§ 1. The pseudo-statesmen sometimes also praise virtue; but when it is seriously required in a prince, when the senatorial order and the tribes of the people are formed toward it, they set before us the shadow and dead image of virtue in place of virtue itself. They consider it sufficient to simulate justice and temperance; they fashion for us a city which is Helen outside, Hecuba within. They so instruct the prince that he formulates prayers in these words:
Grant me to deceive; grant me to seem just and holy.
Set night before my sins, and a cloud before my frauds.
But they fashion senators and tribunes not dissimilar to the prince:
Οἳ τ’ εὖ μὲν λαλέουσι, κακῶς δ’ ὄπιθεν φρονέουσι.
Who indeed speak well, but afterward contrive evil.
Machiavelli assuredly denies that a prince can be good, chapter 15: “For the manner in which human beings live is so far removed from that in which it would be right that they live, that he who neglects what is done in order to follow what ought to be done summons ruin for himself in learning this, rather than willing that counsel be taken for his safety. For he who strives to profess himself a good man in every part must assuredly be endangered among so many who are not good. It is therefore necessary for a prince, if he wishes to be safe, to have perceived the manner by which he can be not good, and, according to the necessity of the matter, either turn this to his use or not turn it.
“Therefore, setting aside the things fashioned in the mind concerning a prince only, and discoursing concerning those things which are true, I say that all human beings—and especially princes, since they are placed in a higher position—are accustomed to be noted for some of the following qualities: one is called liberal, another restrictive and tenacious; one munificent, another a plunderer; some cruel, others merciful; some breakers of treaties, others religious; some effeminate and soft, others, on the contrary, manly and fierce; many humane, others swollen with pride; very many lustful, some endowed with chastity; integrity of life is perceived in not a few, most harmful fraud in many; very many are harsh in morals, some adorned with affability and mildness; some grave and severe, others, on the contrary, light and dissolute; many cultivate piety, while, on the contrary, there are those who oppose it exceedingly—and other things similar to these.”
Since therefore he denies that a prince can be good, he nevertheless admonishes him to beware of the infamy of those vices by which his government might be taken from him, and not to labor greatly concerning the others, without which he cannot easily protect his dominion. And chapter 18: “He who was more sagacious, so that he expressed the nature of foxes better, found all things turning out more happily. But since there are two kinds of contending, one by the right of laws, the other through force; and since the former is proper to a human being and the latter to beasts, one must have recourse to the latter if it is not sufficient to employ the former. Accordingly, it is necessary that a prince hold the right use of both, beast and human being.
“This part was delivered to princes under a certain covering by the ancient writers, who assert that Achilles and many other princes of old were entrusted to Chiron the centaur to be educated and placed under his discipline. For in saying that they had a teacher of mixed kind, both human being and beast, they teach nothing other than that the use of both natures will be necessary for a prince. Since therefore it matters greatly that a prince skillfully put on the nature of a beast, he must assume the morals both of the fox and the lion. For the lion does not guard himself against snares, while the little fox fears wolves. Therefore, in order that snares be perceived, one must act the little fox; but in order that wolves be terrified, the leonine nature must be assumed. Those who simply insist upon the lion’s tracks assuredly do not grasp the matter itself.
“A prince who is endowed with wisdom ought therefore to avoid those promises which he sees will be contrary to his own advantages. And indeed, if human beings were all upright, this precept would have been plainly useless; but since they are wicked, their wickedness and perfidy must be carefully eluded. Moreover, causes will never be lacking to human beings by which they may introduce a color over violated faith. Almost infinite recent examples could be brought forward on this matter and show how many treaties of peace, promises, and agreements have been rendered ineffective and vain by perfidy. But it matters greatly that one know how rightly to clothe this nature with color, both by simulating and dissimulating. For human beings are so simple and so compliant with present necessities that one who is deceitful and instructed in the art of simulation will immediately have someone who delivers himself to be deceived by him. Such persons must therefore be guarded against all the more, and their art frustrated by art.”
And even if that teacher of vices had said none of the other things, these assuredly suffice abundantly to overthrow the commonwealth.
§ 2. Nothing is more shameful than a simulator, whom no one except a madman can believe even when he acts seriously. For the present I shall omit most things against hypocrisy and the deceptive art of simulating and dissimulating, but shall touch chiefly upon those which pertain to civil government.
