§ 1. Daily losses show that disturbances and movements are frequent in the state. It is my intention to investigate their causes, so that they may be guarded against and, if perhaps no precaution has been employed, may be removed. Their causes arise either from the vice of princes and optimates, or of peoples, or of both; for if ever in any matter each party is guilty, it happens in tumults and civil wars. For there,
In truth, guilt is committed within the walls and beyond them.
It is a sign of a state about to fall when the magistracy is ignorant of manifest vices or dissembles them; when those whom all men judge impious it holds in esteem as though they were upright.
There are, moreover, as many causes as there are vices. For although men are chiefly impelled to rebel by cruelty, avarice, and pride, nevertheless there have frequently been other causes also: fear, lust, luxury, and others. For just as every evil of the body, if it becomes severe, is capable of destroying life—
—so whatever introduces hatred, envy, and contempt of others into the body of the state is accustomed to prepare discord, factions, tumults, and civil wars. The friends of princes destroy them more often than their enemies do.
§ 2. The first and most powerful cause of rebellion is the cruelty of magistrates. For since nothing is dearer to a man than life, men protect themselves in whatever way they can against the bloodthirsty and cruel. We always bear arms against lions, wolves, bears, and serpents, and fortify ourselves with the protection of others, for we know that their rage is always armed against us. The mind of an entire kingdom is no different when its people perceive that the king is cruel: clemency makes kings gods; cruelty makes them demons.
The impious and savage deeds of Mezentius are an ancient example. Hence:
Etruria rises in righteous fury.
I have shown this sufficiently in the chapter concerning cruelty. For cruel men are feared most by those nearest them. Alexander of Pherae, whose savagery was celebrated, was killed in his sleep by his wife’s brothers while she herself held the light before them.
We know that Augustus was agitated by many seditions; but when we consider his cruelty, we marvel that he escaped. Suetonius, chapter 27: “For ten years he administered the triumvirate for establishing the state. In it he indeed resisted his colleagues for some time, lest there should be any proscription, but when one had begun he exercised it more bitterly than either of them. For while they were often capable of being entreated by favor and prayers in the case of many persons, he alone contended earnestly that no one should be spared; and he proscribed even Gaius Toranius, his own guardian and the colleague of his father Octavius in the aedileship.
“Junius Saturninus relates this besides: that when, after the proscription had been completed, Marcus Lepidus excused the past in the Senate and held out hope of clemency for the future, because sufficient punishments had been exacted, Augustus, on the contrary, professed that he had fixed a limit to proscribing in such a way that he had left everything free to himself. Nevertheless, in repentance for this obstinacy, he afterwards honored Titus Junius Philopoemen with equestrian dignity because it was said that he had once concealed his proscribed patron.
“While in this same power he blazed with manifold odium. For when, while he was haranguing, he noticed that Pinarius, a Roman knight admitted among the soldiers with a crowd of civilians, was writing down certain things, he judged him inquisitive and a spy and ordered him to be stabbed before his eyes. And Tedius Afer, consul designate, because he had censured a certain deed of his with malicious speech, he terrified with so many threats that the man threw himself down to his death.
“And when Quintus Gallus the praetor, during the duty of salutation, was holding double tablets covered by his garment, Augustus suspected that he concealed a sword; but he did not dare investigate anything immediately, lest something else be found. A little afterwards, Gallus was dragged from the tribunal by centurions and soldiers and tortured after the manner of a slave; and although he confessed nothing, Augustus ordered him to be killed, first gouging out his eyes with his own hand. Augustus nevertheless writes that Gallus sought a conference and plotted against him; that he was cast by him into custody, then banished from the city and released; and that he perished by shipwreck or the ambushes of robbers.
“He received perpetual tribunician power, in which once and again, at each interval of five years, he chose a colleague for himself. He also received an equally perpetual governance of morals and laws; by this right, although without the honor of the censorship, he nevertheless conducted the census of the people three times—the first and third with a colleague, the middle one alone.”
It is monstrous how great a hatred the reputation of cruelty brings. Philippicus killed Justinian II amid the greatest joy of all because he had resolved utterly to destroy the people of Cherson, had even sent a fleet to kill the infants, and ordered a citizen to be slaughtered whenever, after his nose had been cut off, he blew it. Diaconus, Book XIX. The Locrians avenged the cruelty of Dionysius with greater savagery and injustice: for they prostituted his wife together with his daughters, killed them after piercing them with needles beneath the nails of their fingers, crushed their bones, and cursed those who did not taste their flesh. Aelian, Book IX. But enough has been done concerning this matter in the chapter on cruelty.
§ 3. A no less effective and much more frequent cause of seditions is the avarice of rulers. Aristotle noted this in Book V of the Politics, chapter 3:
Τούτων δὲ ὕβρις μὲν καὶ κέρδος τίνα ἔχει δύναμιν καὶ πῶς αἴτια, σχεδόν ἐστι φανερόν· ὑβριζόντων τε γὰρ τῶν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς καὶ πλεονεκτούντων στασιάζουσι καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ πρὸς τὰς πολιτείας τὰς διδούσας τὴν ἐξουσίαν.
