§ 1. Power is the faculty, furnished with suitable means, for preserving one’s own things and obtaining another’s; thus the Roman orator describes power for us. That thing is constituted by many things: resources, arms, men, provisions, cities, citadels, and prudence rightly using all these.
§ 2. All human power is spoken of comparatively. For whoever is powerful by comparison with inferiors will perceive himself to be weak if he wishes to assail one greater than himself. Rams rush together and contend for mastery of the flock; yet before the wolf victor and vanquished alike become prey. He too, when he has filled his maw with the tender flock, will perish by the tooth of a lion or bear. Adonibezek saw seventy mutilated kings crawling beneath his table; but he suffered from one more powerful what he himself had inflicted as an evil upon the weaker. The stronger Carthaginians oppress Messana and the Sicilians, but they provoke the more powerful Roman enemy, until, after the seas and islands had been taken away, they paid tribute, and then lost their city also and their liberty. Philip the Macedonian—not the ancient one, but he whom the Romans conquered—harasses Athens with tyrannical domination, having abused his power against that noble city; but Roman power, already the conqueror of Carthage, shattered it, so that Macedonia became a modest possession of so great an empire.
Nor, for the most part, could those who seemed more powerful than their neighbors recognize their own strength until some greater monarch restrained them as they raged fiercely. For nearly all those have been the fates of nations: while they devote themselves to increasing power, they lose liberty. In the time of our grandfathers also, while all the cities of Italy attacked one another in war, contended about power, and led forth their proud carrocci, they passed into the power of a few.
§ 3. Great power can exist only in a great state. Yet the greatest kingdoms are frequently weak, and moderate ones more powerful. For just as those bodies whose mass is taller are not the strongest, but those which possess symmetry and vigor, so also those vast bodies of lands must be estimated by their character, position, and other circumstances, not by their extent. In great kingdoms this very greatly breaks their power: when one part is weakened or rebels. Just as the pain of one limb not only torments the sick man with its own evil but also casts down the mind, the ruler of the body, and corrupts the functions of the other limbs, so also, in this vast mass, the estrangement or tumult of one province disturbs even faithful cities. We have heard that this occurred formerly, and in our own time we experience that by the rebellion of one province, which is scarcely the hundredth part of a kingdom, the peace of all parts is disturbed and all expenditure is devoted to one.
§ 4. But what is powerful? What is not powerful? Who is worthy of so great a name that he is not only powerful but even most powerful? “Because I have not known letters, I shall enter into the powers of the Lord.” כי־לא ידעתי ספרות, “I have not known γραμματείαν,” as the Seventy render it, or, as others, “σοφισματείαν”—human and crafty wisdom, which seems to itself to govern empires—“I shall enter into the powers of the Lord,” which have made every power. “I shall declare his wonders, the power and justice of God even unto the highest places.” For this is true power; the power of men is wretched, since it depends upon the slightest moments.
If it is confined within narrow borders, it is wholly concentrated in itself, and when war arises in the neighborhood, it fights concerning its entire safety and its head. If it has peoples subject to it under a broad dominion, it lies open to a wound in many parts and is entangled in perpetual labor and innumerable dangers; for what region is added which does not bring new dangers with it? Do you command many? Yet you displease many; many hate you, and many are permitted many things against you and yours, without whom you cannot be safe. Demosthenes is reported to have said that, if two roads lay open, one to the lower regions and the other to the throne, he would choose that which leads to the lower regions. I believe that he did not speak sincerely; nevertheless, he showed that the ambition of those men is most wretched who through labors, dangers, and wounds climb a slippery, tottering summit, buffeted by thunderbolts and winds, where they can neither stand nor depart thence without a most conspicuous ruin, over which Fortune delights to exercise her command. For how many, not only kings but even peoples, have stood upon a lofty summit so that they seem to have obtained no other advantage than that the sound of their regal collapse might be heard farther?
