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BOOK V

Chapter i

Is the sedition of citizens the first seed-bed of alterations in every constitution of the commonwealth?

HE subject I am now approaching is great and difficult, namely that, out of Aristotle, I describe the lucky and unlucky stars and destinies of republics. Indeed this task now requires the acumen of a Caesar, the long life of a Nestor, since nobody except the learned, nobody but the experience could write about such great matters. Therefore I hesitate, altogether doubtful whether I should break off here or continue onward, especially since that that wonderful year is at hand, for which the the Sibyl foretold I know not what strange destinies for republics. May Christ bring it about that we rule the stars as if we were wise, that we auspiciously govern their aspects. We confess our guilt, acknowledge what is Yours. We lament, forgive what is ours. For nought is Yours but salvation, nought is ours but sin. But what am I to do in this ecstasy and, as it were, this dream? As I hope, the Sibyl’s leaves have long ago been scattered, in many matters she has been found to be false. Oh would that this year she be proven much so! But come, however it may be, I shall join my author in spinning the globes of republics, I shall describe their revolutions and movements, and diligently set forth the causes of their destruction and preservation. For just as the consideration of both sickness and health pertains to the physician, so the student of politics should examine not only what the plagues of the commonwealth are, but what are its remedies and, as it were, its antidotes. Therefore, after Aristotle has laid the foundations of the republic in Book I, its mistakes in Book II, and after he has divided the commonwealth into its forms in Book III, and demonstrated its differentiating features, powers, properties, and parts in Book IV, it now follows that he should more accurately declair how it is preserved, and also in what way it collapses and dies.
2. So much for the material and intention of this chapter. The question now is, whether sedition of citizens is the first seedbed of alterations in every constitution of the commonwealth. Aristotle rightly begins this Book, in which he strives to dispute about the causes tending to overturn and preserve republics, with sedition, as if with a deadly thunderbolt. For what knocks the loftiest walls of commonwealth off their very foundations quicker than sedition? What assaults the monuments of antiquity and the endowments of peace more furiously than sedition? Time eats things away, but sedition comes equipped with more teeth than time. For it snatches, devours, consumes everything. It is never conceived without the ruin of its mother, never born without the shipwreck of the commonwealth. Oh how much is sedition therefore to be shunned! But that I may only dispute about this thing here, the Philosopher sagely proves that this has been, now is, and ever will be the original plague and first seedbed of alterations in every constitution of the commonwealth. His arguments are from its definition, its causes, and from examples, to which others are added by the interpreters, namely from a similarity and a contrariety, as will be evident in the sequel. The definition is insinuated, not openly demonstrated, namely that sedition, insolent and proud, belongs to citizens who value themselves unreasonably high, a deviation from the just and from their civil lot. This is ambitious faction and factious ambition, thanks to which bad citizens ardently aim at revolution, and are gripped by nothing more than by discord, and once set afire by thi,s neither high Carthage nor haughty Greece flourishes. Savage, frowning Fortune always employs it for spinning her balls and her wheels, and empires, nations and kingdoms are nothing other than Fortune’s juggling-balls, if virtue does not receive her strength from the scepter. If, therefore, nothing sets the wheel spinning on high than sedition, sedition is the first bane and plague of the commonwealth.
3. Speaking generally its causes (from which is drawn the second argument in the text) are four: liberty, wealth, birth and honor. Beneath these lurks the poison of sedition, glowing, as it were, like a coal beneath the ashes. For when free citizens strive to make themselves equal with the well-to-do in all ways, the well-to-do in all ways with the nobility, those noble by birth in all ways with the the leading and honorable men of the commonwealth, immediately a division of parts emerges, by which, like a spark cast into straw, the hearts of bad citizens are inflamed for a change of the present constitution. For the wealthy are high-stomached towards the multitude, men noble by birth do not prosperous wealthy cobblers, princes (born or created) are jealous and suspicious lest they lose their kingdom. Hence contention, hence innovation, hence the overthrow of the commonwealth, the original cause of which is (as is now agreed) the sedition arising from these causes. The third argument takes its force from examples, which briefly shows not only the method but also the action of its alteration: its method, for if the haughty rich are more powerful, the constitution of the commonwealth is turned to oligarchy, if the free and the poor conquer, to democrac; if the faction of a single man prevail, to tyranny; if the fury of the people win out, to anarchy and confusion. The examples in the text which bespeak this tragedy and the act of this conversion are three. The first is that of Lysander, who attempted to destroy the kingship at Sparta. The second is of Pausanias the king, who tried to abolish the government of the ephors. The third is that of certain men inhabiting a city in Sicily named Dyrrachium, who created a senate in place of a tribune of the people and tribal prefects (whom the Greeks call phylarchs), and again at length changed that into a very large council of judges. Thus sedition juggles Fortune’s balls, thus it overturns kingdoms. So what in the commonwealth is deadlier than the estran gement of citizens? The arguments attached here by the interpreters are from a similarity and a contrariety. From the similarity, for, just as in the human body a colic agony sometimes tears at the bowels, so intestine sedition disrupts the sinews and body of the commonwealth, and, as lightning shatters bone without damaging flesh, so sedition shakes the foundations of the commonwealth under a cloak of virtue. The contrary of sedition is the union and concord of citizens, which all the philosophers affirm to be the prime cause of preservation. Sedition, therefore, can most appropriately be defined as the prime cause of destruction and overthrow. To these can be added arguments from authority and the outcome of events. From authority, for Plato says that nothing is better for the commonwealth than union, nothing more harmful than the division and sedition of its citizens. From the outcome of events, for what throws open the gates of the commonwealth to the enemy quicker than sedition?
4. With the question now having been discussed, it remains for me to run briefly and lucidly through the sequel in the text. When it was demonstrated that flames of sedition are most fanned in the commonwealth’s bowels by this, that citizens rendered purblind over their personal goods measure justice and equality by their own blind opinion rather than by upright reason and judgment, at this point the Philosopher makes a distinction about both, which is there is one justice and fairness according to numerical arithmetic, which deals with the proportion of a thing, and another geometrical arithmetic according to magnitude, which consists in the proportion of reason and dignity. An example of that is obvious in this, that just as 2 is surpassed by 3 by 1, so 1 is surpassed by 2 in unity. The example of thisis placed in a double proportion of things, since in it equality is not reckoned pound for pound (as they say,) but an accounting of merit and virtue is had. But why all this? Surely because men’s minds are bedazzled by blind self-love in the defining of the fair and the just, whence the fans of sedition often arise among good citizens. For since some people simply grasp at equality in all thing on the grounds of their liberty, others because of their wealth, others because of their honor, and yet others because of their birth and blood, dreaming that for this reason it is just for them to be equals in all respects, because they take precedence in one or two of these things, bile must burn in the stomach, war in the commonwealth. For the wealthy are indignant if paupers become their equals, free men wax angry if they live under the wealthy in oppression, and who does not know that Pompey suffers no equals? Thus everything is turned topsy-turvy, and, stricken by the battering-rams of Mars, the temple of peace suffers a collapse. With these things posited, three additions follow in the text. The first is that all over the world popular administration and the power of the few are encountered more frequently than the other forms of the commonwealth. The reason is that there are more poor than rich, and there are more rich than there earnest men. The second is that democracy and oligarchy are the most exposed to the gales of sedition. The reason is that the highest will always struggle against the lowest, the lowest against the highest. Therefore, as above, he praises the form of administration mixed from them both. The final point is that popular government is stronger and longer-lasting than the power of the few. He gives as reasons both because it is less agitated by seditions since it has nobody against whom it must strive, and because it is more like the polity, which is the safest of them all, as the Philosopher has previously defined it.

THE DISTINCTION OF THE QUESTION

5. OBJECTION Whatever is the cause of preservation is not the primary seedbed of destruction, sedition is a cause of the preservation of the commonwealth, therefore it is not the seedbed of its destruction. The minor premise is proven, since, when the citizens are drawn apart into various factions, administration will be more careful and more safe: more careful, since the magistrates will conduct themselves more prudently when faction is ablaze; more safe, since, when their enemy is known, they will protect themselves against that enemy more stoutly. This was once proven in the Roman empire, in which the tribunes of the people were factiously opposing themselves to the nobles, and they made the senate much more prudent.
RESPONSE Machiavelli’s opinion that faction, the daughter of sedition, is to be nourished in the commonwealth, is pernicious. Therefore I respond that in this way the commonwealth is made neither more cautious nor more protected from danger. For what security can there be when your roof is afire? And what else is faction than a blazing torch on the roof of the commonwealth. I confess, if you wish, that in this way the magistrate is made more cautious but mark me, it is miserable that the magistrate should live in the city with the citizen like a general with an enemy during tumultuous time of war. For the commonwealth is a place of security and a kingdom of peace, but what tranquillity exists in the commonwealth if citizens become the mortal foe of their kings? What you say about the Roman empire hurts you and your cause, for Rome’s beauty withered right at the time when the sedition of her tribunes flourished.
OBJECTION Perpetual peace consumes the commonwealth, therefore sedition, the opposite of peace, is sometimes necessary. Which being granted, it follows that sedition is not always a cause of the commonwealth’s overthrow. The antecedent is proven, since the enduring peace of one age engenders so great a multitude and mass of men that, harmed by a deficiency of necessary things, the commonwealth is often compelled to engage in an unjust war by which its superfluous parts may be cut back
RESPONSE Peace is rarely converted into a plague, but, granting this and conceding that peace devours peace when the multitude is increased, yet there is no need for sedition, by which the whole government collapses sooner than its parts. Further, the commonwealth is never to be compelled to an unjust war so that its citizens may be lopped off. For there are six hundred better ways to free it of this burden, for example if the burdensome throng be sent to the aid of other princes, who are unjustly harmed by the insults and injuries of others. Thus Rome often freed itself of famine and plague.
OBJECTION Men who are very devoted to virtue can very justly create sedition, therefore sedition is not per se inimical and contrary to civil good. The antecedent is obvious in the text of this chapter. The reasoning follows, since good men undertake nothing contrary to the common good.
6. RESPONSE Most justly (says the Philosopher) do good men stir up seditions, but they do so very little. This is as if he were to say that, if men who excel in virtue should be debarred from their due honors, with greater fairness they could employ violence. And yet they refuse to do this, since, as good men, they know that it is a great crime to stir up sedition unless the republic should be endangered, being oppressed by tyranny. But then this is called just vengeance, not unjust sedition.
OBJECTION Sedition sometimes consults for the common good, therefore it is not the first cause and seedbed of alterations in the republic. The antecedent is proven, since tyrants often fall by the power and hand of sedition, which is a welcome thing for the commonwealth.
RESPONSE That which removes a tyrant is a revolution, not a sedition. For sedition is only a viper in the bowels of the commonwealth, but a tyranny is not a commonwealth, nor a civil and just administration, as I have proved before.
OBJECTION War is permissible, therefore sedition is permissible. The antecedent is clear, since war is the cause of peace. The argument holds, because sedition is subsumed under war, as a lesser evil is subsumed to a greater.
RESPONSE For a war to be permissible, four things are requisite, first that it be waged by the authority of both the prince and the commonwealth; then that it be just; third, that it be publicly declared; and finally that it be intended for the public and common good. If this is your meaning, I concede your antecedent; but if you are speaking universally, I absolutely deny it. For war in general is impermissible. Furthermore, the reasoning does not hang together, both since in sedition the aforesaid conditions are absent, and since in its own right sedition is no less of an evil than war, and indeed is worse in this respect, that it never aims at peace: should peace follow, this is a chance rather than a choice, since it is not intended by Marius and Cinna, that is, by seditious men.

