§1
Since so great a wickedness has no need of instruction, I think it the act of an insane man to teach the art of stirring up sedition. But to set forth publicly the things that histories furnish and that princes must know is the task of the political writer; for in this way the prince will recognize the signs and indubitable prognostics of sedition and, when he perceives that matters are tending toward it, will meet it in good time. Therefore, when either the people itself, or the nobles, or some one man from the crowd does those things which inspire or reveal in the multitude or the nobles a hatred of the present condition, sedition is not far away. This generally is not believed until it has begun to rage.
And indeed, when the people itself inclines toward tumult, the contrivance cannot be secret. For free and ill-considered words against the chief men or the prince, heard with attention and applause, indicate that the minds of the people are estranged and that they will dare something if they find a leader. When the mime is ordered to repeat these words, “Magnus, you are our misery,” who could doubt that favor had already been transferred from Pompey to Caesar and that, when an occasion was given, Pompey would be cast down? But when a private person or one of the chief men attempts a revolution, he carries on secret counsels, and the treason is not recognized until everything has been prepared and arranged.
§2
Those, therefore, who attempt to move the people or the chief men to sedition do this in order to bring them into hatred of the magistrates. Then, because hatred languishes when hope and fear are absent—for it ventures little besides abuse—they remove fear of punishments, but instill a fear of many hardships if men remain quiet. Finally, they bring hope of better things and fill light minds with empty things. Sometimes they also set forth money as the rewards of treason.
§3
They procure hatred of the magistrate by relating true things and by calumniating. Calumnies are of two kinds: either they artfully invent false things, or they increase beyond measure things that are true.
A sedition is most dangerous when it is born from true evils, for it never ends except with the destruction of one of the parties or with a change of the state. Scripture presents an example in 3 Kings 12. For they complain truly: “Your father imposed a most harsh yoke upon us; you, therefore, now lessen a little the rule of your father and the most grievous yoke that he imposed upon us, and we will serve you.” Nor does Roboam deny it: “My father made your yoke heavy.” This had been done by the old man when his expenditures upon seven hundred queens and three hundred concubines became immoderate. Jeroboam therefore easily led away ten tribes here, and, so that the defection might be ratified with blood, Aduram, Roboam’s treasurer, was overwhelmed with stones. And in truth, seditions arise for the most part from a true beginning and from true evils, as what I taught concerning the causes of seditions has demonstrated. For either kings conduct themselves wickedly and tyrannically, or subjects unjustly oppose good kings.
But this is the worst thing: although sedition can be healed at its beginning, within a short time, when there is no measure in avoiding or avenging evils, the injury increases. And thus, while each party executes vengeance not by reason but by anger, it always inflicts a more grievous evil than it suffers. This customarily occurs because vengeance for a civil injury seems to provide two things: consolation to the man who received the injury and security for the future. It always provides the first for angry men, but not the second. It provides the first because to give back is sweet. For in anger there is a mixture of pain and pleasure. The man who returns pain thinks himself excused, even if it is greater than what he received. Truly and philosophically Homer says:
ὡς ἔρις ἔκ τε θεῶν, ἔκ τ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἀπόλοιτο,
καὶ χόλος, ὅς τ᾽ ἐφέηκε πολύφρονά περ χαλεπῆναι,
ὅς τε πολὺ γλυκίων μέλιτος καταλειβομένοιο,
ἀνδρῶν ἐν στήθεσσιν ἀέξεται ἠΰτε καπνός.
But may contention and anger perish from gods and men—
Anger which compels even the wise man to blaze up,
Which is much sweeter than dripping honey,
Growing in the breasts of men like smoke.
They therefore do not weigh injuries with equal weight, but pain against pain, so that, as though they had equalized the law of retaliation, they inflict something greater in return for the offense. Like men who strike back a ball they have received, they drive it back more strongly, assisted by the impetus of its coming. So greatly has this seemed good to many that they think vengeance is well sought even by death:
Though the gods destroy me, nevertheless they desire that I be aided, Because before I perish they will give me time to take vengeance.
