in such a way as to feel themselves dying, who so often repeated that savage cry: “Again!” Blind paganism was not ignorant of its own bloodthirsty inhumanity, but loved it. Thus all were filled with homicide, stripped of the human being, clothed in a bestial mind, not commonly savage but conquerors of every savagery. For beasts abstain from their own kind and rarely bite more than they eat. These men, however, rejoiced in homicide, in the slaughter not of another species, and without any advantage to themselves. And so they experienced men of the same kind not only as enemies but also as their emperors.
§ 16. But to you, O state, I commend mercy, gentleness, and clemency. If anyone delights in human miseries, command him to be miserable. We are commanded to be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. God threatens that
those who have not shown mercy to their neighbor will not obtain it. Mercy is preferred to all sacrifices. That it must be shown to one’s neighbor is taught in Psalm 112:5, 9; Proverbs 11:17; 14:21; 15:27; 24:21, 31; 19:7; 25:21; 29:7; Hosea 6:11; Micah 6:8; Zechariah 7:9; Matthew 5:7; 19:13; 10:33; 25:41; and Galatians 6:12. Thus not only is the steadfast will to bring aid, to relieve human miseries, to redeem captives, and to enrich the poorer most praiseworthy and, as Cicero says, characteristic of a great and weighty man; but even that most tender softness of mind by which we are affected by the evils of others, if it is governed by right reason, is an excellent instrument of beneficence and a solace for human evils enclosed by the most merciful God within the breasts of his children. For we see that the miserable also derive consolation from the affections of those who grieve with them. Therefore:
Nature confesses that she gave the softest hearts
To the human race, for she gave tears; this is the best part
Of our feeling. Therefore she commands us to weep at the cause pleaded by a friend,
At the squalor of a defendant, at an orphan summoning to law
His defrauder, whose face, streaming with weeping,
His girlish hair renders uncertain.
At nature’s command we groan when the funeral of a marriageable
Maiden meets us, or an infant is enclosed by the earth,
Too small for the fire of the pyre, what good man, or man worthy of the torch
Of the mysteries, such as Ceres wishes her priest to be,
Believes any evils of another foreign to himself? This separates us
From the herd of dumb creatures; and therefore we alone received
A venerable nature, capable of divine things
And fit for practicing and receiving the arts;
We drew down feeling from the citadel of heaven.
The beasts that gaze bent toward the earth lack it.
At the beginning the common Creator granted them
Souls only, but us a mind as well, so that mutual
Affection might command us to seek and to furnish aid,
To draw the scattered into a people, to migrate from the ancient
Grove, and to leave the forests inhabited by our forefathers;
To build houses, to join another roof to our household gods,
So that shared confidence might grant safe sleep at a neighbor’s threshold;
To protect with arms a fallen citizen or one reeling from a great wound;
To give the signals by a common trumpet, to be defended by the same
Towers, and to be held by the single key of the gates.
But now concord among serpents is greater: a beast with like markings
Spares its kin. When did a stronger lion ever take
The life of a lion? In what forest did a boar ever expire
By the tusks of a larger boar? The Indian tiger maintains
Perpetual peace with a raging tiger; savage bears agree among themselves.
But for the human being it is too little to have produced deadly iron
On an accursed anvil, although the first smiths, accustomed only
To forge rakes and hoes and wearied by mattocks and ploughshares,
Did not know how to hammer out swords.
The cause of the humanity implanted in us is that no animal is by nature more loving toward its own kind than the human being. The στοργὴ of beasts, and their affection toward their offspring, fades when the offspring is grown, nor is there any regard for kinship. Next, because most human beings require pardon, the human being ought to be kindly toward his own nature. In Book I, Chapter VI of On Clemency, Seneca exhorts Nero to clemency for this reason: “We have all sinned: some grievously, some more lightly, some deliberately, others perhaps driven by impulse or carried away by another’s wickedness; others have stood insufficiently bravely in good counsels and have lost innocence unwillingly and while resisting. Nor do we offend only once, but we shall offend to the very end of life. Even if someone has so thoroughly purified his mind that nothing can disturb or deceive him any longer, nevertheless he has reached innocence through sinning.”