THE CHAPTER’S DOUBTFUL QUESTION
Is a sedition to be raised rather than having the commonwealth be devastated by a tyrant?

7. A rabid, raging thing is sedition, and wounded by its bite the commonwealth quickly wastes away. But should it become toothless, as some men would have it, there is oftentimes no harm in its bark. For, as barking often drives thieves away from houses, so tyrants and oppressors of republics are deterred from their evil intentions by sedition’s clamor. But, lest I seem to be contending against myself and saying contrary things in the same breath, I maintain that the word “sedition” can sometimes be taken in a gentler sense, not for the aroused fury of citizens in a bad cause, but for the ardor of the best of men who aim to defend the common good. Hence it is, in my opinion, that the Philosopher says in the text that men preeminent in virtue can most justly set seditions in motion. If they can, then surely they can when Rome languishes, weakened by Caesar’s madness. Tarquin the Proud was deposed from his throne, Caesar was killed in the senate, and the philosophically inclined approve both deeds. Therefore sedition is to be tolerated lest Phalaris, Nero and Dionysius should reign. There are three reasons why mighty powerful tyrants (who cannot otherwise be pacified) may be killed by sedition’s sword: the first is that they govern contrary to nature, the second is that they do not consult for the common good, the third is that, not unlike vultures, they make the people their prey, tearing and rending it. Their government is therefore unjust, and violent is their administration of the commonwealth, and if this cannot be rendered wholesome by law and counsel ,then it should be curbed by the onslaught of mutiny. Rightly did Hippocrates say, We must take risks in risky matters. For it is in the civil body as it is in the human one, in the human body a short, sharp pain is more to be tolerated than the death of the whole, therefore in the civil body a brief and brutal tragedy is to be supported rather than suffer the downfall and destruction of the commonwealth. This medicine is bitter, but is necessary then, when the cankers of tyranny have spread so far abroad that they can be cured by no other method than the knife. Yet it must be marked that this cure for the failing republic does not depend on the dizziness of the people or the disposition of any single man, but must be applied to the wounds of the commonwealth by the consultation of physicians, that is, by the hand of wise men. Then it deserves to be called a sedation, not a sedition, a certain stirring-up of the humors, not a distraction and distinction of citizens. Sedition, taken in this sense, is to be tolerated lest cruel Nero strum his lyre and sing his Fall of Troy while Rome burns, that is, lest the incurable monster tyranny destroy the commonwealth with its Persian fury.
8. OBJECTION Whatever tears apart and subverts the commonwealth is in no wise tolerable, sedition (as is proven before in many places) tears apart and subverts the commonwealth, therefore sedition is in no wise tolerable. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated above that tyrants are not to be removed by sedition.
RESPONSE As I have said, in this context the word “sedition” is taken more mildly for a mutiny of prudent citizens in the case of tyranny and oppression alone, and this when the wounds of the republic can in no other way be cured. And, thus understood, tyranny does not tear the commonwealth apart, but gathers it together; it does not subvert the commonwealth, but preserves it. Then too, I acknowledge that I have demonstrated above that tyrants born to the scepter are not to be deposed by the steel of sedition, since in them resides the sacred title of king. But if they be simply tyrants, and are monsters of nature against the nation, let them deservedly feel the mutiny of their parts and suffer the censure of good citizens.
OBJECTION It is impermissible to take up arms against princes, therefore it is impermissible to take up arms against princes and depose them from their kingdoms. Which being granted, it appears that sedition can in no way be tolerated. Furthermore, since sedition cannot occur without great peril, it follows that it is in no way to be stirred up in the commonwealth.
RESPONSE It is true that arms are not to be taken up against princes, but tyrants are deemed to be rapacious vultures, not true princes. I respond to the other part of the argument that, just as a grave bodily infirmity should not go neglected, since sometimes it cannot be cured without risk to life, thus the cankers of the commonwealth are not to be ignored, since often they cannot be healed without great loss to the republic, so this indeed is rather to be tolerated rather than to have a shipwreck of the whole ensue.

Chapter ii

Is there any propensity of human nature towards the change of republics?

RISTOTLE follows an excellent order in this most useful Book. For, having made a division into two primary parts, first about the causes of overthrowing and preserving the republic in which many men predominate, and second about the causes of overthrowing and preserving the republic in which one man predominates. But inasmuch as (as the proverb says) evils which are understood are more readily avoided, first he graphically and comprehensively describes the tares and, as it were, the black seeds of sedition, then the causes and foundations of preservation. Therefore, after first showing in general that the departure of the people from the just and the fair is the source and beginning of every alteration and, as it were, retrograde movement in the commonwealth, now he gives other causes of sedition, but still general ones. Among these, he advances three in particular for our consideration, namely the disposition of those who set sedition in motion, the things about which they quarrel and contend, and the ways and means by which they accomplish their most pernicious work. But inasmuch as in this chapter Aristotle is very brief, I shall summarily sketch each of these. Therefore the disposition of those who nurse the sparks of sedition is a prideful self-love and a thirsty lust for domination, which so embitter the minds of bad citizens with a boredom with their lot and condition that they immediately estrange themselves from common society. For once this dog-like appetite invades the bellies of depraved citizens, it cannot be said for sure how great flames of bile it conceives, and if you add to these the tinder of envy, it is a no wonder if the lofty roofs of the commonwealth catch fire, if lofty and glorious governments come tumbling down. Thus the first cause of sedition is this elevation of the mind, thanks to which mortals bewitched with self-love (as once was Narcissus) wretchedly die. For these are the men who, born aloft with Icarus, rashly flying, as it were, in the chariot of the sun, idly dream they can do anything, though they can do nothing, dream that everything is owed them, though nothing is at all is owed.
2. Now our second consideration is of the things for which factious citizensfoment seditions. In the text four things are enumerated: profit, honor, and their opposites, namely loss and shame, and if you add to these the neglect of magistrates, an abject mind, and dissimilarity of morals, you will make up the seven things of which the Philosopher speaks at the end of this chapter. What shall I say about each of them in their due order, when each and every one of us perceives that a movement of civil fear is hidden under them? For what is profit but tinder? What is honor but a crop of contention? Rightly the poet wrote of the accursed hunger for gold, to which answers that other line, they delved in the bowels of the earth for incitements to evil. Yet thus intones the citizenry, profit has a good odor, no matter what its source, and if they do not obtain it they go a-rioting and contrive conspiracies. I have often defined honor as ambition’s bait, by which we are caught unawares and smothered. This axiom denied, Caesar turned his arms against his nation. Loss and shame are stimulants to the mind’s heat and incandescence. Very few men, or rather no men at all, tolerate with equanimity the loss of their resources or their being held in contempt. Finally, what provokes citizens to sedition more than the magistrate’s unconcern? What brings the magistrate into contempt and hatred more than his downcast mind and lack of resemblance to his citizens in matters of morals?
3. But more about these things in their proper places. So now I come to the question, which is whether there is any propensity of human nature towards the change of republics. Beyond doubt, it is not without reason that here the Philosopher urges that we must particularly observe how citizens are affected by nature, since sedition builds its nest in nature’s bosom, and from her often begets her savage chicks. For even if universal nature does not err, yet a monster is called the mistake of a particular nature. Likewise, even if Man, subject to reason’s government by force of nature, requires a just and tranquil administration of the republic, within him nevertheless is a movement and a certain propensity towards novelty, whence often arises the dizziness of great commonwealths, not without the great peril of those seeking it. That this proclivity towards change was conceived in nature’s womb is clear from this, that from the first fountains of the human race we have drunk reason’s infirmity, and this infirmity is indeed insolent and proud, and to it is joined an insatiable greed for new things. Hence that saying, the human mind is eager for novelty. And if this be true, who does not perceive that this appetite derives its strength from nature herself? Then too, just as all nature likes variety, so human nature takes its greatest delight in novelty. Therefore, as the former desires perpetual change and alteration in things, so the latter, never content with its lot, makes Fortune’s new balls and wheels to spin. For Man’s will is changeable, according to the saying of the poet, When at Rome, fickle, I love Tibur, and Rome when at Tibur. Also, when reason, which, as it were, looks out so the many lattices, of the body and sees external things, when the intellect (the light of the mind) is dulled by appetite, emotion, or sensation and is mostly blind, its necessary that we are usually affected in the same way as those servants of the intellect. And nothing pleases them but what is new, and therefore the manifold change in things that begets novelty is pleasing to them. I prove the same by examples. For what transformed Rome from a monarchy into an aristocracy when Tarquin was expelled? Was it not the nature of that warlike race? Among the Jews, what transformed an aristocracy into a kingdom, a kingdom into anarchy? Was it not their fickle and inconstant nature? Nero was excellently reared and educated by Seneca, yet turned his monarchy into a tyranny, only (as I think) because of his nature’s instinct and impulse. It is an old staying, Though you cast out nature with a pitchfork, she always returns. And, indeed, very mayn citizens are born for the change of republics, not their preservation, and these are most rarely called off by advice or punishments. Therefore that which Aristotle teaches and prescribes here is most useful, that we carefully weigh citizens’ morals and their propensities towards this evil. For this contagion of nature spreads the plague of sedition in every corner of the commonwealth. To which can be added that nature acquires this change-seeking infection from place, not otherwise than men sometimes acquire the plague from the air. Hence the Scythians and the Persians are said to have sucked in their barbarity from the climate in which they lived, and indeed it frequently happens that citizens’ nature follows the place in which the habitually live. For, just like a father, so the fatherland of their birth gives each thing its beginning and cause: so if place inclines their minds to a change in things, the nature of citizens is all the more to be curbed lest it directs their strength to the rabies of sedition.

THE DISTINCTION OF THE QUESTION

4. OBJECTION The general causes of sedition are touched upon in chapter i, therefore the Philosopher superfluously repeats them here, and likewise in chapter iii.
RESPONSE The reasoning does not hold, since they are discussed in diverse respects in these individual contexts. For in chapter i he relates them to their root and the original cause of alterations, in chapter ii he compares them with their opposites, and in chapter iii he demonstrates examples of them, together with other added causes of sedition.
OBJECTION Dissimilarity is a cause of preservation, therefore in this context it is wrongly assigned as a cause of sedition. The antecedent is clear in Book III, where Aristotle proves that the commonwealth needs to be constructed out of dissimilar elements.
RESPONSE Here dissimilarity is understood as being a dissimilarity of morals and wills, but in Book III as a dissimilarity of offices and abilities. The former weakens the commonwealth, the latter preserves it.
OBJECTION The goods of fortune are necessary for the political constitution, therefore profit, which is a fruit of fortune, is necessary. Which being granted, it follows that profit is not a cause of sedition.
RESPONSE The Philosopher maintains that it is not profit, but rather the insatiable thirst for and pursuit of wealth that is a cause of alteration in the commonwealth. The same is to be said of honor, liberty, breeding, and other things.

