people, and under such laws and ordinances, that they may live at ease
and peace, without danger and with dignity, and may worthily enjoy this
end of their actions, which ought to be tranquillity. For many republics
and princes are often found that have been very prosperous and great in
war, and as soon as they have had peace they have gone to ruin and lost
their greatness and splendour, like iron laid aside. And this has come
about from nothing else but from their not having been well established
for living at peace, and from their not knowing how to enjoy the
blessing of ease. And to be always at war, without seeking to arrive at
the end of peace, is not permitted: albeit some princes think that their
chief aim ought to be to lord it over their neighbours; and therefore
they train their people to a warlike ferocity for spoil, killing and the
like, and give rewards to excite it, and call it virtue.
“Thus it was once a custom among the Scythians that whoever had not
slain an enemy might not drink from the bowl which was handed about to
the company at solemn feasts. In other places they used to set up,
around a tomb, as many obelisks as he who was buried there had slain
enemies; and all these things were done to make men warlike, solely in
order to lord it over others: which was almost impossible, because the
undertaking was endless (until the whole world should be subjugated) and
far from reasonable according to the law of nature, which will not have
us pleased with that in others which is displeasing to us in ourselves.
“Therefore princes ought not to make their people warlike for lust of
rule, but for the sake of being able to defend themselves and their
people against him who would reduce them to bondage or do them wrong in
any wise; or to drive out tyrants and govern those people well who were
ill used, or to reduce to bondage those who are by nature such as to
deserve being made slaves, with the object of governing them well and
giving them ease and rest and peace. To this end also the laws and all
the ordinances of justice ought to be directed, by punishing the wicked,
not from hatred, but in order that they may not be wicked and to the end
that they may not disturb the tranquillity of the good. For in truth it
is a monstrous thing and worthy of blame for men to show themselves
valiant and wise in war (which is bad in itself) and in peace and quiet
(which are good) to show themselves ignorant and of so little worth that
they know not how to enjoy their happiness.
“Hence, just as in war men ought to apply themselves to the qualities
that are useful and necessary to attain its end, which is peace,—so in
peace, to attain its end also, which is tranquillity, they ought to
apply themselves to the righteous qualities that are the end of the
useful. And thus subjects will be good, and the prince will have much
more to praise and reward than to punish; and dominion will be very
happy for the subjects and for the prince—not imperious, like that of
master over slave, but sweet and gentle, like that of a good father over
a good son.”
28.—Then my lord Gaspar said:
“I should much like to know what these virtues are that are useful and
necessary in war, and what ones are righteous in peace.”
My lord Ottaviano replied:
“All virtues are good and helpful, because they tend to a good end; but
of especial utility in war is that true courage which so frees the mind
from the passions that it not only fears not dangers, but even pays no
heed to them; likewise steadfastness, and that enduring patience, with a
mind staunch and undisturbed by all the shocks of fortune. It is also
fitting in war, and always, to have all the virtues that make for
right,—like justice, continence, temperance; but much more in time of
peace and ease, because men placed in prosperity and ease, when good
fortune smiles upon them, often become unjust, intemperate, and allow
themselves to be corrupted by pleasures: hence those who are in such
case have very great need of these virtues, for ease too readily
engenders evil behaviour in human minds. Therefore it was anciently said
as a proverb, slaves should be given no ease; and it is believed that
the pyramids of Egypt were made to keep the people busy, because it is
very good for everyone to be accustomed to bear toil.
“There are still many other virtues that are all helpful, but let it
suffice for the present that I have spoken until now; for if I knew how
to teach my prince and instruct him in this kind of worthy education
such as we have planned, merely by so doing I should deem myself to have
attained sufficiently well the aim of the good Courtier.”
29.—Then my lord Gaspar said:
“My lord Ottaviano, since you have highly praised good education, and
seemed almost to think that it is the chief means of making a man
virtuous and good, I should like to know whether this instruction, which
the Courtier must give his prince, ought to be begun with practice and
with daily behaviour as it were, so as to accustom him to right doing
without his perceiving it; or whether a beginning ought to be made by
demonstrating to his reason the quality of good and evil, and by making
him understand, before he sets out, which is the good way and the one to
follow, and which is the bad way and the one to avoid: in short whether
his mind ought to be first imbued and implanted with the virtues through
the reason and intelligence or through practice.”
