§ 1. I have demonstrated that prudence, diligence, and justice are necessary to the prince. For if he is destitute of wisdom, none of the remaining virtues will attain its purpose. But if diligence is necessary in a private house, lest the whole house perish through a defect of the roof, how great a diligence is at last demanded in that vast body in which some part is always being injured? For the idleness of the prince involves great danger. Agapetus the Deacon seriously admonished Justinian concerning this matter:
Ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῶν πλεόντων, ὅταν μὲν ὁ ναύτης σφαλῇ, μικρὰν φέρει τοῖς συμπλέουσι βλάβην, ὅταν δ᾽ αὐτὸς ὁ κυβερνήτης, παντὸς ἐργάζεται τοῦ πλοίου ἀπώλειαν· οὕτω κἂν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν, ἂν μέν τις τῶν ἀρχομένων ἁμάρτῃ, οὐ τὸ κοινὸν τοσούτῳ, ὅσον ἑαυτὸν ἀδικεῖ· ἂν δὲ αὐτὸς ὁ ἄρχων, πάσης ἐργάζεται τῆς πολιτείας τὴν βλάβην. Ὡς οὖν μεγάλας ὑφέξων εὐθύνας, εἴ τι παρίδοι τῶν δεόντων, μετὰ πολλῆς ἀκριβείας, ἃ λεγέτω πάντα, ἃ πραττέτω.
Just as among those who sail, if one of the sailors has erred, he brings a small loss, but if the helmsman errs, he causes the loss of the whole vessel, so in the state, if one of the subjects sins, he harms himself more than the state; if the prince sins, he brings detriment to the whole state. Therefore, since he will have to render a great account if he has neglected anything among those things which ought to be done, let him both say and do all things with great exactness.
From this prudent diligence follows justice, concerning which I spoke just now; and the inseparable companion of justice is faith, or constancy in words and deeds.
It must therefore be established that the state ought to preserve faith safe and intact. Faith adorns the prince; perfidy disgraces him. Deceit attacks the fickleness of the people more severely. An upright senate is accustomed to cultivate faith most steadfastly. Faith, moreover, must be kept with the people, and in turn the people are bound to the prince; then it must be kept with private persons; third, with neighboring states; finally, with enemies. And not only in prosperity, but in every fortune, constancy in all words and deeds must remain. Let the saying of the Roman sage in Epistle 88 adhere to the mind and grow old together with it: “Faith is the most sacred good of the human breast; it is compelled by no necessity to deceive and corrupted by no reward. Burn,” it says, “strike, kill; I shall not betray. But the more deeply pain seeks secrets, the more deeply shall I conceal them.”
Therefore let truth be preserved in deeds, words, and the whole of life. Socrates said that truth and virtue were the same. Plato judged truth to be, not indeed the τέλειον ἀγαθόν, the supreme and perfect good, but ἀγαθοειδές, good-like; for it always adheres to the highest good and attends it as light attends the sun. “Οὐδέν,” he says, “οἰκειότερον τῇ σοφίᾳ τῆς ἀληθείας.” Nothing is more closely joined and familiar to wisdom than truth. It removes the crowd of evils: “Ἡγουμένης τῆς ἀληθείας, οὐκ ἂν ποτε χορὸν αὐτῇ κακῶν ἀκολουθῆσαι.” The chorus of vices does not follow when truth leads.
§ 2. And first, the prince ought to preserve altogether whole and uninjured the faith which he gave to his subjects. Whatever princes promised at the beginning of their assumption of power to the estates concerning liberty, privileges, immunities, and donatives must be performed, provided that they are just and honorable. For inequitable or shameful things are never promised without crime and are performed with a greater crime than that with which they were promised. The emperor binds himself in many ways to the Church, the princes, and the subjects; and I think that there is no people in Europe which does not admit a prince and state bound by oath.
Therefore shameful is the method of those princes who, after they have placed their powers in safety, seek various pretexts for violating promises. Nor are wicked craftsmen lacking for cloaking perfidy, to whom nothing is so accepted as to deceive faith. Deceit certainly does not make men just; for faith is the foundation of justice. Although, indeed, where the magnitude of profits is regarded, unbroken faith rarely remains, nevertheless the judgment of the Roman consul remains firm and valid: “Nothing holds a state together more powerfully than faith.”