OBJECTIONS TO THE QUESTION

5. OBJECTION Sedition wholly destroys human nature (which is a participant in society), in Man there is therefore no natural disposition towards it. The antecedent is clear, since nothing more distracts Man from the government of reason than discord, nothing confounds his humanity more than sedition. The argument is proven, since, should human nature tend toward sedition, it would be wholly hostile towards itself.
RESPONSE I have said before that this monster of sedition is not engendered in the whole and universal nature of all men, but in the particular disposition of some. Here I mean those who follow emotion more than reason, sensation more than intellect. To these may also be referred those born under the aspect of Saturn, Mars, and other stars that incline men towards sedition.
OBJECTION Those who live according to appetite or sensation live the life of beasts, not men, as Aristotle attests in the final chapter of Book X of the Ethics. Therefore human nature does not seem prone to change, since human nature is located in intelligence and wisdom, as he teaches there, not in sense or appetite.
RESPONSE Human nature is considered as it exists either absolutely (which rarely appears) or as it is, infirm and imperfect, which commonly occurs in many ways, and thus mind conjoined with appetite and sense comprise human nature, which in its corrupt condition often takes wonderful delight in the change of things.

Chapter iii

Are the causes of sedition rightly assigned?

UST as in painting Helen Zeuxis once assembled ten fair individual parts of girls on a single canvass, so that the excellent and divine work of his pencil would shine forth the more, so Aristotle now assembles in one place the members of sedition that he has treated separately, so that the horrid appearance of that monster, described by the art of such a great man, would inspire minds to the pursuit of peace. He therefore itemizes thirteen causes of sedition here, which, linked together by their tendrils, form a Charybdis of republics. To mention these in order, they are injury, avarice, honor, excellence, fear, contempt, excess of property, fortune, discord, idleness, small occasions, dissimilarity, and place. Injury (that I may dispute about each in its individual place) is an unjust wounding of the citizen, which (as the Philosopher attests) nobody suffers save unwillingly. Therefore those who feel its stings, either by a loss and damage of their name or private property, are easily set against those who unjustly harm them. For human nature is impatient of loss, and cannot digest the power of injury. So if Roman Apii deal insultingly with the people, we must beware lest they make a democracy out of an aristocracy, since the anchor is not fixed securely in that commonwealth in which the multitude is hurt by an injury. Therefore those desirous of hamstringing sedition are obliged to divert the minds and hands of the people from injuries and oppressons, for nothing drives it to faction more than injury, nothing scorches it more vehemently than oppression. Avarice, sedition’s second root, is an unquenchable thirst and appetite for things by which, as it were, feverish magistrates are sordidly drawn to Fortune’s every dunghill. Princes befouled by the stain of all the vices are every adjudged unworthy of rule by their citizens. Hence melted gold choked Crassus, Hellish torment tortured Tantalus, a donkey’s reputation wounded Midas. Why say more? That commonwealth is not safe in which avarice reigns. True honor is the reward of happiness, but false honor is nothing other than Fortune’s laughter and the empty roaring of the multitude. Many men are so puffed up by its wind that they hold everybody else in contempt in comparison with themselves. Very few are the men who take no delight in its voice and reputation, and virtually none are the men who shun honor’s shadow, for men are straightway incited to madness and frenzy if they are compelled to withdraw from it (as they say) by even the breadth of a fingernail. Therefore nothing in the republic stages a more brutal scene than the unjust possession of honor, nothing produces greater grief than the the dread of disgrace and ignominy. Look around yourself, if you please, and observe the stadiums of governments. Oh what tragedies ambition for honor has provoked!
2. Excellence, which lays the fourth egg of sedition, is the preeminent or distinguished power held in the commonwealth by one man or a few, in comparison with other men, whence (as says the philosopher) monarchy or dynastic oligarchy is wont to be born. This omnipotence (if I may so call it) was once prosecuted with such a deadly hatred by the Argives, the Athenians, Romans, Carthaginians, that they degraded Hercules, Themistocles, Scipio and Hannibal, those very excellent men, by the ostracism and the potsherd of exiles. But, as the Philosopher urges, this evil should be put down and curbed lest, as Cicero says, it become habitual and gather strength. Fear exists as sedition’s fifth cause, which in this context is defined as the expectation of future evil. Those who have committed injuries, stricken by this emotion, become fans of sedition lest they pay the penalty or themselves suffer according to the law of retaliation. Thus in antiquity the nobles on the island of Rhodes, who had cast their yoke on the people, took up seditious arms against the people, fearing lest they be justly afflicted. It is an old saying, hatred is fear’s shadow, and sedition grow out of hatred, therefore out of fear. The sixth cause of sedition is contempt, which can be defined as a certain supercilious scorn and disdain of citizens, who think themselves no less deserving those who sit in the citadel of the commonwealth. Human nature loathes being marked witht his black mark, since, being free, it will sooner suffer death than contempt. Carthage, that proud city, was destroyed because of the contempt in which it held a single ambassador. Thebes, Megara, Syracuse, once most ample cities, were broken by contempt (as the Philosopher teaches here) and fell. Growth occupies the seventh place, a monstrous and excessive increase of wealth, which inspires the seditious to seek gold not otherwise than hunger impels lions to seek prey. Wherefore, just as the body ought to grow according to proportion, sothat its partsmay have concinnity and harmony, thus, if the citizens in the commonwealth are to live in harmony, a mean should be observed in the accumulation of wealth and power. The eighth torch of sedition is Fortune, which is defined here as an uncertain, hidden cause of calamity. Once the Tarentines, Argives and Athenians experienced this to their peril, as the Philosopher teaches here, when the extinction of their nobles proved a calamity not only for themselves but also for their cities. Assuredly Fortune is a blind mistress of human affairs, who playfully turned to dust — I almost said to nothingness — the empires of the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and now almost the Romans as well. I name blind Fortune as a cause, not because anything comes to pass without the providence of God, Who sees the rise and falls of emperors, because this is the unknown reason why Alexanders are destroyed by poison, that is, why monarchies and their scepters are destroyed by hidden means. Therefore Fortune is a certain cause of change if you consider human ignorance, but in no wise is she, if you consider divine providence.
3. The Philosopher adds a ninth cause of sedition, namely discord, which is the invidious contention of citizens over slight matters. This sometimes brings it about that democracies, in which there are many well-to-do citizens, change into oligarchies or powers of the few. For the wealthy take it amiss that paupers are made their equals in liberty of government. To this can be referred shame, which is the indignity of magistrates when tailors, cobblers, and dregs of the populace are promoted to magistracies by lot rather than judgment, as at Heraea and other free commonwealths in which, not the mental endowments of the monkey, but his filth and his buttocks are visible from his lofty seat in office, as drunken Piso once comported himself in the senate, and as today (alas) all too many men comport themselves at all times and places. Now follows the tenth cause of change, namely carelessness and neglect, which resides in the magistrate’s boredom with his labor in office and his idleness, the magistrate not keeping his vigilant eye on the supremacy of the scepter. In this manner it comes about that foxes and men with minds estranged from the republic insinuate themselves into the bowels of the republic, and, having gained control of it, rip and rend it. It is for this reason, as I think, that the Israelites hoped for a king, because their judges and priests performed their office negligently, and certainly it appears that Solomon, plunged in a life of excessive leisure, changed his kingship into a tyranny, his worship of God into a superstition. Rightly the poet says, leisure has destroyed kings, and also prosperous cities. Scipio Nasica did not wish Carthage to be destroyed, lest the Roman people live in idleness, and indeed that commonwealth cannot flourish in which a cow is purchased at less cost than a fish. Claudius Nero was wont to say that Capua was Hannibal’s Cannae, which is to say his destruction, since there he allowed the soldiers under his command to be rendered effeminate by whores, baths, and other delights of the kind. Here, of a surety, it is just and timely for me to accuse us Christians, for thanks to our very own idleness and carelessness, once-great empires of religion and piety lie as extinguished lights. Where is Rhodes and its Christian lords? Where, I say, are those who, consecrated to a holy war, were supposed to defend the walls of Zion and Jerusalem, which is to say Christ’s Church, against the Persians and the Turks? Oh Christ, we have rent Your garment and divided it amongst ourselves!
4. Small occasions take the eleventh place among the causes of sedition, which are things that seem of little importance at first sight, but if they are handled idly or negligently, they call the commonwealth into great peril and danger. For as a ship is stranded by many grains of sand, as an ox is choked by a multitude of gnats, so great empires are sometimes overthrown by the neglect of small and trivial things. Wisely did Hippocrates say, Scorn nothing, for nothing is small. Pustules often break out into a severe disease, things of little weight grow into a great danger. Therefore we are not to delay in uprooting the trifling little occasions of crime, For delay gives strength, delay ferments the tender grapes, and makes mighty crops out of what was a shoot. At the outset it seemed a small thing to the Romans to institute tribunes of the people, but, when license was created this liberty is said to have darkened the light of the consuls. In the text the Philosopher says this selfsame thing, using the example of the citizens of Ambracia, who first admitted men of small estate into the citadels of their commonwealth: once this way was opened, many butchers of no estate at all seized the government. The penultimate cause of sedition is dissimilarity of manners, which in this context is described as an affection and disposition that differs between citizens that were created such and ones that were born such. This certainly is a very great cause of change among the rest. For, just as nothing infects the human body quicker than a mixture of pestilent vapors with innate humors, so nothing corrupts the commonwealth more quickly than the admission of alien men, in which lurks a contagion and a poison. The Philosopher proves this by many examples, of which I shall say more in the doubtful question of this chapter. Now follows the final cause, namely place, which is understood not so much in terms of situation as of heavenly influence. For thus place has a great power to change manners. Hence nations under Mars are said to be warlike, those beneath Mercury fickle, those beneath Jupiter fortunate, and those beneath other virtues of heaven are affected with other manners and ways. In the situation of place there is also an impulse and a tinder by which we are often incited towards change. Thus, by Aristotle’s testimony, threre were more democratically-inclined living in the Piraeus than were those who dwelt in the city. Thrown into confusion by its huge size, Babylon witnessed its downfall and ruin.