For this reason Titus readily pardoned even grave offenses. “Two men of patrician family,” says Tranquillus in Chapter IX, “convicted of aspiring to the empire, he did nothing more than admonish to desist, saying that the principate is given by fate; if they desired anything besides it, he promised that he would grant it.”
§ 17. But the chief consideration by which all must very greatly be incited to clemency is that through it love is born, and security from love. From cruelty arise hatred and fear; from hatred, plots; from fear, flight and, when it hopes for victory, seditions and wars.
With one voice the whole human race proclaims how much love the clemency of princes and of the state conciliates. Seneca demonstrates this to his prince in Book I, Chapter III of On Clemency: “The greatness of that man alone is stable and founded whom all know to be as much for them as above them; whose care for the safety of individuals and of all together they experience keeping watch every day; at whose approach they do not scatter as though some evil or harmful animal had leapt from its lair, but fly eagerly toward him as toward a bright and beneficent star, most ready to cast themselves before the blades of plotters for him and to lay their bodies beneath him if a road to safety must be constructed for him through human slaughter. They protect his sleep with nightly watches; placed before and poured around him, they defend his sides; they oppose themselves to dangers rushing in. This agreement of peoples and cities in thus protecting and arming kings, and in casting themselves and their possessions wherever the safety of their commander desires, is not without reason.”
And in Chapter XIII: “On the other hand, he who has care of all things, although he guards some more and others less, nourishes every part of the state as though it were part of himself, inclined toward milder measures; even if it is expedient to punish, he shows how unwillingly he lays hands upon a harsh remedy. In his mind there is nothing hostile, nothing savage. He exercises his power placidly and beneficially, desiring that his commands be approved by the citizens; he considers himself abundantly happy if he has made his fortune public; affable in speech and easy of access, lovable in countenance—which above all wins over peoples—favorably disposed toward just desires and stern toward unjust ones, he is loved, defended, and revered by the whole city.”
§ 18. Cruelty, however, is more powerful for producing hatred than clemency is for producing love. Ancient Rome saw scarcely two clement princes, Germanicus, whom it did not fear to have as Caesar, and Titus, whom it could not retain for long. Tacitus speaks thus of the most clement Germanicus in Book II of the Annals: “Not long afterward he died, to the immense grief of the province and the surrounding peoples. Foreign nations and kings grieved: such was his courtesy toward allies and gentleness toward enemies; equally venerable in sight and hearing, while he retained the grandeur and gravity of the highest fortune, he had escaped envy and arrogance. His funeral, without ancestral images and procession, was renowned through praises and the memory of his virtues. And there were those who equated his appearance, age, kind of death, and also the nearness of the places in which he perished with the fate of Alexander the Great. For both were of handsome body and distinguished lineage, had passed scarcely beyond thirty years, and died through the plots of their own people among foreign nations. But this man had been gentle toward friends, moderate in pleasures, had lived in one marriage with legitimate children, and was no less a warrior, even if rashness was absent and he was hindered from pressing into servitude the Germanies shattered by so many victories. But if he had been the sole arbiter of affairs, if he had possessed royal right and title, he would have attained military glory the more readily in proportion as he excelled in clemency, temperance, and the other good arts.”
Of Titus, Suetonius, Chapter XII: “He died in the same villa as his father, on the Ides of September, after two years, two months, and nine days from the time he succeeded his father, in the forty-second year of his age. When this became public, all mourned publicly no differently than in a domestic bereavement; before it was summoned by edict, the senate ran to the senate-house and, while the doors were still barred and afterward opened, rendered the dead man such thanks and heaped upon him such praises as it never heaped upon him even when alive and present.”
