§ 1. If we consider the duties and functions of the virtues, and the infinite desires and deviations of the vices, we shall readily conclude that no commonwealth can stand without the cultivation of the virtues and the flight from and punishments of the vices. Let us establish a human being adorned with many gifts of fortune, distinguished by eloquence, strength, beauty, and resources, but foolish—some Nabal, as it were, and a golden wether. He will assuredly be able neither to administer the commonwealth, govern a household, nor be useful to friends; he is commended to his relatives, lest he turn all those things into the reproach of himself and his friends. Can a city therefore be governed, a war waged, or a kingdom maintained without prudence?
Next, let the commonwealth indeed be prudent, but a deserter of justice: will it be able to stand? It will endure for a time, like certain bands of brigands. If justice is absent, the stronger will despoil the inferior; he will suffer the same from one greater; weapons will remain to those despoiled. Now, amid rods, axes, red-hot plates, racks, pyres, and crosses, wickedness exults; all things are full of evils; the name of innocence has almost perished, because οὐδὲν οὕτω ῥᾴδιον ὡς τὸ γίνεσθαι κακόν, “nothing is so easy as becoming bad.” Unhappy wickedness finds rivals; what if it should flourish and thrive?
Third, without fortitude and constancy there can be no city, indeed no justice; for if the judge is fearful, he will not pronounce sentence against the powerful. The soldier will flee before the trumpet and surrender himself to the enemy as bloodless booty. What shall I say of temperance? Let him be wise, just, and brave. If he is the slave of drunkenness or lusts, he will not be able to be happy. Luxury broke the strength of Samson; lust and its companion idolatry cast down the wisdom of Solomon. The calamitous ends of the Babylonians, Tyrians, and indeed of many regions of the world teach this: very many kingdoms were overthrown by lust; one adulterer committed Asia and Europe to war; and incestuous marriage-beds again, the Trojans and Latins. Therefore, if these vices are strengthened and become powerful, if they pass into morals and into a second nature, there will cease to be a place for remedy. But when the poison has so occupied the inward parts that the contagion rejects medicine, the evils are ended only by death and destruction, as in Sardanapalus, Nero, Gallienus, Heliogabalus, and the other pests of the human race, whom God willed by their horrific ends to be examples unto the detestation of crimes.
§ 2. Since those virtues are therefore altogether necessary to the commonwealth, and nevertheless cannot be stable without true piety and fear of God—for religion is the foundation of every virtue—it is necessary that he who governs the helm of the commonwealth keep continually before his eyes the supreme Lord of all things, to whom an account must be rendered even of right deeds. Otherwise, when occasions offer themselves, even good princes will readily slip toward worse things.
Nor will subjects be able to be contained in duty without fear of eternal punishment or hope of reward. For fear of the laws and the penalties customarily inflicted upon the guilty possess little effectiveness for terrifying and obstructing crimes. Many despise death, or do not so fear it that they bring themselves to restrain their desires by that thought. They also hope that they can deceive and escape punishments until they are in the very chains. Therefore, he who has cast away piety will not only dare whatever crimes he has conceived whenever there is hope of lying hidden, but will carry the criminal desires of a criminal mind into prisons, chains, the rack, and pyres. He will not be corrected by lashes but made more savage; he will condemn not the crimes but their unhappy outcomes, and will prepare himself for the future so that he may offend more cautiously and secretly.