THE DISTINCTION OF THE QUESTION

 

5. OBJECTION There are far more causes of sedition than the ones enumerated here, therefore this disputation about causes is inaccurately framed. The antecedent is proven by the introduction of fraud, oppression, loose living, famine, religion, and many similar things, which seem to wound citizens’ minds no less than those itemized here by the Philosopher.
RESPONSE Fraud and oppression are the means of sedition, not its material, as the Philosopher subsequently teaches. But the others you enumerate can be reduced and related to the former ones, as loose living to the idleness and carelessness of the magistrate, and religion to excellence, of which I have said enough just now.
OBJECTION Many of the things reckoned as causes of sedition have no savor of evil,, therefore they cannot be considered causes of such great evil. The antecedent is clear about honor, excellence, liberty , and place, all of which have a necessary use in the commonwealth. The reasoning holds, since, just as bad fruit cannot grow from a good root, so a monstrous result (such as is sedition) cannot grow from a good cause.
RESPONSE Honor, excellence, liberty and place are posited as causes of alterations, not because they are evil per se, but because within them is contained a bait for evil, towards which factious citizens strive and are carried. They say that envy is the companion of virtue, and fear is usually the guardian of honor. The best of things sometimes have evil shadows, not because there is corruption in the things themselves, but because there is a pernicious affection in bad men, which turn the goods of fortune to a bad use. Therefore, just as the sun draws a fragrant odor from a rose, but an evil stench from a dunghill, so honor, virtue and liberty offer an occasion of preserving the republic to earnest, good men, but an occasion for its overthrow to bad and factious ones. Therefore I respond that neither is bad fruit engendered from a good root, nor an evil effect from a good cause per se and in its own right, yet it can happen that by chance and happenstance a monster takes its origin from nature herself.
OBJECTION Place is a principle of preservation, therefore it is no cause of sedition. The antecedent is proven by the authority of Porphyry and Aristotle, who attribute the preservation of things to place itself.
RESPONSE Anything you care to name is safe in its place, according to the philosophers, but here place is called a cause of sedition either because sometimes it is subjected to the influences of evil stars, or because a place girt by sea and land arms the seditious.
OBJECTION In the Physics time is called the cause of the corruption and change in all things, time is not enumerated among here among the causes of changes, therefore all causes are not assigned.
RESPONSE Time can be referred to small occasions, for a smaller cause of sedition lurks in time than in place. Wherefore, albeit time is a dimension of motion in which all mortal things see a period and end of their existence, yet the cause is not in time, which flows, but in the material itself, which contains within itself a cause of corruption.

THE CHAPTER’S DOUBTFUL QUESTION
Is the admission of foreigners into the republic dangerous?

6. It is perilous to receive snakes into your bosom and strangers into your city. For just as the former bite when revived by the heat, so the latter, endowed with liberty, destroy the commonwealth. Hence the statement in the text, Those who receive lodgers or immigrants into the commonwealth, nearly all of them, or at assuredly most of them, are troubled by seditions. But that I might prove this by arguments, let us bear in mind that any nation has its own manners and ceremonies. If, therefore,the people of one nation should migrate to another commonwealth, we say that they have changed their home, but not their character. As Horace said, they who go running across the ocean change their climate, but not their character. This being granted, at least in my opinion a great risk ensues that, with foreigners taken in, ancient manners and laws may be changed into new and foreign ones, and what begets sedition quickly than a change of laws and manners? So what is more dangerous than the reception of strangers into the commonwealth? Furthermore, why has nature taught like to consort with like, if she were to bring men with alien morals into the commonwealth? Nature does not intend that sheep consort with wolves, prudence does not intend that citizens consort with foreigners. For philosophy urges this, that contraries cannot coexist in the same place. And for the greatest part strangers are hostile to the citizens with whom they associate. Add to this that what locusts are to a crop, such are newcomers to the commonwealth. For as the former devastate and consume the grain of the crops, so the latter devour the fruit of the commonwealth, for even if they are branches of the same plant, yet they do not drink the wholesome sap from the root, but rather poison, infected by which the entire plant finally dies. I hold my silence about domestic examples, and will very briefly explain those in Aristotle. The Achaeans together with the citizens of Troezen once colonized the right noble city of Sybaris, but after they grew to a large number they banished the Troezenians from Sybaris, whence (as the Philosopher says) the “Sybaritic crime” was engendered. The citizens of Sybaris did the same thing at Thurii against those who had taken them in with kindness, newcomers plotted against the citizens of Byzantium but failed, having been defeated in battle. At Antissa the citizens who admitted exiles from Chios were at length obliged to eject them by arms. The citizens of Apollonia, who lived on the Black Sea, were troubled by the sedition of foreigners. To their own harm, the Syracusans received seditious settlers. The citizens of Amphipolis, having taken in Chalcidian colonists, were driven from their ancestral home. But why am I lingering over these external examples? Did not immigrants wound God’s People like briars and thorns? Surely Solomon fell into idolatry because of foreign women. In my opinion the Spaniards were not unjust in expelling the seditious Jews from their territories. I come no closer to home, but pray Christ that our crowd of foreigners not become a great cloud over commonwealth.
7. OBJECTION God’s Word and virtue command us to receive strangers into the commonwealth, therefore it is iniquitous to forbid this thing. The antecedent is clear from many passages in Scripture where it is expressly commanded that we be hospitable, and who does not know that Abraham and his brother Lot gave hospitality to angels, thinking them to be strangers? What virtue commands is likewise manifest, since the light of liberality and magnificence shines most greatly in the reception of strangers, as all the philosophers teach.
RESPONSE Far be it from me to teach here that hospitality’s doors are to be shut, I think this is to be done least of all. Therefore this is what I shall urge, that foreigners should have no share of senate, judgment or government, and that their number and strength should not swell immoderately. Yet if they have abandoned their nation for piety’s sake or for some other honorable reason, and come to the commonwealth of another nation under compulsion, I hope they will be received honorably, and be treated with every office of kindness. For heaven is for the Lord of heaven, but He granted the earth to the sons of men.
OBJECTION Sometimes commonwealths can enter justly and advisedly into leagues of affinity, so that, joined by blood, they might be stronger, as the Romans united with the Sabines, the Gauls with the Franks, ourselves with the Normans. It is absurd to deny a share to these, therefore it is possible for strangers to be admitted to a share of the commonwealth.
RESPONSE The union of great empires should be most rare, for it is very dangerous. But if it should sometime occur, then I deny that the people who are taken in are foreigners. For the joining of blood confers the freedom of the commonwealth. For, just like a shoot engrafted on a plant of another kind, so a people adopted into the commonwealth of another nation acquires the nature of a part.

Chapter iv

Is a faction of the nobility the greatest plague in the commonwealth?

N the opinion of that most erudite man Donatus, three other causes of sedition are given by Aristotle in this chapter. But, with all due respect to such a great man, I believe that the eleventh cause cited above (as which Aristotle posits small occasions) is being demonstrated here in greater detail. For thus says the Philosopher: Seditions arise not because of small matters, but out of small ones. For men fall out and foment seditions about great things. This is as if he were to say that small matters are not causes of sedition as long as they want strength and increase. But, lest my discourse ramble on, this chapter is divided into two parts: in the first, he shows that sedition of the nobility is the most to be feared, but the quickest to be cured; in the second, that violence and fraud are like the right and left hands of sedition. From the first, I raise this question, whether a faction of the nobility is the greatest plague in the commonwealth. It is scarcely a doubtful thing about which I am now speaking, but inasmuch as the monsters of our time defend this paradox, that factions between the highest and leading men are to be encouraged, I think I shall be doing something worthwhile if here, along with Aristotle, I show in a few words that dissension among the peerage is the ruin of commonwealths. And to make my beginning from a definition, what else is sedition of nobles but (if I may thus speak) a paralysis and dissolution of the entire commonwealth? For, just when the most important sinews are ill-affected, the individual parts of the entire body quake, so when the leading men are divided among themselves it is necessary that all the citizens be pulled apart into various factions. For the sheep follow their shepherds, the multitude follows its leaders and nobles. If the heads are mad, it is not strange for the remaining parts of the body to be instruments of their fury. Aristotle proves this by many and copious examples. The first of these concerns two young men of Syracuse, both performing a magistracy, between whom strife arose over a love-matter. For in the absence of the one, the other seduced his darling. The first man, returning, seduced the other’s wife in return, and both in their rage sounded the bugle and fomented sedition; the people were in a frenzy, the city perished. Wherefore (says the Philosopher) when such offenses arise, caution is to be applied, and the discords of the powerful are to be resolved with speed. In the text he adds a reason, that the sedition of nobles drag the entire commonwealth, contaminated by the contagions of their evils, into the same offense, and what is this but what I am now teaching? Aristotle means that the sedition of noblemen is the tomb of the commonwealth, and I mean the very same thing. He hopes that even the slightest discords between them be removed with haste, and I greatly hope the same. For, just as a small affection in the heart of an animate being produces a great alteration in the rest of its members, so the smallest contention in the highest men (who are, as it were, the heart of the commonwealth) begets the greatest sedition between citizens.
2. A number of other examples are produced by the the Philosopher to make this point, and since they are clearer than daylight in the text and I am now striving for brevity, I pass they by. Yet I urge aspiring statesmen to read them through, so that medicines may be applied to the cankers of our own times. For in these examples, if I am not mistaken, he makes the insinuation that there are two causes of sedition among noblemen: false prophecy and loose living. Oh how many noblemen run risks, deceived by false prophecies! How many, following the example of Paris, bring Helen’s torches into the commonwealth! Tarquin’s mad love created sedition, and Antony’s wantonness was a great sorrow for Cleopatra and for Egypt. And no wonder, for blind wantonness is a weapon of madness. From these examples it is now clear that dissent among nobles is like the lightning-bolts of the gods, by which the commonwealth is of a sudden wasted, if they be not quenched. If you seek further reasons, thus I teach it by points. Noblemen are pillars of the commonwealth, therefore, should they be sundered by seditions, it is necessary for the entire edifice to collapse, Again, great and distinguished gentlemen have great wealth and power, therefore they do not become seditious without the commonwealth suffering great loss and danger. Finally, the union of noblemen in virtue is the preservation of the commonwealth, therefore their distraction is its downfall and convulsion. But I come back to the Philosopher’s text, in which I perceive an explanation of the two causes which he has previously offered. These are excellence and dissimilarity of manners: by examples he relates how the former brings about great and frequent alterations in the power of the few, in democracy, and in the polity; the latter brings about alterations in oligarchy only when the rich and the poor are put on the same footing, and no means exist by which they can be reconciled. There are many examples of the former, which suggest that changes sometimes come about thanks to the envious, or thanks to those seeking an insolent victory. For example, the senate put its faith in Themistocles when he offered the interpretation that the Athenians’ ships were their wooden walls, and hence the city prepared for a naval war, the people fought and won the day, Themistocles was created a general, and sedition arose among the upper class. To this other can be added the examples of the citizens of Syracuse, Chalcis, and Ambracia, which follow in the text.
3. The final part of this chapter is devoted, not to the causes of change, but to its methods. The methods are in fact two, force and fraud: force turns the axles and wheels of commonwealth by sword and fire, fraud by schemes. Force occurs when one part succumbs to another, fraud when, deceived from the beginning, we are subsequently compelled to tolerate a government, or when, deceived from the beginning and subsequently persuaded, we do the same. An example of the former method is that of the forty men who possessed the republic of the Athenians. As the annals record, when the Spartans had declared war, these men cleverly spread a lie and and convinced the people that the King of Persia intended to supply money to subsidize the war they had undertaken against the Spartans. The naive people believed the lie, and (as history tells us) paid grave penalties for their gullibility. For, deceived by this fraud, it long lived under the tyranny of those sophists. These hands of sedition need to be cut off, for the truth is simple, and lions and foxes flee from it. Violence is contrary to nature, and fraudulence works harm more cruelly than violence: the lion’s blow (in which there is violence) makes us cautious, but the snakebite in which fraud is concealed renders us more careless. Both are evil, but the latter is worse than the former. Both are the tomb of the commonwealth, for the means of sedition are in both.

