The Portable Machiavelli

by Niccolo Machiavelli

  And, in short, to conclude this subject, let me say that just as the states of princes have endured for a long time, so too have the states of republics; both have needed to be regulated by laws, for a prince who is able to do what he wishes is mad, and a people that can do what it wishes is not wise. If, therefore, we are talking about a prince obedient to the laws or a people restricted by them, we shall observe more ability in the people than in the prince; if we are discussing either one or the other as being free from these restrictions, we shall observe fewer errors in the people than in the prince; moreover, they are less serious ones and easier to remedy. For a licentious and unruly people can be spoken to by one good man and can easily be brought back to the right path; however, with an evil prince there is no one who can speak to him and no other remedy than the sword. From this fact one can draw a conclusion concerning the seriousness of their respective maladies: if words are enough to cure the malady of the people and the sword to cure that of the prince, there will never be anyone who will not conclude that the greater the faults, the greater the attention required. When a people is unrestrained, neither its mad actions nor the evil at hand need be feared, but rather the evil that may arise from them, since a tyrant may emerge from so much confusion. But with an evil prince the opposite happens: present evil is feared and one hopes for the future, since men persuade themselves that ending his evil life can result in an era of freedom. So you see the difference between the two: one concerns things as they are and the other concerns things that will be. The cruelties of the masses are directed against anyone who they fear might act against the public welfare; those of the prince are directed against anyone who he fears might act against his own interests. But the prejudice against the people arises because everyone speaks ill of them freely and without fear, even when they rule; one always speaks ill of princes only with great fear and apprehension. And this seems not to be beside the point, since this subject leads me ahead to discuss, in the following chapter, whether one may place more trust in alliances made with a republic or those made with a prince.

  CHAPTER LIX. WHICH ALLIANCE, OR LEAGUE, IS MOST WORTHY OF TRUST: ONE MADE WITH A REPUBLIC OR ONE MADE WITH A PRINCE?

  [An examination of the question reveals that in most cases there is little difference. Neither a prince nor a republic will honor agreements made by force; if one or the other feels that keeping the agreement will result in a loss of power, this party will not hesitate to break faith. However, republics will usually be more reliable than princes since they are slower to act and take more time in coming to a decision. Therefore, they are slower to break a treaty. Alliances are broken for profit, and a prince is more likely to break an agreement for a small advantage than is a republic. This discussion concerns agreements broken for improper motives, not those broken for legitimate reasons, such as nonobservance of terms.]

  CHAPTER LX. HOW THE CONSULATE AND EVERY OTHER MAGISTRACY IN ROME WAS GRANTED WITHOUT REGARD TO AGE

  [Merit, not age or birth, was always the qualification for office under the Roman republic, as is shown by the election of such men as Valerius Corvinus, Scipio, and Pompey while they were still very young. Any state that wishes to accomplish what Rome did should follow this example.]

  BOOK II

  INTRODUCTION

  Men always praise ancient times and condemn the present, but not always with good reason; they are such advocates of the past that they celebrate not merely those ages which they know only through the memory of the historians but also those that they, now being old, remember having seen in their youth. And when this opinion of theirs is mistaken, as it is most of the time, I am persuaded that there are several reasons which lead them to make this mistake. First, I believe that we do not know the complete truth about antiquity; most often the facts that would discredit those times are hidden and other matters which bestow glory upon them are reported magnificently and most thoroughly. Most writers submit to the fortune of conquerors, and in order to render their victories glorious they not only exaggerate what they have ably achieved but also embellish the deeds of their enemies in such a way that anyone born afterward in either of the two lands—that of the victor or that of the vanquished—has reason to marvel at those men and those times and is forced to praise them and to love them to the greatest degree. Besides this, since men hate things either out of fear or envy, two very powerful reasons for hatred of things in the past are eliminated, for they cannot hurt you or give you cause for envy. But the contrary applies to those things you deal with and observe: they are known to you in every detail, you see in them what is good as well as the many things that displease you, and you are obliged to judge them most inferior to things of the past; while, in truth, those of the present may deserve even more glory and fame—I am not speaking of things pertaining to the arts here, for in themselves they possess so much brilliance that the times take away from them little and cannot bestow upon them much more glory than they intrinsically merit; I am speaking rather of those matters pertaining to the lives and customs of men, about which we do not witness such clear evidence.

