Notes from Wikiquote
Pittacus made this remark to justify his release of his captured enemy Alcaeus. | According to William Shepard Walsh, in Handy-book of Literary Curiosities (1892), p. 392, Epictetus, quoting from the same source, gives the phrase thus: "Forgiveness is better than punishment; for the one is proof of a gentle, the other of a savage, nature."