§ 1. I would wish that what always sounds in the Church in the Apostle’s voice were inscribed upon the citadels of all princes and the senate houses of all cities (Romans 12:8): ὁ προϊστάμενος ἐν σπουδῇ. “He who presides, with solicitude, zeal, diligence.” Prudence cannot be idle. I take diligence and solicitude as the same, as do the ancient translator of Scripture and St. Thomas. For although among non-Christian writers solicitude signifies a vicious and anxious restlessness and agitation of mind, it nevertheless has a better signification among our writers. St. Thomas says: “One is called solicitous as though sollers citus, ‘skilfully swift,’ insofar as someone, from a certain skilfulness of mind, is swift in pursuing the things that are to be done.” Diligence, therefore, is an alacrity and faculty of mind by which swiftness, with right reason, is prescribed for those things which have been prudently resolved.
The enemies of this virtue are ἀμέλεια, negligence, when, with care and solicitude set aside, good counsels perish through not acting—a frequent but deadly evil in the commonwealth; next, sloth, or ὀκνηρότης, when the times for action are postponed until affairs come into danger; third, torpor, or νωχεία, which so dissolves the mind that it interrupts things well considered and rightly begun. O prince, O consul, O commander:
Ἔργοις φιλόπονος ἴσθι, μὴ λόγοις μόνον.
Love labor in deed, not only in words.
The saying is brief, but it embraces all the things of prudence: νόει καὶ πρᾶττε—think and act. For diligence is truly the mother in every good thing. A little earlier I praised the verse concerning wisdom:
Ἅπαντα δὲ διὰ τὸ φρονεῖν καθίσταται.
All things serve wisdom.
But a similar saying demonstrates that this must be understood of efficacious, laborious, and operative wisdom:
Τῆς ἐπιμελείας πάντα δοῦλα γίγνεται.
All things serve diligence.
§ 2. I indeed judge every care, solicitude, diligence, and vigilance of the magistrate honorable and almost royal. For whatever things, having been prudently resolved, are executed with princely authority and swift vigor are great because they pertain to many. Every virtue requires ἀκρίβειαν, exactness, and that the result answer the art precisely; but under government, diligence even in small things is of the highest importance and is a certain and stable proof of a mind not degenerate. To many it is accustomed to seem beneath majesty to take an interest in the accounts of quaestors and to exercise care over expenditures. But in truth this especially procures and strengthens majesty; otherwise, through that negligence the treasury is exhausted and the rapacity of officials and ministers is increased without measure. And when war threatens, all flee; for both those who have plundered wish to preserve their possessions, and those who have no hope from a poor prince transfer themselves to the rich.
Then indeed they feel the penalties of negligence, when citadels, revenues, and towns must be pledged—not to friends and faithful men, but to thieves who buy the prince for themselves with the princes’ money. I shall discuss this matter in book 8. For now I admonish that the lively eyes of princes and senators must be cast upon the smallest things. All those smallest things are decisive points of the greatest things. The sum is this: either let the prince or senate do all things itself, or let it demand accounts of all things done; if it can do neither, let it act so that all believe that accounts of all things must be rendered daily.
Not only is this useful to the commonwealth and an antidote to embezzlement; it also conduces to the safety of administrators, of whom there is not one in a thousand who is not compelled to disgorge things badly acquired and restore them with disgrace, since no one lacks an enemy and, in truth, an accuser. Princes sharpen the industry of others by example: the prince carries a palisade, raises an earthwork, sights the cannon, polishes the sword, exercises the horse, demands accounts, and learns small things. Majesty is not reduced to the ranks; rather, distinction from majesty is added to common works. The majesty of God is infinite, and nevertheless he always looks upon all lowly things: he disposes limbs and members for flies and fleas, and executes these small things without diminution of majesty just as he governs the world. Therefore in Amos 7:1 God himself is named “the Maker of the locust.” For the same wisdom of his shines in great and small things.
§ 3. Finally, who does not daily experience what the disadvantages of negligence are? I do not treat of private matters; public ones lie open to everyone’s eyes. Nothing is so rightly constituted that idleness does not overthrow it. The opportunities of affairs never wait for the idleness of rulers. I condemn precipitation in counsels, which nevertheless is sometimes successful not by its own merit but by the indulgence of the divine power; but I condemn still more delay and languor, which corrupt all things. For just as diligence corrects the depravity of nature, so negligence in a great body nourishes and increases the plagues of all diseases. There is nothing that persistent labor and intent and diligent care do not conquer; and, on the contrary, there is nothing that does not waste away through idleness and fall through relaxation and torpor.
