§ 1. I speak of the lesser magistrates, who are appointed either by the King, by the Senate in an aristocracy, or by the people in a polity. For wherever suitable and good men are placed in command, the safety of the state stands firm. Let this remain a certain, fixed, and noble maxim of rulers: a state in which the Prince is bad is better than one in which the friends of the Prince and the magistrates who administer the state in part are bad. For one good man does not easily restrain many bad men; but if a bad Prince has good administrators, he lacks instruments of wickedness. This alone is difficult: that under a bad Prince the administrators should be good and long-lasting.
§ 2. It is a natural and supreme obligation of a Prince to place good Governors over the province, to protect the Prefects, and to keep them in their duty; and, to say it in one phrase, to see that his administrators and magistrates remain in their duty. The Emperors themselves recognized this, and some of them exercised particular care in selection. The Emperor Alexander never granted provincial governorships as a benefice, but by judgment. That
obligation arises from the right of the state and of every private person. For just as, if the Prince establishes a physician and surgeon at the expense of the city, he is bound by the laws of justice not to send among the citizens—like living and effective plagues—men such as Demostratus, Marcus, Simon, Menophanes, Capito, Phaedo, Socles, Agelaus, Alexes, Agidas, Zopyrus, Charinus, Gennadius, Rhodon, and Callignotus, who boast like the man in Agathias, Epigrams, book 2, εἰς ἰατρόν:
Καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ πολλὰς ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προϊάπτω.
For I too send many souls down to Hades.
Rather, he must send skilled, industrious, and faithful men—not men whom the textually uncertain οἱ σοφοτηγοί
βάλλουσι μίτραις, ἄνθεσι, καὶ στεφάνοις—
sprinkle with mitres, flowers, and crowns.
Thus by no right can Princes set plunderers and unjust men over peoples. For unless they themselves take precautions, they are compelled to answer for the fault of their Governors.
§ 3. At Rome, even amid the highest ambition and a venal electoral field, some account was nevertheless taken of candidates. Before the assemblies it was necessary to declare their names before a magistrate; if their names were not accepted by him, they could not be elected by the people. For by public judgment those to whom the government of the state was to be entrusted had been judged unworthy. But avarice and ambition broke through all these things. When Cato perceived the conspiracies of the leading men, he cried out that it was an unworthy thing for command to be consigned to the procuring of marriages and for men, through women, mutually to advance one another to provinces, commands, and armies.
§ 4. The greatest virtue of a Prince, therefore, is to know his own men—and not merely to know but also to govern them, which cannot be done without knowledge. It was prudently established in the Roman Empire that a summary of the Empire should be ready at hand, containing all taxes, expenditures, provinces, fleets, armies, magistrates, and their salaries.
The ancients called it the Register of the Empire; Augustus was accustomed to display it publicly. They also called it the laterculus. Cedrenus says: ἦν δὲ πάνδημος πίναξ, καὶ τὰ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ὀνόματα ἀπεγράφοντο. It was a public register in which the names of Senators and of the army were written. Tacitus, book 1 of the Annals, says that Augustus composed a booklet in which the public resources were contained: how many citizens and allies were under arms, how many kingdoms, fleets, provinces, taxes and revenues, needs and largesses—all of which Augustus had written out with his own hand. In later times these matters were handled much more diligently, as is clear from title 17, book 1 of the Code, To the Praetorian Prefect of Africa:
We believe that this too must be ordained by the present sanction: that judges should not appear to sustain great expenses for the completion of charters or warrants, whether in our register or in the archives of the Praetorian Prefect throughout Africa. For if they themselves are not injured by expenses, they will have no necessity to burden the taxpayers of our Africa. We therefore order that the civil as well as military judges of the African diocese shall pay no more than six solidi in our register for the customary fees of the warrants and charters of their promotion; but in the archive of the Prefects they shall be compelled to pay no more than twelve solidi. If anyone exceeds this measure, the judge himself shall be liable to the expense of thirty pounds of gold, while his staff shall sustain not only a like expense but also the danger of capital punishment. For if anyone from any quarter dares to exceed our commands and does not hasten to observe them with the fear of God, he shall sustain not only danger to dignity or property, but shall also be subject to the ultimate punishment.
The Princes of all, therefore, had a description of their Prefects. Then those records were deposited in the sacred archive. On the Notitia, see also book 5, On Various Advocates.
Since the ancient records have perished, but Justinian’s African laterculus survives in the place cited, anyone may read it there.