THE DISTINCTION OF THE QUESTION

 

4. OBJECTION Previously sedition of the nobility was permitted rather than have the commonwealth destroyed: therefore here it is ill-defended that sedition of the nobility is the greatest plague of the commonwealth.
RESPONSE This reasoning is easily countered, for there approval seems to be given, not to sedition, properly speaking, but to the suppression of felons and a certain sedation of madness.
OBJECTION The madness of the multitude is a greater evil than the sedition of the nobility, therefore the sedition of the nobility is not the greatest plague of the commonwealth. The antecedent is proven, since nobles defer to the rule of reason quicker than does the barbarous, insane multitude, and since distinguished and eminent men possess greater use of reason, and the throng of the people, no otherwise than a beast and (as it says in the proverb) a many-headed hydra, is always in a fury.
RESPONSE Dispersed force is weak, united force is violent: the multitude possesses a dispersed and distracted violence, for it is usually at odds with itself, and therefore sedition of the nobility is called a greater evil than the fury of the people, not only because it has a more united force, but also because it possesses wealth and greater power, and also armed malice.

OBJECTIONS TO THE SECOND PART OF THE CHAPTER

5. OBJECTION Force is permissible according to the law of nature, therefore it is not an instrument of sedition, which is contrary to nature. The antecedent is proven, since according to the law of nature it is permissible to repel force by force.
RESPONSE Force is permissible according to the law of nature, but not simply and absolutely, but only when force and assault are unjustly employed against us. Therefore this reasoning does not follow, since force is sometimes said to be inimical to nature, sometimes friendly to it.
OBJECTION Stratagems and sophistries are permissible, therefore fraud is permissible. Which being granted, it follows that fraud is not sedition’s companion and instrument. The antecedent is clear earlier in the Politics. The reasoning holds, since otherwise it would be an instrument of contrary things.
RESPONSE The fox’s fur and the lion’s hide, that is, fraud and fury, should not be joined together in any well-regulated republic. Therefore I respond to your reasoning by denying everything, since, even of stratagems and sophistries are permissible, fraud is still not admitted. For only deception resides in them, not evil deceit. Furthermore, it is not absurd for the same instruments to be adapted to contradictory things, as it is regarding the goods of fortune, which exist as instruments both of good and bad men.

THE CHAPTER’S DOUBTFUL QUESTION
Are wizards and their devotees justly to be visited with the penalty of death?

6. Among the stories about sedition included in the text, one is of a certain nobleman betrothed to a girl, who (forewarned by I know not what portent) consulted diviners and did not appear at his wedding. The girl’s kinsman, regarding this disgrace as an insult to themselves, replaced his offerings with some holy items and then killed this devotee of diviners for being a sacrilegious man. The Philosopher does not criticize their deed, whence I conjecture that in a certain sense he approved it. Hence I ask whether wizards and their devotees to be visited with the penalty of death. In a few words I have shown who wizards are in Book IV, chapter xiv. They are blaspheming and sacrilegious men, who cast in God’s lap that which is God’s own, namely they most criminally claim to know the future of everything. Everywhere these gentleman boast that they can predict horoscope-destines, portents fatal for commonwealths, and secrets marvelous to all, and indeed, furnished with their household demons they do many strange things, but nothing at all marvelous. Slight-of-hand artists often cheat the eye, but diviners often deceive the mind. Simon the Mage, they say, appeared to fly aloft by his own powers, but when Peter prayed this blasphemer took a fall, and breathed out his life with the people looking on. May God bring it about that in these days we do not join the pagans in fleeing from Christ’s true oracles to Delphic prophecy, from the tablets of salvation to the dreams and lies of wizards! But I become forgetful of myself and am lengthier than I ought to be. So I thus prove the thing at hand thus. Those who betray princes are worthy of capital punishment, therefore wizards and their devotees are to be visited with a greater punishment, if such were possible. The reasoning holds, for they are impelled by a kind of force to regard themselves, not as mortal, but as God Himself, and most falsely lie that they are acting in His name. For hence they fast, pray, invoke the godhead, protect themselves with magical signs of safety, and practice other ceremonies. But to what end? Surely that they may feloniously deceive the simple and the ignorant. Another argument is from the testimony of Scripture, which not only forbids us to turn to them, but even condemns to capital punishment those who do so. Finally, I prove the same from the good of the commonwealth. It is useful and wholesome for the authors of sedition to be removed by capital punishment, wizards and their devotees are authors of sedition, therefore wizards and devotees of sedition are to be removed by capital punishment. The assumption of this syllogism is agreed, since wizards, lying about alterations of republics and the fates of great princes, throw the state of the administration into confusion, distract citizens’ minds, and finally exhaust, as it were, the vital spirits of the commonwealth, as occurred under Irene and Constantine in Greece, and under Henry VI and Edward IV in England.
7. OBJECTION Those who do useful things for the republic should not be removed by capital punishment, wizards and their devotees do useful things for the republic, therefore they should not be removed by capital punishment. The minor premise is agreed, for these interpreters of the Fates predict many things which it is in the republic’s interest to know. Hence among us the prophecies of Merlin and Bacon were once regarded as oracles.
RESPONSE It must be admitted that they predict many true and wonderful things, but since they invent more false and dangerous ones, and since their method of pronouncement is abominable, it is better to depend on divine providence alone than to admit their detestable science. About Merlin and Bacon I say nothing, for many men call them mages rather than magicians. Bacon was learned, but Merlin a dreamer.
OBJECTION God’s prophet Moses appears to have been instructed in this art, therefore those who use it are not to be visited with the penalty of death The antecedent is clear, since he is said to have been learned in every art of the Egyptians. The reasoning holds, since there was nothing deserving of capital punishment among the Prophets.
RESPONSE Moses was not instructed in a marvelous art, as are wizards, but, guided by the finger of God, performed miracles as God’s prophet. He was instructed in every science of the Egyptians, but not in the same manner. For they learned much from the Devil, but he learned everything from God. Therefore the examples of Moses, Joseph and Daniel are of no avail to wizards, since these men, inspired by God’s spirit, gave out oracles on the most hidden things of times, and prophesied about things to come.

Chapter v

Is democracy most exposed to change?

HIS is the second part of this chapter, in which the Philosopher treat in detail of the causes of changes in every kind of republic, and he makes his beginning with democracy or popular power, which (as Plutarch and Patricius write) is driven hither and thither by the wind and tide of fortune, like a rudderless skiff. For what is more changeable than the common run of mankind? What more fickle and inconstant is offered us? Rightly Vergil said, The uncertain crowd is split apart into contrary things. Wherefore it is no wonder if, together with the chameleon, that form of administration is most often changed, for within it, in addition to the fickleness of the people, every man lays claim on the most dignified place, and foists himself into the republic’s loftiest duties and offices. Hence the question, is democracy most exposed to change? And indeed I maintain that it is. The causes are the rashness of the common folk,, their contrary opinions, ignorance of affairs, and innate hatred of nobles, the flattery of their leaders, and the excessive power granted to these leaders. I shall run through these individually, but in imitation of Aristotle I shall take my first beginning from the last two of these, namely from the flattery of ingratiating leaders of the people and of the excessive power granted these men. These are the Philosopher’s words: Democracies are most greatly changed because of the petulance of ingratiating leaders of the people and empty-headed speakers, who in part heap the well-to-do with insults and make them come together and conspire, and in part incite the multitude against them as a class. Hence, with an assault made by both parties, if the people should be bested the constitution is very legitimately changed by the victors, as once happened on the islands of Cos and Rhodes, and also occurred at Heraclea,, Megara and Cumae. For in these five rather distinguished places, as the Philosopher teaches here, democracy was altered to other forms for the causes I have mentioned. But I have already described these demagogues and flatterers of the people. Therefore, if the people desires to govern, it must be on its guard against these men. For Cato wisely wrote, The flute sings sweetly as it deceives the bird. But the people is empty-headed and, bewitched by Amphion’s lyre, is quickly caught by fraud. For example, the people hated Cicero and adored Brutus and Cassius as if they were gods, but when sweet Antony delivered a speech in Caesar’s praise, the people waxed insane against his murderers.
2. But I come to the second cause of change, which is when unreasonably great authority is conceded to one or two of those leaders of the people, for example if he becomes dictator or commander of the army. For then those men, set afire, as it were, by the torch of ambition, extinguish the popular constitution and seize the government, turning it into cruelly tyranny. Thus Peisistratus at Athens, thus Thrasybulus and Cleon, and thus Dionysius, Hiero and Agathocles at Syracuse. Why say more? Thus Periander at Ambracia, Archilaus on Crete, Polycratus on the island of Samos, the decemvirs at Rome and six hundred others who transformed themselves from commanders of the army into masters of the commonwealth. So let the people beware to whom it entrusts itself. For it is an old saying, Nothing is more savage than a wretch when he rises on high. Fire on a building’s roof is rarely put out, and, having gained the kingdom, a Sulla is not restrained without the slaughter of the people. In the popular constitution, therefore, it is safe that great honors be given, but given so that all things are referred to popular consent.
3. The third cause of downfall in this form of administration is the wonderful empty-headedness and rashness of the people, which is swept to every object of change by blind emotion and, as it were, a raging onslaught. Thus the Athenian people wanted now its tribunes, now kings, now thirty ephors, now four hundred noblemen and senators to take its republic in hand and govern it. Therefore I conclude that, like the Euripus, this constitution is is driven by shifting currents. Why should I describe here the contrariety of opinions which makes the people vacillate? Certainly it is most rare for it to be self-consistent in its counsels, judgments, or votes and elections. Therefore it is impossible that the wolf would not invade them when they are thus squabbling. For the enemy is alert and seeks his opportunity, and there is no more opportune occasion than the internal strife of the people and the civil discord of the multitude. Who is so imprudent as not to perceive that the ignorance of affairs that resides in the people is a cause of change? For the multitude is ignorant and unschooled, and this folly often betrays the commonwealth. The common folk of Corinth most stupidly violated the Roman ambassadors by throwing dung at them, and Rome, offended by that deed, entirely demolished the most august city of Corinth, which if assuredly would not have done, had the people understood its duty towards the ambassadors. I say nothing here about the people of Psillis in Africa, who dwell near the Syrtes, who (as Sabellicus writes) declared war only on the South Wind. I write these things so that any reader may understand how great is the inexperience and ignorance of the people. Yet with my pen I am not taxing the entire multitude, but only its more boorish portion. For (as the Philosopher says) there is a part of the multitude that is more cultured, and a part that is more stupid, and if the government is entrusted to the latter, right quickly it runs upon the reefs.
4. These things being posited, I at length conclude that which is the hinge of this question, namely that, in comparison with other forms of the republic, democracy is most exposed to annihilation and change. For (as will become clear subsequently) in the other forms, virtue’s foundations are stronger, and wisdom’s protection greater, since in monarchy the virtue of a single man, in aristocracy the authority of the best men, in oligarchy the prudence of the wealthy, in the polity the counsel of the entire commonwealth does the governing. But, to make my conclusion along with Aristotle, the gist of this all is this, that in democracy the chief cause of change is the petulance of its tribunes, by which some noble or wealthy men are wounded and strive to convert and transform this constitution now into aristocracy, now into the power of the few, now into tyranny. But another cause is the gullibility of the people, when unreasonably great authority is conceded its demagogues and ingratiating leaders. The final cause is the multitude’s ambition, when its furor brakes forth, not into another species of constitution, but into a crueler degree of government, for example, when it elects magistrates not according to some property requirement, but according to its whim. The remedy for this thing, as the Philosopher teaches here, is for separate tribes rather than the entire people to create its superintendents and magistrates.

