§1
The remedies are altogether of two kinds. Some are prophylactic: they remove the causes and preserve beforehand. Others are applied when affairs have already been disturbed, in the midst of their heat. Of the former kind are those things already said concerning right instruction; for if they are observed, tumults will not easily arise and can be quieted with little labor. For if the prince preserves his authority and power and consults the safety of his subjects, he will easily regulate a quiet state by laws. To this pertains the enumeration of seditions and of the causes of tumult, so that by considering them a prudent magistrate may render his city immune from those evils by which he has seen others perish. But since plots are laid even against the holiest and most just magistrates, either from the depraved nature of the people or from the vices of certain men, we must treat of guarding against them and restoring peace.
§2
The first and safest remedy is to meet the beginnings; for here plainly:
Medicine is prepared too late When evils have grown strong through long delays.
The first movements subside under modest remedies; when they have gathered impetus, they devastate everything. And it is established that it is easier to exclude pernicious things than to govern them, and not to admit them than to moderate them once admitted. Nevertheless, admitted things, when they are small at the beginning and have not yet placed themselves in undisturbed possession, readily allow themselves to be cut back. The reason why all things are easily corrected at the beginning is that the contagion has not seized many; next, the few who are the authors conduct everything timidly; many are ignorant of the causes and attach themselves through folly.
Thus, in the affair of Saint Paul, when the city of Ephesus was filled with confusion, most did not know for what cause they had assembled, yet they cried for two hours, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” How easily did the town clerk restrain such great movements? Acts 19:35: “Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is the worshiper of great Diana and of Jupiter’s offspring? Since, therefore, these things cannot be contradicted, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly. For you have brought forward these men, who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of your goddess. But if Demetrius and the craftsmen who are with him have a case against anyone, court days are held and there are proconsuls; let them accuse one another. If, however, you seek anything concerning another matter, it can be resolved in a lawful assembly.” If the magistrate had not met the affair at the beginning, it would have come to slaughter and plunder; then the mere investigation of questions and judgments would have hurled them into further evils.
Histories teach that very many seditions were suppressed at their beginning. For although many conspiracies were entered into and plots laid against individual emperors and kings, they were nevertheless removed from the midst only by the last of them; they therefore suppressed very many. The Spartans quieted a most dangerous sedition with a word. The Partheniae had established as their signal that they should throw mud into the middle of the forum to begin the tumult. When the ephors learned of it, they ordered it proclaimed by the herald: “Those of you who wish to remove mud from the forum, depart”; and thus the sedition was dispersed. Polyaenus IV. If they had begun to remove the mud, that tumult would have raged with the slaughter of the magistrates and the state.
§3
All tumults indeed must be treated immediately, but they must not immediately be met by an assault; for when resistance is made to an evil that cannot be conquered, it is provoked and rages farther. When the people is in motion and fury, measures that soothe it must be taken, and the people must be questioned gently. Thus it was done in the Roman secession. The counsel is no different in individual cases. Caesar, already supported by legions, secure through magistrates he had bought, pleasing to the people, and strong through his conspiracy with Pompey and Crassus, ought not to have been provoked; but he should have been permitted the powers which they could not take from him. Tiberius approached Sejanus cautiously and gradually. Nicolaus Utranus forbade anything to be done against Cosimo de’ Medici once he had already been strengthened. Thus, when a sedition burns with a great cause, or when it has been strengthened through delay, it must be attacked not by engines but by mines.
Seneca puts it beautifully. They say that a physician, when he had to treat the daughter of a king and could not do so without iron, while gently warming the swollen breast, applied a scalpel covered with a sponge. The girl would have resisted the remedy if it had been applied openly; because she did not anticipate it, she endured the pain—the woman who is healed secretly only when deceived. This must be done in a fresh sedition when men have, or seem to themselves to have, great causes for rioting. For the first onset of the plebs must be guarded against; presently—
—when it has subsided, individuals flee apart in fear, no one trusts another, and all are anxious for their safety.