What force insult and gain have among these things, and how they are causes of seditions, is almost manifest. For when those who bear magistracies are insulting toward private persons and take more and greater things for themselves through injury and avarice, they excite sedition both among themselves and against those forms of administering the state which offer and permit this license.
If you weigh everything in the Roman state, you will find that most seditions arose from the avarice of the nobility. Hence the tribunes of the plebs were instituted, so that they might assist the weaker against the injuries of moneylenders. Hence the agrarian laws were attempted so often, when the plebs, conqueror of nations, wasted away from want while the nobility possessed vast estates.
There are exceedingly many Cleons today who have
τὴν χεῖρ ἐν Αἰτωλοῖς, τὸν δὲ νοῦν ἐν Κλωπιδῶν,
their hand among the Aetolians, or in petitioning, but their mind in the district of Clopidae, or among thefts. Caligula stirred up everyone when he compelled wills to bequeath property to him and set a price upon foodstuffs. Galba, because of the reputation of avarice, was betrayed by the army. For the same cause Didius Julianus was deserted and killed in the palace. His own men betrayed Maurice for that reason when they neglected the protection of the avaricious prince, and they raised up Phocas the parricide for the same reason. Constantine was killed by his own men in Sicily because of the same sordidness and rapacity; his plunder was diverted by the Saracens into Africa. Perseus, king of the Macedonians, deserted by soldiers defrauded of their pay, was captured with his gold and led in triumph by Paulus Aemilius. Heraclius also, while depriving the Saracens of their pay, lost the empire of the East.
§ 4. Unjust exactions of tributes pertain to avarice; they rarely enrich princes, frequently bring destruction to them and profit to their officers. Darius, who first ordered the tributes of the Persian kingdom, was called κάπηλος, or a huckster; he also corrupted morals and was hated by the nation. The Lydians suspended King Achaeus by his feet for avarice in exacting tributes, so that his head emerged into the Pactolus and its gold-bearing water might thus satisfy his thirst.
Bato the Dalmatian freely reproached Tiberius that the Romans supplied the cause of war because they sent not dogs but wolves as guardians of the flock. If we consider present affairs, the exaction of tributes produced the war in Belgium, or furnished its occasion. One must therefore take great care that people not be burdened beyond measure or custom, for when they perceive that they are being despoiled they rise up grievously. For although there are extraordinary necessities, so that a prince is sometimes compelled for the public utility to impose assessments and superassessments, the people are nevertheless so disposed that they interpret what is done for their safety as being given to others. But the most bitter seditions are those which arise when tribute is refused and which assail the ministers above all. Thus the fury of the Israelite people raged singularly against Adoram, who was over the tribute, and stoned him.
A king will therefore act most safely if he exacts small tributes in portions, with the estates consenting after the necessity of the kingdom has been demonstrated; if he preserves the ordinary ones and does not readily command new ones. In the time of Charles VI, new taxes almost overthrew king and kingdom, for the plebs, having risen in tumult, obtained their abolition after the most illustrious men of the magistracy had first been killed. For the same cause the French were expelled from all Flanders after the people of Bruges had made the beginning. The plebs indeed serves humbly and remains quiet so long as customary things are commanded; when it understands that it is being despoiled by unaccustomed methods, it turns to arms.
§ 5. Injustice is either that which truly opposes laws and right, or that which those living in a worse condition judge to be injustice. For although all demand right, that is, what is equitable, and put it forward as a pretext, they nevertheless do not acknowledge true equity. For those who are equal in some respect wish to be peers in all things, and by this reasoning violate justice, that is, equity itself. Although the people and the optimates are equally free, nevertheless equal honor is not therefore owed to a plebeian and a nobleman; for the former is κατ’ ἀριθμὸν ἰσότης, “equality according to number,” not ἰσότης κατ’ ἀναλογίαν, “equality according to proportion.” Again, those who are superior in some respect are willing to bear an equal in no respect, and they judge this just. Thus, when nobles are exempt from civil burdens, they judge it equitable not to pay their creditors, not to appear when summoned to judgment, to display honor to no one, and to exact the services of lesser men.
When, therefore, they perceive that right is denied to them or judgment rendered inequitably, they turn to force. The great commander Julius Caesar never entered greater danger than when, chosen as judge between Cleopatra and her brother and indulging his love of the queen, he pronounced an inequitable judgment against her brother. For then the Egyptians, turned to sedition and almost madness, rose against him with one mind, to such a degree that he was compelled to entrust himself naked to the river and thus escaped to his own men; nevertheless the Alexandrians carried his garments around in mockery. For the sacred writings teach us that a kingdom is transferred from nation to nation because of injustice.
§ 6. Fear is also a great incitement to sedition. For when men have sinned and fear the vengeance of the laws, or when innocent men foresee injuries, they prefer to anticipate them. Thus Aurelian was slaughtered by his own men, partly deserving punishment and partly innocent.
