For if anyone proceeds in a passion to inflict punishment, he will never observe that happy mean which lies between excess and defect.
Cicero: “For if anyone proceeds in a passion to inflict punishment, he will never observe that happy mean which lies between…”
Editor's note · Context
From his philosophical treatise on moral duties, Cicero discusses the importance of dispassionate judgment in administering punishment.
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But while they steer clear of the one kind of injustice, they fall into the other: they are traitors to social life, for they contribute to it none of their interest, none of their effort, none of their means.
Further than this, who fails to see that those promises are not binding which are extorted by intimidation or which we make when misled by false pretences?
For whereas there are many, as I have said before, who place the achievements of war above those of peace, so one may find many to whom adventurous, hot-headed counsels seem more brilliant and more impressive than calm and well-considered…
There are, on the other hand, two kinds of injustice--the one, on the part of those who inflict wrong, the other on the part of those who, when they can, do not shield from wrong those upon whom it is being inflicted.