  I repeat, then, that this aforementioned custom of praising the old and condemning the new does exist, but it is not always wrong. Sometimes such a judgment has to be correct since human affairs are always in motion, either rising or declining. And so, one city or province can be seen to possess a government that was well organized by an excellent man; and for a time it may keep improving because of the ability of the founder. Anyone, then, who is born in such a state and praises ancient times more than modem times deceives himself, and his deception is caused by those things mentioned above. But those who are born afterward in that city or region, at the time of its decline, do not, then, deceive themselves. As I reflect on why these matters proceed as they do, I believe that the world has always been in the same state and that there has always been as much good as evil in it; but this evil and this good changes from country to country, as we can see from what we know of ancient kingdoms that were different from each other according to the differences in their customs, while the world remained the same as it always had been. There is only this difference: the world’s talents first found a home in Assyria, then moved to Media, later to Persia, and, in time, came into Italy and Rome; and if, after the Roman empire, no succeeding empire has lasted, nor has there been one where the world has retained all its talents in one place, nevertheless we can still see them scattered among many nations where men live ably, as in the kingdom of the Franks, the Turks—that of the Sultan—and today among the peoples of Germany; earlier there was that Turkish group which achieved so many grand things and seized so much of the world once it had destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire. In all these lands, then, after the Romans came to ruin, and in all those groups of people, such talents existed and still exist in some of them where they are desired and truly praised. And anyone who is born there and praises past times more than present ones may be deceiving himself, but anyone who is born in Italy or Greece and has not become an Ultramontane in Italy or a Turk in Greece has reason to condemn his own times and to praise others, for in them there were many things that made them marvelous, but in the present ones there is nothing to be seen but utter misery, infamy, and vituperation. There is no observance of religion, laws, or military discipline; all is stained with every kind of filth. Furthermore, these vices are the more detestable as they are found among those who sit on tribunals, command others, and expect to be worshiped.

  But, returning to our subject, let me say that if the judgment of men is unfair in deciding which is better—the present age or the past—the latter of which, because of its antiquity, men cannot have as perfect a knowledge of as they can of their own times, this should not corrupt the judgment of old men in assessing the time of their youth and their old age, since they have known and observed both one and the other equally well. This would be true if men were all of the same opinion and had the same desires in all phases of their lives; but since these desires change, a
nd the times do not, things cannot appear to men to be the same, since they have other desires, other pleasures, and other concerns in their old age than they had in their youth. For as men grow older they lose in vigor and gain in judgment and prudence, and the things that seemed acceptable and good to them in their youth become, later on, as they grow older, intolerable and bad; and although they should place the blame for this on their own judgment, they blame the times instead. Besides this, human desires are insatiable, for we are endowed by Nature with the power and the wish to desire everything and by Fortune with the ability to obtain little of what we desire. The result is an unending discontent in the minds of men and a weariness with what they possess: this makes men curse the present, praise the past, and hope in the future, even though they do this with no reasonable motive. I do not know, therefore, if I deserve to be considered among those who deceive themselves if, in these discourses of mine, I am too lavish with my praise of ancient Roman times and condemn our own. And certainly, if the excellence that existed then and the vice that rules now were not clearer than the sun, I would speak more hesitantly for fear that I might fall into the same error of which I accuse others. But since the matter is clear enough for all to see, I shall boldly declare in plain terms what I understand of those ancient times and of our own times, so that the minds of young men who read these writings of mine may be able to reject the present and prepare themselves to imitate the past whenever Fortune provides them with an occasion. For it is your duty as a good man to teach others whatever good you yourself have not been able to do, either because of the malignity of the times or because of Fortune, in order that—since many will thus be made aware of it—someone more beloved by Heaven may be prepared to put your truth into action.