You may compare with these the deaths of others. The case of Titus is more marvelous because at the beginning of his rule he had been secretly cruel, but thereby conciliated greater hatred. For Suetonius, Chapter VI, says: “And he acted somewhat less civilly and more violently. Indeed, he unhesitatingly crushed everyone most suspected by him, sending men through theaters and camps to demand their punishment as though by common consent. Among these was Aulus Caecina, a man of consular rank, whom, after inviting him to dinner and when he had scarcely departed from the dining room, he ordered to be stabbed—admittedly because danger was urgent, since even a document in Caecina’s handwriting concerning a conspiracy prepared among the soldiers had been discovered. By these actions, just as he made sufficient provision for his future security, so for the present he contracted the greatest unpopularity, such that scarcely anyone passed to the principate with so adverse a report and with all men more unwilling.”
But afterward he corrected this and left behind a great longing for himself. It was not so at the death of Tiberius. “The people rejoiced so much at his death,” says Suetonius, Chapter LXXV, “that at the first report they ran about, some crying that Tiberius should be dragged into the Tiber, some praying Mother Earth and the infernal gods that they would give the dead man no abode except among the impious, while others threatened his corpse with the hook and the Gemonian stairs, exasperated not only by the memory of his former cruelty but also by a recent atrocity.”
So great was the public joy at Nero’s death that the common people ran throughout the whole city wearing caps. Suetonius, Chapter LVII. Vitellius, with his hands bound behind his back and his garment torn, was led as a foul spectacle, with many reviling and no one weeping; the deformity of his end had removed pity. Amid great mockeries of deeds and words he was led through the whole length of the Sacred Way, his hair drawn back from his head as condemned men are accustomed, and even the point of a sword placed beneath his chin so that he would present his face to be seen and not lower it; some assailed him with dung and mud, others shouted “incendiary” and “glutton,” and part of the crowd even reproached the defects of his body. For he possessed an enormous height, a face generally red from drunkenness, a swollen belly, and one thigh somewhat weak from the impact of a chariot long before, when he attended Gaius as he drove. Finally, at the Gemonian stairs, he was lacerated and killed by the smallest blows and thereafter dragged by a hook into the Tiber.
The senate rejoiced so much at the killing of Domitian, according to Suetonius, Chapter XXIII, that when the senate-house had been filled in eager rivalry, it did not refrain from mangling the dead man with the most insulting and bitter kind of acclamations. It even ordered ladders to be brought in, his shields and images to be pulled down before their eyes and dashed against the ground in that very place, and finally decreed that his inscriptions everywhere be erased and all memory of him abolished.
I say nothing of the Maximini, Commodus, and others; they too experienced many mockeries after death. How are those men safe or secure whom all pursue with so much hatred?
§ 19. Although some have reached such madness that they have upon their lips, “Let them hate, provided that they fear,” they nevertheless obtain no security through the slaughter of many. Machiavelli, the worst adviser of princes, teaches thus in Chapter XVII of his Prince: “Passing now to the other qualities which we enumerated above, it would be desirable for every prince to be held clement, not cruel; nevertheless, caution must be employed lest he abuse this clemency. Valentino was considered inhuman; yet his inhumanity restored all Romagna to soundness, united it into one, and brought it back to peace and fidelity. If this is duly considered, he will be found more merciful than the Florentine people, who, in order to escape the name of cruelty, permitted the city of Pistoia to be destroyed. Therefore, let a prince care little for the name of savagery by which he may keep his people united in fidelity. For with a very few examples he will be more clement than those who, through excessive mildness, permit disturbances of affairs to follow, whence killings or plunder arise.”
In general he thinks it better to be feared than loved. But he is very greatly mistaken, for the fear that arises from cruelty always has hatred joined to it; the fear of the wicked which arises from a prince’s justice, and the reverence of the good, is not pernicious because it is without hatred. There is no security for a prince amid the fear and hatred of the good. He provokes the hatred of all if he rages against a few. While Augustus raged, he suffered many conspiracies, for he did not lack even a conspiracy by men whom one would be ashamed to know had dared so great a deed. But when he turned himself to clemency, he lived secure. This was Livia’s counsel, whose speech is found in Dio, and its abridgment in Seneca, Book I, Chapter IX of On Clemency: “Admit,” she says, “a woman’s counsel. Do what physicians are accustomed to do: when customary remedies do not succeed, they try their opposites. You have accomplished nothing thus far by severity. Salvidienus was followed by Lepidus, Lepidus by Murena, Murena by Caepio, Caepio by Egnatius—to be silent about others whose audacity one is at last ashamed of. Now try how clemency may turn out for you.”
