Pardon one offense, and you encourage the commission of many.

Publilius Syrus was a 1st-century BCE Latin writer of mimes whose lines survived chiefly as sententiae—brief moral maxims excerpted from his stage works and later collected for rhetorical and ethical instruction. This saying reflects Roman concerns with discipline, deterrence, and the social consequences of leniency in matters of wrongdoing. Because the surviving material is largely a compilation of detached aphorisms rather than complete plays, the precise dramatic situation in which the line was first spoken is generally unrecoverable; it is best understood as part of the later tradition of using Syrus’s maxims as practical counsel on governance and personal conduct.

The maxim argues that unpunished wrongdoing tends to reproduce itself: forgiving a single offense can signal that rules are negotiable, lowering the perceived cost of future misconduct. It is less a rejection of mercy than a warning about incentives and precedent—clemency, if indiscriminate or publicly interpreted as weakness, may erode authority and invite repetition by the same offender or imitation by others. In ethical terms, the line frames justice as partly preventive: accountability is meant not only to address a past act but also to shape future behavior. The aphorism’s enduring appeal lies in its stark, policy-like logic about deterrence and social order.