§ 5. In great Empires, just as nothing is more pleasant or fruitful than common peace and security—for they do not fear more powerful neighbors—so the license of inferior magistrates is most grievous, because in so great a mass of business injuries easily lie concealed. This arises either because access is not given to the accuser or because remote matters are neglected. Therefore the state will take this especially to heart: just as on the frontier of the Empire and near the enemy it stations the bravest and most faithful commanders, so in the most distant places it must station the most equitable Governors and Judges. For distance itself, just as it takes from subjects the hope of assistance, gives rulers confidence of impunity. Who at Rome dared to do what the Romans did in Gaul and Asia? Indeed, it occurred very often that Governors were so intent upon ruin that they compelled the wretched to rebel, and in this way had no need to stand trial, since they had already judged them enemies upon whom their injuries had imposed the necessity of rebellion.
Cyrus restored liberty to the nation of the Jews and issued an edict in this form, 1 Ezra 1:2:
The Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has commanded me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who among you is from all his people? May his God be with him. Let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel; he is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let all the rest, in every place wherever they dwell, assist him from their own place with silver and gold, substance and cattle, besides what they voluntarily offer to the temple of God which is in Jerusalem.
If this had had to be done at Babylon, a magnificent temple would have stood within a year. But now, what could the command of an absent King do against the hatreds of neighbors? First Ezra 3:3 says: “They placed the altar of God upon its bases, while the peoples of the surrounding lands terrified them; and they offered upon it a holocaust to the Lord morning and evening.”
They had been ordered to assist in building the temple, but they terrified them so that they could not even erect an altar. Nor do they merely obstruct; under the pretense of assistance they also endeavor to profane it. First Ezra 4:1 says: “Let us build with you, because we seek your God just as you do. Behold, we have sacrificed victims from the days of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, who brought us here.”
When they could accomplish nothing by force, they acted by calumnies. In the same chapter, verse 4: “They hired counselors against them, that they might destroy their counsel throughout all the days of Cyrus, King of the Persians.”
They acted much more perfidiously against Nehemiah, not fearing the fact that he was dear to the King, had been sent with power by the King and Queen, and that commanders of the army and horsemen had been sent with him, 2 Ezra 9 and 10. What, then, did the King’s Governors do? First, “They were grieved with a great affliction.” Second, “Sanballat was exceedingly angry,” chapter 4:1. Third, greatly disturbed, he mocked the Jews. And at verse 8: “Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites all gathered together to come and fight against Jerusalem and devise ambushes.” And at verse 11: “Our enemies said:
Let them neither know nor understand until we come into their midst, kill them, and cause the work to cease.”
Behold, against the express command of the King, the King’s subjects devise such things against his subjects and against a legate sent from the King’s table who was soon to return to the King. Therefore the most diligent provision must be made for distant regions.
Nor did the Governors of the Indies furnish few examples for the Spains. To say nothing of the wars of the Portuguese and Castilians: without the cruelty, avarice, ambition, and mutual slaughters of the Governors, the Castilian Crown would hold all the West Indies. Examples need not be sought farther away. Many men, and not without reason, judge that no Empire in Europe is more rightly constituted than the French; yet when the French held the kingdom in Sicily, petty tyrants, by their injuries, compelled that nation to revolt, because their Governors had withdrawn as far from equity as from their fatherland.
A further proof of this matter is what Nicholas Bellus relates in his discourse on the Kingdom of Naples. First, he testifies that military affairs were administered negligently and perfidiously, and that the triremes were old and useless:
For, he says, it is enough for the royal ministers to display some outward appearance which may be magnified in the Royal Court. By ostentatiously displaying diligence in this way, they satisfy the King to some degree and hold the whole world in extraordinary expectation of great achievements. This contributes wonderfully to the swift acquisition of riches, with which they soon purchase some jurisdiction in the kingdom, accumulate revenues, and amass costly furniture.
He recounts that these things were done in the year 1579. And a little afterward:
For the most part the Neapolitan triremes remain at the harbor mole without pay, without soldiers, and often without half their complement of rowers. These rowers are very frequently hired out by the captains to merchants, nobles, and others to unload ships and perform other domestic work. Thus in a time of necessity—as in the preceding year, when eight pirate triremes captured two Sicilian vessels near the island of Capri—five triremes were equipped throughout an entire day to pursue the Turks, since both oars were lacking and soldiers were wanted. It must therefore be doubted whether from so great an expense, which the King bears for these triremes, even the smallest advantage is gathered; all the more because those same triremes are badly furnished with engines of war and lack experienced sailors. The rowers, moreover, are either Turkish slaves or condemned men: the former row under compulsion and with danger to those who employ them, while the latter are inexperienced and insufficiently suited to endure the hardships of the sea.