§4
Yet in this matter nothing is more pernicious than through delay and negligence to give men time to compare counsels, strengthen themselves, gather auxiliaries, and—what contributes most to breaking their hope of pardon and is an impediment to quiet and peace—to commit offenses. For the farther they advance, the more gravely they transgress, because they injure others more in order to protect their own position. By this slowness, too, while they fight for altars and hearths, they are rendered bold, contemptuous of dangers, and altogether warlike; for this reason they cannot be compelled to their duty except by great expenditures and wars. Caesar warned that dangerous and great things must be done, not deliberated about; this must be said especially of seditions. Here assuredly that saying has a place: the swifter an onset is, the stronger it is. Hence in the Capitol, in the forum, in the very gathering of the people, seditious men were killed by the Romans. Courts did not sit against violence; the sword was drawn.
§5
Despair must never be cast upon rebels. He who hopes for nothing despairs of nothing and dares everything. He thinks anything preferable to perishing amid mockery and the insulting of enemies. Despair is always dangerous; for after a man has renounced safety, he seeks consolations for destruction and companions in death. Severity must therefore be used in such a manner that a hope which is not vain is shown to those who return to their senses. The Roman state was tossed by such savage wars because the defeated placed no protection in the mercy of the victor. They renewed the war in Africa, in Spain, at Pharsalus, and in Sicily because they preferred to drag out their life through unhappy wars rather than be slaughtered like sheep. They remembered the times of Marius and Sulla.
Alexander Severus overcame a conspiracy by kindness. Lampridius relates a witty history. When a certain Quintius Camillus, a most delicate senator of an ancient family, wished to rebel and aimed at tyranny, and when this had been reported to Alexander and immediately proved, Alexander summoned him to the palace and thanked him because, when good men declined it, he voluntarily undertook the care of the state that was to be imposed upon them. Then he proceeded to the Senate and called the man—who was afraid and wasted away by so great a corruption of conscience—a partner in the imperial power. He received him into the palace, admitted him to his table, and honored him with imperial ornaments better than those he himself used. And when an expedition against the barbarians was announced, he either urged him to go himself, if he wished, or to set out together with him. When Alexander made the journey on foot, he invited him to the labor; when Camillus held back after five miles, he ordered him to sit upon a horse; and when after two stages he was wearied even by the horse, he placed him in a carriage. When Camillus refused this too, whether from fear or shame—indeed, when he even abdicated the imperial power and was prepared to die—Alexander dismissed him; he commended him to the soldiers, by whom Alexander was singularly loved, and ordered him to go safely to his estates, where he lived for a long time.
In a similar manner the tyrant of Athens recalled his seditious friends. When the friends of Pisistratus had withdrawn from him, he came to them with his bedclothes. When they marveled, he said that he had come so that, if he persuaded them, he might bring them back, but if not, he might remain with them. Severus certainly acted more rightly than if he had raged against a most delicate man unused to labor. For dangers and fears, when the counsels and examples of others are added, arouse even cowards. Otho was soft and ruined by pleasures, yet he fought bravely and accomplished death by his own hand—not bravely indeed, but nevertheless obstinately, and showing what more he could do when so prepared to die. Even Sardanapalus, an example of luxury, did not fear the flame of his burning palace.
Men must therefore not be reduced to despair, even when unarmed. Weapons remain to the despoiled; and if those are lacking, fury will furnish weapons. But if the fury has cooled, others will be inflamed for vengeance. The speech of a Campanian citizen sufficiently demonstrates this, Livy XXVI, where he introduces Vibius Virius speaking thus:
“What sort of surrender do you think that will be, by which we once surrendered ourselves and all our possessions to the Romans in order to obtain aid against the Samnites? Has it already departed from your memory at what time and in what fortune we defected from the Roman people? Have you forgotten how, in the defection, we killed with torture and insult the garrison that could have been sent away; how often and with what hostility we broke out against those besieging us; how we attacked their camp; how we summoned Hannibal to crush them; and, as the most recent act, how we sent him from here to attack Rome? Come, on the other side, review the hostile things they have done against us, so that from this you may know what you are to hope.