The Holy Spirit frequently impresses that simulation, deceit, and hypocrisy greatly displease God. Job 8:13: “The hope of the hypocrite will perish. His folly will not please him, and his confidence will be like spiders’ webs.” And Job 36:13: “Simulators and the cunning provoke the wrath of God.” And Psalm 5:8: “The Lord will abominate the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” The same things are repeated in Job 15:34 and 20:5; Psalm 54:24; Matthew 7:5; Luke
16:15. The magnitude of this crime is taken from four causes.
§ 3. First, it most gravely offends God, because it always joins and couples two crimes. For, as St. Augustine says on Psalm 36: “Simulated innocence is not innocence, and simulated equity is not equity, but a double iniquity, because it is both iniquity and simulation.” A most beautiful reason has been given. Alfonso explained it when, returning victorious from Africa to the island of Aenaria, he heard that Antonio Piceno, a distinguished craftsman of simulation, had ended his life most wretchedly, eaten away by little worms because of his blasphemies and hypocrisy. He said that hypocrites were so hateful to God because they bewitched and deceived mortals, made God the mediator of this crime and perfidy, and undertook crimes under the pretext of so great a majesty. Therefore they are not only consigned to eternal punishments after death, but are generally punished and tortured in the sight of the human beings whom they deceived.
Accordingly, we see that when God brings out what was done in darkness and makes it manifest in the sight of this sun, the error is removed. For unless divine justice, the immutable exactor of sincerity, acted so severely against those wicked persons, human beings, from the habit of deceiving, would judge that they could deceive even God. Isaiah, chapter 29:15, testifies that counselors and statesmen who thought thus were not lacking to perishing Judaea: “Woe to you who are deep in heart, so that you hide counsel from the Lord, whose works are in darkness, and who say: ‘Who sees us, and who knows us?’ This thought of yours is perverse, as if clay should think against the potter and the work should say to its maker, ‘You did not make me,’ and the thing fashioned should say to its fashioner, ‘You do not understand.’ Will not Lebanon yet, in a little and a short time, be turned into Carmel, and Carmel be reckoned as a forest?”
§ 4. Second, the simulator himself both readily slips and is cast headlong by his own arts, so that he can never escape. For he cannot be admonished and corrected, since he himself, as though innocent and just, anticipates chastisements as the leader and author of others. They are tombs, but closed ones, and for as long as they can, they restrain their stench. Such were the monks in Syria and Egypt whom they call Sarabaites; Jerome calls them Remoboth. They feigned holiness by habit, gesture, and solitude, while most wicked in their minds. They are obstinate in this very evil: that whatever good thing they are commanded to do, they simulate it.
§ 5. Third, human beings are accustomed to be offended by nothing more than the simulation of justice and piety, just as they are delighted by sincerity and faith. It is an oracle of St. Ambrose, book 2 of On Duties: “Direct simplicity of mind abounds for all things and sufficiently commends itself.” Therefore nothing in the commonwealth is more harmful than suspicion of simulation, which renders all benefits ineffectual and every courtesy and every humanity hateful. Without a reputation for faith and piety the commonwealth cannot be governed; but if simulation is perceived, the most extreme hatreds and contempt follow. It is certain that nothing feigned and painted is the work of true virtue; indeed, it is not even accustomed to endure. At the beginning it blossoms; in its course it is scattered and dissolved like a little flower. But what is right and sincere is established upon a deep root. Not even simulators and the wicked themselves can endure hypocrites who are rivals in their art.
Assuredly, a certain poet contemplates flight lest he injure his eyes, so burdensome to him was the sight of simulation—Juvenal, Satire 2:
I desire to flee from here beyond the Sauromatae and the icy
Ocean, whenever they dare anything concerning morals,
Who simulate Curii and live Bacchanals.
First, they are unlearned—although you may find all things full
Of plaster busts of Chrysippus. For the most perfect of these is
One who buys an image of Aristotle or Pittacus
And commands archetypal Cleantheses to guard his shelf.
There is no trust in the face; for what street does not abound
In gloomy obscenities?
But where will you flee? Perhaps you will carry a hypocrite with you even beyond the icy Ocean; perhaps some pus is concealed in your own heart, and a foul crime is covered by a polished forehead. Perhaps the countenance is a lamb’s, while the inward parts are a dragon’s. How hatefully Seneca lashes these things in the Hippolytus:
Where is that countenance, and the feigned majesty of the man?
And his bristling appearance, seeking ancient and bygone things?
And the gloomy old age of morals, grave in aspect?
