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"A fine thing it is, men of Syracuse, to take the lead in establishing a friendship and, by showing mercy to the unfortunate, to make up the quarrel. For goodwill toward our friends should be kept imperishable, but hatred toward our enemies perishable, since by this practice it will come about that one's allies increase in number and one's enemies decrease. [2] But for us to maintain the quarrel forever and to pass it on to children's children is neither kindly nor safe; since it sometimes happens that those who appear to be more powerful turn out to be weaker by the decision of a moment than their former subjects. [3] And a witness to this is the war which has just now ceased: The men who came here to lay siege to the city and, by means of their superior power, threw a wall about it have by a change in fortune become captives, as you can see. It is a fine thing, therefore, by showing ourselves lenient amid the misfortunes of other men, to have reserved for us the hope of mercy from all men, in case some ill befall us of such as come to mortal men. For many are the unexpected things life holds—civic strifes, robberies, wars, amid which one may not easily avoid the peril, being but human. [4] Consequently, if we shall exclude the thought of mercy for the defeated, we shall be setting up, for all time to come, a harsh law against ourselves. For it is impossible that men who have shown no compassion for others should themselves ever receive humane treatment at the hands of another and that men who have outraged others should be treated indulgently, or that we, after murdering so many men contrary to the traditions of the Greeks, should in the reversals which attend life appeal to the usages common to all mankind. [5] For what Greek has ever judged that those who have surrendered themselves and put their trust in the kindness of their conquerors are deserving of implacable punishment? or who has ever held mercy less potent than cruelty, precaution than rashness?

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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