My lord Ottaviano said:
“You start me upon too long a discourse; still, in order that you may
not think I abstain from lack of will to answer your questions, I say
that just as our mind and body are two things, so too the soul is
divided into two parts, of which one has the reason in it, and the other
has the appetite. Then, just as in generation the body precedes the
soul, so the unreasoning part of the soul precedes the reasoning part:
which is clearly perceived in children, in whom anger and lust are seen
almost as soon as they are born, but with the lapse of time reason
appears. Hence care must be taken of the body earlier than of the soul,
and of appetite earlier than of reason; but care of the body with a view
to the soul, and of the appetite with a view to reason: for just as
intellectual worth is perfected by instruction, so is moral worth
perfected by practice. We ought, therefore, first to teach through
habit, which is able to govern the as yet unreasoning appetites and to
direct them towards the good by means of that fair use; next we ought to
establish them through the understanding, which, although it shows its
light more tardily, still furnishes a mode of making the virtues more
perfectly fruitful to one whose mind is well trained by
practice,—wherein, to my thinking, lies the whole matter.”
30.—My lord Gaspar said:
“Before you go further, I should like to know what care ought to be
taken of the body, since you said that we ought to take care of it
earlier than of the soul.”
“As to that,” replied my lord Ottaviano, laughing, “ask those who
nourish their bodies well, and are plump and fresh; for mine, as you
see, is not too well conditioned. Yet of this also it would be possible
to say much, as of the proper time for marriage, to the end that the
children may not be too near or too far from their father’s age; of the
exercises and education to be followed from birth and during the rest of
life, in order to make them handsome, strong and sturdy.”
My lord Gaspar replied:
“That which would best please women for making their children handsome
and beautiful, methinks would be that community wherein Plato in his
Republic wishes them to be held, and after that manner.”[441]
Then my lady Emilia said, laughing:
“It is not in the compact that you should fall to speaking ill of women
again.”
“I think,” replied my lord Gaspar, “that I give them great praise in
saying that they wish to bring in a custom approved by so great a man.”
Messer Cesare Gonzaga said, laughing:
“Let us see whether this could have place among my lord Ottaviano’s
precepts (I do not know if he has rehearsed them all), and whether it
were well for the prince to make it law.”
“The few that I have rehearsed,” replied my lord Ottaviano, “might
perhaps suffice to make a prince good, as princes go nowadays; although
if one cared to look into the matter more minutely, he would still have
much more to say.”
My lady Duchess added:
“Since it costs us nothing but words, tell us on your faith everything
that it would occur to your mind to teach your prince.”
31.—My lord Ottaviano replied:
“Many other things, my Lady, would I teach him, provided I knew them;
and among others, that he should choose from his subjects a number of
the noblest and wisest gentlemen, with whom he should consult on
everything, and that he should give them authority and free leave to
speak their mind to him about all things without ceremony; and that he
should preserve such demeanour towards them, that they all might
perceive that he wished to know the truth about everything and held all
manner of falsehood in hatred. Besides this council of nobles, I should
advise that there be chosen from the people other men of lower rank, of
whom a popular council should be made, to communicate with the council
of nobles concerning the affairs of the city, both public and private.
And in this way there would be made of the prince (as of the head) and
of the nobles and commonalty (as of the members) a single united body,
the government of which would spring chiefly from the prince and yet
include the others also; and this state would thus have the form of the
three good kinds of government, which are Monarchy, Optimates, and
People.[442]
32.—“Next I should show him that of the cares which belong to the
prince, the most important is that of justice; for the maintenance of
which wise and well-tried men ought to be chosen to office, whose
foresight is true foresight accompanied by goodness, for else it is not
foresight, but cunning; and when this goodness is lacking, the pleaders’
skill and subtlety always work nothing but ruin and destruction to law
and justice, and the guilt of all their errours must be laid on him who
put them in office.