O deceitful life, you bear hidden thoughts,
And put a beautiful face upon troubled minds.
Modesty conceals the shameless man, quiet the audacious,
Piety the impious; the false approve true things,
And the soft simulate hard things.
§ 6. I doubt whether any prince surpassed Tiberius in the art of simulation. Dio of Nicaea describes his nature: “Tiberius was a patrician and learned, but of a peculiar and uncommon nature and morals. For he so concealed all the affections of his mind that he scarcely ever said what he desired, and his will and desire fought against his speech. For he professed hatred for what he sought most greatly and dissembled what he hated. He was angry although disturbed by no circumstance; when angry, he was thought to possess the most tranquil and equable mind. He pitied those against whom he had acted severely, and was sometimes angry with those whom he pardoned. He so embraced the most hostile human beings as those most familiar and closely joined to him; but, on the contrary, he conducted himself no more truly with his closest friends than with the most alien human beings. Finally, he thought that the mind of a prince ought to be known to no one.
“If this had stood alone in Tiberius, his will could not have been obscure to those who tried and strove to know it, since they would have taken everything in the contrary sense. For when he had denied that he wished something, they would have judged that he desired it most greatly; and when he said that he desired it, they would then have judged that he did not wish it. But beyond the things said above, he bore it grievously when he suspected that anyone was conscious of and a participant in his counsels; and he commanded many to be killed for no other reason than that he said his will had been observed and perceived by them. Accordingly, almost the only man safe—and this occurred very rarely—was he who neither was ignorant of his character and morals nor revealed that he knew them. For in this manner those who obeyed him were not deceived and did not therefore come into his hatred by showing that they perceived the things he did.
“Endowed with these morals, Tiberius, as though he had immediately obtained the empire, sent letters from Rome not only to the army but also to all nations; yet in them he did not write that he had been made emperor, because he rejected that name decreed to him by the senate together with his other names, and admitted the inheritance of Augustus but not his surname.”
§ 7. Such was the disposition of the prince, fashioned for dissimulating and simulating. But now let us look upon the things that followed from it. First, when he had refused the empire, there was more dignity than faith in such speech. Therefore someone objected that others were slow to perform what they promised, but Tiberius slow to promise what he would perform; for only when he spoke in the senate was he a delayer.
§ 8. Second, he had now accustomed his mind to simulation to such a degree that he could not bring forth sincere words. “And in Tiberius,” says Tacitus in book 1 of the Annals, “even in matters which he did not conceal, whether by nature or habit, his words were always suspended and obscure. But then, when he strove utterly to hide his thoughts, they were entangled all the more in uncertainty and ambiguity.” How great a loss joined with dishonor it is for deceit and falsehood to appear in every speech of a prince, and for the fox’s skin always to flash forth!
§ 9. Third, nothing was accomplished by so great an art. For just as actors or hypocrites are regarded as better hypocrites by as much as they adapt voice and gesture to theatrical trifles with greater skill and assimilate feigned things more closely to true ones—for hypocrites are simulators, as though reciters of other persons, as Augustine says in the Sermon on the Mount and Basil in the homily On Fasting—so magistrates are judged more cunning and fraudulent by as much as they simulate benevolence, justice, and piety with greater art.
For no one believed Tiberius. Behold the miseries of the subjects under that ape. Tacitus, Annals 1: “But the Fathers, who possessed one fear—that they might appear to understand—poured forth into complaints, tears, and vows, stretching their hands toward the gods, toward the image of Augustus, and toward his own knees.” Nor without cause. It was afterward understood that the doubt had been introduced in order also to inspect the wishes of the nobles, for he stored away words and countenances, twisting them into a charge. Great was the danger for minds so consternated, so doubtful. For if even one man of the spirit of Brutus or Cassius had then existed, by one word he could have freed all the Fathers from so great a fear. Assuredly that prince possessed no true friend: a painted friend of all human beings, a true enemy, he wasted away in the dreadful hatred of all.
§ 10. Fourth, not only the things which he simulated openly and concerning which they labored lest they appear to understand, but all his secrets were published. The quaestor Crispinus charged Marcellus, praetor of Bithynia, with treason and accused him of having held sinister conversations concerning Tiberius. The charge was unavoidable, since the accuser selected from the prince’s morals each most shameful thing and cast it against the defendant. For because they were true, it was believed that they had also been said. Therefore all his secrets lay open, and what was covered by so great an art was already rumor.
