provocation; but when you reproach men greatly for small
offenses, you excite those whom you reproach to be your
adversaries; for this will only make them leave off hurting you
privately, and with some degree of modesty, and to lay what you
have waste openly. Now nothing so much damps the force of strokes
as bearing them with patience; and the quietness of those who are
injured diverts the injurious persons from afflicting. But let us
take it for granted that the Roman ministers are injurious to
you, and are incurably severe; yet are they not all the Romans
who thus injure you; nor hath Caesar, against whom you are going
to make war, injured you: it is not by their command that any
wicked governor is sent to you; for they who are in the west
cannot see those that are in the east; nor indeed is it easy for
them there even to hear what is done in these parts. Now it is
absurd to make war with a great many for the sake of one, to do
so with such mighty people for a small cause; and this when these
people are not able to know of what you complain: nay, such
crimes as we complain of may soon be corrected, for the same
procurator will not continue for ever; and probable it is that
the successors will come with more moderate inclinations. But as
for war, if it be once begun, it is not easily laid down again,
nor borne without calamities coming therewith. However, as to the
desire of recovering your liberty, it is unseasonable to indulge
it so late; whereas you ought to have labored earnestly in old
time that you might never have lost it; for the first experience
of slavery was hard to be endured, and the struggle that you
might never have been subject to it would have been just; but
that slave who hath been once brought into subjection, and then
runs away, is rather a refractory slave than a lover of liberty;
for it was then the proper time for doing all that was possible,