“I should tell how justice also fosters that piety towards God which is
the duty of all men, and especially of princes, who ought to love Him
above every other thing and direct all their actions to Him as to the
true end; and as Xenophon said, to honour and love Him always, but much
more when they are in prosperity, so that afterwards they may the more
reasonably have confidence to ask Him for mercy when they are in some
adversity.[443] For it is impossible to govern rightly either one’s self
or others without the help of God; who to the good sometimes sends good
fortune as His minister to relieve them from grievous perils; sometimes
adverse fortune, to prevent their being so lulled by prosperity as to
forget Him or human foresight, which often repairs evil fortune, as a
good player repairs bad throws of the dice by placing his board
well.[444] Moreover I should not cease reminding the prince to be truly
religious—not superstitious or given to the vanities of incantation and
sooth-saying; for by adding divine piety and true religion to human
foresight, he would have good fortune too and a protecting God always to
increase his prosperity in peace and in war.
33.—“Next I should tell how he ought to love his land and people, not
holding them too much in bondage, lest he make himself odious to them,
from which thing there arise seditions, conspiracies and a thousand
other evils; nor yet in too great freedom, lest he be despised, from
which proceed licentious and dissolute life among his people, rapine,
theft, murder, without any fear of the law; often the ruin and total
destruction of city and realms. Next, how he ought to love those near
him according to their degree, maintaining among all men an even
equality in some things, as in justice and liberty; and in certain other
things a judicious inequality, as in being generous, in rewarding, in
distributing honours and dignities according to the inequality of their
merits, which always ought not to exceed but to be exceeded by their
rewards; and that in this way he would be not merely loved but almost
adored by his subjects. Nor would there be need that he should turn to
aliens for the safeguard of his life, because his own people for their
very profit would guard it with their own, and all men would gladly obey
the laws, when they found that he himself obeyed and was as it were the
guardian and incorruptible minister of the same; and thus he would make
so strong an impression in this matter, that even if he sometimes
chanced to infringe the laws in some particular, everyone would feel
that it was done for a good end, and the same respect and reverence
would be paid to his wish as to the law itself.
“Thus the minds of his subjects would be so tempered that the good would
not seek for more than they needed, and the bad could not; for excessive
riches are oftentimes the cause of great ruin, as in poor Italy, which
has been and still is exposed as a prey to foreign nations, both because
of bad government and because of the great riches of which it is full.
Hence it were well to have the greater part of the citizens neither very
rich nor very poor, for the over-rich often become insolent and rash;
the poor, base and dishonest; but men of moderate fortune do not lay
snares for others, and live safe from being snared: and being the
greater number, these men of moderate fortune are also more powerful;
and therefore neither the poor nor the rich can conspire against the
prince or other men, nor can they sow seditions; wherefore, in order to
avoid this evil, it is a very wholesome thing to preserve a mean in all
things.
34.—“I should say then, that the prince ought to employ these and many
other suitable precautions, so that there may not arise in his subjects’
mind a desire for new things and for a change of government; which they
most often bring to pass either for gain or else for honour which they
hope for, or because of loss or else of shame which they fear. And this
unrest is engendered in their minds sometimes by hatred and anger
driving them to despair, by reason of the wrongs and insults that have
been wrought upon them through the avarice, insolence and cruelty or
lust of their superiors; sometimes by the contempt that is aroused in
them by the neglect and baseness and unworthiness of their princes.
These two errours ought to be avoided by winning the people’s love and
obedience; as is done by benefiting and rewarding the good, and by
prudently and sometimes severely precluding the bad and seditious from
becoming powerful, which is much easier to prevent before they have
become so than to deprive them of power after they have once acquired
it. And I should say that to prevent a subject from running into these
errours, there is no better way than to keep him from evil practices,
and especially from those that spread little by little; for they are
secret pests that infect cities before it is possible to cure or even to
detect them.