Suetonius, chapter 66: “Moreover, various reproaches from every direction burned his anxious mind, since every one of those condemned cast every kind of insult upon him, either in his presence or by placards set in the orchestra. By these he was indeed affected in the most diverse ways, sometimes so that from shame he wished all to be unknown and concealed, and sometimes so that he despised the same things and voluntarily brought them forth and published them. Indeed, he was also torn apart by a letter from Artabanus, king of the Parthians, who cast parricides, killings, cowardice, and luxury against him and admonished him to make satisfaction as soon as possible, by voluntary death, to the greatest and most just hatred of the citizens. Finally, having become weary even of himself, at the beginning of a letter he all but professed the sum of his evils.”
§ 11. Fifth, he was never secure by that simulation. Clemens, a slave of Agrippa, had prepared a force not to be despised in vengeance for his master, and many secretly assisted him. Lucius Scribonius Libo was attempting revolution; there was a mutiny of the soldiers in Germany and Illyricum. Finally, hateful to everyone at Rome, Tiberius shut himself upon an island. What disposition human beings had toward him was disclosed at his death. For the people rejoiced so greatly at his death that, when the first report arrived, some, running about, shouted that Tiberius should be dragged into the Tiber; some entreated Mother Earth and the gods of the dead not to give the dead man any dwelling except among the impious; others threatened his corpse with the hook and the Gemonian stairs.
He also passed his life in perpetual fear. For through fear of Sejanus, when the matter was uncertain, he prepared ships and contemplated flight to any of the legions, repeatedly observing from the highest rock; and, lest the messengers delay, he had commanded signals to be raised far off according as each thing had been done. But even after the conspiracy of Sejanus had been crushed, no more secure or steadfast, he did not depart during the following twelve months from the villa called that of Jupiter.
§ 12. Sixth, hence there was no care for the commonwealth in the senate, even if the most extreme things of the empire were dishonored, for inward dread had besieged it. Meanwhile simulation did not abandon Tiberius even when he was now dying; for even when failing, he ordered a banquet to be renewed, until Macro, prefect of the praetorian cohort, ordered the old man to be smothered by a heap of clothing. Thus it came about that he possessed no friend except a simulated one. By the just and true judgment of God he perished by his own arts: throughout his whole government he had labored to disclose the secrets of his heart to no one, and had killed many solely because they seemed to have perceived his will and counsels.
§ 13. Simulation is therefore useless to a government and always ruinous to a prince. Human minds are so constituted by nature that they immediately hate a person whom they hold suspect and perceive to be distrustful; they neither commit themselves to him nor remain faithful, for mutual trust binds trust.
Nor can simulation in a prince be concealed for long. With the passage of time many things must be done which had been covered, while their contraries had been simulated.
The observation and experience of one year therefore instruct most people sufficiently concerning the nature of a prince.
They see persons driven into exile or slaughtered whom a little before the prince appeared to carry in his bosom. They cannot doubt that those persons were raised on high so that a heavier fall might shatter them.
The following admonition is therefore for a good prince:
You live—and rule—rightly if you take care to be what you hear yourself called.
For the simulator, however, this is the proper admonition: Ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κεῖνος ὁμῶς Ἀΐδαο πύλῃσιν, ὅς χ’ ἕτερον μὲν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ.
He is as hateful to me as the gates of the infernal regions,
Who hides one thing in his mind and speaks another.
§ 14. Therefore the evil of hypocrisy is supreme, because it secretly covers, fosters, and increases all crimes. Since so many true evils are concealed by a thin, uncertain, and mutable simulation of false good, it is necessary that the commonwealth perish by that art.
§ 15. Nevertheless, atheists remain in their opinion and maintain that opinion can accomplish the same thing as truth. Minos, king of the Cretans, pretended that he was descended from Jupiter. He was accustomed to descend into a deep cave of the most ancient superstition, as though to receive laws from Jupiter. Following his example, Numa wished it to be believed that he held nocturnal meetings with Egeria, was instructed by her, and delivered sacred rites received from the immortal gods.
Lycurgus, with a similar fabrication, declared Apollo the proposer of his laws. Zaleucus persuaded the Locrians that he had employed Minerva’s counsel. Scipio Africanus did not go forth to business unless he had delayed in the cell of Jupiter. Sulla embraced a small image of Apollo before battle and asked it to hasten what it had promised. More foolishly than all, Sertorius deceived the Lusitanians—a nation fierce and barbarous at that time, now the most cultivated of all—by leading around a white doe, tame and familiar, as though prophetic.