Why do you look upon distant things? The surest protection is from what is nearest—indeed, from yourself. The magistrate, therefore, will imitate farmers, whose rustic axiom is this: wherever the eyes of the present master have frequently approached, in that part the fruits abound to a greater degree; for the master’s eye feeds the horse. Therefore let no one, like the Chinese king or the later Persians, think that the fruit of kingship is leisure with dignity; rather, let him judge that it is royal to act well and to hear ill. The gait of the Egyptian king was a matter of ridicule to Scipio and the Roman envoys: it displayed ἀεργίαν, idleness, and ἀδυναμίαν, weakness.
The constancy of Alexander Severus in laboring is to be praised. Lampridius describes it thus: “Indeed, if necessity compelled, he gave his attention to business before daybreak and prolonged it to a late hour; nor did he ever become weary or withdraw morose or angry, but always with an even countenance and cheerful toward all things. For he was of enormous prudence, a man upon whom no one could impose, and one whom, if anyone wished cleverly to attempt to deceive him, he understood, and the man paid the penalty.”
And Herodian: “He himself made the journey without interruption, greatly regarding neither feast days nor any labors, equally enduring cold and heat. Often he also went through the highest mountains in a savage winter, with snow falling heavily from the sky, his head uncovered, so that in deed he might exhort the soldiers to alacrity and endurance of labors. Therefore they were incited to endure all things not by a certain fear and law, but rather by emulation and the prince’s example. He also sent men to occupy the narrows of the Alps and beset the approaches to Italy.”
Nor did he wish others to act differently, for he gave the watchword “Let us labor,” just as Pertinax had given “Let us serve as soldiers.” Hadrian was energetic and laborious, if any emperor was; for he frequently traversed the provinces, administered justice, and punished the greed of governors. The poet Florus mocked his august labors: “I do not wish to be Caesar—to walk among the Britons and endure Scythian frosts.” To him Hadrian wittily replied: “I do not wish to be Florus—to walk through taverns, hide in eating houses, and endure round mosquitoes.” Vespasian indeed died amid imperial cares while he was attending to embassies; his maxim was this: “An emperor ought to die standing.” What would he have thought concerning those whom soft inactivity buries alive? In the morning, after he had awakened from sleep, he read letters, conducted public business, inspected petitions, and heard parties. Domitian too, among his greatest vices, retained this through a certain emulation. Trajan, however, sat upon the tribunal and heard cases without weariness.
§ 4. But as in other affairs, so especially in military affairs, in which it is not permissible to err twice, there is need of most cautious speed. For it strikes great terror into enemies and does not grant those terrified an interval for recovering themselves. But how will a prince suffice for so many and such minute cares? I answer: not only lesser kings and commanders, but even monarchs and lords of very many kingdoms, can have ordered times for arranging affairs.
§ 5. First, therefore, let the prince arrange his times in order; for things out of order hinder not only themselves but also those things which are well ordered. If he distinguishes these times, affairs will present themselves in their order, and times will not be lacking for them; yet neither will times—which the prince will count as profit—remain over for vices. The time expended upon business is sacred; that expended upon other things is profane, unless it is expended so that health may be equal to the business.
Second, if there are several provinces, he will assign their own counsels to each, just as to individual affairs, and thus he himself will also be able to be present with them by turns.
Third, if seven hours are allotted to sleep, two to food, and the same number to recreation and honorable relaxation of the mind, thirteen will remain for business. If he so arranges these that all can say:
The day itself is distinguished by a beautiful order of affairs,
he himself will dispatch many affairs. For fixed hours he will assign to fixed consultations, and other hours which he wishes to be free for extraordinary matters and for hearing the wretched, widows, and wards. For pity is due first to them, and the prince ought especially to be a father to those deprived of other protection.
