§1
I call those things fortuitous which are not committed through the fault of princes or of the people and which by their own nature have no reason why they should stir up sedition. God has his own fixed reason why he brings them upon us or permits them to occur. Nothing is fortuitous to eternal providence, which numbered the hairs of our head before the foundation of the world. We judge something to have happened by chance because it was contrary to expectation. The fortuitous causes of seditions, however, are calamities, such as famine, fires, floods, and other things that make spirits sorrowful and imbue them with much hatred. For since there is a very great number of evil men in a state, they are embittered by calamities and grow savage, like wild beasts, rather than becoming tame. Thus provoked, they easily make an attack upon the magistracy and others, although these have not injured them. Prudent princes will assuredly attempt what Fabius did:
Fabius, soothing these complaints, taught that it was shameful To rage against disasters, and kept the crowd from anger; For to be broken by adversities was not the part of men.
The Hebrews in the desert, if Pharaoh rages, if water is lacking, if they desire flesh, do not deal by prayers, but murmur against God and Moses and rage against their disasters. The good are tested by adversities as gold by fires; the evil are burned up like chaff. The cause of this fact is that the unhappy, since they bear evils impatiently, become angry, envy the fortunate by comparison with their own fortune, and grieve. Hence they are readily indignant at all by whom they are not assisted, and especially at the magistrates.
§2
Among the other hardships from which seditions arise, famine is the chief. The cause of this is that, when bodies have been emptied, it stirs the humors and renders men malevolent and bilious. Léry, in his History of the Voyage to Brazil, relates that, when the Calvinian church, after its affairs among the barbarians had gone badly, was afflicted by famine on the return voyage, its members became fierce, morose, and irascible. These are his words, page 325:
“Before I put an end to this discourse, I should like to observe in passing something that I noticed in others, indeed most of all in myself, for I experienced two famines, and such that I believe no men ever escaped more horrible ones. When bodies have been weakened by want of food, nature is failing, the senses are disordered, and the spirits dispersed, men become not only fierce but also morose and irascible. Moreover, that irascibility may deservedly be called a kind of madness. Hence it comes about that in our vernacular speech one who is oppressed by hunger is aptly said to rage with hunger. Furthermore, because experience teaches all things more distinctly, I see that it is not without cause that God, when threatening his people with famine unless they obey his commandments, expressly declares that it will come to pass that the eye of the man who had been tender and delicate will be very evil toward his brother, his dearest wife, and his children, so that he will not give any of them some of the flesh of his children which he will eat. For, in addition to the examples that we have related from sacred history concerning parents who ate one of their children, and concerning certain soldiers who, after they had tasted the corpses of those who had died in war, declared that they had resolved to lay hands upon the living if that evil had lasted longer, I can affirm that during that famine at sea we could scarcely, indeed hardly at all, converse peaceably with one another, although we were restrained by the fear of God; indeed, that—may the Lord pardon us—we looked upon one another with evil eyes.”
From this, therefore, arise bitterness of spirits, complaints, and tumults. Under the emperor Claudius there was an immense famine in the Roman—
—Empire. Dio recounts the tumult that arose from it at Rome; scarcity of grain, too, and the famine arising from it, was taken as a prodigy. There were not merely secret complaints: they surrounded Claudius while he was administering justice with turbulent shouts and, driving him to the farthest part of the forum, pressed him until he broke through the hostile crowd with a body of soldiers. It was established that no more than fifteen days’ provisions remained for the city. By God’s great kindness and the mildness of the winter, relief was brought to affairs at their extremity. Yet, by Hercules, in former times provisions were carried from the regions of Italy into distant provinces; nor is sterility the affliction now, but rather we put Africa and Egypt under exertion, and the life of the Roman people has been entrusted to ships and accidents.