“When a foreign enemy was in Italy, and Hannibal was the enemy, and all things blazed with war, they omitted all else, omitted Hannibal himself, and sent both consuls and two consular armies to attack Capua. For a second year they keep us encircled and shut in and waste us with famine, themselves undergoing with us the utmost dangers and most grievous labors; often slaughtered around the rampart and trenches and nearly driven from their camp at the very end. But I omit these things. It is an old and customary matter to suffer labors and dangers in attacking an enemy city. This is the proof of execrable anger and hatred: Hannibal attacked their camp with immense forces of infantry and cavalry and captured part of it; they were not moved from the siege by so great a danger. He crossed the Volturnus and burned the Falernian territory; they were not called away by so great a disaster to their allies. He ordered hostile standards to be borne against the city of Rome itself; they despised even that storm hanging over them. He crossed the Anio and placed his camp three miles from the city; at last he approached its very walls and gates; he showed that he would take Rome from them unless they abandoned Capua—and they did not abandon it.
“If you go toward the lairs and cubs of wild beasts stirred by a blind onset of rage, you turn them aside to bring aid to their own. Rome besieged, wives and children whose wailing was almost heard even here, altars, hearths, temples of the gods, and the tombs of their ancestors profaned and violated did not turn the Romans away from Capua. So great is their eagerness to exact punishment, so great their thirst to drink our blood. And perhaps not unjustly: we too would have done the same if fortune had been given us. Therefore, since it seemed otherwise to the immortal gods, although I ought not indeed to refuse death, while I am free and master of myself I can escape by death the tortures and insults that the enemy hopes for, and by a death not only honorable but also gentle. I shall not see Appius Claudius and Quintus Fulvius supported by insolence in victory; nor shall I be dragged in chains through the city of Rome as a spectacle in a triumph, then in prison or bound to a stake, my back torn by rods, to submit my neck to the Roman axe. Nor shall I see my country destroyed and burned, nor Campanian mothers, virgins, and freeborn boys carried off for violation. They overthrew Alba, from which they themselves had sprung, from its foundations, so that neither the stock nor the memory of their origins might remain; much less can I believe that they will spare Capua, toward which they are more hostile than toward Carthage. Therefore, for those of you whose resolve it is to yield to fate before they see these many and great bitter things, a banquet has today been furnished and prepared at my house.”
Twenty-seven senators accompanied him and took poison after the banquet. How greatly could Rome have profited if it had conducted its wars more mildly! They rebelled for so long because they feared tortures.
§6
Furthermore, just as a sedition sometimes arises from fortuitous events, so at times it is quieted by them.
The annals of Tacitus furnish an example. Chance softened a threatening night that was about to break forth into crime. For the moon was seen to grow dim in a clear sky. The soldier, ignorant of the reason, accepted this as an omen of present affairs and compared the failure of the star to his own labors, supposing that the things they pursued would turn out prosperously if brilliance and splendor were restored to the goddess. Therefore they made a din with sounding bronze and a harmony of trumpets and horns, rejoicing or grieving as it became brighter or darker. After clouds arose and obstructed it from view, and it was believed to have been buried in darkness, as minds once struck by superstition are changeable, they lamented that eternal labor was portended for them and that the gods abhorred their crimes. If such events obtain a true or skillful interpreter, they effect the greatest change in the rude crowd; if a malicious one, they customarily make it more savage.
§7
It is customary, if the authors of seditions cannot be removed, to win them over by gifts and soften them with the hope of pardon. For if they hope for pardon and trust that they will obtain it by a lawful way, they will easily turn their sails backward and be reconciled to the state. If, moreover, they abandon those whom they have stirred up, all things will soon become tranquil; for when the wind has fallen, the sea lies placid. Nor is it contrary to the authority of the prince to strengthen public peace by the safety of one wicked man, to remove civil wars, and, so that many good men may be preserved, to preserve even some wicked men. No one treats this wound more easily than the man who made it.
