§ 1. Kings and all princes are rich enough if they are good household managers, and if they employ frugality, but royal frugality. The saying of Chilon in Laertius, book 1, is prudent: “One who does not rightly govern his own house cannot govern the state.” For a household is exceedingly like the city that is governed.
But here Megalonymus Parophaeus stands ready as a formidable adversary. He removes all household management from a generous prince. “Why do you make a money-changer out of a king, so that he looks around anxiously like Euclio and offends all his friends? Will you lead him to the granaries, the wine cellar, and the valuation of onions and garlic? Let the prince’s mind be free for the loftier heights of affairs. Let him administer wars, peace, treaties, and justice; let him rejoice that there are many things which perish to his loss. From his sublimity let him cast the lower cares upon others. Let there be a distinction between the prince and his procurator.”
§ 2. That flattery brings more evil to the state and ruins the prince more than can be imagined. I wish the prince to be great-minded and, as follows from this, liberal. But it belongs to liberality not that he pour out wealth rashly, but that he receive from those from whom he ought, at the place, time, and manner in which he ought; that he preserve, expend, and give according to right reason. I say that no prince can do these things unless he possesses an exact system of household management.
For if he neglects his affairs, these disadvantages arise. 1. When he has himself been reduced to the last extremity, the cleverest thieves lend him money at interest. 2. Then, unknowingly, he enriches enemies and makes them most hostile. Beware of believing that those who, abusing your sloth, have committed various forms of embezzlement ever wish you well; as long as they fear, they wish you dead.
Nor do I occupy the prince with private labors, but show him the necessity of attending to them. Amid so many eyes of petitioners, hands of plunderers, and tongues of liars, you set the prince like a golden sheep and order him not to know by whom he is plundered. Nor do I listen when you say that good men should be placed over the household management. For the prince’s sloth will make them evil: great gains and greater impunity recommend nothing moderate.
Third, the prince’s household management is easy; neglected, it increases his cares and, what is unworthy of a prince, makes them anxious. For he who has abundantly enough upon which to live and from which to give to others passes his life pleasantly. He whose debt increases daily is compelled to submit his mind to biting anxieties. Indeed, if he knows that very many things are being lost to him, yet neither grieves nor commands them to be spent better, he is scarcely worthy of the name of man. If you do not know what he has received, what he possesses, or what has been given to each, but know only the bread he eats and that which he gives to a parasitic embezzler, he is a prince only in title, a laughingstock to foreigners, a burden to subjects, a source of profit to ministers,
the slave of his own slaves and the prey of purple-clad thieves.
§ 3. Since I have seen and known men who, while apparently doing the same things and using the same care, administer their affairs with very different results, I began to consider within myself why this should happen. I learned from Scripture to refer increases in household property to the divine blessing and losses to the curse. Yet because miracles are not ordinary, I discovered that such contrary effects proceed from the means and diligence of men.
Gaius and Titius practice agriculture and animal husbandry: one accumulates wealth, while the other’s estate always slips backward. Two men trade: one man’s affairs increase, the other’s decrease. Two possess instruments for carrying on their affairs: one immediately draws out for use what has been placed in order; the other spends the time for acting in searching. Some build at great expense houses which are useless because the principles of architecture have been neglected; others at lesser expense arrange houses suited to every use, in which no corner is not most suitably adapted.
The reason, therefore, is that some conduct affairs by a certain art, order, and method, while others complete everything rashly, just as it comes to hand. Those who learn to play upon organs scarcely produce a slight harmony with great labor and readily damage the very instruments which they do not know how to tune. In the same way private persons injure their patrimony, and princes their province, with great losses while they are ignorant of or despise household management.
