Pittacus of Mytilene made this remark to justify his release of his captured enemy Alcaeus, as quoted by Diogenes Laërtius in Life of Pittacus, i. 76, citing Heraclitus as his source; 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."https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Revenge