Moral essays. With an English translation by J.W. Basore

ON MERCY, I. XVIII. 1-xix. 2With how much more justice do they require thatfree, free-born, and reputable men should not betreated as mere chattels, but as those who, outstrippedby you in rank, have been committed toyour charge to be, not your slaves, but your wards.Even slaves have the right of refrige at the statueof a god ; and although the law allows anythingin deahng with a slave, yet in deahng ^ith a humanbeing there is an extreme which the right common toall li\-ing creatures refuses to allow. Who did nothate Vedius Polho even more than his o^\"n slavesdid, because he would fatten liis lampreys on humanblood, and order those who had for some reasonincurred his displeasm-e to be thrown into his fishpond—orwhy not say his snake-preserve ? Themonster ! He deserved to die a thousand deaths,whether he threw his slaves as food to lampreyshe meant to eat, or whether he kept lampreys onlyto feed them on such food !Even as cruel masters are pointed at mth scornthroughout the whole city, and are hated and loathed,so with kings ; while the WTong they do extends moreN^-idely, the infamy and hatred which they incur ishanded down to the ages. But how much better notto have been born than to be counted among thoseborn to the public harm !It Avill be impossible for one to imagine anythingmore seemly for a ruler than the quality of mercy,no matter in what manner or with what justice hehas been set over other men. We shall admit, ofcourse, that this quality is the more beautiful andwonderful, the greater the power under wliich it isdisplayed ; and this power need not be harmful ifit is adjusted to Nature's law. For Nature herself409