§ 3. Certainly perfidy brings the least evil upon those who are deceived and harms its author most. For no perfidy is lasting. What prince who occupied power through force and blood did not give his own blood to his successor? What murderer of his own prince, who succeeded through crime, was not sacrificed by his successor for the safeguarding of power? For it is the custom of princes to give every tyrannicide over to death, both so that they may not appear to have committed the slaughter by their own command and so that they may meet conspiracies beforehand. Why, then, should anyone bind himself with perfidy, which even the man to whom it brought a kingdom will avenge? For they prefer to punish the audacity of conspirators rather than to appear to owe a kingdom to another’s crime. Thus perfidy has no place anywhere, neither among those whom it has ruined nor among those whom it has benefited.
Among all who were notorious for perjury and perfidy, Lysander the Lacedaemonian possessed the greatest name among the ancients. To cruelty, avarice, and lust he finally added shamelessness, so that, when he was to return to Sparta, he asked Pharnabazus for testimony to his continence and equity, by which he might be assisted against the accusations of citizens before the ephors. But Pharnabazus avenged perfidy by deceit. For after he had ordered a commendatory letter for Lysander to be written, and Lysander had approved it, while it was being sealed he substituted another one entirely like it, which explained Lysander’s wickedness and crimes. The ephors ordered Lysander himself to read it in the senate; and so the perfidy by which alone he believed himself safe returned upon his own head.
§ 4. But the reason why punishment soon overwhelms the perfidious, the perjured, the ἀσπόνδους, contemners of treaties, is the vengeance of the divinity itself, which is always provoked by the perfidious. For he who deceives others by false promises and calls God as witness—what else does he do than either mock God or command him to be the minister of his
crimes?
And so when Sennacherib had broken faith, he first fled after his soldiers were slain, and then was butchered by his sons before his own idol. For he who mocked whatever divinity he believed in, and who severed the commerce of the human race, was deprived of life by those whom he brought into the light, by a great crime indeed, yet according to his own desert. Zedekiah likewise violated faith with an impious king, but he nevertheless paid the penalty by the destruction of his nation.
Antiochus the Illustrious, in 1 Maccabees, and his son Eupator are a sorrowful example of violated faith. He and his princes swore to the Jews. “And he entered into the mountain and saw the fortification of the place, and he broke more quickly the oath which he had sworn and commanded the wall round about to be destroyed.” But Alexander and Demetrius soon exacted the penalties of the violated oath. For when the army had seized Antiochus and Lysias in order to offer them to Demetrius, and he had answered, “Do not show me their face,” the army killed them. Alcimus, Bacchides, and Nicanor perished by the same perjury. For Nicanor and Bacchides fell; Alcimus died with great torment. Demetrius also, deserted by the Jews on account of his notorious perfidy and defeated by Alexander, was deprived of kingdom and life.
But neither was perfidy fortunate for Alexander. Led into deceit by his father-in-law Ptolemy through the covenants of marriage, and defeated by a perfidious Arab, he was punished with decapitation. Shortly afterward Ptolemy likewise paid the penalties of perjury and contempt for human right: he died on the third day and paid for three days of joy with immense infamy. But the other Demetrius, for whom Jonathan preserved kingdom and life—how ungrateful, how forgetful of his oath he was! “And he lied in all the things which he said,” says Scripture, “and estranged himself from Jonathan; he did not repay him according to the benefits which he had bestowed upon him.” Avenging justice did not delay the punishment. Routed in battle by Antiochus through Tryphon and cast down from the kingdom, he was at last stripped of his camp by Arsaces the Mede and cast into chains.
But Tryphon, after he broke the faith given to the Jews and removed the young Antiochus his lord by parricide, paid the penalty, late indeed but within a few years, as a fugitive, and was killed by his own men. Nor indeed did Antiochus Sidetes perform the things promised to Simon Maccabaeus; Tryphon therefore killed him as he occupied his brother’s kingdom.
Demetrius, the son of Demetrius, succeeded, together with his father’s perfidy and hatred. Alexander Zabinas harassed him with war and perjuries for six years. Demetrius’ son was Antiochus Grypus, while Antiochus Cyzicenus was the son of Antiochus Sidetes. For a short time they fought, not more with arms than with perjuries and by soliciting peoples to perfidy, until Antiochus Grypus was butchered by the most perfidious Herodianus, and Antiochus Cyzicenus by Seleucus, the son of Grypus. Their sons likewise waged war, as their fathers had, with perfidy and contempt for every treaty.
What of the two Antiochi, sons of the former men, for eleven years—one the son of Grypus, the other of Cyzicenus; Seleucus, son of Grypus; and Philip and Demetrius, sons of Cyzicenus? Did not the perfidy of all their predecessors reach these men, and Philip, who survived them all by two years? At last, after Tigranes was defeated, the power of the Macedonians passed into a Roman province; and with the resources of great kingdoms luxury is always their ruin, and thence come perfidy and perjuries, civil wars and ruins, which gave beginnings to the kingdoms of Europe today.