“By such means I should advise that the prince contrive to keep his
subjects in a tranquil state, and to give them the blessings of mind and
body and fortune; but those of the body and of fortune, in order to be
able to exercise those of the mind, which are the more profitable the
greater and more superabundant they are; which is not true of those of
the body and of fortune. If, then, the subjects be good and worthy and
rightly directed towards the goal of happiness, their prince is a very
great lord; for that is a true and great dominion, under which the
subjects are good and well governed and well commanded.”
35.—Then my lord Gaspar said:
“I think that he would be a small lord under whom all the subjects were
good, for in every place the good are few.”
My lord Ottaviano replied:
“If some Circe were to change all the subjects of the King of France
into wild beasts, would he not seem to you a small lord for all he ruled
over so many thousand animals?[445] And on the other hand, if only the
flocks that roam our mountains here for pasture were to become wise men
and worthy cavaliers, would you not think that those herdsmen who
governed them and were obeyed by them, had become great lords instead of
herdsmen? You see then, that it is not the number but the worth of their
subjects that makes princes great.”
36.—My lady Duchess and my lady Emilia and all the others had been for a
good space very attentive to my lord Ottaviano’s discourse; but since he
now made a little pause, as if he had finished his discourse, messer
Cesare Gonzaga said:
“Verily, my lord Ottaviano, it cannot be said that your precepts are not
good and useful; nevertheless I should think that if you fashioned your
prince after them, you would rather deserve the name of a good
school-master than of a good Courtier, and he rather that of a good
governor than of a great prince. I am far from saying that the care of
lords should not be to have their people well ruled with justice and
good uses; nevertheless methinks it is enough for them to select good
ministers to dispose of such matters, and that their true office is much
greater.
“Therefore if I felt myself to be that excellent Courtier which these
gentlemen have described, and to possess the favour of my prince, I
certainly should not lead him into anything vicious; but, to pursue that
good end which you tell of, and which I agree ought to be the fruit of
the Courtier’s toils and actions, I should seek to impress upon his mind
a certain greatness, together with that regal splendour and readiness of
mind and unconquered valour in war which should make him loved and
revered by everyone to such a degree that he should be famous and
illustrious in the world chiefly for this. I should tell him also that
he ought to accompany his greatness with a familiar gentleness, with
that sweet and amiable humanity, and a fine manner of caressing both his
subjects and strangers with discrimination, more or less according to
their merits,—always preserving, however, the majesty suited to his
rank, so as not to allow his authority to abate one jot from
over-condescension, nor on the other hand to excite hatred by too stern
severity; that he ought to be very generous and splendid, and to give to
all men without reserve, because God, as the saying runs, is the
treasurer of generous princes; that he ought to give magnificent
banquets, festivals, games, public shows; to have a great number of
excellent horses (for use in war and for pleasure in time of peace),
falcons, hounds, and all things else that pertain to the pleasures of
great lords and of the people: as in our days we have seen done by my
lord Francesco Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, who in these matters seems
rather King of Italy than lord of a city.[446]
“I should seek also to induce him to erect great buildings, both to win
honour in his lifetime and to give a memorial of himself to posterity:
as Duke Federico did in the case of this noble palace,[447] and as Pope
Julius is now doing in the case of St. Peter’s Church[448] and of that
street which leads from the Palace to his pleasure pavilion the
Belvedere,[449] and many other buildings: as also the ancient Romans
did, whereof we see so many remains at Rome and at Naples, at Pozzuoli,
at Baja, at Civita Vecchia, at Porto,[450] and out of Italy too, and
many other places,—which are great proof of the worth of those divine
minds.[451] So did Alexander the Great also, for not content with the
fame that he had justly won by having conquered the world with arms, he
built Alexandria in Egypt, Bucephalia in India,[452] and other cities in
other countries; and he thought of reducing Mount Athos to the form of a
man, and of building a very spacious city in its left hand, and in its
right a great basin in which were to be gathered all the rivers that
take their rise there, and from it they were to flow over into the
sea:[453] a truly great thought and one worthy of Alexander the Great.
“These, my lord Ottaviano, are things which I think befit a noble and
true prince, and make him very glorious in peace and war; and not
setting his mind to so many trifles, and taking care to fight solely in
order to rule or conquer those who deserve to be ruled, or for his
subjects’ profit, or to deprive those of power who wield it ill. For if
the Romans, Alexander, Hannibal and the others had had these aims, they
would not have reached that height of glory to which they did attain.”
