[154]
It behoves wise men, and men endowed with the authority and power with which you are
endowed, to remedy especially those evils by which the republic is especially injured.
There is not one of you who does not understand that the Roman people, who used formerly
to be thought extremely merciful towards its enemies, is at present suffering from
cruelty exercised towards its fellow-citizens. Remove this disease out of the state, O
judges! Do not allow it to remain any longer in the republic; having not only this evil
in itself, that it has destroyed so many citizens in a most atrocious manner, but that
through habituating them to sights of distress, it has even taken away clemency from the
hearts of most merciful men. For when every hour we see or hear of something very cruel
being done, even we who are by nature most merciful, through the constant repetition of
miseries, lose from our minds every feeling of humanity.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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