“It happened,” says Flavius Vopiscus, “as events conduct themselves fatally, that he rendered a certain Mnesteus, whom he had as secretary of secrets—a freedman of his own, as some say—more hostile to himself because he had suspected I know not what concerning a certain matter. Mnesteus, who knew that Aurelian was accustomed neither to threaten in vain nor to pardon if he threatened, wrote a brief list of names, mixing those with whom Aurelian was truly angry together with those concerning whom he contemplated nothing harsh, and adding even his own name, so that he might impart greater credibility to the anxiety he had aroused. He read the brief to the individuals whose names it contained, adding that Aurelian had resolved to kill them all, but that they, if they were men, ought to come to the aid of their lives. These men—those who deserved his displeasure having blazed up with fear—mingling resentment with the benefactions and services for which Aurelian seemed ungrateful, suddenly attacked and killed the prince as he made his journey in the aforesaid place.”
Rightly, therefore, Aristotle, Book V, chapter 3:
Διὰ δὲ φόβον στασιάζουσιν οἱ ἠδικηκότες, δεδιότες μὴ δῶσι δίκην, καὶ οἱ μέλλοντες ἀδικεῖσθαι, βουλόμενοι φθάσαι πρὶν ἀδικηθῆναι.
On account of fear, however, those who have inflicted injury rise in tumult lest they pay the penalties, or those who suspect that they are about to suffer injury; for they prefer to anticipate it. Thus the Rhodians conspired against the plebs through fear of judicial proceedings. For vehement fear, when it produces despair of pardon, is the strongest of all passions. See that heroine:
I would have cast myself upon them.
What did I have to fear, being about to die?
Those whose life, fortune, and reputation are in another’s power think more often about what their master is able to do than about what he ought to do. But if they are so conscious within themselves that they judge that their master not only can but also rightfully can and ought to act more harshly, and they now see him ready and prepared for torments and destruction, they will attempt everything in order to escape. If many are afraid, no force of command is so great that it can long endure under the pressure of fear. Hence arises swift and unconsidered rebellion, and indeed rebellion by many, because no one is faithful to the man whom he fears.
When Athens summoned Alcibiades to the tribunal because the affair in Sicily had been badly conducted, it overthrew the city. For he, despairing that he would obtain pardon from the hostile plebs for the disaster received, when he saw that those who had deserved best had suffered the extremity, preferred to entrust his safety to enemies rather than to citizens. Having set out for Lacedaemon, he was the author of the counsel that Gylippus should be sent to the aid of the Syracusans, that war in Attica should be renewed, and that assistance should be brought to the Chians, Lesbians, and others who had revolted from the Athenians; sailing to Ionia himself, he was successful in alienating cities from the Athenians.
Yet there was no loyalty for him among the Spartans either. Their insult and injury reconciled Alcibiades to his fatherland; for when the ephors commanded the commanders to kill Alcibiades, he again brought the Lacedaemonians into hatred, both among the cities and with Tissaphernes the Persian. Thereafter he defeated Mindarus and Pharnabazus in a mighty battle and, after wresting the empire of the sea from the Spartans, handed it to the Athenians. When he had again been reduced to the ranks of private men by them, he was compelled as an exile to see his fatherland captured.
§ 7. Hope is akin to fear. For both those who struggle with adversity hope for better things and those whose affairs proceed prosperously hope for the best. Thus for a long time the Roman Empire was sold, when seditious men impelled military spirits, filled with hope, to crime, and the same men, when frustrated in their hope, deserted the princes.
Dio reports concerning Vespasian: “He was nevertheless not pleasing to the Alexandrians, who were so gravely hostile to him that they mocked and cursed him both privately and publicly. The cause was that, although they had hoped to receive from him, whom they had made emperor first of all, some great gift, he not only bestowed nothing upon them but even exacted money from them; and he collected so much, omitting no kind of tribute, that he did not spare even beggars and made money from divine and human affairs. For he renewed many taxes which had now ceased to be paid and increased many of those which were in force; and he did this in the other provinces subject to Roman command and afterwards in the city. For this reason the Alexandrians hurled many reproaches against him and said, among other things, that he exacted six obols.”
Hope, therefore, aroused the Egyptians, and when disappointed it raged. Those who attempt innovations know this: nothing impels spirits more toward sedition than to inflate them with hope of better things. Thus Cyrus induced the Persians to revolt from the Medes. Antiochus, in like manner, when he was besieging Cypsela, ostentatiously adorned with necklaces and silver arms the nobles of Cypsela whom he had in his camp. And so their kinsmen revolted to him and, as followed, betrayed the city.
Fear and the consciousness of an evil deed are cruel.
Bagoas, through fear of cruelty, killed Ochus, king of the Persians. He raised his son Arsames to the kingdom and killed him in the same manner lest the latter avenge his father’s slaughter, and he transferred the empire to Darius. Thus Marcus Duillius, tribune of the plebs, consulted no more for the Senate than for the state when, after the decemvirs had been condemned and all were afraid, he proclaimed that in that year no one should be permitted to appoint a day of accusation against anyone. But hope is sharper because it makes men active, fear sluggish.