  In the discourse of the preceding book I have discussed the decisions the Romans made in matters concerning their internal affairs; now, in this one, I shall discuss what it was that the Roman people did concerning the expansion of their empire.

  CHAPTER I. WHETHER ABILITY OR FORTUNE WAS THE MAIN REASON THE ROMANS CONQUERED THEIR EMPIRE

  Many have held the opinion—among them Plutarch, a most serious writer—that the Roman people, in acquiring their empire, were favored more by Fortune than by their own ability. And among the other reasons he brings forth, he says that the people, by their own admission, attributed all their victories to Fortune, since they built more temples to Fortune than to any other god. And it seems that Livy holds this opinion, for he seldom has any Roman deliver a speech in which he speaks of ability without mentioning Fortune. But I do not accept this argument in any way, nor do I believe that it can be supported, for if no republic produced such results as Rome did, it is obvious that there never has been a republic so organized that she could acquire as Rome did. For the ability of her armies caused her to acquire her empire, and the institution of her conduct and her individual way of living, which were discovered by her first lawgiver, allowed her to keep her conquests, as will be explained in more detail in successive chapters.

  These same writers declare that it was a consequence of Fortune, and not because of the innate ability of the Roman people, that they never had to fight two great wars at the same time; that they never waged war on the Latins unless they had completely vanquished the Samnites and, in fact, were even waging war in their defense; they never fought with the Tuscans unless they had first subjugated the Latins and had almost exhausted the Samnites through frequent defeats. However, if two of these powers had united when they were fresh and at full strength, without a doubt one might say that the ruin of the Roman republic would have been inevitable. But no matter how things turned out, they never waged two important wars at the same time; on the contrary, the case was always such that either one came to an end at the beginning of another or the other was begun when one was finished. This is surely evident from the order in which their wars took place: putting aside those wars waged before Rome was sacked by the Gauls, it is clear that while they fought with the Aequi and the Volsci—and those peoples were powerful—other nations never rose up against them. When they were defeated, the war against the Samnites broke out, and although the Latin peoples revolted against the Romans before the war ended, nevertheless, when this rebellion occurred the Samnites were allied with Rome; their army helped them to tame the Latin insolence. When the Latins were defeated, the war with Samnium broke out again, and when the Samnite troops were broken by the many defeats they suffered, the war against the Tuscans began; when this was settled, the Samnites again rose up because of the crossing of Pyrrhus into Italy. When he was repulsed and driven back into Greece, they instigated the First Carthaginian War; no sooner was that war over than all the Gauls, from both sides of the Alps, joined together against the Romans until, between Popolonia and Pisa, where the tower of Saint Vincent stands today, they were destroyed in a great slaughter. When this war was over, the Romans waged wars of little consequence over a space of twenty years, for they fought with no one except the Ligurians and the remainder of the Gauls, who were in Lombardy. And they continued in this manner until the Second Carthaginian War broke out, which kept Italy occupied for sixteen years. This war having ended with the greatest glory for Rome, the Macedonian War broke out; and, after that was over, there followed the war against Antiochus and Asia. After that victory, there remained in all the world neither prince nor republic that could, either by itself or together with others, oppose the Roman forces.

  But before this last victory, one who carefully examines the order of these wars and the way the Romans proceeded will see in them good fortune mixed with great ability and prudence. Thus, if one looks for the cause of such good fortune one will discover it easily, for it is certainly true that when a prince or a people attains such a reputation that every prince or people nearby is afraid to attack singly and is in a state of fear, it always happens that none will ever attack unless driven to it by necessity; as a result, that power will have, as it were, the choice of waging war upon whichever of its neighbors it chooses, while keeping the others at peace with its diplomatic skill. And they will easily be kept at peace, partly because of their respect for this power and partly because they are deceived by the means employed to lull them to sleep. Other powers, which are far away and have no dealings with them, consider the matter a remote one, of no concern to them; they remain in this error until the fire draws near, and when it does, they have no remedy to extinguish it except their own forces, which, by then, will not suffice, since the other forces have become so very powerful.