THE DISTINCTION OF THE QUESTION

5. OBJECTION The more violent something is, the more prone it is to annihilation and change, there are some administrations of the commonwealth which are more violent than democracy, therefore there are some administrations more prone to annihilation and change than is democracy. The major premise is the Philosopher’s in the Physics, where he teaches that nothing violent is long-lived. The minor is obvious, since there more violence and madness the tyranny in which there is a single Nero, than in oligarchy, in which many Neroes and tyrants preside.
RESPONSE First I say that tyranny and oligarchy, taken in this sense, are faults, not forms of the commonwealth. For Nero governed unfairly among the Romans, the Thirty Tyrants unjustly among the Athenians. But if this word “oligarchy” is understood more mildly, only as the power of the wealthy, I maintain that less violence and madness is employed in oligarchy than in democracy.
OBJECTION In democracy there is a union of the entire multitude, therefore of all the forms of government it is least subject to change. The reasoning holds, first, since the multitude is the greatest part of the commonwealth, and then since this united multitude can defend itself more stoutly, and repel the onslaught of its enemies.
RESPONSE This reasoning can be inverted. For even if the greatest part of the commonwealth is the multitude itself, yet since it is like a body without a head, like a herd without an overseer, its union does not tend towards a consensus of virtue, but towards a movement of sedition. Wherefore, just as a throng of untrained soldiers without an officer and without order often loses its victory, so in the absence of counsel the raw and undigested mass often loses the commonwealth.
OBJECTION A correct form of the republic is longer-lived than an incorrect one, democracy is a correct form of the republic whereas oligarchy is not, therefore democracy is longer-lived than oligarchy. The major and minor premises are Aristotle’s in Books III and IV of the Politics.
RESPONSE In this context, democracy is not being compared with the worst form of oligarchy, but what that power of the wealthy in which men live according to the laws. And thus, however democracy is understood, it is much more infirm and subject to the reefs of Fortune, for the abovementioned causes.
OBJECTION Oligarchy is a more eminent and illustrious constitution of the commonwealth than is popular power, therefore it is more exposed to reefs and changes. The reasoning holds, since Fortune often sports with great things, not with small.
RESPONSE The loftier constitutions and forms of the commonwealth are said to be more subject to Fortune, not because they fall more frequently, but because their downfalls are more conspicuous when they transpire, as the Philosopher says.

THE CHAPTER’S DOUBTFUL QUESTION
Is eloquence in popular leaders a cause why seditions occur less frequently?

6. Orpheus is said to have drawn trees and rocks behind him by the lyre of his eloquence. Therefore what Ovid once said about every art, I now say about eloquence, It softens manners, nor allows men to be savage. Iron-mailed soldiers came to that pleasant orator Antonius, sent by Marius and Cinna to kill him, but he so softened those savage and cruel butchers by the powers of his eloquence that they cast aside their weapons and shed tears. Indeed the power of eloquence is divine and wonderful, but (that I may keep strictly to the matter at hand) it has power in many men, but most of all those who deal with men’s iron and highly boorish ways. Hence it is that in this context the Philosopher says that in olden times democracies were frequently transformed into tyrannies, until leaders of the people became eloquent and fluent. But (he says) as the art of speaking became widespread, those who were skilled at speaking governed the people, and by their oratory often moderated it. In my estimation, this is as if he had said that power turned topsy-turvy has the greatest need of eloquent men, who by the power of their voice rather than that of Mars can tame the savagery of manners. And in democracy, because of the license of the people, the manners of the commonwealth are fluid, crude and dissolute. Therefore it will be much better if eloquent men preside in that constitution, who have the power to cut off the heads of contention and discord with the sharpness of their wit, not that of the sword. But that this should be so, and so that the republic should so be ordered, I prove thus. In war, the eloquence of the general is the reason that no contention blazes in the camp, therefore the eloquence of the popular leader is the reason that no sedition occurs in the city. Caesar, Themistocles and Xenophon, those thunderbolts of war and of eloquence, prove my antecedent, but Caesar and Demosthenes, those of lights of oratory, prove my reasoning. For with their most honeyed tongues the former soothed the throng of soldiers, the latter the fury of the people. Furthermore, what is eloquence other than wisdom speaking capaciously and tending towards the good of the commonwealth? Therefore, if the governors of the people be eloquent men, they will readily overcome the seditious. For there is a greater power in the voice of the eloquent man than in the hand of the warrior. Finally, just as the skilled physician rescues diseases and dangerous wounds from corruption, so the eloquent governor of the people saves the manners and cankers of the commonwealth from sedition. But, just as, lacking the help of medicine, prolonged diseases soon produce contagion, so the manners of the people soon tend to sedition without the help and support of eloquence. Therefore I conclude that eloquence in leaders of the the people is a cause for sedition not occurring in the commonwealth.
7. OBJECTION Eloquence most greatly flourished at Rome and Athens, but in those commonwealth the power belonged to aristocracy, not democracy, therefore it is seems that eloquence is not especially required in the popular constitution.
RESPONSE Even if orators existed as oracles of the republic in those commonwealths, yet it does not follow but that eloquence is more requisite for the popular power more than for that of optimates, for the reasons I have stated. Furthermore, in those constitutions too, eloquence most greatly pertains to matters of the people, not the senate, as can be seen in histories.
OBJECTION In the text Aristotle teaches that ingratiating leaders of the people were the reason why democracy was often transformed into tyranny, therefore it appears that in such men is requisite, not eloquence so they may speak pleasantly, but innocence of life.
RESPONSE Quintilian affirms that orators must be good men, and in this context Aristotle requires this selfsame thing. Here, therefore, I only call men eloquent who bend all their discourse to the pursuit of peace and virtue, and who draw the people to the good of the commonwealth.

Chapter vi

Are the causes of changes in oligarchy rightly defined?

OW I must treat the causes of change in oligarchy or the power of the wealthy, which are two in kind: injury inflicted on others, and discord among themselves. The injury exists when the few that possess the government oppress and, as it were, trample down the people which, bearing the yoke of tyranny with impatience, are eagerly swept along to gain vengeance. For although the nobility and prosperous, as it were, hold in their hand the treasure, laws, and government of the commonwealth, it is impossible that they can long resist the conspiring people. In this matter, the Roman plebeians serve as an example for us, who, harmed by the nobility, had its yapping puppies and tribunes, though the senate was unwilling. Discord, the second cause of change, occurs in two ways, as Aristotle here teaches, either when those have no share in government foment sedition, or when the rulers themselves become divided into factions. The first occurs when only a very few are admitted to government and the rest of the powerful burn with envy, and pursue a revolutionary course up to the point that they themselves are also placed in power, as has happened in Massilia, Istros, Heraclea and many other cities. In these many a bloody tragedy was enacted until brother succeeded brother, and son succeeded father in the possession of dignities, in despite of the laws of those cities. Hence at Istros an oligarchy was turned into a democracy, but at Heraclea government passed from a few powerful men to six hundred. The second, which is faction among the wealthy and the powerful, has happened in three ways, either of the fewness of those admitted to honor, or because of rivalry between those who keep most men under their power, or because of the ambition of those who, disliking their lot, strive to attain fortune’s highest rank. For, under this constitution, their fewness renders the people armed for sedition, the rivalry of noblemen wholly depletes their strength, and their ambition tends towards tyranny or monarchy, since their power is weak if their magistrates be few, and they cannot withstand the onslaught of the people. If they are contentious and divided amongst themselves, it is no wonder if they should see their collapse. If they are ambitious, it is necessary that they experience a dangerous downfall, since Fortune’s ladder is slippery and the road to honor steep. An example of the first is of the people at Cnidos which changed oligarchy to another form because of the fewness of its magistrates. An example of the second concerns Charicles, one of the thirty ephors of Athens, who created a sedition by flattering the people. Thus once acted Phrynichus, one of the Four Hundred, thus acted the guardians at Larissa (the so-called politophylaces). An example of the third is that of certain soldiers chosen by the citizens of Heraclea for their protection, who ambitiously took possession of the government. This also occurs when one man seeks to drive out another man or block him from his advantages, particularly concerning banquets and lawsuits, in which men’s feelings and prestige are most wounded.
2. Now follow other causes of change in this form of the republic, namely profusion of property, decay of morals, unjust election, and violent oppression. To these the Philosopher adds the self-doubt of noblemen, thanks to which they fear the people, and affluence of fortune, which begets hatred. To begin my discourse at the beginning, the prodigality or spendthrift habit of magistrates is like a bottomless whirlpool, since it is a limitless bane of the commonwealth, and since it infinitely consumes the good and infinitely flows to the bad. Hence guardians of the republic become thieves, oppressors, traitors and tyrants, for when they run through their own fortunes they fall upon those of other men. Thus the tyrant Dionysius, placing his reliance on a certain Hipparinus (who had sold off all his property) arrived at the highest pinnacle of tyranny. I cannot linger over this subject, otherwise here I would express the vehement wish that it not be permitted the nobility to sell off their property. Another cause is dissoluteness, called in the text the wantonness and intemperance of magistrates. Oh that such Sardanapaluses would not live, loving their whores more than their commonwealths! But I hasten onwards. Another cause is unfair election of magistrates, which is said to occur when men of the better sort are unjustly ejected from their civic duties, or when some men are created magistrates for life, like the Ninety once were at Elis, and the Thirty at Sparta, who transformed a government of the few into a form of tyranny. Hence arises another cause, namely violent oppression, which always bears in its hand the thunderbolts of sedition. For it is an old saying, where there is oppression (if the people is free), sedition follows. Wherefore many kings act incautiously and imprudently nowadays, who set their people to working in the mill, and treat their subjects no differently than slaves and chattel. From this flows yet another cause, namely the self-distrust of the nobility, who fear the people. For, the storm of war having arisen, they suspect the loyalty of their fellow-citizens, call in outsiders for aid, and rashly entrust themselves to these men. These traitors are overcome, are banished from their nation, and the form of the commonwealth is changed. As it says in Aristotle’s text, all these things came to pass at Corinth, Larissa, and many other places. The final cause of change is affluence of good fortune, by which lot the entire commonwealth is rendered happy. Hence, with things prospering and flowing as the citizens wish, each and every man strives to rule, and if they receive a rebuff, violence and chaos immediately ensue.
3. The causes having now been given, at the end of this chapter the Philosopher shows with a few words the forms in which the power of the wealthy is changed. These are either homogeneous (when only the degree is altered), or heterogeneous (when the species is altered). For example, changes are homogeneous if an oligarchy governed according to ways passes to another mode in which the wishes of the wealthy rather than the laws prevail, but homogeneous when the power of the wealthy shifts to a government of optimates or the people. These causes, these forms are the ones from which and into which this oligarchic sphere of the commonwealth is turned. But lest I become obscure in my effort to be brief, I think the principal heads of the things I have discussed should here be reviewed. So divide the causes of changing this form into the proper and the common. The commons are injuries inflicted upon the people and contention between the wealthy themselves. The proper are the profusion of wealth, the dissolution of morals, unfair election, violent oppression, self-doubt of their powers, and affluence of fortune, to which can be added flattery of the people and the dangerous condemnation of the wealthy, should they chance to offend. For sophistry is contained in the former, and a great stratagem in the latter, since when the well-to-do and great men have done atrocious harm to the republic, covered under a show of kindness to the nation they flatter and speak ingratiatingly to the people. For they are aware they cannot safely escape if they do not strive in this way to alter the form of the republic. Marius, that Roman noble, committed a crime, and when accused of a capital offense he came to his trial. Convicted of his crime, he flattered the people, the city fathers grew irate, and the people resisted. What followed? Tragedy and an unmhappy alteration of the commonwealth. Therefore under this constitution judgment will have to be exercised with care, condemnation must be done in a politic manner. For, just as wounded lions are all the more cruel in their savagery, so the nobility scarcely suffer and tolerate capital investigation. Therefore, should justice occasionally ordain them to be dispatched, mist must be employed lest the multitude catch sight of the falling star, since in them the people is wont to discern, not the heat of sedition, but the splendor of dignity; not their future danger, but their present brilliance.

