examples, I will add one of less remark; but it shall
hold some proportion with them, and this shall suffice
me for all others of this kind, which is Hiero the
Siracusan. He of a private man, became Prince
of Siracusa, nor knew he any other ayd of fortune than
the occasion: for the Siracusans being oppress’d,
made choyce of him for their Captain, whereupon he
deserv’d to be made their Prince: and he
was of such vertue even in his private fortune, that
he who writes of him, sayes, he wanted nothing of
reigning, but a Kingdom; this man extinguish’d
all the old soldiery, ordaind the new; left the old
allyances, entertained new; and as he had friendship,
and soldiers that were his own, upon that ground he
was able to build any edifice; so that he indured
much trouble in gaining, and suffered but little in
maintaining.
CHAP. VII
Of new Principalities, gotten by fortune, and other
mens forces.
They who by fortune only become Princes of private
men, with small pains attain to it, but have much
ado to maintain themselves in it; and find no difficulty
at all in the way, because they are carried thither
with wings: but all the difficulties arise there,
after they are plac’d in them. And of such
sort are those who have an estate given them for money,
by the favor of some one that grants it them:
as it befell many in Greece, in the cities of Jonia,
and Hellespont; where divers Princes were made by
Darius, as well for his own safety as his glory; as
also them that were made Emperors; who from private
men by corrupting the soldiers, attaind to the Empire.
These subsist meerly upon the will, and fortune of
those that have advanced them; which are two voluble
and unsteady things; and they neither know how, nor
are able to continue in that dignity: they know
not how, because unless it be a man of great understanding
and vertue, it is not probable that he who hath always
liv’d a private life, can know how to command:
neither are they able, because they have not any forces
that can be friendly or faithful to them. Moreover
those States that suddenly fall into a mans hands,
as all other things in nature that spring and grow
quickly, cannot well have taken root, nor have made
their correspondencies so firm, but that the first
storm that takes them, ruines them; in case these,
who (as it is said) are thus on a sudden clambred
up to be Princes, are not of that worth and vertue
as to know how to prepare themselves to maintain that
which chance hath cast into their bosoms, and can afterwards
lay those foundations, which others have cast before
they were Princes. For the one and the other
of these wayes about the attaining to be a Prince,
by Vertue, or by Fortune, I will alledge you two examples
which have been in the dayes of our memory. These
were Francis Sforza, and Caesar Borgia; Francis by
just means and with a great deal of vertue, of a private
man got to be Duke of Millan; and that which with
Copyrights
Machiavelli, Volume I from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