For although power may be great, it is not certainly lasting. While Epaminondas lived, the Thebans’ quasi-dominion over the Lacedaemonians was brief. When they boasted of it, Cotys used to say that the power of the Thebans was like a torrent which quickly dries up, while that of the Spartans endures after the fashion of a perennial river. This was said truly of the Thebans; of the Spartans, more by comparison than according to the truth. For although that torrent endured longer than the Boeotian, it nevertheless did not flow for long. The Eurotas saw Sparta rising, endangered, ruling, enslaved, finally destroyed, and now sees tamarisks where Sparta was.
The names of the ancient kingdoms have long since ceased; and where they are retained, the peoples are different. No power is fixed; great empires migrate. Monarchy began in the East and reached its summit in Nebuchadnezzar: the head of gold ends in the breast and arms of silver; these are followed by the belly and thighs of bronze, which end in legs of iron and clay. Daniel 2. Meanwhile not Fortune, but God, turns this wheel; whoever holds the higher places upon it necessarily now descends: there is no rest, or only a brief one. But while entire kingdoms change more slowly, how many kings perish in the meantime? How few fulfill their own fate? And is he powerful whom fever burns, quinsy strangles, dropsy suffocates, and—to speak briefly—as many hundreds of diseases as there are members kill? Zoroaster seemed powerful, but is killed while his power looks on; Ninus, after conquering him, was pierced by an arrow; Cyrus drank blood from Tomyris’s skin-bag. Artabanus killed Xerxes, his friends Darius, domestic enemies Alexander, and his fellow banqueters Antiochus. Indeed, in our own time Henry IV, a king great in wisdom, in war, and—what is chief—in clemency, after he had assembled a great army and filled all Europe with fear or hope, was slaughtered by a fanatic among his bodyguards.
§ 5. Since, therefore, every power is brief and weak, it must be used sparingly—not so that it may be lasting, as Cato advised, but lest it be most brief. Golden is the saying of Pertinax: “It is holier, Conscript Fathers, to govern a needy state than to arrive at a heap of riches through dangers and the footprints of disgrace.” The first good of power, therefore, is its moderate use. The second is that you not attempt things greater than your strength and hope for Fortune as helper—something which, although it sometimes does not turn out badly, is nevertheless never undertaken without the fault of rashness. Finally, do not consume power without cause upon those things which do not increase it, as Cyrus did when he divided the Gyndes into 365 streams and consumed the season for waging war in digging channels; as Caesar did when, neglecting the main issue, he wore down his army at Massilia:
Although we hasten toward the western axis of the world, there is leisure to destroy Massilia.
Yet surely there would not have been leisure if Pompey the Great had been able to use that opportunity. I give this warning because it has always happened: great things rush against themselves. Consider Roman power: after it ceased to have an equal, it was divided against itself. That Rome—
than which the aether embraces nothing higher upon earth, whose extent no sight, whose beauty no hearts, whose praise no voice contains; which, with the gleam of metal, joins roofs rivaling the neighboring stars; parent of arms and laws, which pours dominion upon all and first gave the cradle of law. She it is who, sprung from narrow bounds, stretched toward the twin poles, and, setting forth from a small seat, spread her hands together with the Sun. Meeting the fates, while she waged innumerable wars at one time, laid low the Gaul on land and the Carthaginian on the sea, she never succumbed to losses; terrified by no wound, after Cannae and the Trebia she raged greater.
Nevertheless, she consumed all her strength, not upon the winds—which is foolish—but upon her own entrails—which is most monstrous—until she went to serve barbarians, Heruli, Alans, Goths, Vandals, and Lombards.
