Vengeance accomplishes usually one of two purposes: if a person has been injured, it gives him either a compensation or immunity for the future. But a prince’s fortune is too exalted for him to feel the need of compensation, and his power is too evident to lead him to seek a reputation for power by injury to another. That, I say, is so, when he has been assailed and outraged by his inferiors; for in the case of foes whom he once counted his equals, he has vengeance enough if he sees them beneath Ms heel. A slave, a snake, or an arrow may slay even a king; but no one has saved a life who was not greater than the one whom he saved. Consequently he who has the power to give and to take away life ought to use this great gift of the gods in a noble spirit. If he attains this mastery over those who, as he knows, once occupied a pinnacle that matched his own, upon such especially he has already sated his revenge and accomplished all that genuine punishment required; for that man has lost his life who owes it to another, and whosoever, having been cast down from high estate at his enemy’s feet, has awaited the verdict of another upon his life and throne, lives on to the glory of his preserver, and by being saved confers more upon the other’s name than if he had been removed from the eyes of men. For he is a lasting spectacle of another’s prowess; in a triumph he could have passed quickly out of sight. If, however, it has been possible in safety to leave also his throne in his possession, and to restore him to the height from which he fell, the praise of him who was content to take from a conquered king nothing but his glory will rise in increasing greatness. This is to triumph even over his own victory, and to attest that he found among the vanquished nothing that was worthy of the victor. To his fellow-countrymen, to the obscure, and to the lowly he should show the greater moderation, as he has the less to gain by crushing them. Some men we should be glad to spare, on some we should scorn to be avenged, and we should recoil from them as from the tiny insects which defile the hand that crushes them; but in the case of those whose names will be upon the lips of the community, whether they are spared or punished, the opportunity for a notable clemency should be made use of.