[12]
but this justice and lenity of yours will every day
grow brighter and brighter, so that, in proportion as time takes away from
the effect of your deed, in the same degree it will add to your glory. And
you had already surpassed all other conquerors in civil wars, in equity, and
clemency, but this day you have surpassed even yourself. I fear that this
which I am saying cannot, when it is only heard, be understood as fully as I
myself think and feel it; you appear to have surpassed victory itself, since
you have remitted in favour of the conquered those things which victory had
put in your power. For though, by the conditions of the victory itself, we
who were conquered were all ruined, we still have been preserved by the
deliberate decision of your clemency. You, therefore, deserve to be the only
man who is never conquered, since you conquer the conditions and the violent
privileges of victory itself.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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