It pleases me here to append what the most prudent man Antonio de Guevara rightly and wisely wrote concerning Marcus Aurelius, in imitation of Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus. “By these intervals,” he says, “the excellent emperor Marcus Aurelius divided his times, so that he might have sufficient time both for caring for his own affairs and for public business. For a man released from cares and solicitude—not idle—accomplishes many things even in a short time; one distracted by solicitude scarcely accomplishes a few in a long time. He ordered his time so that he slept seven hours at night, rested at noon for one, and allotted two to lunch and dinner—not because he lunched or dined for so long, but because the banquet was prolonged by the disputations of philosophers. For during all seventeen years he was never seen to take food without hearing either a reader or a philosopher.
“Although he commanded many kingdoms and provinces, he gave individual hours to the affairs of Asia, Africa, and Europe; but for two hours on each day he associated familiarly with his children, wife, and friends. He likewise allotted one hour to extraordinary business—for example, hearing the complaints of the oppressed, the grievances of the poor, the burdens of widows, and the spoliations of wards. For poor people, who have little power, must be heard by princes who love the praise of clemency just as much as rich people, who possess very much.
“Whatever remained of either daytime or nighttime was distributed to the reading of books, the writing of works, the composition of poems, the investigation of antiquities, the conversations of learned people, and the disputations of philosophers; for nothing was more pleasant to him than learned conversations.
“Unless he was hindered by difficult wars or called away by arduous business, ordinarily in wintertime he always went to bed at the ninth hour and arose from bed at the fourth; and lest he be idle, he always had a book placed beneath his pillow, by reading which he passed the time until it grew light. For it was solemn custom for fire to be carried before the Roman emperors—glowing coals by day, but lamps to be lit in their chambers at night—so that candles might burn while they watched and lamps while they slept. It was instituted by the Romans that oil born from the olive tree and wax prepared by the industry of bees should be burned before princes, so that they might remember that they ought to be as placid and mild as oil born from the olive, and as useful to the commonwealth as the bee in the hive.
“When he had risen at about the sixth hour, he dressed publicly, not in a common manner but rather with the greatest pleasantness, by asking those standing around how they had passed the whole night and by explaining either what he had dreamed, what he had meditated upon, or what he had read. Once dressed, he washed his face and hands with scented waters, since he especially delighted in pleasant odors and was endowed with so acute a sense of smell that he was sometimes not a little offended when passing foul and fetid places. First thing in the morning he ate one or two morsels of the electuary diastoechados and drank three cups of Cretan wine or a little distilled liquor, because his stomach and breast were weaker from excessive exertion in studies. For those devoted to studies are exposed to various diseases, as experience teaches, since, enticed by the sweetness of studies, they do not perceive the harm to life.
“In summertime, first thing in the morning, he walked on foot along the bank of the Tiber for about two hours and heard while standing those who addressed him; and this was certainly wise. For a prince who is sitting always makes him who speaks brief. As the day gradually advanced and the heat grew stronger, he ascended to the Capitol, where he was awaited by the senate. When it had been dismissed, he went to the amphitheater of Titus, where the envoys and procurators of the provinces assembled, and remained there for a good part of the day. When he had eaten lunch and withdrawn for a little while, he went to the temple of the Vestals and heard the individual nations in the order assigned to them by him. He ate only once in the day, and that sometimes rather late, but pleasantly and abundantly, rejoicing in few dishes, but the best; for foreign and varied feasts always produce foreign diseases and infirmities.
“Not rashly did he go out to walk through the city more than once in each week, without any retinue either of his own people or of strangers—attended by only ten or twelve servants—so that all needy people and orphans might have free power to speak to him and, if they wished, to complain concerning his officials. For it can in no way happen that anyone heals the commonwealth unless he whose duty this is thoroughly knows its diseases.”
§ 6. Experience teaches that a prince can perform these things and embrace the care of all. Unseasonable and seasonable banquets, journeys, hunts, fowling, games, and other pleasures take away much time. If they cut off a part from these, so much time will be supplied for ordering serious affairs very well that all subjects will enjoy the prince’s vigilance, all faithful administrators will rejoice that their works are inspected, and the wicked will be in continual fear.