He pardoned Cinna, gave him the consulship, and possessed him as his most faithful friend. And Ovid, the luxurious knight of a most luxurious Caesar, sings truly:
I have seen many also increased in riches and honors
Who had borne arms against your head.
“Clemency,” says Seneca in Book I, Chapter X of On Clemency, “brought him to safety and security; it rendered him pleasing and favored, although he had laid his hand upon the neck of a state not yet subdued. This today still grants him a reputation which scarcely serves living princes. We believe him to be a god, not as though we had been ordered. We confess that Augustus was a good prince and that the name of father suited him well.”
§ 20. What clemency, then, truly befits a prince? That which Seneca perceived he had falsely attributed to his Nero in Chapter XI: “This, Caesar, is true clemency, which you display, which did not begin from repentance for savagery: to possess no stain, never to have shed civil blood. This, amid the greatest power, is the truest temperance of mind and an incomprehensible love of the human race: not to be inflamed by some desire or rashness, nor, corrupted by the examples of former princes, to test by experiment how much is permitted against one’s citizens, but to blunt the edge of one’s command. You have furnished, Caesar, a bloodless city; and this of which you have gloried with a great spirit—that you have not shed a single drop of human blood in the whole world—is the greater and more marvelous because the sword was never entrusted to anyone more quickly. Clemency, therefore, not only renders princes more honorable but also safer, and it is an ornament of empires and at the same time their most certain safety. Kings have grown old and handed kingdoms to their children and grandchildren; the power of tyrants is execrable and brief. What difference is there between a tyrant and a king? For the outward appearance of their fortune and their license are equal, except that tyrants rage from pleasure, kings only from cause and necessity.”
This praise was altogether false, and Seneca’s lie was not hidden. At the beginning, poison was given to Silanus the proconsul amid a banquet. There would have been a progression to further slaughter if Afranius
Burrus and Annaeus Seneca had not stood in the way. Certainly the poison administered to Britannicus amid the banquet, his sudden funeral, and other things proved cruelty. A pious and humane prince has arms as a protection of peace—or rather as an ornament. Mamertinus in his Panegyric of Julian: “Therefore arms and young men with swords and javelins are not guards of your body, but a certain solemn ornament of imperial majesty. For what need is there of them when you are surrounded by the strongest wall of civic love?”
A tyrant, on the contrary, looks securely upon no arms. Experience speaks thus in Thyestes:
While I stood aloft,
I never ceased to fear, and to fear the very sword at my side.
He will never restrain great hatreds by the sword; he turns his guards against himself:
He fears the man who fears him; fear returns upon its author.
Plutarch speaks excellently to all princes:
τῷ γὰρ ὄντι δεδίασιν οἱ βασιλεῖς ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀρχομένων, οἱ δὲ τύραννοι τοὺς ἀρχομένους· διὸ τῇ δυνάμει τὸ δέος συναύξουσι· πλειόνων γὰρ ἄρχοντες πλείονας φοβοῦνται.
Kings truly fear on behalf of their subjects; tyrants fear their subjects. If their power increases, their fear also increases. And when they command more people, they fear more people.
“For he errs,” says Seneca in Book I, Chapter XIX of On Clemency, “if anyone thinks that a king is safe where nothing is safe from the king. Security must be purchased by mutual security. There is no need to build citadels raised aloft, nor to fortify hills difficult of ascent, nor to cut away the sides of mountains, nor to enclose oneself with manifold walls and towers. Clemency will furnish a king safety in the open. There is one impregnable fortification: the love of the citizens. What is more beautiful than to live while all desire it and offer their prayers without a guard? If his health has faltered a little, that not the hope of men but their fear should be aroused? That nothing should be so precious to anyone that he would not wish it exchanged for the safety of his protector? That he should reckon whatever happens to him as happening also to himself? In this he has proved by continual arguments of goodness that the state is not his, but that he belongs to the state.”