Therefore a prince can sometimes employ simulated religion.
I indeed confess that the common people are held by superstition and are sometimes moved by it more strongly than by true religion. Just as those who suffer from pica are carried more ardently toward inhuman and filthy foods than healthy persons, whom natural appetite stimulates, so a people whose morals are already corrupt is led by the shadow and vanity of religion. But when superstition is treated, I shall show that this is not only impious but useless to a kingdom.
But because they employ examples, these too must be refuted. For I deny that the sacrileges of feigned religion ever turned out well either for these men or for others.
§ 16. Minos bound the minds of the Cretans by superstition, so that they received the laws as though from Jupiter’s parchment. Thus indeed; but the Cretans neither preserved the laws and were infamous for two things, being counted among the three worst kappas—namely, because they were fraudulent and contentious. Hence the name “Cretism” denotes malicious cunning, and “syncretism,” according to usage, a fraudulent pacification.
Minos himself paid penalties for simulation. For although he boasted that he enjoyed conversation with Jupiter, was admonished by him concerning all matters, and even possessed foreknowledge of the future, he did not know his domestic disgraces. That unhappy simulator went so far as to possess an adulterous wife—that is, a simulator, or, if tales are to be believed, a follower of the most impious lust—and no faithful person at home to disclose the arts of Daedalus. Nor, when Theseus guided his footsteps by the dowry-thread and led away his daughter, did Jupiter his father admonish him. Nor did he foretell the king’s unhappy death when Minos went to Sicily to avenge the injuries received from Daedalus, although this pertained more greatly to the king’s safety.
For whether he was killed by Sicilian women, as Herodotus says, or was suffocated by Cocalus with the heat of a bath, as Diodorus maintains, he gave a distinguished proof that God is the avenger of simulated religion and wills to be honored only by true and sincere religion. He was also regarded as a fool by his subjects: although foreknowing the future, he was ignorant of the lusts of his wife and daughter.
§ 17. Numa and Lycurgus imitated Minos. Numa, a magician, indeed established superstition at Rome. Augustine speaks prudently concerning him in book 3, chapter 9 of The City of God: “That man ought to have been congratulated for so great a leisure, if only he had known how to expend it upon salutary things and, with most destructive curiosity neglected, to seek the true God by true piety. But as it is, the gods did not confer that leisure upon him; rather, perhaps they would have deceived him less if they had not found him at leisure. For by as much as they found him less occupied, by so much the more did they occupy him. Varro discloses what he attempted and by what arts he was able to associate such gods with himself or that city. If it pleases the Lord, this will be discussed more diligently in its own place.”
But for the present, since the question concerns their benefits, peace is a great benefit. Yet it is a benefit of the true God, generally bestowed even upon the ungrateful and wicked, like the sun, rain, and other supports of life. But if those gods conferred so great a good upon Rome or Pompilius, why did they never afterward furnish it to the Roman Empire during its more praiseworthy times? Were the sacred rites more useful while they were being instituted than when they were celebrated after institution? But at that time they did not yet exist and were being added so that they might exist; afterward they did exist and were preserved so that they might profit.
What, then, is the reason that those forty-three—or, as others maintain, thirty-nine—years were passed in so great a peace while Numa reigned, but afterward, with sacred rites instituted and those very gods who had been invited by the rites now acting as guardians and protectors, scarcely one year, after so many years from the founding of the city down to Augustus, is commemorated as a great marvel after the First Punic War, in which the Romans were able to close the gates of war?
Thus Numa, by simulating, made the city unhappy; afterward no one believed him, for all confess that he simulated conversations with the gods. But many gods were added afterward, and they were not content with Numa’s divinities; and Rome, burdened by so many divine powers, lived amid perpetual disaster.
§ 18. Lycurgus and Zaleucus are also praised. But although I grant that certain things in each are worthy of praise, I condemn their vain pursuit of the glory of divination. Lycurgus gave laws to the Lacedaemonians, but laws which no city wished to employ and which soon became obsolete. He indeed bound all by oath that they would preserve the laws while he was away; but lest by his return he release them from the religious obligation of the oath, he chose voluntary exile. And lest he himself someday return to the fatherland through weariness of wandering, he took his own life. He was unhappy not only in his death but also in his laws, a great part of which Lacedaemon soon abrogated, whether by practice and morals or by contrary sanctions.
