ave
provisions in abundance,--I am going to speak right out with no
disguise: you do get your pay in full and on time and you are always and
everywhere supplied with plenty of food--that you endure no inglorious
toil nor useless danger; furthermore that you gather many great prizes
for your bravery and are rebuked little or not at all for your errors,
and yet you do not see fit to be satisfied with these things. I am
speaking not of all of you, for you are not all such men, but only to
those who for their own gain are casting reproach on the rest. Most of
you obey my orders very scrupulously and satisfactorily, abide by your
ancestral customs, and in that way have acquired so much land and wealth
and glory; some few, however, are attaching much disgrace and disrespect
to all of us. Though I understood clearly before this that they were
that sort of persons,--for there is none of your interests that I fail
to notice,--still I pretended not to know it, thinking that they might
become better if they believed they were not observed in some of their
evil deeds and had the fear that if they ever presumed too far they
might be punished for the guilt of which they were conscious. Since
they, however, proceeding on the ground that they may do whatever they
wish because they were not brought to book at the very start, are
overbold and are trying to make the rest of you, who are guilty of no
irregularity, likewise mutinous, it becomes necessary for me to devote
some care to them and to give them my attention. [-29-] In general, no
society of men can preserve its unity and continue to exist, if the
criminal element be not disciplined: if the part afflicted does not
receive proper medicine, it causes all the rest, as in fleshly bodies,
to be sick at the same time. And least of all in armies can discipline
be relaxed, because when the wrongdoers have strength they become more
daring and corrupt the excellent also by causing them to grow dejected
and to believe that they will obtain no benefit from right behavior.
Wherever the insolent element has the advantage, there inevitably the
decent element has the worst of it: and wherever injustice is
unpunished, there uprightness also goes without reward. What is there
you could assert is doing right, if these men are doing no wrong? How
could you logically desire to be honored, if these men do not endure
their just punishment? Are you ignorant of the fact that if one class is
freed from the