After such clear examples, it is irksome to recall others: Manuel Comnenus, betrayer and likewise poisoner of Emperor Conrad and the German army. I pass over the sole art of the Turks when their affairs are prosperous—perjuries. For since they judge it holy to destroy enemies in whatever way, they hold no treaties valid except when it pleases them. Consult history, especially Bonfini concerning the siege of Famagusta. Although their malice in agreements is so manifest, nevertheless Murad, about to fight Ladislaus, king of Hungary, whom he alleged had first broken the treaties, arraigned him as guilty before the tribunal of God. For before the battle he read aloud the letters that witnessed the treaty and thus concluded his speech in Bonfini: “These, Jesus Christ, are the treaties which your Christians struck with me. By your holy name they swore and violated the faith given under your name; perfidiously they denied their God. Now, Christ, if you are God, as they say, and we are hallucinating, avenge, I pray you, your injuries and mine. Show to these men who have not yet known your holy name the penalties for violated faith.”
However the matter was conducted, after these words the uncertain battle inclined and was more favorable to the Turk. In the memory of our grandfathers also, treaties between Louis and Charles the Bold were rather frequently broken and still more shamefully renewed, but by the perfidy of the counselors more than of the king and duke. For often, although they clashed with all their strength, neither king nor duke knew the true cause of the war, as Philippe de Commines recounts.
Philip of Valois likewise had promised Louis the Bavarian by oath that he would act so that Edward, king of Britain, might be reconciled to the Roman Pontiff; and although he seemed outwardly to conduct this matter solicitously, he nevertheless secretly obstructed it. He paid for the perjury so fraudulently covered by a vast slaughter and almost the destruction of the French nobility; and, routed by the Englishman at Crécy, he showed that God is never deceived. Claudian therefore sings falsely:
Now he who breaks treaties is enriched; he who keeps them is in need.
Rather, because what the better instructor of morals, Theognis, sings is true:
Παῦροι τῶν πολλῶν πίστιν ἔχουσι νόῳ.
Few among the many have faith in mind.
For this reason kingdoms are oppressed by so many calamities. I have related the examples of the Seleucids, of whom it can truly be said:
Faith never enters a royal threshold.
Nor was the perfidy of their own people ever absent from a royal threshold; by it they paid the penalties for the perfidy they exercised against others. They thought it prudence to deceive others by an oath until, deceived themselves, they perceived destruction.
§ 5. Deservedly did those Thracians perish who, during a truce agreed for the days, invaded the fields of the Boeotians by night in order to plunder them. Deservedly also did Cleomenes afterward rage against himself. For when he had sworn that he would deliberate all things with the head of Archonides—which Archonides understood according to the Greek custom as though Cleomenes had promised to do all things according to his counsel—Cleomenes turned the matter into a cruel mockery: he carried the head of Archonides around and held his deliberations concerning the things to be done in its presence.
Among the other origins of calamities for Suleiman was the killing of Ibrahim, whom, after he had advanced him to the highest position, he swore that he would never kill. He therefore caused Ibrahim’s throat to be cut while he was sleeping. For the Turkish pontiff had interpreted it to be lawful because he denied that sleeping men were counted among the number of the living. But that fraud binds the perjury; it does not release it.
§ 6. The second reason why nothing that is faithless is stable is drawn from the nature of the thing itself: because he who has lost faith can lose nothing further. Therefore, when human beings observe someone acting either by manifest perjury or by criminal sophistries, they not only furnish him no faith but hate him in turn and strive to withdraw from his friendship and to place themselves and their
possessions in safety.
Everyone thinks it madness to entrust oneself to the man who has denied faith. Thus this is the greatest evil of the perfidious man: no one is faithful to him. If no one is faithful, therefore, he cannot be safe. Although friends devote themselves, although armies, with swords placed at their necks, swear to your safety, although they surround you with a multitude of ambitious guards—if you yourself teach them to deceive faith, you will alienate even the most faithful men. And since otherwise,
No fortune ever stands long for mortals when faith totters,
you will find faith wholly closed to you when you are wretched and in doubt. You will hold no one bound by love or mutual faith. Payment inflames avarice; it does not bind hearts to the giver if he is perfidious. That whole crowd thinks itself to have an oath to fortune, not to faith.
Sejanus was once faithful to Tiberius. “Sejanus,” says Tacitus in book 4, “suspended above Caesar by knee, countenance, and hands, set himself against the falling masses; and in such a posture he was found by the soldiers who had come to their aid. Thereafter his influence was greater; and although he advised ruinous things, he was heard with confidence as one not anxious for himself.” What, therefore, made him from faithful into faithless, an ambusher, and an aspirant to power?