§ 4. Household management is fourfold, as Aristotle distinguishes in book 2 of the Oeconomica:
Οἰκονομίαι τέσσαρες δὲ εἰσὶν ὡς ἐν τύπῳ διελευστέον· τὰς γὰρ ἄλλας εἰς τοῦτο ἐμπιπτούσας εὑρήσομεν· βασιλική, σατραπική, πολιτική, ἰδιωτική. τούτων δὲ μεγίστη μὲν καὶ ἁπλουστάτη, ἡ βασιλική· ποικιλωτάτη δὲ καὶ ῥᾴστη, ἡ πολιτική· ἐλαχίστη δὲ καὶ ποικιλωτάτη, ἡ ἰδιωτική. ἔστι κοινωνεῖν μὲν τὰ πολλὰ ἀλλήλαις ἀναγκαῖον· ὅσα δὲ μάλιστα δι᾽ αὐτῶν ἑκάστῃ συμβαίνει, ταῦτα ἐπισκεπτέον ἡμῖν ἐστιν.
There are four forms of household administration, so that the matter may be distinguished by a certain outline, for we shall find the others falling within these: royal, satrapic, civic, and private. Of these, the royal is the greatest and simplest. The civic is more varied than the others and the easiest. The private is indeed the smallest, but it too is exceedingly varied. It is necessary that there be many things common among them; but those things which occur by themselves in each must be considered by us.
He divides the royal into coinage, ἐξαγώγιμα καὶ εἰσαγώγιμα, καὶ ἀναλώματα—exports and imports, and expenditures. Those things which are imported and exported were treated in the chapter on tributes; expenditures will now be discussed.
But if it is royal to establish a standard for denarii and gold pieces, to impose tributes upon all things great and small, and if not even the buyer of roasted chickpeas or the poor man selling trifles can defraud him, why should it be contrary to his dignity to guard what has been collected in this way, demand an account, and know where it goes?
They therefore betray themselves as impostors who suggest to kings every pocket and every name for plunder: hundredths, fiftieths, fortieths, twentieths, tenths, fifths, taxes on columns, taxes on doors, the Chrysargyron, and smoke taxes; yet, after these have been collected with so many cares, they forbid the king to attend to them, repeatedly saying that it is unworthy for Jupiter to be present at small matters. As though it were worthy for Jupiter to be present when poor men are scraped together door by door and handful by handful, his granaries stuffed from all their baskets and his treasuries from all their purses, and then, lest those griffins, who are ἁρπακτικώτεροι γαλῶν, “more rapacious than cats,” lack an opportunity for seizing, to close his eyes.
But what of Aristotle? Does he not expressly posit τὰ ἀναλώματα, expenditures and expenses? Unless I am mistaken, these men will lead their prince under the appearance of magnanimity to be mad by calculation. For they consume him in the most foolish labor: that he should strain every sinew to collect, but not preserve what has been collected. This is just as if he poured water into a perforated cask with wicked labor. What the poets feigned to be the punishment of the Danaids in the lower world, these men interpret as dignity, so that no one can doubt that they desire this: that the prince, at his own danger, labor, and odium, should squeeze money from his subjects, which they afterward, without the prince’s knowledge, turn to their own profit.
§ 5. Satrapic management also pertains to the king, that is, as Aristotle warns, those things which arise ἐκ τῆς γῆς, “from the land,” concerning which he should calculate the most exact account. When all matters have been brought together into one, this is the sum of household management: no more should be spent than is received. From exceeding that limit come borrowed money and pledges, and all the ornament of majesty is surrendered to the ostentation of the rich.
But it is too little not to spend more than you receive if you do not diligently set aside something to be taken up for the uncertain emergencies of the times. Since they possess great revenues, they can also heap up great treasures without diminishing princely splendor, provided order is established. Once order has been brought into use, it makes the accounts balance without any labor. Xenophon says many things about order in λόγῳ οἰκονομικῷ, “the discourse on household management”; if order is applied, the numerous phalanx of a palace will be governed as easily as a small house.
§ 6. First, effort must be made to have faithful ministers. This indeed will be attained in few, for amid so many peoples there is scarcely one fidelity. Yet the faithful hearts of a few will be able to resist the rapacity of many. Next, let no one be idle; let his own duties be assigned to each, an account of which most should be bound to render on the same day, and very many in the same week. Third, let the prince purge and contract his court, and free it entirely from a useless crowd of men who neither benefit the prince, defend him, nor increase his splendor.