THE DISTINCTION OF THE QUESTION

 

4. OBJECTION No causes of change are given here which do not fit other forms of the commonwealth as well, therefore they are ill-assigned by the Philosopher as proper and germane causes of this one. The antecedent is clear from an induction from the individual causes, for injury, discord, dissolution of morals, profusion of riches, and the others enumerated here destroy monarchy, aristocracy, and other constitutions of the republic no less than the power of the wealthy we are treating here.
RESPONSE The properties of those causes are discerned, not in things, but in persons and methods of action. For the things enumerated here are common plagues for other forms as well as the one treated here. But if you take persons and methods of action into consideration, they are transformed from common causes into proper and germane ones. For instance, unfair election and unjust oppression are causes of collapse in every republic, but if you refer them to the wealthy and the well-to-do, under this constitution they are proper causes of alteration. The reason is that only in this form are the wealthy magistrates, who most often turn their constitution into another form of the commonwealth because of dissolution of morals, profusion of riches, self-distrust of mind, flattery of the people, and similar means.
OBJECTION The affluence of fortune is a cause of preservation, therefore it is wrongly posited here as a cause of alteration. The antecedent is clear, since it is required by the Philosopher that the commonwealth prosper in every affluence of things.
RESPONSE The affluence of fortune is requisite for the splendor and need of the commonwealth, not for the pride and insolence of the citizen. Therefore it is said to be a cause here since the wealthy abuse it.
OBJECTION The condemnation of the seditious wealthy man preserves oligarchy, therefore it is not rightly accounted among the causes of the destruction of the same. The antecedent is agreed, since if the seditious magistrate is removed the republic is freed from fear.
RESPONSE The condemnation of a Crassus or some opulent man who harms the republic is here accounted a cause of sedition, not because the commonwealth is not then freed from fear when a monster is eliminated, but since the multitude is often said to be the appendage and goad of an eminent man, and if you do not mollify it before judging them, you will feel the flies issuing from his tomb. For sometimes noblemen live somewhat gently, but the dead often sting their enemies more sharply than the living.

THE CHAPTER’S DOUBTFUL QUESTION
Should flatterers of the people be allowed to live in the commonwealth?

5. When nobles ingratiates itself with the people, a snake lurks in the grass. A serene brow hides malice, and the flattery of the nobility sets snares. Rightly Solon reproached the Athenians, You men of clever tongue, you dally with sweet words, nobody sees what snares your tongue sets. Why are you laughing, Caesar? Why mock the people? Of a surety, there is great suspicion in this laughter. Antony, you rascal, why abandon the senate? The reason is obvious, that you may gain the government. So you flatter the common folk, Clodius? Surely you are worthy to be condemned to the gallows. But I am playing with words, I will prove this thing in very fact. Traitors to the nation should not be allowed to live in the commonwealth, flatterers of the people are traitors to their nation, therefore flatterers of the people are not to be allowed to live the commonwealth. “I admit the major premise, I deny the minor.” You have no reason to deny it, if you consider the end of this flattery more deeply. For pray tell me where these flatteries are tending, why leading men cultivate the dregs of the people and the throng? Why do they call themselves guardians of the citizens? If you don’t smell out the reason, you are quite mad. For in this manner they hide in their bosoms the fires they have conceived, which they then cast in to the midst of the commonwealth, when they sense the people are sufficiently devoted to them. You foolish fellow, you bid our open open enemies be taken and killed, and you allow the flatters of the people, who are secret and insidious enemies, to live, and to live in the senate? What else is this but to defend our walls with arms, but within the walls to lay waste the commonwealth with sedition’s torches? Read, if you want, of Charicles, of Phrynichus, and of other demagogues of the people, and if you approve their deeds, deny the argument I have framed, if you will. Tell me, friend, do you wish to be a prudent guardian of the commonwealth? Then study in earnest what one of the nobility flatterers the people, and if you find him, correct him quickly. For should you allow this evil to creep along longer, you will not be allowed to apply a remedy when you wish.
6. OBJECTION Tribunes of the people are flatterers of the people, tribunes of the people are allowed to live in the commonwealth, therefore flatterers of the people are allowed to live in the commonwealth. The major and minor premises are agreed from the example of the Roman tribunes, who, existing as demagogues and fawning leaders of the people, flourished for a very long time.
RESPONSE Tribunes of the people are called champions, not flatterers of the people. For the were created and established for the favor rather than the flatter of the people. But I think it came about by force rather than law that men like Clodius lived among them.
OBJECTION In democracy it is necessary that noblemen and magistrates flatter the people, they are to be permitted to live in that constitution of the republic, therefore flatterers of the people are to be permitted to live. The major premise is proven, since in democracy popular desire rules, and if nobles do not to defer to this they are acting against the law of the commonwealth.
RESPONSE If you mean the final form of popular power, in which the people’s desire rules, I deny that to be a form of the commonwealth. But if you have in mind the middling administration of the people, I maintain that those men like Clodius are not to be allowed to live within it, since by their flattery they violate its laws and transform the people’s constitution into a tyranny.

Chapter vii

Are the causes of changes in aristocracy and the polity rightly assigned?

O everything their is a season, wherefore not only the faulty forms of republics witness their fates, but even the best ones. All human affairs are in motion, and just as they have their rise, so they will have their old age and death. Nothing is fixed, nothing permanent in this mortal whirl. Therefore it is not strange if unsound governments fall, but it is an object of wonder when sound and lofty ones do. Popular power and oligarchy, of which I have now spoken, have their obvious occasions of downfall, for they are unstable and fluid constitutions of the commonwealth. But to ponder in one’s mind how great lights of virtue and stars of this world so fail that no traces of them remain, creates not just wonder but also amazement. But where do the morning star of the Assyrians, the great estate of the Persians, the green palm of the Greeks, the Roman eagle remain? These all grew ancient and, like an annual plant, are returned to dust. Therefore the fortunes of aristocracy and the polity, of which I am now treating, are placed, as it were, atop a pyramid, and sometimes totter, and, stricken by the motion of the fates, often take a fall. Here the causes are assigned by the Philosopher in a few words, and I shall briefly run through these before coming to the arguments. Here it is to be observed that in this context we are not dealing with simple aristocracy, but with mixed: by “mixed” I mean that which consists of virtue, liberty, and the affluence of the wealthy, whose causes of change are either common or proper: common, such as fewness of magistrates, shame, deprivation of honor, poverty, and ambition; proper, such as feebleness of virtue and its contempt, an unjust and unequal temperament, the immoderate acquisition of fortune’s good, and the negligence of trifling changes. In aristocracy and the polity, fewness of magistrates often begets great envy. For since in these commonwealths there are many men equal in virtue but unequal in dignity, there follows of necessity a certain rivalry among the optimates, from which sometimes arises the smoke of sedition. But although good and earnest men rarely compete for honor’s shadow, yet since honor is virtue’s reward, it is characteristic of the great-mined man to think that this should be accorded and conceded him justly, in return for his merit. But if rewards, that is the offices of honor, are absent, the Partheniae (as it says in the text) enter into conspiracies, i. e., lacking dignity, they are in high stomach. It be well done if in these forms of the republic there are many spurs and goads of virtue, as at Rome there were sometimes 300 senators, sometimes 500, 400 among the Spartans, and other responsibilities to which the earnest might strive, as if towards statues in the theater of the commonwealth. In my opinion, because of this defect the Venetian aristocracy cannot long flourish, in which there are many of noble stock, and many of these grandees (as they say), but only ten on their supreme, inmost council.
2. The second common cause is shame, by which some of the more honorable sort are afflicted. The human mind is insolent and impatient of disgrace, great-minded men cannot bear insult. Hence Lysander, mistreated by the kings, invaded the republic. Catiline did likewise when he sought the consulship. The third cause, namely deprivation of honor, is quite similar and akin to this, as when Ajax sought his reward and was rejected, he went insane, and as during the reign of Agesilaus Cinadon attempted to wholly destroy the Spartiates. Poverty is given as the fourth cause of change, which is when some men are afflicted with extreme misery, and others abound in wealth. For just as republics are preserved by mediocrity, so they are entirely dissolved by extremes. This once occurred at Sparta during the Messenian War. It is accurately depicted by Tyrtaeus in his poem entitled Eunomia or Good Law. The same thing is declared by our times, in which exhausted citizens are obliged to beg and steal on their native soil, or miserably die of hunger and want. The final cause among the common ones is the insane, more than Persian ambition of the magistrate who, like Alexander, does not live content governing the whole world. Thus Pausanias appears to have been among the Spartans, who was military commander in the war against the Medes, and Hanno among the Carthaginians.
3. But these things are clearer than daylight in the text, so now I come to the proper causes, of which the first is feebleness of virtue and its contempt. Assuredly in the power of the optimates and in the polity the scepter is owed to virtue, not to Man, for in these everything is to be done in accordance with equity and justice. If, therefore, they should decline from this, a convulsion and tremor of their members ensue. For what the mind is within the body, such is virtue in them, and, as the body perishes without the mind’s motion, so these constitutions are convulsed and collapse in the absence of virtue. Second among the proper causes is an unbalanced and unequal mixture in these forms. That you might comprehend this cause, consider that a tempered aristocracy is described by the Philosopher, not a simple one, and this consists of three elements, viz. of liberty, wealth and virtue, and if a fair proportion between these is not observed, of necessity a seditious alteration occurs. For, as a harmony of humors begets health in the body, but an imbalance brings death, so the harmony of these elements renders the commonwealth safety, but their distraction makes it turbulent. For in whichever direction the republic inclines, into that it is converted: if it tends towards liberty, democracy arises; towards wealth, oligarchy; towards excess and superiority, tyranny. Therefore only equality of virtue and dignity endures. The third cause is the obsolescence and abrogation of the best laws. For, as slack sinews in the human body produce great weakness, and severed ones produce torments of pain, so the best laws (which are, as it were, the sinews of these administrations) make for dissolution, if they are neglected, but for sedition if they are wholly abolished. This indeed happened to the citizens of Thurii, in which, as Aristotle says, the nobles illegally got possession of all the land until a sedition was created and they were compelled to yield all to the people. The fourth cause is the immoderate acquisition of the goods of fortune, which is often the mother of oligarchy and tyranny. For when senators accumulate mountains of gold, they rarely stand watch in the citadel of the commonwealth. For excess makes magistrates lazy, and gives them confidence for the daring and attempting of every crime, since men possessed by this demon seize license for themselves, contrary to the laws and customs of their ancestors, undertake innovations, and demolish everything. This cause brought ruin on the senate and commonwealth of the Locrians, as Aristotle clearly teaches in the text. The final cause of change in aristocracy and the polity is the neglect of slight transgressions, whose end is the wounding and death of the commonwealth. For, just as little gaps sink a ship if neglected, thus the smallest evils in the commonwealth, if unremarked, very often bring the entire republic into danger. Among the citizens of Thurii there was a law that nobody should command an army for more than five years. Young men violated this laws, it seemed like a small deed, it was neglected, they became generals in perpetuity, the form of the commonwealth was transformed and changed into another. But more needs to be said about this matter later. In addition to these causes, in this chapter the Philosopher teaches that change of the aristocracy occurs in two ways, either internally, when sedition is nursed within its walls, or externally, when the administration of nearby cities is dissimilar, or rather contrary, such as occurred between the Spartans and the Athenians. Up to now I have spoken causes overthrowing these republics in which a number of men hold sway, not it follows that I briefly speak about the causes of their preservation.