Lycurgus was therefore not wise, as is evident from his laws, which are in Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaemonians. Next, if he loved his fatherland, he should have returned himself and brought good laws into morals; for even while present he could compel them by oath. But if he did not wish to return, why did he kill himself? What had he himself deserved so badly from himself that, contrary to the law implanted by nature, he wished to be his own executioner? Did he trust himself so little? Was the desire to see his fatherland so great that it could be quieted only by death? Although others—and I believe this more readily—relate that, inflamed by grief and anger because he understood that his laws were being violated, he wished by death to withdraw himself from that insult.
§ 19. Zaleucus, the lawgiver of the Locrians, also paid penalties for hypocrisy. For when he had established that an adulterer’s eyes should be dug out, and his son had deserved that punishment, he divided the punishment with him so that his son would not be altogether blind: one eye was dug out for his son, the other for himself. But not much later all the laws were neglected and adulteries went unpunished.
The matter is more obscure concerning the death of Zaleucus; nevertheless, many things throughout history teach of the disasters of the Locrians, showing that they were not made happy by the lawgiver’s simulation. The case of Lycurgus is better attested from Plutarch, Herodotus, and Stobaeus. It will suffice me to append what Valerius Maximus has in book 5, chapter 3: “Lacedaemon produced no man greater or more useful than Lycurgus, since Apollo at Delphi is reported to have answered him when he sought an oracle that he did not know whether to number him among human beings or gods. Yet neither the highest sincerity of his life, nor his most constant love toward the fatherland, nor laws salutarily devised could assist him so that he did not experience hostile citizens.
“For he was often attacked with stones, at one time driven out by public fury, and even deprived of an eye; finally, he was expelled from his own fatherland. What should other cities do when even that one, which claims for itself the outstanding praise of constancy, moderation, and gravity, proved so ungrateful toward one who had deserved so well?” Behold a distinguished priest of feigned sanctity and simulation, and the punishment of violated religion made present for you. How, therefore, was Lycurgus happy amid these things through simulation?
§ 20. Concerning Scipio, it is agreed that he was not at all superstitious, that his simulation was mocked at Rome by his adversaries, and that he contended against Hannibal by virtue, not superstition. Nevertheless, he paid penalties: despised and with the people offended, he grew old upon his little farm,
and died wasted away by sorrow. Sulla too was assuredly not at all happy: after abdicating the dictatorship, he was consumed by worms at Puteoli. The outcome mocked the divinations of Sertorius; for, killed by his own men amid a banquet, he taught the Lusitanians that he had not been a prophet. Why did that beast foretell the time and manner of all things to be done, but warn nothing concerning the death of Sertorius, which was followed by the servitude of the whole nation?
§ 21. Vain and hateful, therefore, is the simulation of virtues; indeed, it is generally destructive. The reason is that although the rude common people are led by vanities, nevertheless among the citizens there are many who both recognize and laugh at these things. Who does not know that Proculus swore falsely when he said that Romulus had been seen by him departing into heaven and being called Quirinus? It was said with perjury that Drusilla, Augustus, and Tiberius had gone to the gods; nevertheless, no one believed them for so good a report.
For these things are accustomed to be derided. But if the stupidity of certain persons is entangled by and trembles at such things, it is nevertheless readily instructed by the witty sayings of clever human beings, so that those who hunted a reputation for sanctity by deceptions are regarded as impostors. But if it happens that they err and slip in any matter, as human weakness does, a great part of their authority immediately falls.
Finally, let the prince, magistrates, and people hold this fixed: that the reputation which is tossed about by the opinions of fools is made of glass, and once broken can be repaired among neither the wise nor fools; but such is the glory that does not arise from truth. That saying of Cicero is an oracle: “True glory puts down roots and is also propagated; all feigned things quickly fall like little flowers, nor can anything simulated be lasting.”
When their fraud has been detected, aristocrats come into the greatest contempt. No one laughs at a grave matron if she lacks the grace of beauty; but if her painted purple and antimony run down, she becomes the tale of the common people, because she affected an allurement beyond what was fitting to her age. Thus the impiety of magnates is less detestable if it lacks a veil of piety. Applause was given to him who said that fraud in a prince is more shameful than violence. Deservedly indeed; I add also that the fraud of princes is violent. For if a higher power wishes to circumvent you by malicious deceit, you will permit yourself to be deceived with less danger than you will judge the fraud once understood. For when deceived you will bear only the loss; if you meet the fraud, you will be counted among the enemies, as though conscious of the prince’s sin.