This evil, therefore, is sweet; it increases with practice; and although “vengeance” is an inhuman word, the thing itself is most eagerly sought and grows beyond measure. Hence it is the custom not only of barbarous peoples but also of the most cultivated to take vengeance; so little do they differ from those whom vices close to those of beasts have brutalized far from every fellowship of human law. Amid laws and magistrates, each man is the avenger of his own pain, and continual precautions against crimes are thrown off, while vengeance not only imitates the crime but exceeds it, and while men hate all whom they have injured and by whom they are injured. But the second thing, that is, security, it rarely brings, because the defeated man rarely remains quiet. And we have seen slaughters go round in a circle until power was transferred to foreigners.
§4
Sometimes there is need of the greatest art and diligence in order that a defection can be foreseen. The Ionians who inhabited Asia suddenly defected from Darius and, after auxiliaries had been assembled in Greece and especially at Athens, burned Sardis. The cause of the defection was given by a plan of Darius that seemed safe but was unjust: he had planned to transfer the Ionians to Phoenicia and the Phoenicians to Ionia, so that he might thus tear the Greeks away from intercourse with Greeks and from their συμμαχία (alliance), and place in the midst another nation friendly to neither. When Histiaeus the Greek learned this in Persia, he burned letters onto the shaven head of a messenger, by which he disclosed the matter to Aristagoras, leader of the Greeks. The latter, when the messenger’s head had again been shaved and he had read the letters, began a savage war as though for altars and hearths. Darius could not have foreseen this sedition in any other way than by suspecting that his purpose would not remain secret. And Aristagoras indeed was killed, and Histiaeus was driven onto a cross; nevertheless Darius could not accomplish the migration of the nations.
§5
They openly sow calumnies in order to disturb quiet men and stir up seditions. Tarquinius Superbus furnished an example in the council of the Latins. Another was furnished under Aurelian, when a secretary displayed a document upon which he said that the names of men destined for death had been written. Absalom also overreached his father by manifest calumny, 2 Kings 15: “Your words seem to me good and just, but there is no one appointed by the king to hear you.” And Absalom would say: “Who will appoint me judge over the land, so that everyone who has a suit may come to me and I may judge justly?” Yet the greatest regard for justice was maintained by David. Thus Valerius came under suspicion of seeking the kingship because of the house he had built, nor could he dispel the calumny except by its demolition. Aulus Albinus was stoned by the army because of false suspicions his enemies had spread, Valerius Maximus IX.8. These things have now become excessively customary in our own times, in which every deed and saying of princes is taken in the worse sense. Homer once presented Thersites as the example of those who railed against kings and moved sedition.
Enemies, too, when they could not calumniate brave men with words, disparaged them by the facts themselves. Coriolanus devastated the fields of the plebeians and left those of the patricians untouched, in order to kindle manifest dissensions. Hannibal likewise refrained from the fields of Fabius Maximus in order to render him suspect; but Fabius broke the force of the calumny by declaring the field public property. The Romans did not do these things without a precedent. The Lacedaemonians left the fields of Pericles untouched so that they might create resentment against him and a suspicion of treason. But he gave them as a gift to the state, by which act he obtained great praise and proved his fidelity more fully to the Athenian people.
§6
Another kind of calumny occurs when all things that are vicious, or seem so, are raised to a greater degree, and good things are taken in the worse sense. This became so manifest at Rome in the tribunes of the plebs that there is no need of another proof. Nothing ever done by the Roman Senate was so pleasing as when it decreed pay for the soldiery, and nothing was received with such great joy: men flocked together, praised the senators, grasped their hands, and said that they had truly been called fathers. What did the tribunes do? Alone untouched by the common joy and concord of the orders, they denied “that this was as joyful to all the senators, or would prove as prosperous, as the senators themselves believed,” Livy IV. “The plan was better in its first appearance than it would prove in practice. For from where could that money be raised except by imposing a tribute upon the people? From the property of some, therefore, they would be generous to others.