§ 8. The license of magnates and princes toward women has excited many seditions. External wars also arose from it; a royal wife, foreign marriage beds, and the carrying off of betrothed women were the cause of many wars. But we are treating seditions.
Livy, Book IV, says that at Ardea civil discord arose between the plebs and the optimates because of the marriage of a certain maiden who was indeed of plebeian birth but most distinguished in beauty. Two young men sought her, one a plebeian and the other a nobleman. The former relied upon her guardians; the latter upon both the favor of her mother, who wished the girl to be joined in the most splendid marriage possible, and that of the optimates. Since the affair could not be completed within the walls of the house, they went to law. After the claim of the mother and that of the guardians had been heard, the magistrates awarded the right of marriage according to the will of the parent.
But force was more powerful. For the guardians, having harangued the men of their party in the forum concerning the injustice of the decree, formed a band and carried the maiden off from her mother’s house. Against them arose a more hostile battle line of optimates, which followed the young man inflamed by the injury. A fierce battle took place. The armed plebs, driven from the city, went forth, occupied a certain hill, and made incursions with sword and fire upon the lands of the optimates; it prepared to besiege the city itself. No disaster of war was absent. It seemed to each party that too few arms were present in the city and for war; the optimates summoned the Romans to come to the aid of the city, while the plebs summoned the Volscians to storm Ardea with them.
The lust of Roderic, king of Spain, so inflamed Julian of Tingitana, whose daughter he had dishonored, to vengeance that he called the Saracen Mamolinus into Spain. Thus the intemperance of one man brought first rebellion, then war and the servitude of many centuries, upon the most noble kingdoms.
The people also expelled the Roman kings, despairing that they could otherwise avenge chastity. They also avenged themselves upon the decemvirs for this reason. The tyrant Pandulf, because the daughter of Bellantius had been carried off, was crushed by a conspiracy of her kinsmen.
Aristotle also numbers this among causes that are small but frequent. Assuredly among the people of God lust was expiated by the destruction of almost one entire tribe. Xerxes, the most powerful of kings, while violating his brother’s wife and household with unspeakable lust and slaughtering his most beloved brother, was killed by his uncle Artabanus. But nothing was fouler than the contest between Artaxerxes and his son Darius over a concubine. Artaxerxes loved Aspasia and created Darius king. It was the custom that on the day of inauguration it was not lawful to deny the son a gift, requested separately, of whatever he wished. The shameless and ungrateful Darius sought Aspasia. Artaxerxes gave her according to the laws and, a little afterwards, overcome by desire, took her away. Darius plotted his father’s death; when detected, he paid with his head. Just as the abductions of maidens and matrons are the most ancient causes of wars, so also the rivalries of leading men have thrown whole states into confusion.
§ 9. Desire for honors and ambition are scarcely absent from any rebellion; but of very many they are the sole causes. The matter seems clear to Aristotle, Book V, chapter 3:
Δῆλον δὲ καὶ ἡ τιμή, καὶ τί δύναται καὶ πῶς αἰτία στάσεως· καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀτιμαζόμενοι καὶ ἄλλους ὁρῶντες τιμωμένους στασιάζουσι· ταῦτα δὲ ἀδίκως μὲν γίνεται ὅταν παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἢ τιμῶνταί τινες ἢ ἀτιμάζωνται, δικαίως δὲ ὅταν κατὰ τὴν ἀξίαν.
It is clear what honor can do and how it is a cause of sedition; for those who are without honor, seeing others honored, rise in tumult. This happens sometimes justly, sometimes unjustly. The desire to dominate is assuredly the torch of seditions just as it is of wars.
At Rome the Senate was burdensome to the plebs, and the plebs to the Senate. The younger men among the Fathers insulted the plebs; the older men judged their own young men too fierce, yet preferred, if a limit had to be exceeded, that courage should abound in their own men rather than in their adversaries. At first men wish to be made equal; then, lest they lose liberty and equality, they wish to cast others down and command others, and so to repel injury in order that they may inflict it upon others. This throws everything into confusion. For they do not think themselves safe unless they have so prostrated others who are rightfully their equals that they cannot rise again.
Good princes also perished in this way, but after being changed. Pausanias, an example of modesty and of a temperate spirit in victory, being raised up by prosperity, was preparing a Persian peace and had contracted for a royal marriage so that he himself might become king of Greece. For this reason, when he fled into a temple, he was walled in and there perished from hunger, after his mother Alcithea had placed the first stone in the blocking of the entrance.
In the Roman city very many seditions were excited by hope of domination. Whether you examine sacred or profane history, you will find very many things of this kind. Almost all the kings of the Israelites were killed by plotters, and the kings of the Jews also endured conspiracies. Sennacherib was killed by his sons, and other men by others; for those who come to a kingdom through slaughter are generally cast down in the same manner. This, therefore, is what they labor to effect: that no one be their equal and no one their superior, and that they be masters of some; with the outcome uncertain, they kill innumerable men.