Great kings and princes did this, preferring to have a great, dignified, royal court rather than a populous one. I judge useless a crowd such as exists at the court of the Turkish emperor. First, there are three hundred court tailors in the palace, a sign of great luxury in clothing; likewise three hundred smiths; five hundred new Janissaries assigned to cleansing the citadel and base services; four hundred who care for dogs and falcons; and thirty wrestlers. He could reduce these and other refuse of men to a moderate number.
Antoninus Pius formerly did this. Julius Capitolinus says: “He withdrew salaries from many whom he saw receiving them in idleness, saying that nothing was more sordid, indeed more cruel, than for those who contributed nothing to the state by their labor to gnaw it away. Hence he also diminished the salary of Mesomedes the lyric poet. He knew particularly well the accounts of all the provincials and revenues. He transferred his private patrimony to his daughter, but gave its fruits to the state. He sold superfluous imperial furnishings and estates, and lived upon his own farms, differently according to the seasons. He undertook no journeys except that he went to his estates in Campania, saying that the retinue even of an exceedingly frugal prince was burdensome to provincials.”
Golden words: “The retinue even of an exceedingly frugal prince is burdensome.” For a retinue is costly, and that concerning which magnificent cruelty is practiced publicly is tyranny in private. What is poured out splendidly is exacted with the utmost bitterness.
Alexander Severus used to say that it was an evil thing for a prince to feed from the entrails of provincials men who were neither necessary nor useful to the state. Let the prince look around his court, and let him persuade himself that, in proportion to the number of men whom he maintains for idleness and delights, he is maintaining a plague for the state.
§ 7. In every matter let him avoid immoderate expenditures, as upon gems, building, and similar things. Let him despise gems like childish locks of hair. Alexander Severus acted excellently, as Lampridius reports: “Whatever he had in gems, he sold, and brought the gold into the treasury, saying that gems were of no use to men; that royal matrons ought to be content with one hair-net, earrings, a necklace set with pearls, a crown with which they performed sacrifice, a single cloak sprinkled with gold, and a ceremonial robe which did not contain more than six ounces of gold.” In his own times he plainly performed a censorship based upon his own morals. Great men imitated him, and most noble matrons imitated his wife.
Caligula, on the contrary, neglected nothing upon which money is customarily squandered. Accordingly, when he had found two hundred and thirty hundred-thousands of gold pieces, he dissipated them before the third year, as Dio says in his Caligula. These amount to sixty-six millions of our gold pieces, for the Roman pieces were twice as large. This was the more marvelous because money at that time was rarer and dearer, and one gold piece accomplished more than ten now do; for they could buy an ox for a gold piece.
Some also deliberately lost everything, like that monster of whom Cornelius speaks: “He himself, from the sole concern of wasting, built stables for charioteers; filled the environs with spectacles of gladiators and beasts; as though amid the greatest abundance of money he made sport of it.” Indeed, Caecina and Valens celebrated the birthday of Vitellius by exhibiting gladiators district by district throughout the whole city, with immense preparation unprecedented before that day.
But this occurred under that fourth beast, that is, the Roman Empire, so that it might break in pieces and trample the remainder underfoot. Therefore there was always public want, both of men and of money. Take an example from Vopiscus in his Probus:
The kind of spectacle was as follows. Strong trees, torn up by the roots by soldiers, were fastened to beams joined far and wide; earth was then thrown over them, and the whole circus flourished like a forest through the charm of new greenness. Then through all the entrances were let in a thousand ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand boars, a thousand fallow deer, ibexes, wild sheep, and other grass-eating animals, as many as could be fed or found. Then the common people were admitted, and each seized what he wished.
On another day he added in the amphitheater, in one release, one hundred maned lions whose roars aroused thunder. All of them were killed from the rear gates; they did not afford a great spectacle when they were killed, for they did not possess that onset of beasts which they customarily have when emerging from their cages. Moreover, many beasts which the people were unwilling to seize were killed with arrows. Then one hundred Libyan leopards, one hundred lionesses, and three hundred bears were exhibited together. The spectacle of all these beasts is known to have been greater than it was pleasing.
In addition, three hundred pairs of gladiators were exhibited, most of them Blemmyes of enormous size who had been led in triumph, many Germans and Sarmatians, and some Isaurian robbers.
But I shall speak later of the expenses fabricated for gifts and donations. Now let us look at other things.