[-19-] "I could cite innumerable other details of like nature which, no matter how true they were, are no business for free men to concern themselves about or report to you. If they went unnoticed, they would do you no harm, but when heard they might irritate you even against your will: and that ought by no means to happen, especially in a ruler of the people. Now many believe that from this cause large numbers unjustly perish, some without a trial and others by some unwarranted condemnation of a court. They will not admit that the evidence given or statements made under torture or any similar proof against them is genuine. This is the sort of talk, though some of it may not be just, which is reported in the case of practically all so put to death. And you ought, Augustus, to be free not only from injustice but from the appearance of it. It is sufficient for a private individual to avoid irregular conduct, but it behooves a ruler to incur not even the suspicion of it. You are the leader of human beings, not of beasts, and the only way you can make them really friendly to you is by persuading them by every means and constantly, without a break, that you will wrong no one either voluntarily or involuntarily. A man can be forced to fear another but he has to be persuaded to love him: and he is to be persuaded by the good treatment he himself receives and the benefits he sees conferred on others. The person, however, who suspects that somebody has perished unjustly both fears that he may some day meet the same fate and is compelled to hate the one responsible for the deed. And to be hated by one's subjects is (besides containing no element of good) exceedingly unprofitable. The general mass of people feel that ordinary individuals must defend themselves against all who wrong them in any way or else be despised and consequently oppressed: but rulers, they think, ought to prosecute those who wrong the State but endure those who are thought to commit offences against them privately; rulers can not be harmed by disdain or assault, because they have many guardians to protect them.