In many ways, clementia was the political slogan of Caesar’s dictatorship. Yet it provoked as much opposition as gratitude, for the simple reason that, virtue though it may have been in some respects, it was an entirely monarchical one. Only those with the power to do otherwise can exercise mercy. Clementia, in other words, was the antithesis of Republican libertas. Cato was said to have killed himself to escape it. So it was not just.
-Mary Beard
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