84.
In Corcyra then were these evils for the most part committed first;
and so were all other, which either such men as have been governed with pride rather than modesty by those on whom they take revenge were like to commit in taking it;
or which such men as stand upon their delivery from long poverty out of covetousness, chiefly to have their neighbours' goods would contrary to justice give their voices to;
or which men, not for covetousness but assailing each other on equal terms, carried away with the unruliness of their anger would cruelly and inexorably execute.
[2]
And the common course of life being at that time confounded in the city, the nature of man, which is wont even against law to do evil, gotten now above the law, showed itself with delight to be too weak for passion, too strong for justice, and enemy to all superiority.
Else they would never have preferred revenge before innocence nor lucre (whensoever the envy of it was without power to do them hurt) before justice.
[3]
And for the laws common to all men in such cases (which, as long as they be in force, give hope to all that suffer injury), men desire not to leave them standing against the need a man in danger may have of them but by their revenges on others to be beforehand in subverting them.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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