He too, taught by Tiberius’ perfidy to deceive, had determined to occupy the empire. A perfidious man is very like ice; no one but a fool builds upon it. Thus, just as ice is without houses, so the perfidious man is stripped of friends. We see, indeed, that those who cross rivers bound by frost are always in a state of suspense and anxiety and are afraid if the slightest cracking sound occurs, since they are not ignorant that they stand upon something fragile by nature. The friendship of the perfidious, through which very many have perished, is more uncertain.
Cyrus acted prudently when he employed Hyrcanian leaders. When they said that hostages should be awaited so that he might set out under a pledge of faith, he answered: “I think that the pledge for us all is in our minds and in our hands. For we seem to be so disposed in our minds that, if you are truthful, you will have us fit to deserve well of you; if you deceive us, we judge the condition of our affairs will be such that we shall not be in your power, but we believe that you, with the gods helping us, will be in ours.” But this was altogether to distrust the barbarians. And since perfidious princes can by no means be in another’s power, it is certain that no faith is placed in them. The Parthians have no faith except insofar as it is expedient; and thus, always clashing against themselves, they were worn down until they were reduced to servitude. Just as the Syrians have no faith, so they have never had any liberty.
§ 7. Therefore Francis, king of the Gauls, also spoke rightly in a human manner. For when he had Charles V in his power and was admonished by his men to hold him captive in violation of faith, he said: “If faith were exiled from the whole world, it nevertheless ought to be preserved by kings, who can be constrained by it alone and by no fear.”
Our Germany, always an unshaken preserver of faith, held the Empire for a very long time; and, what you may marvel at and not find in another nation, for so many years no king of Germany, no Augustus, was led into captivity by foreigners or fell in battle. Yet they waged very many wars and subdued the Pomeranians, Rugians, Livonians, Slavs, Helvetians, and others.
But you may marvel at this also: in almost eight hundred years only six emperors were reduced to order by their own people—Charles the Fat, Ataulf, Wenceslaus, Henry III, Otto IV, and Frederick II. And these too had degenerated from German sincerity. Deservedly, indeed, faith and the religion of the oath were furnished by their own people to emperors tenacious of faith and the oath. You, reader, compare these things which I have said concerning the ancient emperors with these present ones. Meanwhile, while civil perfidy devastated the eastern empire, it polluted itself with the blood of eighty-six or eighty-seven emperors. They had learned to deceive faith and were crushed and cut down by their own deeds.
The perfidious Zeno was buried alive by his wife Ariadne. Anastasius, who obtained power by the crime of the perjured and parricidal Ariadne, paid the penalties of perfidy when struck by lightning. Heracleonas and his wife Martina deprived Constantine, the son of Heraclius, of life; but he, with his nose cut off, and she, with her tongue cut out, perished detestably in exile. Constans killed his brother Theodosius, and in vengeance for his brother’s death he was killed by Andrew, almost the only man whom he trusted. Philippicus, than whom no one was more criminal and who held all faith as a mockery, lost power together with his eyes. No one was more wicked than Copronymus, who kept faith with no one; but as he died he cried out that he had been delivered alive to unquenchable fire. Leo IV was killed by his own men; Leo the Armenian, by Michael the Stammerer. Andronicus, Isaac, and Alexius, all perjured, fell by the perfidy of their own men.
Who, therefore, would not say that those who teach perfidy and perjuries overthrow the state? For how can commerce, wars, peace, cities, or households stand without faith? If the prince can violate faith, who will be bound to preserve it?
§ 8. But must faith be kept with one who violates faith? Indeed, it must be kept even with treaty-breakers and barbarians. Caesar, to be sure, according to Plutarch, judging it madness to keep faith with men so perfidious and barbarous, led an army against them. Nevertheless faith must be kept, nor must another’s perfidy be punished by your perfidy. For if Hannibal besieged Saguntum contrary to the treaty, it was not therefore lawful for the Romans to break the peace afterward made with the Carthaginians. Nor, if Roman legates were violated by the Carthaginians, was it therefore right that Hanno likewise be led into chains. Much less, if the Lusitanians attacked the Romans contrary to their oath, did it therefore become Lucullus to entice the Lusitanians by a promise of impunity and butcher them.
Yet when enemies deceive faith within the same agreement, the man whom another’s perfidy has afflicted is released from obligation. For if the Messenians plunder Spartan territory during an agreed truce, the Spartans will repay like for like by the best right. For those who exercised hostilities rendered the common peace void. But when, after the first treaties have been violated, a new one is struck, it is not lawful to violate it because the first treaties were violated.