What the boldness produced by the King’s absence accomplishes is found in the same discourse:
When an ordinary gift had recently been made to the Royal Majesty, and the nobles and the whole kingdom wished to send it through certain men of their own, the Viceroy wished to send it through his own man. He did this lest, if others were sent, the Viceroy’s misdeeds should be reported to the King and his court; and therefore he compelled them to hand the gift over to him.
This is surely an injury greater than the injuries and insults themselves: violently to wrest from the nobles of the whole kingdom, when sending gifts to the King, the power of sending their own legates. What must private men suffer if such crimes are committed publicly—so openly that the accounts fly throughout the whole world, while the Kings alone, whose danger is involved, remain ignorant? But such was the practice at that time; and that age too had its own Verres.
§ 6. In appointing magistrates, therefore, the lot is altogether to be condemned. For if, when about to sail the sea, you do not choose a ship and a shipmaster by lot, but seek an experienced master and a strong ship, how can it belong to a well-constituted state to cast the safety of all citizens into the hazard of lots? The Athenians, a bold and impetuous people, chose τὴν γερουσίαν τῶν πεντακοσίων, the Senate of Five Hundred, by lot; and through this they possessed a state constituted in the worst manner. Xenophon, in Περὶ Ἀθηναίων πολιτείας, On the Polity of the Athenians, rightly judged:
Περὶ δὲ τῆς Ἀθηναίων πολιτείας, ὅτι μὲν εἵλοντο τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον τῆς πολιτείας, οὐκ ἐπαινῶ διὰ τόδε, ὅτι ταῦθ᾽ ἑλόμενοι, εἵλοντο τοῖς πονηροῖς ἄμεινον πράττειν ἢ τοῖς χρηστοῖς· διὰ μὲν οὖν τοῦτο οὐκ ἐπαινῶ.
As regards the state of the Athenians, I do not praise the fact that they followed that form of government, because by following it they brought it about that the wicked were in a better condition than the upright. In this respect, therefore, I do not praise it.
They act altogether badly, but popularly, for they consider bad men useful to themselves. Hence they both choose by lot and, when designating a magistrate by votes, are more favorable toward the worst and unjust toward the good. All the decrees and deeds of that people were barbarous. Thus Xenophon judges:
Διὰ ταῦτα οὖν τοὺς μὲν χρηστοὺς ἀτιμοῦσι, καὶ χρήματα ἀφαιροῦνται, καὶ ἐξελαύνουσι, καὶ ἀποκτείνουσι, τοὺς δὲ πονηροὺς αὔξουσι.
Therefore they dishonor the good, punish them by loss of money, exile, and death, but increase the bad.
Hence they exercised their Empire for a short time and turbulently.
§ 7. Nevertheless, a matter can be entrusted to the lot if some greater power divinely directs it. Thus, after Saul had already been chosen and anointed King by Samuel, they selected him by lot, 1 Kings 10:20. For God did not wish Samuel to be suspected, as though he had designated Saul by his own judgment or affection. Then the people sought a King from Samuel as a Prophet. Although they sinned by demanding a King, they nevertheless acted rightly in this respect: they established a King not through tumult and the ambition of the tribes, but sought him from a Prophet, that is, from God himself. Thus they speak at 1 Kings 8:5: “Establish a King for us, that he may judge us.” The use of the lot, therefore, was not lawful unless it was established that it would be directed by God. There were hidden disputes among the twelve tribes, and that assembly would not have been concluded without strife unless God had determined the matter by his judgment. Among barbarians there was great use of lots, which were corrupted either by rashness or superstition.
§ 8. When there are several candidates who are judged equal and all suitable, they may be elected by lot, yet with the assistance of God invoked so that he may designate the man who is best. Thus the Apostles placed Joseph and Matthias in the midst; the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was numbered with the twelve Apostles. Hence the turns of the Priests in the temple were distributed by lot. “It happened,” says Luke, “when he exercised the priesthood before God in the order of his turn, according to the custom of the priesthood, that he went forth by lot to place incense after entering the temple of the Lord.” For since several Priests were present, all of whom had equal right to place the incense although it had to be placed by the work of one man, one was selected by lot lest contention arise from rivalry. Otherwise, under the Old Law the supreme priesthood was never subjected to the lot. In the Jewish War, according to Josephus, book 4, chapter 5, the Zealots, after Pontiff Ananias had been reduced to the ranks, chose by lot as High Priest a rustic named Phannias, who was an object of mockery to all.