§ 10. Overthrows of the state occur for the most part when the excessive power of one man is nourished and made firm. This has been treated rather often, but the evil clings with the greatest tenacity. The preeminence of one man is equally harmful to the liberty of peoples and to the majesty of kings. Aristotle prudently says: “Moreover, sedition arises because of preeminence when one man, or several, obtains ampler resources and greater power than the city or the power of the administration of the state can bear; for monarchy or dynasty is accustomed to arise from such conditions. For this reason in certain places they are accustomed to relegate the more preeminent men for a fixed time by means of a potsherd, which the Greeks call ὀστρακίζειν, as at Argos and Athens. And yet it is better to provide from the beginning that men so preeminent cannot arise in the city than afterwards to remedy an evil born from sufferance and negligence.”
Hence Rome, through the conspiracy of three leading men, was made common to three masters. Hence come oligarchies, conspiracies, and the other plagues. If one man can do everything with the prince, he is unable to bear the envy; if a few obtain control of affairs, they are unable to agree among themselves and betray the prince rather than preserve him, because they turn the prince away from the friendship and society of others. Finally, out of so many thousands concerning whose power the provinces complained, scarcely ten used power moderately; rather, they turned it to the destruction of the plebs, the nobility, the prince, and at last themselves. The cause is that they possess hope neither in the will of the people or leading men nor in that of the king.
§ 11. The error of rulers is equal when they dishonor great men.
For since these men are powerful, bear great spirits, and are unaccustomed to insult, they do not easily let an opportunity for vengeance escape. When Ish-bosheth charged Abner with embracing the royal concubine, he offended a man of great spirit and a support of the kingdom, so that he immediately revolted to David. David likewise, while attempting to reduce Joab to the ranks of private men by substituting Amasa in his place, gave Joab a man to fear not without reason, had Amasa not fallen by treachery.
Coriolanus would have avenged the disgrace of his judgment by the destruction of his fatherland, had his mother’s prayers not stood in the way. The Athenians expelled Hippias, who had thus deserved it, but shuddered when he returned with one hundred thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry. Miltiades nevertheless defeated him, furnished with eleven thousand men; yet toward Miltiades they were most ungrateful, and after fining him an immense sum of money they compelled him to die in prison. If he had wished to flee to the Persians, he could have overthrown Athens with small forces; for what would not the man who defeated one hundred and ten thousand with eleven thousand have done if he had possessed one hundred and ten thousand against eleven thousand? A foolish city, therefore, which, always inequitable and malevolent toward illustrious men, deprived itself of its own defenses.
Baldilus the Gaul, because he had been unjustly beaten by Childeric, killed the king himself and his pregnant wife. Colas the tutor incited three pupils to the murder of Galeazzo Sforza because he had repaid the blows which the boy had received from that tutor. Andrea Lampugnani killed Galeazzo Sforza because Galeazzo had not favored him against the bishop of Como.
Whole states sometimes commit an offense of this kind. Matho, punished with exile together with the army, set out for Carthage and besieged his ungrateful fatherland; he was mitigated only by prayers. The great man preferred to occupy and destroy his fatherland rather than, innocent, to pay the penalty of adverse fortune together with so many brave citizens.
There are, moreover, two ways in which offense is committed in these matters: when a prince admits excessive honors or contemns the other leading men. By that arrogance Caesar alienated his once most friendly and faithful soldiers and armed the leading men for his own destruction. Suetonius, in Julius, chapter 76 and those following:
“Yet his other deeds and sayings outweigh these, so that he is judged both to have abused domination and to have been slain rightfully. For he not only received excessive honors, such as a continuous consulship, perpetual dictatorship, and prefecture of morals, besides the praenomen Imperator, the surname Father of the Fatherland, a statue among those of the kings, and an elevated seat in the orchestra; he also allowed greater honors than were fitting to human eminence to be decreed to him: a golden seat in the senate-house and before the tribunal, a ceremonial carriage and litter in the procession of the Circus, temples, altars, images beside the gods, a sacred couch, a flamen, Luperci, and the naming of a month from his own name. And he took and gave certain honors according to his own caprice.
“He bore his third and fourth consulships in title only, content with the power of the dictatorship decreed together with the consulships; and in each year he substituted for himself two consuls for the final months, so that in the intervening time he held no elections except those of tribunes and aediles of the plebs. He appointed prefects in place of praetors to administer urban affairs in his absence. On the day before the Kalends of January, when the office of consul had become vacant through the sudden death of the consul, he gave it for a few hours to a man who sought it. With the same license, after despising the custom of his fatherland, he appointed magistrates for several years; he gave consular ornaments to ten men of praetorian rank; and he received into the senate-house men given citizenship and certain men from among the half-barbarous Gauls. Besides this, he placed his personal slaves over the mint and public revenues. He entrusted the care of three legions which he was leaving at Alexandria to the son of his freedman Rufinus, his own catamite.
“Chapter 77. He publicly uttered sayings of no less unrestrained power, as Titus Ampius writes: that the state was nothing, merely a name without body and form; that Sulla did not know his letters, since he had laid down the dictatorship; that men ought now to speak more considerately with him and to regard what he said as laws. And he advanced to so great a degree of arrogance that, when a soothsayer once pronounced the entrails sorrowful and without a heart, he said that they would be more favorable when he wished, and that it ought not to be taken as a portent if a beast lacked a heart.