§ 6. There is no surer sign of how weak the pillars are upon which human power rests, and how worn its strength is, than that the greatest empires have always fallen, not by a violent hand, but through slight circumstances and a trivial occasion. But what depends upon a changeable occasion is weak. Curio transferred the Roman Empire from the Senate to the Caesars, and he had no other cause for war than the magnitude of his debt. Thence it passed to Augustus because Cicero, they said, had repeatedly said that the boy must be praised and raised up. Offended by that expression, Octavian estranged himself from the Senate, because he declared that he would not permit himself to be removed. Claudius was then made Emperor when a few soldiers dragged him from hiding. And thus the bloody tragedy continued throughout the Roman world, with the greatest battles inclining to one side at a single word or gesture. There scarcely seems, therefore, to be any place for power which upon so many occasions ceases to be power.
§ 7. As I consider all these things, it comes to my mind that nothing in human affairs is more wonderful than the providence of God governing occasions; for the power of human affairs, even when greatest, is overthrown by a small occasion. Hannibal came into Italy. His army, coming from the sun and the south after breaking through the Alps, could easily have been conquered by the Romans, but every opportunity was let pass. Through no one’s care was he prevented from crossing the river, entering Italy, and refreshing his army. Hannibal seizes every opportunity: he chooses a cold day; he conceals his cavalry with fog and brushwood; finally at Cannae he even fought with dust, wind, and sun. Behold, power and army would have availed nothing unless he had conquered by the occasion of thorn-thickets, fogs, rains, cold, wind, and dust. Rome was now in the greatest alarm, and it would have been her last day if Hannibal had wished to use his victory; but he neglected the opportunity, and Rome was saved not by her own strength but by the enemy’s imprudence.
The empire of the Turk seems formidable to many, but in truth it grew strong by opportunity alone, and even now protects itself by our discord. Heraclius gave an opportunity to Muhammad when, in place of pay, he inflicted insults upon the Saracen soldier whose faithful service he had used. The Saracens then grew, and the Turcomans subdued them. At last the family of the Ottomans occupied Asia while two Andronici, grandfather and grandson, contended with one another; it was easy to conquer the divided. Then the dissensions of those same Greeks, and of Cantacuzenus and Palaeologus, made Orchan powerful. Palaeologus all but delivered Greece into the hand of Amurath. The rebellious Greeks hated their Emperor; in order to restrain them, he called in Amurath, who came as avenger of the sedition and obtained the empire of Greece—a robber in place of a helper. Tamerlane subdued Bayezid. When Calepinus had recovered himself from flight, the nobles of the Greeks aided the desperate affairs of the Ottomans, although that empire could have been destroyed in one battle; and so Muhammad soon turned the strength of the Greeks against themselves. But while Amurath II was reigning, those Greeks first equipped his uncle and then his young brother as an adversary. Such was the madness and softness of the Constantinopolitans that they preferred to equip barbarians with arms, money, and men rather than arm themselves. Thereafter, although they abounded in resources, they were conquered because they were unwilling to expend them upon enlisting soldiers.
That enemy is now feared by us because we provide him opportunity through seditions, civil wars, and heresies.
We also provide him opportunity through distrust. Nor does he lack spirit, but he is wearied by the Persians. Nothing is readier than that he be called in as an ally by one of those at discord. The Greeks did this; the Hungarians did this; and they paid the penalty of destruction. Earlier Alfonso II and Ludovico Sforza called in Bayezid against the French and Venetians. Indeed, in the time of Francis I, King of France, and Henry II, they summoned his fleet—and its plunder—to the Ligurian Sea through our discord. There survives a speech of the British ambassador before the Turk in which he exhorts him, together with his queen, to turn his arms against the Spaniard. Therefore, a kingdom exposed to so many occasions of adversity cannot be called powerful.
§ 8. But neither is the Turkish kingdom powerful. If the Hungarian war had been continued, the Turk could easily have been driven from his kingdom with moderate preparation. The Hajduks defend themselves against him in Pannonia; the Cossacks in Poland voluntarily bring arms against him; the Arabs keep everything hostile. At present nothing sustains him in Europe except our sloth, because we do not use the opportunity.