# CHAPTER 19 — Whether Deference or Punishment Is More Necessary to Restrain a Multitude

The Roman republic was stirred up by the enmities between the nobles and the plebeians; none the less, when war was upon them they sent out Quinctius and Appius Claudius with their armies. * Appius, who was cruel and harsh as a commander, was so rarely obeyed by his troops that, on the brink of defeat, he fled from his own battlefield. Quinctius, who was kind and gracious of spirit, had obedient soldiers and carried off the victory. Thus, it appears that it is better, in governing a multitude, to be more humane than arrogant, more merciful than cruel. Nevertheless, Tacitus, with whom many other writers agree, in one of his maxims reaches exactly the contrary conclusion when he says: ‘In governing a multitude, punishment is more valuable than indulgence.’ * In considering how both of these opinions can be reconciled, I will say: either you have to control men who are usually your companions, or men who are always your subjects. When they are your companions, it is impossible wholly to use punishment or that severity Tacitus describes, and because the Roman plebeians shared equal power in Rome with the nobility, a single man who became ruler for a limited time could not handle them with cruelty and harsh treatment. Often it is clear that Roman commanders who made themselves loved by their armies and who treated them with deference achieved better results than those who made themselves extraordinarily feared, unless, of course, they were endowed with enormous ability as was Manlius Torquatus. But anyone who commands subjects, such as those Tacitus discusses, must lean more towards punishment than deference, so that they will not become insolent and ride roughshod over you because of your excessive kindness. But even this kind of punishment must be moderate in a way that avoids hatred, because making oneself hated never turns out well for any ruler. The way to avoid hatred is to leave the property of one’s subjects alone, because unless it conceals his desire for plunder, no ruler is eager to spill blood, except when driven to it by necessity, and such necessity comes about only on rare occasions; but when such eagerness is mixed with a desire for plunder, this necessity always appears, and the reasons and the desire to shed blood are never lacking, as was discussed at length in another treatise on this subject. * Quinctius, therefore, deserved more praise than Appius, and the maxim of Tacitus, within its limits and not in the ways it was observed by Appius, deserves to be approved.

Since we have spoken of punishment and deference, it does not seem superfluous to me to demonstrate how an example of human kindness could accomplish more with the inhabitants of Falerii than arms. *