Such was Augustus when he was old, or just upon the verge of old age. In youth he was hot-headed, flared up with anger, and did many things which he looked back upon with regret. To compare the mildness of the deified Augustus with yours no one will dare, even if the years of youth shall be brought into competition with an old age that was more than ripe. Granted that he was restrained and merciful — yes, to be sure, but it was after Actium’s waters had been stained17 with Roman blood, after his own and an enemy’s fleet had been wrecked off Sicily,18 after the holocaust of Perusia19 and the proscriptions. I, surely, do not call weariness of cruelty mercy. True mercy, Caesar, is this which you display, which arises from no regret for violence, that bears no stain and never shed a compatriot’s blood. In a position of unlimited power this is in the truest sense self-control and an all-embracing love of the human race even as of oneself — not to be perverted by any low desire, or by hastiness of nature, or by the precedent of earlier princes into testing by experiment what license one may employ against fellow-citizens, but rather to dull the edge of supreme power. Your gift, Caesar, is a state unstained by blood, and your prideful boast that in the whole world you have shed not a drop of human blood is the more significant and wonderful because no one ever had the sword put into his hands at an earlier age.
Mercy, then, makes rulers not only more honored, but safer, and is at the same time the glory of sovereign power and its surest protection. For why is it that kings have grown old and have handed on their thrones to children and grandchildren, while tyrants’ sway is accursed and short? What difference is there between a tyrant and a king (for they are alike in the mere outward show of fortune and extent of power), except that tyrants are cruel to serve their pleasure, kings only for a reason and by necessity?