“Nor, even if the others endured it, would those whose terms of service had already been completed suffer others to serve under a better condition than that under which they themselves had served, and the same men both to have made expenditures for their own pay and to make them for that of others.”
But when they heard that the army was also to winter in the siege of Veii, they magnified everything and twisted it to the worse sense. They repeatedly said: “This was the thing for which pay had been established for the soldiers; nor had they been mistaken that this gift would be smeared with the poison of their enemies. The liberty of the plebs had been sold; the youth had been removed forever and banished from the city and the state, and now did not yield even to winter or the season of the year so as to see their homes and affairs. What did they think was the cause of this continued military service? They would surely find no other than that nothing might be done for their interests through the frequent presence of those young men in whom lay all the strength of the plebs. Moreover, they were harassed and subdued much more bitterly than the Veientes. For the latter passed the winter beneath their own roofs, defending a city with excellent walls and by its natural position; the Roman soldier endured under skins amid work and labor, buried beneath snow and frost, not laying down his arms even in the span of winter, which is a rest from all wars by land and sea.
“Neither kings, nor those proud consuls before the tribunician power was created, nor the grim command of the dictator, nor the oppressive decemvirs had imposed this form of slavery, that men should perform perpetual military service. The military tribunes exercised kingship over the Roman plebs. What, then, would those men do as consuls or dictators who had made their proconsular likeness so savage and cruel? But this happened not undeservedly: not even among eight military tribunes had there been a place for any plebeian. Previously the patricians had been accustomed to fill three places with the utmost contention; now they went eight abreast to obtain commands, and not even amid the crowd did any plebeian cling on who, if nothing else, might remind his colleagues that those who served were their free men and fellow citizens, not slaves; that at least in winter they ought to be led into homes and beneath roofs; and that at some time of the year they ought to see their parents, children, and wives, exercise liberty, and elect magistrates.”
What could have been more shameful than for citizens thus to rage against the concord of their fellow citizens? But it was done, nor was it passed over by the senators. For Appius depicts for us the nature of these calumniators in its native colors:
“If it was ever doubted, Quirites, whether the tribunes of the plebs have always been the authors of seditions for your sake or for their own, I hold it certain that in this year the doubt has ceased. I both rejoice that at last an end has been made for you to a long error, and, because this error was removed especially amid your prosperous affairs, congratulate both you and, on account of you, the state. Is there anyone who doubts that the tribunes of the plebs were never so offended and agitated by any injuries done to you, if perhaps there ever were any, as by the senators’ gift to the plebs when pay was established for those serving as soldiers? What else do you believe they either feared at that time or wish to disturb today except the concord of the orders, which they judge to be the thing most capable of dissolving the tribunician power?
“Thus, by Hercules, like wicked craftsmen they seek work: they always wish something in the state to be sick so that there may be something for whose treatment they are summoned by you. For do you defend or attack the plebs? Are you the adversaries of the soldiers, or do you plead their cause? Unless perhaps you say this: ‘Whatever the senators do displeases us, whether it is for the plebs or against the plebs.’ And just as masters forbid their slaves to have any dealings with other men and judge it right that others refrain equally from kindness and injury toward them, so you forbid the senators intercourse with the plebs, lest we call forth the plebs by our courtesy and generosity, and lest the plebs be attentive and obedient to us. How much more, if there were in you anything—I do not say of a citizen, but of a human being—ought you at last to favor and, so far as lay in you, to indulge instead the courtesy of the senators and the obedience of the plebs? If that concord should be perpetual, who would not dare promise that this dominion will in a short time be the greatest among its neighbors?”
No one doubts that such men must be eliminated from the state as pests. The reason is that even the best princes have many things that must be amended; their administrators commit many faults; the princes themselves seem to commit more, and they actually commit some. If all these are gathered together, exaggerated, understood with a hostile mind, and infected with the poison of a malevolent tongue, the state must necessarily collapse.
