is more becoming to a sovereign than
clemency, by whatever title and right he may be set over his fellow
citizens. The greater his power, the more beautiful and admirable he
will confess his clemency to be: for there is no reason why power
should do any harm, if only it be wielded in accordance with the laws
of nature. Nature herself has conceived the idea of a king, as you may
learn from various animals, and especially from bees, among whom the
king's cell is the roomiest, and is placed in the most central and
safest part of the hive; moreover, he does no work, but employs
himself in keeping the others up to their work. If the king be lost,
the entire swarm disperses: they never endure to have more than one
king at a time, and find out which is the better by making them fight
with one another: moreover the king is distinguished by his statelier
appearance, being both larger and more brilliantly colored than the
other bees.

The most remarkable distinction, however, is the following: bees are
very fierce, and for their size are the most pugnacious of creatures,
and leave their stings in the wounds which they make, but the king
himself has no sting: nature does not wish him to be savage or to seek
revenge at so dear a rate, and so has deprived him of his weapon and
disarmed his rage. She has offered him as a pattern to great
sovereigns; for she is wont to practise herself in small matters, and
to scatter abroad tiny models of the hugest structures. We ought to be
ashamed of not learning a lesson in behavior from these small
creatures, for a man, who has so much more power of doing harm than
they, ought to show a correspondingly greater amount of self-control.
Would that human beings were subject to the same law, and that their
anger destroyed itself together with its instruments, so that they
could only inflict a wound once, and would not make use of the
strength of others to carry out their hatreds; for their fury would
soon grow faint if it carried its own punishment with it, and could
only give rein to its violence at the risk of death. Even as it is,
however, no one can exercise it with safety, for he must needs feel as
much fear as he hopes to cause, he must watch every one's movements,
and even when his enemies are not laying violent hands upon him he
must bear in mind that they are plotting to do so, and he can not have
a single moment free from alarm. Would any one endure to live such a
life as this, when he mig