“I will tell you,” continued Livia, “without hesitation, because I share your comforts and adversities, and while you are safe I myself hold dominion day by day, whereas if you come to any harm (which Heaven forbid!) I shall perish with you.  Well, then, human nature persuades some to sin under any conditions, and there is no device for controlling it when it has once started toward any goal.  What seems good to persons,—­not to rehearse the vices of the masses,—­at once induces very many of them to do wrong. [-17-] The boast of birth and pride of wealth, greatness of honor, audacity founded on bravery, and conceit due to authority, bring shipwreck to not a few.  There is no making nobility ignoble, bravery cowardly, or prudence foolish:  it is impossible.  Nor, again, is it to curtail men’s abundance or to strike down ambitions where conduct has been correct:  that is iniquitous.  That he who is on the defensive and anticipates others’ movements should incur injury and ill repute is inevitable.  Come, let us change our policy and spare some of them.  To me it seems far more feasible to set things right by kindness than by harshness.  Not only are those who grant pardon loved by the objects of their clemency, who strive to repay the favor, but all others both respect and reverence them and will not readily endure to see harm done to them.  Sovereigns, however, who maintain an inexorable anger not only are hated by those who have aught to fear, but cause uneasiness to all the rest.  As a result, men plot against them to avoid meeting an untimely fate.  Do you not notice that physicians very rarely have recourse to cutting and burning, wishing to avoid aggravating a person’s disease, but in the majority of cases soothe and cure by means of fomentations and mild drugs?  Do not think that because those ailments have to do with the body and these with the mind that they are essentially different.  Very many experiences of the body are similar in a way to what goes on in the souls of men, no matter how bodiless the latter may be.  The soul contracts under the influence of fear and expands under that of wrath.  Pain humiliates men and audacity puffs them up.  The correspondences then are very close and therefore both kinds of trouble need treatments which are much alike.  A gentle speech uttered to a man causes all his unruliness to subside, just as a harsh one provokes to anger even an easy-going person.  The granting of pardon melts the most audacious, just as punishment irritates the most mild.  Acts of violence inflame all men in every instance, even though such measures may be thoroughly just, but considerate treatment mollifies them.  Hence one would more readily brave great dangers through persuasion and voluntarily, than under compulsion.  Such is the inherent, unalterable quality of both methods of behavior that even among brute beasts that have no mind many of the strongest and fiercest are domesticated by petting and are subdued by coaxing, whereas many of the most cowardly and weak are made unmanageable and maddened by cruelties and terrors.