And in Chapter XXVI: “Even the hands of slaves have avenged the cruelty of private men under certain danger of the cross; whole nations and peoples have attempted to cut off tyrants—both those whose evil it was and those whom it threatened. Sometimes their own guards have risen against them and practiced upon them the perfidy, impiety, ferocity, and whatever else they had learned from them. For what can anyone hope from a man whom he has taught to be evil? Wickedness does not obey for long, nor does it sin only so far as it is commanded.”
Let no one deceive himself. The experiences of all kingdoms have taught that the most faithful guard of the state is the clemency of the prince.
The reason is that all willingly submit themselves to a ruler who is gentle, kindly, and loving toward the citizens, and entrust all their possessions to him; all turn away from a cruel ruler. All subjects flee a prince’s cruelty as a public pestilence and an incurable disease; they indignantly endure standing beneath the blow. They are all detained as though in a free prison and judge their prince to be a jailer and executioner. When the first hope appears, they vindicate themselves into liberty. Nor is security prepared by the slaughter of enemies, although many fall. For those who survive hate more actively, since they judge themselves safe through hiding and obscurity. Furthermore, scarcely any human being is so solitary that he has no relatives, connections, or friends. A cruel prince incites all of these to hatred of himself, and therefore increases the number of his enemies by raging. It was rightly objected to a tyrant who boasted that he had killed all his enemies: “But their children have not also been killed; they survive as avengers.” No one has ever killed his own successor, no one his avenger. He lies hidden among thousands of flatterers. For this is remarkable: most men who commanded cruelly were slaughtered by those whom they judged most faithful. When this happens all marvel. Brutus killed Caesar, Macro Tiberius, and Chaerea Gaius. Yet it is necessary that it happen so: all hate them; the suspected are removed from their midst; friends alone can be avengers.
§ 21. Now the measure of clemency must also be discussed, for it must be tempered with salutary severity. For you would not praise a physician who binds up with sweet potions and soft fomentations those evils which demand the iron and fire. Let him use the scalpel and cautery when necessity requires, provided that the remedy does not rage beyond the disease. Wounds are often treated more painfully than they are. A Hippocratic slaughterhouse is crueler than brigandage when
The remedy has exceeded its measure.
It belongs to a clement magistrate to disregard private injuries. That saying is worthy of immortality: “The King of France does not avenge the injuries of the Duke of Orléans.” A great spirit is needed for this, lest the man who, as an equal, was troublesome in like measure be crushed when the other becomes more powerful. And indeed, most men, when they are elevated to great and unexpected honors, hate those by whom they understand that they were known as humble and abject. Vitellius, now emperor, defrauded all his creditors and compelled them to return the records of their contracts, for he boasted that he returned life in place of money—with an altogether brigand-like spirit, as though inflicting death upon creditors were part of justice. When this saying of his was spread among the common people, immense hatred was aroused among all, in which he soon burned away. Retirement embittered Tiberius, and he was more cruel because many had despised him as a private man. For this reason he also furnished material for witticisms:
He who comes from exile to command
Will reign with much blood.
§ 22. The clemency which is mild in pardoning injuries against the prince is more illustrious than that which forgives or dissembles crimes committed against the state. Yet the contrary frequently occurs. Many men become less angry at enemies gnawing away the extremities of provinces, at avaricious governors, and at authors of dissension than at a light jest or an act of neglect. When Severus entered Rome in ovation, he put forty men of consular rank and fit for command to death upon fabricated and most trifling charges. Many were killed because they had jested about his name, because they had called him truly Severus, truly an emperor bearing his own name, and the Punic Sulla. Thus Spartianus: “He thereafter set out for the Parthian war, after presenting a gladiatorial show and giving a largesse to the people. Amid these things he killed many upon either true or fabricated charges. Many, moreover, were condemned because they had jested, others because they had been silent, others because they had spoken many things figuratively: that he was truly an emperor of his name, truly Pertinax, truly Severus.”
