The Roman History · Amm. 28.1.40

And the iron-hearted judge, continually disregarding all law and justice, had but one thing about him which made him endurable; for sometimes he was prevailed upon by entreaties to spare some one, though this too is affirmed to be nearly a vice in the following passage of Cicero. "If anger be implacable, it is the extreme of severity; if it yield to entreaties, it is the extreme of levity; though in times of misfortune even levity is to be preferred to cruelty."

Ammianus Marcellinus · translated by C. D. Yonge · 1911 reprint
C. D. Yonge translation (preface dated February 1862); G. Bell and Sons, 1911; Project Gutenberg #28587
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.