Nevertheless, I would not wish this to be done in the manner in which the sophist spoke. For when the law was that whoever had moved a sedition should die and whoever had quieted one should receive a reward, and the man who stirred it up had himself quieted it, a question arose concerning the reward. The sophist replied: “Which comes first, to move a sedition or to quiet it?” When the answer was “to move it,” he said: “Let him first die, therefore, and then, if it can be done, let him receive the reward.” Far from the state be public fraud, by which the fellowship of the human race is altogether dissolved. Let the prince remember that it is much more beautiful and praiseworthy to make a friend from an enemy than to kill an enemy. The people drove Cimon into exile, but, when the necessity of the state pressed, it acted to have him recalled. Gracchus prevented Scipio from being led to prison, although before this they had lived as bitter enemies.
But at this point the man who has been injured must be warned to propose and maintain a reconciliation truly, not feignedly. Antigonus treacherously punished with death the man persuaded by his promises. Leucon likewise postponed his vengeance but exacted it grievously. Certain trierarchs were attempting treason. He ordered them to remain quiet, lest, if the enemy conquered, it should seem that a calumny had been constructed against them; meanwhile he adorned their relatives with dignities and prefectures, but when the war was ended he killed them all. Agathocles killed all the suspected men, up to five hundred, at a banquet, after he himself had played the flute and danced at the banquet. Polyaenus V.
§8
If the authors of sedition can be recalled to duty neither because they are elated by prosperity nor through fear of punishments, occasions of discord and distrust sought among them disarm the seditious. It is exceedingly customary to render the enemy’s commanders suspect. But it is a strong protection, especially when the rioters are governed by the command of several nobles or of the people. How easily did the envoys of the Tarquins incline noble young men, even the Brutuses themselves, toward the kings? Livy I: “A king was a human being, from whom one could obtain something wherever there was need of right or of injury; there was room for favor and for a benefit; he could both become angry and forgive, and knew the distinction between friend and enemy. The laws were a deaf and inexorable thing, more salutary and better for the needy than for the powerful; they had no relaxation or pardon if one exceeded the limit. Amid so many human errors, it was dangerous to live by innocence alone.”
This is more readily done in sedition than in war, for many reasons. Behold how great a crime: not merely to act so that kings might be brought back upon equal conditions, but, when a reward was offered from the other side, to betray everything. Behold: in that very year they brought themselves to betray their liberated country, their father the liberator, the consulship that had arisen from the Junian house, the senators, and the plebs to a king who was formerly proud and was then a hostile exile. Rebels of other nations will do the same if there is a reward for the work. If they do not, nevertheless they can be rendered mutually suspect, when some nourish rivalries against others and exercise private enmities; when some come to honors through canvassing, others are rejected, and merits are not weighed, but wealth or affinities. Hence come the offenses and indignation of many men against kings.
§9
When subjects seek from a magistrate something not unjust or wicked by nature, it must be granted in such a manner that he does not appear compelled by force or fear—or else one must yield altogether; for it is better to escape the blow than to be wounded. When the Roman Senate had granted the people the power of creating military tribunes, all those created were patricians; the bitterness of the plebs showed itself not so much in the execution as in maintaining the right. But if a king or Senate, when it sees some one man employing largesse, wishes to allure the people by its own beneficence, it will also render the attempt of others ineffectual. For several men can give many more things, and give them from the public treasury, than private persons can. Xenophon yielded his horse to a common soldier who murmured against him and ran up a mountain on foot. His fellow soldiers, indignant and stirred by the danger, urged Xenophon to preserve himself for the duties of a commander and execrated the detractor.