The province of magistrates is certainly hard and laborious. Since through their negligence justice is oppressed, religion despised, enemies gain strength, and satraps exercise tyranny, their negligence is very often a mortal sin—indeed, among mortal sins the most detestable. By one word, one subscription of a name, one cast of the eye, how many scandals can they remove, how many good men can they raise up, how many efforts of the wicked can they repel? Nor can they be excused. They tolerate no negligence in their own affairs; people fly to execute the commands of the court. How, amid so many acts of obedience, do they not understand that the most exquisite diligence is required from them?
Distinguished counsel was given to Augustus by Maecenas: “It belongs to the best and excellent prince not only that he himself perform all things according to duty, but that he also take care by what means all the others may become as excellent as possible.” Let him try to learn all things; this belongs to diligence. I know that many things must be forgiven to one who knows all things; but if he is blind to many, most things will be done in such a way that they ought not to be forgiven. People fear and dread to offend again one who forgives; they mock one who is ignorant. He who sits at the helm never dozes without danger; yet a shipmaster is in one part of the great sea, which is often at rest, while all the storms of the whole kingdom beat upon a prince wherever he sits. Unless he watches perpetually, they will shake him out. Yet he ought to fear not for himself but for his people, so that the people too may fear for the prince, upon whom they know their safety depends.
§ 7. There is one distinguished abridgment of diligence by which things well constituted are faithfully completed with swift execution and without great labor. I have observed the Reverend Father General employ it in our Society, and provincials also employ it sometimes; it will be applied with great advantage in the governance of the commonwealth. When commands and constitutions are sent by the prince to distant places, let this clause be added to the diploma: that the inferior magistrate write concerning the execution performed—whether it has been performed, whether it cannot be performed, or whether he judges that it will be performed—and order the cause to be written if anything obstructs it.
For that precaution instills great solicitude for obeying; otherwise, those through whom it occurred that the prince’s command was not obeyed are themselves compelled to write letters bearing witness to their own negligence. But if, from the circumstances of the place, there should appear a just cause why it was not obeyed, when the inferior magistrate is ordered to write this very thing, full knowledge of the affairs will be gathered from those letters. With the same efficacy, good laws—even ancient ones which have yielded somewhat to customs—will be restored to force and practice without trouble to the prince. For if viceroys, governors, and satraps are ordered at a fixed time to make the prince more certain concerning them, they will strive to prove their work to the prince and to show that by their care and labor his will has been satisfied.
The mutual fear of ministers among themselves is also a great bridle, since without the knowledge of the other one cannot sin, and with his knowledge does not dare. The prince will instill this fear in all with easy care if at fixed times he demands a sincere report, confirmed even under oath, concerning the condition of the province, the administration of justice, the morals of governors, the treasury, and the complaints of subjects—not only from viceroys, governors, and satraps, but also from their counselors, assessors, quaestors, and praetors. I shall say more concerning this matter when I treat of magistracy. For now my purpose was only to show how a prince can most rightly direct very many things with the least trouble to himself. For if those letters arrive at a fixed time and errors are corrected, he will correct more by a word than by a laborious and costly journey, which, although I sometimes counsel it, I do not approve when frequent.
Therefore, although I praise Hadrian’s diligence in greatly disturbed affairs, I nevertheless prefer that, when the commonwealth is at peace, the prince ordinarily remain in one place or another. Since, therefore, the prince himself cannot be present at all business, while there are many duties and many places which never enjoy the sight of their lord, this is the most convenient means by which he can preside over all, even though he is not present among all. Although it is necessary that he forget many things and fail to notice many things, nevertheless, because all things come beneath his gaze, security is taken away from malicious ministers.
§ 8. I summon my prince to labors and solicitude; I shake delights and pleasures, sleep and inactivity from him. He follows willingly if he has weighed that, when he ascended the throne as lord of all, he placed the care of all upon himself together with the diadem, and that he cannot be negligent without both the destruction of many and condemnation to the gravest eternal punishment. In a private person:
Ἔργον δ᾽ οὐδὲν ὄνειδος, ἀεργίη δέ τ᾽ ὄνειδος.
To work and labor is not a disgrace, but sloth and cessation are a disgrace. In a king, prince, or senate it is not only a disgrace; it is a crime, it is perfidy, it is often robbery, often tyranny, when through their idleness the injuries of the wicked rise up against their subjects.