§7
Calumnies are indeed effective for stirring up hatred, but sometimes by the same means men produce fear, as in the death of Aurelian. Sosis of Syracuse contrived plots and a tumult against Dion by this art. Stained with blood and speaking in a lamentable voice, he delivered himself to the multitude, asserting that he had suffered these things from Dion and that all men must expect all the same things. The sedition was indeed composed at that time; its author afterward paid the penalty at Athens. Pisistratus had long before cast the Athenian people into the same fear. For in order to oppress Megacles and the wealthy, he inveighed bitterly against him in an assembly; on the following day he came wounded, complaining that he had been treated so unjustly and insultingly by the nobles. The people, agitated by anger and fear, since they believed that this savagery threatened the bodies of them all, gave Pisistratus three hundred bodyguards for the protection of his life; with these he seized the tyranny. Dionysius obtained bodyguards through the same fear and seized power. For since fear is a most effective passion, and one that makes men anxious and suspicious, it is easily employed for sedition.
§8
They oppose all things, lest the adverse party should be rendered stronger in any manner. Herodian demonstrates this concerning Antoninus Caracalla and Geta. But their hatred and dissensions increased day by day. For whether certain commanders and magistrates were being chosen, each particularly favored his own friend; or whether they pronounced judgment, they always held different opinions, sometimes with great danger to the man whose case was at issue. For they valued their own partisan zeal more highly than right or equity. Even at the games themselves they always belonged to different factions. Besides this, they omitted no form of plots, repeatedly attempting to impel cooks and cupbearers to poisonings. This was almost the perpetual work of the Roman tribunes: to obstruct levies, magistracies, and trials.
§9
Those men act more criminally who bring the state and the army into danger so that they may make the magistrates hateful and overthrow them. By this fraud Philip, as Capitolinus attests, deprived the younger Gordian of both empire and life. First, through Philip’s artifices, the grain ships were turned away; then the soldiers were led into those places in which a grain supply could not be obtained. Hence he immediately rendered the soldiers hostile to Gordian, for they did not understand that the young man had been deceived by Philip’s artifices. But Philip also added this: he spread a rumor through the soldiers that Gordian was a young man and unable to govern the empire, and that it was better for the man who governed the soldiery and understood the state to rule. He also corrupted the officers and brought it about that Philip was openly demanded for the imperial power. In the same manner Stilicho spared the barbarians so that he might raise his son to the imperial power.
§10
When magistrates see a prudent, active, and keen man doing this—that he may grow famous, come forward by means of expenditure, and lead clients—and when he does it neither from prodigality nor folly, they ought to determine with certainty that something greater is being constructed by these beginnings. Thus Caesar acted. Plutarch, in his Caesar: “In addition to these things, by the splendor of his dinners and table and, in sum, of the rest of his life, he gradually gathered power in the state. His enemies, judging that this power would soon vanish when his expenditures failed, securely permitted him to become famous in the state. But too late, when it had already become immense and overwhelmingly strong, and they perceived that it was openly breaking forth into a revolution, did they notice that no beginning of any affair is to be judged small, because continuation does not immediately render it great, and because, from the very fact that it is despised, it succeeds in not being impeded.
“Accordingly Cicero, who was the first to regard Caesar’s conduct in the state with suspicion and fear, and who, as in a calm sea, perceived the fierceness concealed beneath his humanity and flattery, used to say that in all Caesar’s other undertakings and actions he discerned a tyrannical disposition. ‘But,’ he said, ‘when I see his hair so carefully arranged and the man himself scratching his head with one finger, on the contrary, that man does not seem to me likely to conceive so great an evil in his mind as to overthrow the Roman state.’”
This, too, was an art of the ancients. Manlius had freed debtors and bought favor by the loss of his wealth, which he thought he would recover when he had seized the state. Spurius won over the people by an agrarian law, Maelius by largesse. All were men of excellent spirit and not unworthy of command, and perhaps would have been most excellent kings if they could have come to the scepter without crime.