But what will you do to the man who ordered three hundred lashes to be laid upon a slave because he had brought the hot water rather late? Who killed with clubs a wretched man who, when bitten during the hunt, released a Spartan hound before the proper time? How much more clement was Augustus, who despised insults cast against himself and his house? How much better did Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius, Augustuses, decree that if anyone, forgetful of modesty, had cursed the emperor, he should not be subjected to punishment?
§ 23. Clemency toward the public must be exercised with great judgment, lest, if impunity is displayed to criminals without judgment and reason, weaker persons be rendered liable to injuries,
the audacity of criminals be nourished, and the state suffer loss for that reason. For he who spares an incurably evil thing does as much harm as he who cuts away sound things. Therefore a wise prince will not imitate the Indian king whose kingdom is said to have been filled with robbers because of the slowness of judgments. The Treasury of Indian Affairs, Tome III, Book II, Chapter XXVII, explains it thus: “The king of Bisnagar is rather too lenient toward criminals and forbids them to be punished. Hence there is everywhere throughout the whole kingdom a marvelous and unbridled license even among those insolent against the royal majesty. The Great Mughal had recently sent ambassadors to him, and at the same time several most excellent horses and other costly gifts. When these, together with the noblest horse, had secretly been taken by one of his subjects along the road, he imposed no punishment for the insolent deed; he merely ordered the horse to be returned and gave it to the ambassador.” Nor was Nero’s saying clement but a foolish veiling of inhumanity. For when his signature upon the sentences of condemned men was sought, he said, “How I wish I did not know letters!” Would that you had not known poisons and truculent words. Nevertheless, even this was an ill-considered saying. The punishments of guilty men and the gentleness of a prince do not conflict. With a better spirit, but one more flattering than correct, Antoninus the Philosopher bound himself to clemency in a speech: “Far be it that, while I hold the principate, any one of you should be condemned to death by my decree and yours.” Excessive indulgence and excessive impunity introduce great crimes and finally compel the prince suddenly to become cruel.
§ 24. Let him not add mockeries to the slain. For these instill horror, as though he had not been content with death. Severus affixed the head of Albinus to a gibbet. Barbarians enclosed the skull of an enemy in gold, brought it to banquets, and used it as a cup. Nor was that savagery always absent from Christians. German soldiers played ball with the heads of the Cremonese; the Cremonese cut Germans limb from limb. There are innumerable examples. But such things are committed with great infamy. Insult against a dying man is more bitter than death itself.
§ 25. Even to have uttered a cruel saying is imputed as a crime, because such sayings indicate a bestial mind. Of this kind are: “Strike in such a way that he may feel himself dying.” “I have not yet returned to favor with you.” “An antidote against Caesar?” “Why does he not die willingly?” “Strike again.” “Would that you all had one neck.” “Would that my brother were alive.” “From the bald man to the bald man.” For these sayings are spread in such a way that they arouse the most dangerous hatred, since human beings by their own nature abhor cruelty. For even historians who have passed over the deaths of many most illustrious persons nevertheless commit those signs of inhumanity to writing. Julius was not ignorant of this. For when, after the fatherland had been crushed, he plundered its patrimony—that is, the treasury—he threatened death to the quaestor who resisted. When the man marveled, Caesar said that it was easier for him to do this than to say it. By a nod, while absent and as though unaware, he could do it without the reputation for cruelty which, while the opposing party still stood, was destructive; by voice he could not command it. A horrible saying certainly rendered Octavian detestable. Tranquillus reports it thus: “When Perusia had been captured, he punished very many, meeting those who attempted to beg pardon or excuse themselves with one answer: ‘You must die.’”
§ 26. Above all, let him take care that treachery or mockery is not joined to savagery. The prefect Maximinus, after promising that he would destroy no one by fire or iron, ordered them to be crushed with lead, mocking the credulity of simple men. He increased hatred by a double evil and brought it about that no one trusted him.
