is not the equal according to geometrical but according to
arithmetical proportion.
1 For it makes no difference
2 whether a good man has defrauded a bad man or a bad one a good one,
nor whether it is a good or a bad man that has committed adultery; the law looks only at
the nature of damage, treating the parties as equal, and merely asking whether one has
done and the other suffered injustice, whether one inflicted and the other has sustained
damage.
[
4]
Hence the unjust being here the unequal, the
judge endeavors to equalize it: inasmuch as when one man has received and the other has
inflicted a blow, or one has killed and the other been killed, the line
3 representing the suffering and doing of the deed
is divided into unequal parts, but the judge endeavors to make them equal by the penalty
or loss
4 he imposes, taking away the gain.
[
5]
(For the term ‘gain’ is used in a general way to apply to
such cases, even though it is not strictly appropriate to some of them, for example to a
person who strikes another, nor is ‘loss’ appropriate to the victim in
this case;
[
6]
but at all events the results are called
‘loss’ and ‘gain’ respectively when the amount of
the damage sustained comes to be estimated.) Thus, while the equal is a mean
between more and less, gain and loss are at once both more and less in contrary ways, more
good and less evil being gain and more evil and less good loss; and as the equal, which we
pronounce to be just, is, as we said, a mean between them, it follows that Justice in
Rectification
5 will be the mean
between loss and gain.
[
7]
This is why when disputes occur