“Chapter 78. But he especially aroused against himself the chief and inexpiable odium from this. When all the Conscript Fathers approached him with many most honorific decrees, he received them while seated before the temple of Venus Genetrix. Some think that he was held back by Cornelius Balbus when he attempted to rise; others that he did not attempt it at all, but even looked with a less friendly countenance upon Gaius Trebatius when he admonished him to rise. And this deed of his was regarded as all the more intolerable because, when he himself was triumphing and passing by the tribunician benches, he had been so indignant that one man from the college, Pontius Aquila, did not rise for him that he cried out: ‘Then reclaim the state from me, Aquila, as tribune!’ Nor for continuous days did he cease promising anything to anyone except with the reservation, ‘If, however, Pontius Aquila permits it.’
“Chapter 79. He added to so signal an insult in despising the Senate a deed much more arrogant. For when, as he returned from the Latin sacrifices amid modest and novel acclamations of the people, a certain man from the crowd had placed upon his statue a laurel crown bound with a white fillet, and the tribunes of the plebs Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus had ordered the fillet to be pulled from the crown and the man led into chains, grieving either that the mention of kingship had been moved with too little success or—as he claimed—that the glory of refusing it had been wrested from him, he severely rebuked the tribunes and deprived them of their power. From that time he was unable to cast off the infamy even of having aspired to the royal name, although he both answered the plebs when it saluted him as king that he was Caesar, not king, and at the Lupercalia, before the rostra, repeatedly repelled from his head the diadem offered by the consul Antony and sent it to the Capitol, to Jupiter Best and Greatest.
“Indeed, a varied report also spread abroad that he was about to migrate to Alexandria or Ilium, transferring there at the same time the resources of the empire, exhausting Italy by levies, and entrusting the administration of the city to friends. At the next meeting of the Senate a report spread that Lucius Cotta, one of the Board of Fifteen, was about to declare the opinion that, since it was contained in the books of fate that the Parthians could not be conquered except by a king, Caesar should be called king.”
These things seemed intolerable in a new and raw servitude; afterwards they began to be regarded as virtues. There would assuredly be no end if I were to recount examples of brave men who, indignant at contempt of themselves, excited civic movements. Coriolanus, Belisarius, Narses, and others are witnesses. Victor Pisani indeed, when he had been cast into chains by the Venetian Senate and freed by the plebs, was admonished by a distinguished man to avenge the injury; he struck him with a slap and added a declaration greater than all his deeds: “Have I ever contemned the decrees of my fatherland?” But so great a virtue is rare; and if it exists elsewhere, nevertheless the fatherland cannot or ought not trust that it exists, because it can also easily be changed.
§ 12. Many princes have been overthrown because of threats, as I taught above concerning Aurelian. Therefore a magistrate ought not readily to threaten unless it is so that an offense may be avoided; for he exposes himself to the most certain danger. If a prince threatens someone with death, that man considers either fleeing or causing death, and he labors so that the prince rather than he himself may perish. I do not doubt that this pertains to fear. Yet because threats produce the most powerful and violent fear, are very easily carried abroad among the common people, and are augmented, one must abstain altogether from threats.
It is safer to have killed a guilty man than to threaten him with death. For threats are either those of a powerful man, which you cannot escape, and thus they are premature; or those of a weak man, and thus they are vain. In either manner they render execution more difficult. If the one threatening is powerful, his atrocity is odious; if weak, his authority is nothing. He who threatens admonishes his enemy; he does not harm him. For it is easiest for him to inflict upon you the evil which you threatened against another.
I add this also: the man against whom you have threatened evil appears to have an authorized cause to defend himself and to prepare himself for defense as though war had been declared. How imprudent was the declaration of the Roman emperor who was then a tribune with military power: “Evil to my soldiers unless they remain quiet!” For, inflamed by this word, they committed slaughter. He who threatens appears to be carried away by passion and anger and to judge when he has not yet taken cognizance of the matter.
§ 13. Opposing magistracies in the state must be guarded against. Thus the Romans acted most ignorantly when they gave tribunes to the plebs, a perpetual nursery of all seditions; they would have acted much more wisely had they created one of the consuls from the plebs. For the tribunes of the plebs first drove them to such a point that they were compelled to elect military tribunes with consular power; next they extorted intermarriage, thirdly one of the consulships, at last both, and finally the censorship, the dictatorship, and everything. Thus it befell the Romans that they perished through Δημαγωγούς, demagogues, and their own tribunes, something which Aristotle relates to have befallen many peoples in Book V, chapter 5.
“Democracies, therefore, are changed chiefly because of the petty wantonness of the tribunes. For in part, by burdening the wealthy with calumnies, they cause them to come together and conspire—for common fear reconciles and joins even the most hostile—and in part by collectively inciting the multitude against them. One may see that this has occurred thus in many cases. For at Rhodes also the democracy was changed when wicked demagogues arose within it. The nobles came together; for the popular haranguers furnished pay to the soldiers and forbade the commanders of the triremes to pay it out. But those commanders, compelled by fear of grave judicial proceedings—which they were to undergo if they did not sail according to law—formed an association and overthrew the power of the people.