Hence came the monstrous savagery with which men devoured one another. This happened in the siege of Jerusalem, when mothers themselves cooked their children. The army of Cyrus in Scythia had already raged against its own men in this manner, and, as Herodotus says in book III, the army of Cambyses ate every tenth man selected by lot. The seditious soldiers of the Carthaginians were subdued by famine alone, although before that they had consumed the bodies of captives and slaves. Sabellicus, Enneads IV, book 9: this happened also at Numantia, Saguntum, Calagurris, Tauromenium, and Rome at the time of the Gothic siege, when men cried out, “Set a price on human flesh.” Byzantines and Placentines suffered the same thing under Totila; the Nevomantini and Samanduni in the siege of Sinderovia gnawed their own hands. Cromerus relates that it happened in Poland in the year 1315, book XI. What wonder is it, therefore, that seditions arise from famine, since it changes men into beasts?
There is a second reason why men riot on account of famine: they think that by the providence of the prince grain could have been gathered in good time or brought from elsewhere. Thus Octavius, Antonius, and many others were endangered because of famine. Wicked citizens, however, abused that occasion to seize the state, as did Spurius Maelius and others. Tiberius and other princes therefore prudently assumed the care of the grain supply themselves, lest anything be neglected by ministers.
The whole Senate was never in greater danger than when it was unwilling that Pompey be put in command of the fleet against the pirates; for the plebs blazed up with such anger that it hastened to destroy the Senate. The cause was that navigation, obstructed by the power of the pirates, had produced famine. Dio, in his Pompey.
§3
Disasters in war also stir up domestic seditions, either by fear or by contempt. When it was announced in Mithridates’ camp that his commanders had been slain by Lucullus, so great a terror suddenly invaded the army that they departed from the camp, abandoning the king; and, reverence for his authority having been removed, they plundered from others as much as each could, pillaged the king’s own precious furnishings, and killed a commander in order to take his costly garment.
A prince must always fear a sedition arising from contempt if a defeat suffered in war is announced, if it is serious, dangerous, and difficult to repair. For men think that a prince placed in danger and afflicted has fallen beneath them. But if they hated him before, they exult vehemently and cast off the yoke. When the city had been burned by the Gauls, the Latins and others moved war out of contempt for it. After the defeat at Cannae the allied cities defected. Once the prince’s authority and the fear of him have been removed, hatreds break forth most freely; and when men have hope from the opposite side, they incline toward it.
Pertinent here is what Herodotus reports in book II concerning Apries, king of the Egyptians, when he was defeated by the Cyrenaeans. When Apries, having sent an army against the Cyrenaeans, suffered a great defeat, the Egyptians imputed it to him and rebelled, thinking that they had been sent down by him to manifest destruction so that, once they had been annihilated, he might rule the other Egyptians more securely. Both those who returned and the friends of those who had perished bore this most grievously and openly defected.
When Apries learned of this, he sent Amasis to pacify them with words. When Amasis had arrived and was rebuking them and dissuading them from doing such things, one of the Egyptians, standing behind him, placed a helmet around his head; and, when it had been placed upon him, he said that he had put it on him for the kingship. Nor was this done against Amasis’s will, as he showed. For as soon as he had been declared king by the Egyptians who had defected, he prepared himself as though about to march against Apries.
When these things were learned, Apries sent to Amasis one of the Egyptians who were with him, a respected man named Patarbemis, with orders to bring Amasis to him alive. When Patarbemis arrived, he summoned Amasis to Apries. But Amasis—he was sitting insolently upon a horse to exhort his men—foolishly ordered him to take this to Apries; and when Patarbemis asked him to go to the king, since he had been summoned, he replied that he had long been devoting his attention to doing so, and that Apries would have no complaint about him, for he would both present himself to Apries and bring others with him.
Patarbemis, not ignorant of Amasis’s purpose, both from his speech and from the preparations he saw, judged that it belonged to his diligence to inform the king as quickly as possible of what was being done. When he returned without bringing Amasis, Apries, moved by anger, without uttering a word ordered his ears and nose cut off. When the other Egyptians who until then had sided with Apries saw a man most highly approved among them treated so shamefully and unworthily, they did not delay even so long, but passed over to the others and surrendered themselves to Amasis. Having heard these things also, Apries armed his auxiliaries—for he had around him about thirty thousand auxiliaries from the Ionians and Carians—and advanced against the Egyptians. He had an immense royal palace in the city of Saïs, worthy of being seen. Thus the Aprians and Amasians took their stand against one another at the city of Memphis, intending to attempt the decision of battle.