§11
In addition to immense hopes, they also scatter money. Herodian, in his Elagabalus: “His mother also secretly gave money for him to distribute privately among the soldiers, so that he might possess their goodwill, increased also by the pledge of money—for this is what they chiefly regard.” Many Romans, so that they might hold the first place in a sedition and crush the opposing parties, poured out their patrimonies. Marcus Livius Drusus, tribune of the plebs, promised the courts to the Senate, the Senate to the equestrians, lands to the plebs, and citizenship to the Latins, so that he said he had left nothing for anyone else to bestow except heaven and mud. Agrippa also came under suspicion because he bestowed many things upon the people, adorned Rome, and gave oil and salt to all. Sejanus tested the dispositions of the citizens, and especially of the soldiers, by gifts.
It would be a long and unnecessary discussion to speak of those who overcame citizens and enemies by money; men give all things for money. When Seleucus had proclaimed a reward of one hundred talents for the head of Theodotus, who had charge of the treasury at Sardis, and now all things were full of suspicions, Theodotus himself opened the citadel to him. For when he saw that money was stronger than fidelity among his own men and observed that amid civil wars he was not safe, he preferred to hand over both the entire treasury and himself rather than to die honorably and prove his fidelity to his prince.
§12
They are accustomed to make a show of zeal for peace so that all things may be received more gently. Tacitus: “A few days after the Kalends of January, letters were brought from Belgica from Pompeius Propinquus, the procurator: the legions of Upper Germany, having broken their reverence for the military oath, demanded another emperor and permitted the Senate and Roman People the decision of choosing him, so that the sedition might be received more gently.” We have seen the rebellions of France, the Low Countries, and Bohemia; nothing could have been said or done more gentle in appearance, more artfully colored, or more disguised. They said that they loved their kings, obeyed them in all things, acted against hidden enemies, and wished the royal majesty to be defended by all. “For king and law,” they inscribed upon their standards. Yet Caesar displayed nothing other than the safety of the state, nor did Pompey display anything else. And Cato deservedly reproaches the soldiers:
You were Pompey’s army, Not Rome’s.
§13
The shameless boldness of many has also raised itself up to stir peoples by inserting themselves into a favored and illustrious family. Smerdis pretended that he was the son of Cyrus and the brother of Cambyses whom Cambyses had killed, and, because of the hatred for Cambyses, who ruled most cruelly, he was eagerly received, until, when the fraud had been discovered, he was killed by seven nobles. Herodotus, book I.
In the same manner, the man whom they pretended to be the son of Antiochus Epiphanes was assisted by the cities. He grew so powerful that he killed Demetrius Soter; and if, corrupted by the kindness of fortune, he had not acted with excessive intemperance, he could have held the kingdom for a long time. Archelaus, Andriscus, Anarhates, Alexander, Herophilus, Chamaces, the false Neros, Scriboniani, Commodi, Frederici, Henrici, and Richardi practiced a similar kind of fraud. But men do not readily believe them unless a change is already desired. Thus these dangers hang over a state when its present condition is hated. Here also care must be taken that such men do not grow strong in power; for in this way they establish the belief more firmly, and those to whom that error is profitable maintain and defend it even knowingly and willingly.
§14
Some states have been so constituted that they do not easily admit civil disturbances, as among the Chinese. For the people cannot easily move itself, since it is oppressed by the immense power of the governors; nor can the mandarins who govern do so, for they are from the common people, and, in the second place, they lack military force. Third, they have ministers assigned by the king, and the military magistrates are subject to the civil. Our Jarric describes these things in the Indian Treasury, volume II, book 2:
“The third good that arises from this form of state is that civil wars and internal disturbances, which rise here and there, are wholly cut off and removed. For the king’s sons and brothers can stir up none while grasping at the kingdom. Although they are kept splendidly, nevertheless, in the place to which they are banished, it is unlawful for them to set a foot outside, under the appointed penalty of death, unless the king’s permission has been obtained—a permission that he will never give. In addition, they govern no affairs, but power has been entrusted to the mandarins alone; nor is it easy for the mandarins to stir up any disturbances. For those who are permanent and military are subject to the civil officials, while the latter hold power for only three years. Moreover, because they generally reach this summit of honors through learning and virtue, and since most are plebeian and humble, they cannot therefore rely upon the aid of friends or blood-relations; and if perhaps relatives by marriage pressed them or suggested loftier ambitions, it would be in vain. For mandarins are always appointed on foreign soil.