“At Heraclea also the power of the people was broken and scattered immediately after a colony had been sent there by the Athenians, through the fault of popular and frivolous demagogues. For when the nobles were injured by them, they were compelled to depart from the city; then those who had been cast out, after assembling and gathering their forces into one body, returned from exile into the city and removed the democracy.
“Likewise the democracy which existed at Megara was dissolved and convulsed. For the demagogues, in order that they might confiscate the goods of private persons, banished many nobles from the city, until they had made a great number of exiles. But the latter, desiring to return from exile into the city, joined battle, overcame the people, and made an oligarchy from the democracy. The same thing, moreover, also happened at Cumae; in that city Thrasymachus utterly destroyed the democracy.
“And in almost all other cities, if anyone wishes to observe and consider them, he may see that the conversions and changes of states take place in this same manner. For sometimes, in order to enter into favor with the people, by inflicting injuries upon the nobles they impel them to make agreements and associations—whether they divide their goods among the people by agrarian laws and introduce an equalization of possessions, or exhaust them with taxes and the discharge of public burdens. Sometimes, by bringing them to judgment on false charges and summoning odium against them, they seek to confiscate the fortunes and resources of the rich. In ancient times also, when the same man became demagogue and commander, democracy was turned into tyranny; for almost all the ancient tyrants were made from demagogues.”
§ 14. Very many men have also lost dominions when they admitted foreigners into the city. Aristotle, Book V, chapter 3: “That which is not of the same nation and stock also has force to excite sedition, until it has come to agreement and conspired together. For just as a city is not made from any multitude offered by chance, so neither is it made at any time whatever. Therefore those who received resident aliens or newcomers into a city have almost all, or certainly very many, struggled with seditions.
“For example, when Achaeans dwelt with the Troezenians at Sybaris, the Achaeans, having thereafter increased in number, cast out the Troezenians. Hence arose the Sybaritic pollution. At Thurii, when the Sybarites unjustly injured the peoples dwelling together with them and received into the city, and claimed the greater part of the territory as their own and indeed all superior things for themselves, they were driven out. When the Byzantines discovered that newcomers were plotting against them and caught them manifestly, as if in the very act of theft, they joined battle, conquered them, and banished them. When the Antissaeans perceived that the exiles of Chios whom they had received into the city were attempting revolution, they joined battle and cast them out. When the Zanclaeans received the Samians into their city, they themselves were conquered and expelled by them. When the Apolloniates who dwell upon the Euxine Sea invited certain newcomers, they excited sedition among themselves. After the tyrants had been driven out, the Syracusans, having made foreigners and mercenary soldiers citizens, dissented and disagreed among themselves and joined battle. And when the Amphipolitans received colonists from Chalcis, most of them were cast out by these men.”
The Romans therefore prudently ordered the Gauls who had crossed the Alps without injury to withdraw. The Gauls plead their cause in Livy, Book XXXIX: “They had been compelled by the excessive multitude in Gaul, want of land, and poverty to cross the Alps in search of a dwelling place, and had settled without injury to anyone in places which they saw uncultivated through solitude. They had also begun to build a town, which was an indication that they had come to bring violence neither upon any territory nor upon any city. Marcus Claudius had recently been sent to them with the message that he would wage war with them unless they surrendered; preferring a certain, although inglorious, peace to uncertain war, they had first committed themselves to the good faith, then to the power, of the Roman people. A few days afterwards they were ordered to depart from both territory and town; they had intended to depart quietly to whatever place in the world they could. Then their arms, and lastly all the other things which they carried and drove, were taken from them. They begged the Senate and People of Rome not to rage more bitterly against harmless men who had surrendered than against enemies.” The Roman people returned their arms and ordered them to depart.
Nations do not easily grow together unless they are gradually rendered similar by marriage, dress, and language. The Bebryces admitted the Phocaeans into the city. When the latter flourished in arms and resources, their hosts began to envy them and considered removing them from the midst. When this became known, the Phocaeans killed the Bebryces, conquered by a notable stratagem, and alone possessed the city.
Would that those who first called the barbarians into the empire and gave them lands had done this, and likewise those who afterwards let the Turks into Europe. And now also, while I write these things, what else are those men doing who, after gathering auxiliaries of foreigners from every quarter, rebel against the emperor Ferdinand—and do so in the sight of the Turks, aided even by a friend and vassal of the Turks—than bringing the tyrant into possession of Germany? But the sins of those who are perishing produce these discords of princes; and nevertheless those same discords will be quieted by the servitude or destruction of the princes.
