Machiavelli writes about Agathocles

Niccolò di Bernardo dei writes about
Agathocles:

"However, his terrible cruelty and inhumanity do not allow him to be glorified as one of the most outstanding men... One may ask oneself how it happened that Agathocles or others like him, after their numerous betrayals and atrocities, could live long and happily in their homeland, because to fall from external enemies and his fellow citizens never conspired against him. At the same time, others, for all their cruelty, were never able to hold power even in peacetime, to say nothing of the horrors of war. In my opinion, it depends on how the violence is used - good or bad. Well-applied violence (if it is permissible to say of evil that it is well-applied) can be called those which are committed only once for the benefit of their own safety, after which they are not resorted to, but obtain from them all possible benefit for the subjects. They are used badly if at first they are rare, and with the passage of time they become more frequent, instead of stopping... The point is that the wrongs should be inflicted all at once, because then each of them is felt individually less and together they do not embitter so much, but charity, on the contrary, should be done little by little, so that they are better eclipsed"

WIKIPEDIA