§ 27. When reason dictates, let the prince himself mitigate the severity of the laws. This will always find a place when the words admit moderation. The laws themselves command this. Through interpretation of the laws, punishments must be softened rather than made harsher. Julius gave an example of clemency. Captured as a boy by pirates, in jest he threatened them with the cross, and confirmed it with an oath; after they were captured, he first killed them and thereafter placed them upon crosses. He interpreted the obligation of his oath courteously. Certainly by this deed he obtained reputation and the affection of the Roman people. The contrary was done by Valentinian, a most severe and sometimes cruel enforcer of laws. He is also reproached because, when reviewing the prisons, he never subscribed a milder judgment for any condemned person. For it was customary that a prince subscribe to the penalties of condemned men and, out of gentleness and clemency, sometimes mitigate the punishments of the laws. Hence it was also established that those condemned by the word of the prince or the sentence of judges should not be led away before the tenth day. Afterward Theodosius added twenty days, upon the admonition of Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan, for this reason: lest anyone fall through the sudden anger of the prince, but that delay might disclose the truth and calm indignation.
§ 28. Let him spare his eyes: let him not be present at punishments, lest he appear to have wished not so much to obey the laws because moved by justice as to exhibit a spectacle to himself. Gaius tortured innocent men with various kinds of torments and with his own countenance. All these considerations have place especially when the prince himself has been injured. For he ought to be moved less by his own injuries than by those of others. But to wish parents or other loved ones to be present at punishments is altogether tyrannical. Caligula had this as a custom. Dio reports: “Furthermore, he ordered Cassius Melinus to be killed and compelled Capito, his father, a good man accused of no offense, to be present at his son’s punishment. When Capito asked Gaius that he be permitted to close his eyes, he was ordered to be killed along with him.”
§ 29. When the state requires severity, clemency is content with the punishments established by law. To be ingenious in devising new tortures is the surest sign of savagery. All new and unusual things not only bring infamy; but because they are eagerly narrated and heard like prodigies, they carry infamy very far. Although the bitterness of punishments may remain within the measure prescribed by law, nevertheless, if it is novel, it reveals a cruel mind.
§ 30. Those punishments must also be avoided which contain some singular, long-premeditated, laborious, and shameful malice. Of this kind was the inhumanity of Elagabalus. “He is said,” says Aelius Lampridius, “to have collected serpents through the priests of the Marsian nation and suddenly released them before dawn, at the time when the people are accustomed to assemble for celebrated games, so that many were afflicted by bites and in the flight.”
The Marsian nation, victorious over asps and snakes, had been given for the safety of peoples against the most hostile beasts; it collected serpents for medicine or in order to destroy them. But that monster, more harmful than an asp or basilisk, turned the gift and labor of that nation to the destruction of his own people. It belongs to barbarians to delight in devising punishments. They killed the Christian of Arethusa with the writing-styles of boys after exquisite tortures. In the Thebaid, after drawing down and releasing the branches of trees, they tore many apart; they killed women in the foulest and altogether pitiable manner, bound by one foot while the other was drawn by machines. They burned Christians smeared with pitch, tow, and resin for use as nocturnal lamps; covered with the skins of beasts,
they cast them to dogs. They buried Chrysanthus and Daria alive in the earth. They cut open the bellies of virgins and, after filling them with barley, fed pigs from them. That barbarity held the empire while it harassed Christians with various punishments. This occurred by God’s permission, so that even in this way posterity might recognize that such foul slaughterhouses belong to savagery, not justice. The Huguenots in France surpassed them in many ways by novelty, bitterness, and foulness, as the Theater of Calvinist Cruelty shows.