§ 15. Arms given to the people for defense easily overthrow the state unless it is administered cautiously. Therefore they must be permitted not to all but to certain selected persons. When the rebels of Aachen had been armed, they expelled the Senate. This once befell many cities of the empire; indeed—
—even countrymen sometimes took up arms. Justinian’s Novel 85, under the title Concerning Arms, must therefore be restored to force:
“Always invoking our great God and Savior Jesus Christ and his aid, we are zealous to guard unharmed and without calumny all our subjects, whose government God has entrusted to us, and to restrain wars which they, undertaking them according to their own judgment against one another, carry on to their sorrow, thereby bringing a double punishment upon themselves: both that which they inflict upon themselves and that which they suffer from the laws punishing their madness.
“Chapter 1. Wishing, therefore, to free men from movements of this kind, we have provided that no private person engage in the work of manufacturing arms, but that only those make arms who are appointed in public armories or who are called fabricenses; and that those who manufacture arms sell them to no private person. Nor do we permit those armorers who are enrolled in the military units—whom they also call deputati and who receive rations from the fisc—to manufacture or sell arms to anyone, but only to exercise care over the arms of the soldiers enrolled in the unit in which they serve. If, however, they make anything new, it shall be taken away from them and brought into our sacred arsenal, to be added there to the public arms deposited within it.
“Chapter 2. We wish those who are in the orders of ballista-makers, whom we have stationed throughout various cities, to observe this also. We ordain and decree that they make arms in such a way that they themselves repair and renew only the public arms deposited in the public arsenals of each city. If any of them fashion any new weapon, they shall likewise furnish this among the public arms and shall sell it to absolutely no other person.
“Those appointed over the ballista-makers shall also guard this, at the peril of the fathers of the cities under whom we have stationed the ballista-makers themselves and established the care and custody of the public arsenals. Thus, if either the deputati or the fabricenses are seen selling arms, the judges in the localities shall take care to subject them to punishments and, in addition, to take the arms without payment from those who purchase them and claim them for the public.
“Chapter 3. Therefore, with God governing this counsel of ours, by the present law we decree that in no city or province of our state shall private persons or anyone else have license to make or sell arms, or to purchase them by any means whatever; rather, those alone who are enrolled among the fabricenses shall fashion them and convey them to our sacred arsenal. We decree that this be guarded by Your Highness and by those who shall receive the girdle after you.
“We appoint certain chartularies who are established under Your Highness in the bureau of the fabricenses, at the peril of the five chief men among them, men possessing a good reputation and fit for the task. Seeking out those who make arms in this most fortunate city and in the other cities of our state, they shall prohibit private persons or any others besides those who are appointed among the fabricenses from conducting the business of manufacturing arms; and in whatever places they discover private persons daring this, they shall cause these arms to be brought forward and applied to the arsenal of the fisc.
“If, however, they are able to find among private laborers artisans fit for the work, they may, if they wish, establish these men in the service, enter their names in a register, and send us the register of artisans, so that by our sacred rescript they may be stationed in those places in which there are public manufactories, and so that, while manufacturing arms, they may receive rations from the fisc.
“For when this has been done and has been scrupulously observed by the aforesaid persons, license will be given to absolutely no one—neither to private persons dwelling in cities nor to countrymen inhabiting villages—to use arms against one another, to presume to commit murders, and thereby to kill very many men, while public duties perish because cultivators of the land, fearing to lose their lives, resort to flight.
“Therefore those who are directed by Your Highness from the aforesaid bureau of the fabricenses to prohibit private makers of arms must receive a sworn declaration also from the local judges and the offices subject to them, and from the defenders and fathers of the cities, that henceforth they will have no power to do anything among those things forbidden by us, but will guard the things decreed by the present law, fearing a punishment both in money and upon the head itself.
“For we decree that the negligent judge of great Alexandria shall pay a penalty of twenty pounds of gold for the things decreed by us, shall fall from the girdle of office, and that his office shall likewise pay a penalty of twenty pounds of gold and undergo capital punishment. The judges of the other provinces, however, shall sustain a loss of ten pounds of gold; they and their offices shall likewise be subject to loss of the girdle. The defenders and fathers of cities shall be fined a penalty of three pounds of gold and shall sustain peril to their heads if, upon discovering any such deed, they do not punish it, or do not report those wishing to do it, but permit it to remain concealed.
“Chapter 4. So that the things which we have forbidden to be done by private persons and certain others besides those who are enrolled among our sacred fabricenses, or the arms forbidden to be sold to private persons, may be manifest, we have taken care that this also be signified through the present law. For we prohibit private persons from manufacturing and buying bows and arrows, broadswords and swords which they are accustomed to call semispathia, and those which are called zabae or cuirasses, and pikes and lances made in any manner or shape whatever, and those called monocopia among the Isaurians, and the things called sitinnes or missiles, and, in addition, aspides or shields, and galeae or helmets. For we permit none other to fashion these things besides those who are appointed among our sacred fabricenses. We permit only smaller knives, which no one uses in battles, to be made and sold by private persons and to private persons. Therefore Your Highness shall promulgate the present general law in this royal city and also throughout the other cities of our state, so that all, recognizing what has pleased us, may observe it.”
The kingdom is finally done for when things that are crimes are called remedies by cunning men and are judged necessary, as Antonio de Leyva was accustomed to boast.
Those, moreover, who must be trained are better trained with public arms, as was done among the Romans.