§10
Those who desire revolution must frequently be confronted with this fact: the men whom they themselves place over affairs are not better than the others. If this is done suitably and opportunely, a bridle can easily be imposed upon all seditions. For since the most loathsome men stir up sedition, they can hardly be judged worthy of command. There is a remarkable example in Livy XXVI:
“Thence he turned his course to Capua, which was luxuriating in long prosperity and the indulgence of fortune. Above all amid all its corruptions, Pacuvius Calavius, himself a noble and popular man but one who had obtained wealth by evil arts, had rendered the Senate subject both to himself and to the plebs by the license of a plebs exercising liberty without measure. When he happened to hold the highest magistracy in the year in which affairs had gone badly at Lake Trasimene, he judged that the plebs, long hostile to the Senate, would dare a great crime when an opportunity for revolution arose: if Hannibal came to that place with his victorious army, it would slaughter the Senate and deliver Capua to the Carthaginians. Although a wicked man, he was not utterly ruined; since he preferred to rule over an unharmed rather than an overthrown state and believed that none could remain unharmed when deprived of public counsel, he devised a plan by which he might both preserve the Senate and render it subject to himself and the plebs.
“Having summoned the Senate, he first declared that a plan of defection from the Romans would in no way be pleasing to him unless it were necessary—for he had children by a daughter of Appius Claudius and had given his daughter to Livius in marriage at Rome. Yet a much greater and more fearful danger was at hand: the plebs did not aim to abolish the Senate from the city by defection, but wished by slaughtering the Senate to deliver the state, emptied of it, to Hannibal and the Carthaginians. He could free them from this danger if they entrusted themselves to him and, forgetting their contests in the state, trusted him. When all, overcome by fear, entrusted themselves to him, he said: ‘I shall shut you in the senate-house and, as though I too were a participant in the contemplated crime, shall find a way for your safety by approving counsels which I would oppose in vain. Receive from me whatever pledge you yourselves wish for this.’
“When a pledge had been given, he went out, ordered the senate-house to be closed, and left a guard in the vestibule so that no one might approach the senate-house without his order or be able to leave it. Then, having summoned the people to an assembly, he said: ‘Campanians, the power you have often desired of exacting punishment from a wicked and detestable Senate you now possess safely and freely—not by storming the houses of individuals in a tumult, houses which they protect by guards of clients and slaves, with the greatest danger to yourselves. Accept them all, shut up in the senate-house, alone and unarmed. Do nothing hurriedly or perhaps rashly. I shall give you the right of pronouncing sentence concerning the life of each, so that each may pay the penalties he has deserved. But before all things you ought so to indulge your anger that you regard your safety and advantage as more important than anger. For you hate these senators, as I think, but you do not wish to have no Senate at all. Assuredly either a king—which must be abominated—or a Senate, which is the sole counsel of a free city, must be possessed. Therefore two things must be done by you at once: you must both remove the old Senate and elect a new one. I shall order the senators to be summoned individually, and I shall consult you concerning the life of each; what you determine concerning each will be done. But before punishment is exacted from the guilty man, you will elect into his place a brave and active man as a new senator.’
“Then he sat down and, when the names had been covered in an urn, ordered the man whose name first fell out by lot to be summoned and brought out from the senate-house. When the name was heard, each man cried that he was evil and wicked and worthy of punishment. Then Pacuvius said: ‘I see what sentence has been given concerning this man. He is cast out as evil and wicked; choose a good and just senator.’ At first there was silence, from want of a better man to be proposed. Then, when someone, laying aside shame, named somebody, at once a much greater clamor arose: some said they did not know him; others objected now his disgraceful acts, now his lowliness and sordid poverty, or his shameful craft or manner of gain. This happened much more with the second and third senator, so that it appeared that the men repented of the senator himself, but lacked anyone to substitute in his place. For there was no purpose in naming the same men, who had been named for nothing other than to hear reproaches; and all the others were much more lowly and obscure than those who first occurred to their memory.”
And indeed, among so many seditions and disturbances of all nations, this must especially be noted: the constitution of the state has very rarely been made better. For if those who rise against the magistrates and citizens are conquered, the ancient form of the state remains; if they conquer, since they are worse than the conquered, they administer it worse. This is the ordinary disaster of the seditious; and I appeal most freely to all history. Whoever considers the outcomes will pronounce it an oracle.