In persecution St. Augustine commands Honoratus to apportion dangers by lot: those more useful to the common people should be retained; but if all are equal and prepared for death, the matter is to be entrusted to lots.
§ 9. Yet even in these cases recourse is not always or rashly to be had to lots. Their use must be applied only from necessity or by a certain decree of God, when reason and counsel admit no other course. For lots have various disadvantages.
First, they are corrupted with little difficulty. When Smerdis had been killed, the nobles of the Persians determined by oath to choose as their new King by lot the man whose horse first uttered a neigh. They were about to regard the voice of a warlike animal as an oracle; but although they supposed that they would act by lot, they entrusted the whole state to the ingenuity of Oebares the groom. For, after bringing Darius’s stallion to a mare on the preceding night, he caused it to fill the air with neighing through remembrance of the place and pleasure. What Darius’s colleagues believed had occurred by divine power had been accomplished by the fraud of a little slave.
Cresphontes even more cunningly drew the territory of the Messenians to himself, as Pausanias relates in his Messenian Affairs. When the matter was to be settled by lot, the Priest Temenus by evil fraud gave the victory to Cresphontes. The procedure of the lot was that dry, hard clay should be placed in water; he whose clay dissolved more slowly would possess the Messenian territory. Corrupted by promises and gifts, Temenus hardened the clay of Cresphontes at the fire and that of the others in the sun. Since the hardness produced by more violent baking dissolved more slowly, the Messenians fell to Cresphontes.
Second, although men appear equal, nevertheless there is often great inequality which easily appears to those who consider it. In the Roman state, the lot was customary in assigning Governors to provinces and selecting Judges. For the Consuls either agreed upon the provinces between themselves or drew lots for them, while Judges were either nominated or chosen by lot. Each practice was established with much caution and yet not without difficulties.
In the allotment of provinces there appeared to be no difficulty. Since each Consul had exercised the supreme magistracy at Rome, why should he not also be equal to the lesser dignity in a province? Thus it appeared to make no difference who was placed over which province. But this matter often deceived the Roman people. For if there were peace in Greece and war in Gaul, and the Consuls were Caesar and Metellus, I certainly would not wish Caesar to be sent to Greece and Metellus to Gaul. Provinces are therefore to be entrusted by judgment, not chance. For it is contrary to reason to send a veteran commander into a peaceful province and to expose a timid and inactive man to the fiercest enemies. For this reason Augustus prudently corrected that system: he entrusted the peaceful provinces to the Senate and people, while he retained for himself those that were turbulent and where war was necessary. He not only exempted Egypt from the lot, but did not even permit a Senator to enter it without his command. Elsewhere it must be said how great evils the allotment of Judges produced.
§ 10. Although Aristotle, book 2, chapter 6, does not approve that men who have been elected should be called to another election, usage has nevertheless obtained this in many places. Aristotle’s reason is that those few men can easily agree and choose the magistrate at their own pleasure. But this will easily be prevented if, first, many Electors are chosen generally, and then a few are selected from them; and if a lot is also added, ambition is entirely excluded. Let the people therefore appoint fifty Electors; let each of these choose another man; and finally let a lot be held among those who are to choose the magistrate.
§ 11. After the King or Senate has deliberated concerning the appointment of Governors, let it never suppose that sufficient provision has been made for the state unless it has clearly understood the judgment of the people concerning the man. For the people is rarely deceived; and if the people approves its ruler, although he lacks many things, the administration is tranquil.
Princes therefore sin most greatly in this respect when, on the recommendation of others, they hold certain men in esteem and place them over cities, although their avarice, frauds, and lusts are publicly known. In this matter they entangle themselves in the greatest danger to their reputation and kingdom. For the people and prudent men speak thus within themselves: the King either knows or does not know the crimes and wickedness of the bad Governor. If he knows them, what may we hope from that King, among whom criminals possess such patronage and who raises the most wicked on high? If he does not know them, we have a statue, not a King. It is not lawful that we perish on account of his ignorance. How greatly such men are hated, moreover, their downfall alone demonstrates.
The ministers of Princes are their eyes, hands, feet, and, as it were, the living organs of the supreme majesty. Therefore their good deeds and offenses are imputed to those who reign, and upon them the reputation of the Prince for the most part depends. Hence the greatest part of the Imperial duty consists in appointing magistrates, as Zonaras teaches excellently. No one assumes or retains a magistracy without the command of the Prince. Thus the Valerian law in Livy, and Dionysius, book 15, speak concerning the people as Prince and bestower of dignities; but that right was transferred to the Prince by the royal law, Digest, book 1, title 4, law 1, §1, On the Constitution of the Prince.