Human weakness desires a quiet and unencumbered life; flatterers inculcate it; harpies, for whom wealth grows from the prince’s lack of diligence, drive him toward idleness. But he will hold to the right path:
Τὴν μὲν γὰρ κακότητα καὶ ἰλαδὸν ἔστιν ἑλέσθαι, ῥηϊδίως· λείη μὲν ὁδός, μάλα δ᾽ ἐγγύθι ναίει. Τῆς δ᾽ ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεὸς προπάροιθεν ἔθηκε ἀθάνατος· μακρὸς δὲ καὶ ὄρθιος οἶμος ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν καὶ τρηχὺς τὸ πρῶτον· ἐπὴν δ᾽ εἰς ἄκρον ἵκηται, ῥηϊδίη τε ἔπειτα πέλει, χαλεπή περ ἐοῦσα.
It is easy to embrace idleness; the road is level and very near. But God placed the sweat of virtue before our eyes; long, steep, and rough is the road to it. But after you have gained the summit, it then becomes easy, although it had been difficult.
Let the prince have men by whose liberty he may be admonished and incited to labors. Under the morning twilight, someone from the company of honored men cried aloud to the Persian kings: “Arise, king; care for the commonwealth,” as Plutarch writes in the book On the Education of a Prince; and: “Care for those things, O king, for which Oromasdes wished you to labor.” Sometimes scarcely a year repairs the negligence of one moment; sometimes even successors are compelled to lament it. Therefore a true prince and lover of his fatherland will foster royal care beneath his breast even when the rest are released into games. The great commander Epaminondas, while the citizens celebrated festivals, alone made the circuit of the walls. When his friends asked about his untimely solicitude, he replied that he was solicitous so that the citizens’ joy could be secure. And indeed, at his death Theban dignity and liberty fell, because the labor and care of princes had been turned into delights.
§ 9. Do you therefore set all hard things before the prince? All things hard, anxious, and solicitous; for I ought not to be a flatterer, but an admonisher. To me he is truly a prince whom cares possess to such a degree that he would prefer private leisure, if this would be for the commonwealth’s good. Those from whom the splendor of majesty, foolish flattery, senseless joy, and fawning acts of obedience have taken away the sense of this solicitude perform their duty least of all; rather, they criminally do not know the grievous things which they especially ought to know. Those who thought they would render an account to no one wished to strip themselves of public cares. What will the prince do whose zeal, vigilance, diligence, solicitude, and idle word—not merely his leisure and idleness—will be judged destructive to peoples?
You will see utterances fall from the most powerful human beings raised on high by which they wish for leisure, praise it, and prefer it to all their goods. Meanwhile they desire to descend from that summit of theirs, if it can be done safely; for even if nothing external assails or shakes it, fortune collapses upon itself. The divine Augustus, to whom the gods granted more than to anyone, did not cease to pray for rest for himself and to seek release from public affairs. All his conversation always returned to this, that he should hope for leisure for himself. With this sweet consolation, though false, he comforted his labors: that someday he would live for himself. In a certain letter sent to the senate, after he had promised that his rest would not be empty of dignity or discordant with his former glory, I find these words: “But these things can be done more splendidly than they can be promised. Yet desire for a time most greatly wished for by me has carried me so far that, since the joy of the reality still delays, I might take beforehand some pleasure from the sweetness of words.” Leisure seemed so great a thing that, because he could not possess it in use, he took it beforehand in thought.
He who saw all things depending upon himself alone, who gave fortune to human beings and nations, thought that day most joyful on which he would strip off his greatness. He had experienced how much sweat those goods shining through all lands pressed out, how much hidden solicitude they covered. Compelled to decide by arms first with citizens, then with colleagues, last with relatives, he shed blood by sea and land. Driven about by war through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, Asia, and almost every coast, he turned armies wearied by Roman slaughter toward foreign wars. While he pacified the Alps and subdued enemies mingled into the midst of peace and government, while he advanced the boundaries beyond the Rhine, Euphrates, and Danube,
in the city itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, and the Egnatii were sharpened against him. He had not yet escaped their plots when his daughter and so many noble young men, bound together by adultery as though by a sacrament, terrified his already broken age; afterward a woman together with Antony was again to be feared.
Amid so many evils and cares a prince cannot interpret his summit as a place of rest. Labor, and great labor, dwells upon it; if he flees this labor, he betrays at once both the commonwealth and his own salvation.