[Illustration:
POPE JULIUS II
GIULIANO DELLA ROVERE
1443-1513
]
Reduced from a part of Braun’s photograph (no. 42.079) of the portrait,
in the Pitti Gallery at Florence, by Raphael (1483-1520). Of two
similar portraits, one is in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, and the
other is in the National Gallery at London. Both Passavant and
Morelli affirmed the superior authenticity of the picture here
presented, which is believed to have been painted for the Duke of
Urbino.
37.—Then my lord Ottaviano replied, laughing:
“Those who had not these aims, would have done better if they had;
although if you think, you will find many that did, and particularly
those first ancients, like Theseus and Hercules. And do not imagine that
Procrustes and Sciron, Cacus, Diomed, Antæus, Geryon, were other than
cruel and impious tyrants, against whom these lofty-minded heroes waged
perpetual and deadly war.[454] Therefore, for having delivered the world
from such intolerable monsters (for only thus ought tyrants to be
called), temples were raised and sacrifices offered to Hercules, and
divine honours paid to him; since the extirpation of tyrants is a
benefit so profitable to the world that he who confers it deserves much
greater reward than any befitting to a mortal.[455]
“And of those whom you named, do you not think that by his victories
Alexander did good to the peoples whom he conquered, having taught so
many good customs to those barbarous tribes which he overcame, that out
of wild beasts he made them men? He built so many fine cities in lands
that were ill-inhabited, and introduced right living there, and as it
were united Asia and Europe by the bond of friendship and holy laws,
that those who were conquered by him were happier than the others. For
to some he taught marriage, to others agriculture, to others religion,
others he taught not to kill but to support their fathers when grown
old, others to abstain from union with their mothers, and a thousand
other things that could be told in proof of the benefit which his
victories conferred upon the world.
38.—“But leaving the ancients aside, what more noble and glorious
enterprise and more profitable could there be than for Christians to
devote their power to subjugating the infidels?[456] Do you not think
that this war, if it succeeded prosperously and were the means of
turning so many thousand men from the false sect of Mahomet to the light
of Christian truth, would be as profitable to the vanquished as to the
victors? And truly, as Themistocles once said to his family, being
banished from his native land and received by the King of Persia and
caressed and honoured with countless and very rich gifts: ‘My friends,
we should have been undone but for our undoing;’[457] so with reason
might the Turks and Moors then say the same, because in their loss would
lie their salvation.
“Therefore I hope that we shall yet see this happiness, if God grant
life enough for Monseigneur d’Angoulême to attain the crown of
France,[458] who gives such promise of himself as my lord Magnifico told
of four evenings since; and for my lord Henry, Prince of Wales,[459] to
attain that of England, who now is growing up under his great father in
every sort of virtue,[460] like a tender shoot under the shade of an
excellent and fruit-laden tree, to renew it with much greater beauty and
fruitfulness when the time shall be; for as our friend Castiglione
writes thence,[461] and promises to tell more fully on his return, it
seems that nature wished in this lord to show her power by gathering in
a single body enough excellences to adorn a host.”
Then messer Bernardo Bibbiena said:
“Very great promise is shown also by Don Carlos, Prince of Spain, who
(although not yet arrived at the tenth year of his age) already shows so
much capacity and such certain signs of goodness, of foresight, of
modesty, of magnanimity and of every virtue, that if the empire of
Christendom shall be (as men think) in his hands, we may believe that he
must eclipse the name of many ancient emperors, and equal the fame of
the most famous that have been on earth.”[462]
39.—My lord Ottaviano added:
“I think, then, that such divine princes as these have been sent by God
on earth, and by Him made to resemble one another in youth, in martial
power, in state, in beauty and bodily shape, to the end that they may be
of one accord for this good purpose also. And if there must ever be any
envy or emulation among them, it may be solely in wishing to be each the
first and most fervent and zealous for so glorious an enterprise.