That, Senators, is what a favour from gangsters amounts to. They refrain from murdering someone; then they boast that they have spared him!
[Quod est aliud, patres conscripti, beneficium latronum, nisi ut commemorare possint iis se dedisse vitam, quibus non ademerint?]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Philippics [Philippicae; Antonian Orations], No. 2, ch. 3 / sec. 5 (3.3/3.5) (44-10-24 BC) [tr. Grant (1960)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Other translations:What other services, my lords, can robbers render, save that they can claim to have given life to those whose lives they spare?
[tr. King (1877)]How; are brigands "benefactors," except in being able to assert that they have granted life to those from whom they have not taken it?
[tr. Ker (Loeb) (1926)]Us not this, O conscript fathers, such a kindness as is done by banditti, who are contented with being able to boast that they have granted their lives to all those men whose lives they have not taken?
[tr. Yonge (1903)]How else can brigands confer a favour, conscript fathers, except by asserting that they have granted life to those from whom they have not taken it away?
[tr. Berry (2006)]What is the kindness of outlaws, members of the Senate, other than their ability to remind us that they gave life to people from whom they did not steal it?
[tr. McElduff (2011)]
Quotations about:
bandits
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It was a five hundred mile journey and, surprisingly, quite uneventful. People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, “Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