§ 31. The punishments of many persons, whether taken at one time or at different times, must be avoided. For where the slaughter of many lies, something must be taken away from severity so that more may be added to charity. Let the state imitate physicians, who use gentle fomentations when they can heal without the iron. When much blood is shed, even guilty blood, the state is weakened; and just as, when a vein is opened, sound blood and the power of the natural spirits escape together with harmful blood, so among many condemned persons some are always believed innocent or capable of being healed by a milder hand. There is a great difference among defendants condemned by one law. Cruelty is never greater or more unjust than when kinds of human beings, not crimes, are punished, which frequently occurs when a multitude of offenders is presumed. Hence so many thousands of Christians formerly perished, because their name and profession were judged impiety. Hence at Caesarea, under the emperor Maximinus, when the corpses of martyrs were scattered everywhere, the forum, the streets, and the columns wept. Eusebius, Book VIII, Chapter XIX. Not only within the city but also against an enemy already conquered there must be moderation in killings. You shed hostile blood, but human blood, blood of your own kind. No animal except the sparrowhawk (nisus) and the human being rages against its own kind. Certainly God, when the ram has struck the wall, when the trumpets have sounded, and when war has been imbued with blood, nevertheless requires clemency even in the now-victorious battle-line. 2 Chronicles 28:6: “Pekah the son of Remaliah killed one hundred and twenty thousand of Judah in one day, all fighting men, because they had forsaken the God of their fathers. And the children of Israel captured from their brothers two hundred thousand women, boys, and girls and boundless spoil, and carried it to Samaria. At that time a prophet of the Lord named Oded was there. Going out to meet the army coming to Samaria, he said to them: ‘Behold, the Lord God of your fathers, angry against Judah, delivered them into your hands, and you killed them atrociously, so that your cruelty reached to heaven.
“‘Moreover, you wish to subject the children of Judah and Jerusalem to yourselves as male and female slaves, which ought by no means to be done; for in this too you have sinned against the Lord your God. But hear my counsel and lead back the captives whom you have brought from your brothers, because the great wrath of the Lord threatens you.’ Therefore, men from among the princes of the children of Ephraim—Azariah the son of Johanan, Berechiah the son of Zellum, and Amasa the son of Hadlai—stood against those who were coming from battle and said to them: ‘You shall not bring the captives here, lest we sin against the Lord. Why do you wish to add these things upon our sins and heap them upon our former offenses? For the sin is great, and the anger of the Lord’s wrath threatens Israel.’”
§ 32. Therefore, let every state which desires to be long-lasting avoid all cruelty and even the suspicion of cruelty. Let it educate children with simple food and clothing that is not costly; from their tender nails let even the children of princes learn to endure someone as though an equal, lest when grown they judge it a crime of majesty if anyone thinks contrary to them.
Commodus was held the cruelest of all the ancients; nature and education made him so. When he was twelve years old—at an age when the sight of blood is a horror to children—he commanded that a bath attendant who had heated the bath more than was right be cast into the furnace; nor did his cruelty grow quiet until, exulting with joy, he perceived the smell of the skins which his tutor, deceiving his madness, had thrown in place of the bath attendant. It is no marvel that he inflicted so much slaughter, when so much was permitted him in childhood. It harmed him to have had evil attendants, for from them he himself learned that by which he afterward made others evil.
Therefore, O princes, embrace clemency, which nature herself teaches you and your dignity demands; flee cruelty. Do not forget humanity and gentleness even when the law is at issue. The impregnable citadel of your security is clemency; cruelty makes all things uncertain and renders even its own ministers unfaithful. Nor should you alone cultivate clemency yourselves; require it from counselors, governors, and praetors. Command them to govern subjects not as governors but as bishops. The clemency of one king accomplishes little if, through the cruelty of petty tyrants, subjects are prevented from enjoying it. Let him be angry here; let him avenge his insults here, so that he may provide for his subjects. Cruelty is never honorable; in one outcome alone it is pleasing—if it is exercised against cruel ministers.
No spectacle is more desirable to a people than to see cruelty perish by its own examples. This alone is praised in Phalaris: that he enclosed the inventor in his own bull. Fix most deeply within your breasts that which reason dictates, which all wise men have taught, which the examples of all kingdoms have demonstrated, which eternal Truth, reigning most clemently for eternity, proclaimed: BLESSED ARE THE MEEK, FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.
In truth, harsh medicine is more dangerous than the disease itself. For it brings it about that no one dares to counsel right things if to have counseled is a danger. Confidence is the mother of that ferocity which has overturned very many kingdoms and has either destroyed very many of the Turks or troubled them with sedition. Indeed, their commanders pay even for accidental events. But the times are often such that no crime lacks its defense. Boccalini, Book II, Chapter XXXIII of Parnassus, even excuses Tiberian cruelty. From this arises the oppression of subjects, which crushes the whole state.