It is praiseworthy to use authority over slaves with moderation. Even in the case of a human chattel you should consider not how much he can be made to suffer without retaliating, but how much you are permitted to inflict by the principles of equity and right, which require that mercy should be shown even to captives and purchased slaves. With how much more justice do they require that free, free-born, and reputable men should not be treated as mere chattels, but as those who, outstripped by you in rank, have been committed to your charge to be, not your slaves, but your wards. Even slaves have the right of refuge at the statue of a god; and although the law allows anything in dealing with a slave, yet in dealing with a human being there is an extreme which the right common to all living creatures refuses to allow. Who did not hate Vedius Pollio even more than his own slaves did, because he would fatten his lampreys on human blood, and order those who had for some reason incurred his displeasure to be thrown into his fishpond — or why not say his snake-preserve? The monster! He deserved to die a thousand deaths, whether he threw his slaves as food to lampreys he meant to eat, or whether he kept lampreys only to feed them on such food!
Even as cruel masters are pointed at with scorn throughout the whole city, and are hated and loathed, so with kings; while the wrong they do extends more widely, the infamy and hatred which they incur is handed down to the ages. But how much better not to have been born than to be counted among those born to the public harm!