From the version of Hermann Cruserius (1580), revised by the version of Philips.

IT is said that the fly called Cantharides by a certain contradiction contains within itself the remedy of the harm it does; but wickedness doeth not so, producing within itself its own torment and punishment in the very act of the crime itself—even as every malefactor when he is punished is made to bear upon his own body the cross on which he is to suffer. Wickedness thus is a marvelous artificer of an unhappy life which she produceth out of herself—a constant torture which is inflicted in agitations, in baseness, with frequent terrors, with carking cares, with remorse and everlasting burning as though of a fire. Still we have among us those who are so like children that when they see the wicked in the theatre in their gold-embroidered tunics and with their purple cloaks, crowned and dancing as if they were happy, are stupefied in admiration and envy until they see them tortured with whips, torn with punishment, and at last, as it were, with flame bursting out from under their painted and sumptuous garments. Thus, indeed, there are often wicked men surrounded by numerous households, high in office, and splendid in their wealth, whom we do not understand to be malefactors until we have seen them punished or brought as it were to the very place of execution—things which cannot be so well called the punishment itself as the consummation and ending of punishment. For as Plato relates that Herodicus the Selymbrian, who fell into a lingering and mortal disease, was the first who joined gymnastic exercises and medicine as a remedy, protracting in doing so the tediousness of inevitable death for himself and all others so diseased,—thus the wicked who seem to have escaped punishment for the time being are really enduring their punishment, not after a longer time, but for a longer time. Nor are they punished when they are old merely, but they grow old under the anguish of their punishments. I speak of time as “long” as length of time appears to us; for to the gods, indeed, the whole space of human life is a nothing, a mere moment of present time. To them a reprieve of thirty years in the punishment of a criminal is as though we should debate whether the condemned malefactor should be brought to the scaffold or the torture in the morning or the afternoon,—especially as men are committed to life in custody as prisoners are committed to a jail, whence they cannot go out or escape, although while prisoners we may transact business, enjoy society, be promoted to honors and divert ourselves with amusement,—even as prisoners in the jail may play at checkers or dice while they are waiting to be hanged. What reason, therefore, have we to say that prisoners in chains awaiting execution are not punished until the ax has fallen, or that one who has drunk the deadly hemlock and can still keep his feet and walk is not punished until he falls senseless because of the coagulation of his blood and the loss of his senses,—if indeed we look upon the last moment of punishment as the punishment itself, leaving out of consideration the perturbation, the trepidation, the expectation, the remorse, and all the tortures of mind with which every wicked man is punished through his own very wickedness. It is as if we should reason that a fish which has swallowed a hook is not caught until we see him cut up and boiled by the cook. For the penalty of his wickedness incubates for every malefactor in the wickedness itself which he has swallowed as a sweet bait. His conscience tears him and he is lacerated—

	“As the hooked tunny tugs against the line
	Which rends its jaws and draws it from the brine.”

For, indeed, the audacity and ferocity of perverseness remains daring and full of hardiness until the wicked deed is done, but soon, as a tempest ceases its violence, it grows abject and bloodless, surrendering itself to all manner of fears and superstition. Hence it seems that the Stesichorus composed the “Dream of Clytemnestra” as a parable of life and truth (when to the wicked dreamer)—

	“There came a dragon with a human head
	With grume and blood besmeared as though
	The King Plisthenides had thus appeared.”

	Inceder’est visus draco cui humanum caput esset
	Rex hinc Plisthenidas obtulit sese oculis.

  Hence if the mind ceaseth to exist when fatal law is accomplished, if death is the end of reward and punishment, we might say that the Deity is too remiss and too merciful if he should suddenly give death as a penalty for wickedness. For even if we should say that there is no evil in the life and career of the wicked, still it is evident that wickedness is sterile and unpleasing, bearing nothing good or worthy of being desired out of its many and great agonies, while the very feeling of them subverts the mind. It is a tradition that Lysimachus when violently affected by thirst, surrendered his person and his army to the Scythians that he might drink as a captive. “Alas, then,” he said, “what a wretch I am, who for so fleeting a pleasure have deprived myself of so great a kingdom!” How hard it is for a man to resist the impulses of his animal instincts; but when a man either to gratify such instincts or for the sake of political reputation and power has committed some base and atrocious crime in the reaction from which his fury leaves him while the foul and terrible perturbations of his crime remain and he gains from it nothing useful or gratifying for his life, is it not probable that he is forced to think for what an empty glory or barren and sordid pleasure he has overthrown the most noble and sublime principles of life, covering, in doing so, his own life with trouble and with shame?

  Simonides was accustomed to say that the box he kept for his cash was always full, but that which he kept for his gratitude was always empty. So knaves when they contemplate their own wickedness find it void of good, but full of fears, sorrows, odious memories, suspicion of the future, and distrust of the present. So Ino is introduced in the theatre complaining in her remorse:—

	“Dear friends, I pray you tell me with what face
	I can return with Athamus to dwell.
	As though I were not criminal and base.”

  Is it not likely, then, that the mind of every depraved man reacts upon itself thus, seeking if it can find a way to escape the memory of its wickedness, that freed from the consciousness of its crime it may begin life afresh? For in evil those who follow it can find neither confidence nor stability nor endurance, or otherwise they would be forced to say that the wicked alone are wise. Wherever the thirst for money, wherever burning passion, wherever impotent envy, has its home with wickedness, there, if you search, you will find superstition, languor in labor, fear of death, a succession of violent passion and the thirst after undeserved honor gaping in its own insolence. Such men fear those who condemn them and condemn those who praise as if the praise itself were a trick. And above everything, they are bitter enemies of the base because they commend willingly those who have the appearance of probity. But the hardness of wickedness, like that of faulty iron, is itself the cause of its breaking, and thus in passage of time when they explore their own state of mind, they grieve, they are angry, they repudiate their former course of life. If, indeed, we see a wicked man who restores what has been pledged with him or becomes security for a friend or does a patriotic act through ambition, very soon he repents and is ashamed of his action, if only because of the fickleness of his inclination which is incident to the depravity of his mind; when we see some men when they are applauded in the theatres sigh soon afterwards because of the avarice of their ambition, we cannot believe that men like Apollodorus who sacrifice human life in their conspiracies and tyrannies or rob their own friends of property, as did Glaucus, the son of Epicides,—we cannot believe that such men as these do not repent and abhor themselves in the torment of their own wickedness. So if it be not wrong to say I believe for my part that there is no occasion for the interference of either gods or men to punish the wicked, since the whole life of such men, subverted and convulsed as it is by their vices, suffices for their punishment.