“Furthermore, they are so distinguished from one another that those who preside over military affairs do not involve themselves in political and civil affairs; those who care for the state have no care of the royal treasury; and the prefects of the treasury do not concern themselves with either civic or military affairs. Finally, because magistrates are not permitted to attach to themselves any ministers other than those whom the king assigns, no handle is thereby given to anyone for secret disturbances or the stirring up of civil wars.”
Nevertheless, just as that arrangement, now tested in China, is praised during a long peace, so in European, Asian, and African kingdoms it is altogether useless, indeed very pernicious. For when the state is constituted in this form, no man of any ability and prudence devotes himself to military service. Hence they are by no means safe by their own strength. A proof is that the Japanese, whose resources do not equal a hundredth part of those of the Chinese, assembled one hundred and fifty thousand men and attacked the kingdom. Although they were repulsed after suffering a defeat, nevertheless everyone sees how greatly the Chinese are held in contempt if one considers military affairs, since the lord of that island dared to attack so great a kingdom with a fleet and thought that he could possess it. This hope would be no less foolish and wicked than if the king of Britain trusted that by the strength of his islands—
—he could reduce all Europe, united under one king, into his power. The form of their state therefore renders the Chinese unwarlike; and if some one keen and able man rebelled with the aid of neighboring kings, he would easily seize or tear apart China. Thus one must not greatly praise a state that is composed of slaves and, as it were, women—certainly of men unwarlike and therefore more exposed to warlike nations.
§15
Other states have been so constituted either by their laws or by the custom of the people that at a slight impulse they are borne up and down, as was the kingdom of the Egyptians. Therefore the disposition of the people must be known; for some have been so disposed that they cannot and will not act without sedition. Trebellius Pollio attests concerning the Egyptians: “And this is familiar to the people of the Egyptians: as though furious and mad, they are led by every trifling matter to the greatest dangers of the state. Often, because salutations were neglected, a place in the baths was not yielded, meat and vegetables were withheld, slaves’ footwear was involved, and on account of other such things, they advanced through sedition all the way to the greatest danger of the state, so that armies were armed against them.
“Accordingly, in their accustomed madness, when on a certain day the servant of a certain governor who then ruled Alexandria had been beaten in military fashion because he said that his sandals were better than a soldier’s, the assembled multitude came in uncertainty to the house of the commander Aemilianus and pursued him with every instrument and fury of sedition. He was struck with stones and attacked with the sword; no weapon of sedition ceased. Therefore Aemilianus was compelled to assume the imperial power, since he knew that he must perish from every quarter.”
Meanwhile the Jews who lived around Cyrene, under a certain leader named Andrew, slaughtered Romans and Greeks alike. They ate their flesh, girded themselves with their intestines, smeared themselves with their blood, and clothed themselves in their skins. They sawed many in two from the crown of the head, threw many to the beasts, and also forced many to fight one another, so that as many as two hundred and twenty thousand men perished. In addition, in Egypt and Cyprus under the leadership of Artemion, a similar slaughter of the Cypriots was perpetrated, in which two hundred and forty thousand men were lost. From this it comes about that a Jew is not permitted to enter Cyprus. If one should perhaps be driven to the island by the force of a storm, he is killed. But the Jews were subdued both by others and especially by Lucius, whom Trajan had sent. A prince, therefore, ought to know the nature and morals of his people.