THERE IS NO NEED FOR A DISTINCTION, SINCE THE INDIVIDUAL CAUSES ARE ENUMERATED WITH SUFFICIENT DISTINCTION AND ARTICULATION

4. OBJECTION A government ruled by virtue does not easily fall, aristocracy is the form of the commonwealth ruled by virtue, therefore aristocracy does not easily fall. The major premise is agreed, since virtue is stable, sound, and free of all contention. The minor is obvious, since in aristocracy virtue alone rules. These things being conceded, it follows that under this constitution movements of sedition are not fomented.
RESPONSE Aristocracy is either simple, which consists exclusively of earnest and good men (and which does not exist in nature), or mixed, which comes together from the free, the good, and the wealthy, and this sometimes collapses, overthrown by the movement of sedition. Here the Philosopher is disputing, not about the simple form, but about the mixed.
OBJECTION The polity and aristocracy are distinct forms of the republic, therefore the same causes of change cannot be given for both. The reasoning is agreed, because things distinct by nature have distinct principles of their coming to be and passing away.
RESPONSE These are not distinct forms of republics by nature, but, as they say, subordinated, for aristocracy is contained under the policy, as a species exists under its genus.
OBJECTION Aristocracy does not exist unless virtue holds sway within it, therefore in this context an equal mixture of virtues, wealth and liberty is wrongly required. The antecedent is proven by the definition of aristocracy. The reasoning holds, since there is no equal mixture where the predomination of one endures.
RESPONSE There is no equal mixture in a pound-for-pound sense, as they say, where the predomination of one endures, but there is an equal mixture with respect to justice. And thus a balance of virtue, opulence and liberty exists in aristocracy, yet so that virtue (upon which this constitution depends) outshines the others.
OBJECTION Earnest and good men should not seek external honors and the applause of the people, therefore in an aristocracy the deprivation of honor should not produce sedition. The antecedent is clear, since virtue is discerned in internal, not external goods. The reasoning is proven, since virtue holds sway in aristocracy.
RESPONSE There is a twofold respect in the seeking of honor, either that of oneself or that of the commonwealth. Good and earnest men do not seek honors for themselves, but so they might be of advantage to the commonwealth. For, decorated with these, they shine them more, and allure the people (which is most entranced by external things) to a greater concern for the commonwealth.

THE CHAPTER’S DOUBTFUL QUESTION
Is it permissible for noblemen to join themselves to whomever they want by right of kinship?

5. In the text, the Philosopher is frank about this matter. At Sparta (he says) wealth comes to few men, and the power of doing what they wish is granted their nobility, so that it is permitted them to marry whomever they wish. Therefore the city of the Locrians was wholly overthrown because of marriage-relations with Dionysius, which would never have occurred in a well-mixed and tempered republic. “What? Should it be permitted the cowherd to contract whatever marriage he wishes, and have the same forbidden by law to the patrician? What, pray, is the cause it should not be permitted/ Noblemen’s marriages in foreign lands enhances their honors, wealth and power, it strengthens the commonwealth, it baffles enemies, resolves quarrels, begets friendship, and makes everything in the republic more august and more sound. Stars in conjunction shine brighter than scattered ones, and so for the lights of the commonwealth rightfully conjoined. A shoot engrafted on a plant of a different kind grows along with it thanks to nature’s power, and bears richer fruit. Thus a sprinkling of our blood in another nature renders the commonwealth happier. Therefore, just as united power is stronger, so a jointure of blood is better. Rome, Sparta, Athens, and other nations had no scorn for foreign marriage-pacts, and to day this is not a monstrous thing to do. For who fails to see that great empires and commonwealths are joined by marriage-bonds all over the world? Therefore this kinship is not to be refused, not to be forbidden the nobility.”
6. All that you say has a certain show of truth, but thorns prick beneath the roses, hooks are hidden under the pleasant bait. For if the thing is disputed in a realistic way, you will find that it will be much better managed in that commonwealth in which this freedom of marriage is prohibited, than in one in which it is permitted without no consideration of circumstances. So I deny your specious reasonings, since that joining of blood does not enhance honors, wealth, and powers, strengthen the commonwealth, baffle enemies, resolve quarrels, beget friendships, or make everything in the republic more august and more sound. Your conjoined stars do not shine, the grafted stock of which you speak does not grow. The examples you adduce to not prove it, everything you say is very empty-headed, and I prove it thus with facts rather than words. It is more perilous to the commonwealth to permit its leading mean to join themselves in marriage to other nations, than to admit foreigners to a share of the commonwealth. But the latter (as proven above) is not allowed, therefore neither will this be. The major premise is agreed, since leading men can work more harm, and surely, if they maintain their snakelike nature, they will work greater harm, should the occasion be granted. For foreigners are unable to set aside foreign ways, and if poison should lurk in them, who does not dread the bite of the snake, especially when the lights of the commonwealth are infected with foreign seed? Furthermore, innovation and the confusion of diverse manners should not be tolerated in a correct form of the republic: therefore the marriage-association of another nation is to be refused to leading men. The argument holds, for hence arises an alteration of laws, hence a confusion of manners, hence an innovation of things, since the marriages of such great men are unwelcome unless laws, manners, and ancestral ceremonies are not somewhat altered. And a blind man and a child understand how much danger these things bring upon the commonwealth. Next, in a just administration of the commonwealth that is not permissible from which arise contention, wrath and sedition, from the nuptial freedom of leading men arise contention, wrath and sedition, therefore the nuptial freedom of leading men is impermissible. The assumption is proven, since it is impossible but that, should this license be granted, the people will commence to grumble and mutter, and will fear lest under this guise leading men conspire against the republic. From this fear arises contention, from this contention comes fury, from this fury sedition seeks after smoke and fire. Safer, therefore, to refuse this thing than to allow it, than to tolerate it. Then too, just as it is a monstrosity to attach the parts and members of some other animal to a human head, so it is an evil to conjoin citizens of another nation in the marriage-pact to nobles (who are the heads of the commonwealth). For, just as the former occurs, not by force of nature, but by her error, so this should not be permitted in accordance with the decree of prudence, but rather out of human ignorance, or at least unconcern, which often begets strange marvels in the commonwealth. Also, pray tell me in what other way the Etruscans and Samnites were once hamstrung and obliterated by the Romans? Was not the association of foreign blood the cause of tragedy for those peoples? Lastly, who dares deny that Abraham and Isaac took a religious care lest their sons be joined in wedlock to the Canaanites, though they lived next door? When it was forbidden an Israelite to contract a marriage with Moabites and Ammonites, now matter how close they were in blood to God’s People? I shall say nothing here about Solomon’s marriage, which was accounted among his crimes by that pious courtier Nehemiah. But I come closer to home. Read in our chronicles of the marriages of Henry I, Henry II, Henry III, John and Edward II, who all could be said to have celebrated, not their weddings, but the funeral of our republic. So if England, France, Germany and other nations close-by have felt basilisks hatched from this egg thrust into their bowels and crawling forth, is not that republic in which this toxin is not spread abroad far more prudently administered than the one which is placed in peril, infected by the same? But in this context I dare define nothing simply and absolutely, when that I see men like Cato, Scaevola, Fabricius, that is, right grave senators, have sometimes granted their approval to the contrary. But my opinion now inclines in the direction of thinking those commonwealths to be much sounder in which this monster is not nourished, than ones in which it thrives and is tolerated.
7. OBJECTION Commonwealths are often obliged to call upon neighboring nations for aid, and this can be accomplished in no better way than if leading men are joined with leading men by right of affinity, therefore it is not absurd for leading men to be joined by right of affinity. The minor premise is agreed, since this affinity is a bond of nature, by which one is made out of many. Hence Euripides said, Kinship is an excellent thing, none better in adversity.
RESPONSE This is fallacious reasoning, and holds no more than if you were to say that medicine is wholesome in time of sickness, therefore medicine is simply wholesome. For even if we should admit that kinship with an alien, neighboring nation does no harm in time of necessity, yet if from this you should conclude that such a kingship is simply beneficial for the republic, your reasoning does not hang together. Nor in this context do I concede that this is the best remedy even in time of necessity, if our neighbors can be summoned and called in for our support in some other way. Euripides’ sentiment is not about foreign marriage, but rather about domestic, as you can see by reading him.
OBJECTION The custom of our ancestors and many examples of nations in histories teach that this was once permitted. Therefore show me a reason why it should not be permissible now. Furthermore, from such a union diverse governments, as it were, have grown into one, and also have very long remained in harbor, safe from the onslaught and malice of their enemies.
RESPONSE In this context it is not asked what custom commands, but what reason bids. Examples of this thing exist, I admit, but the commonwealth’s danger is evident in them more often than its salvation. As for what you say about diverse governments growing into one from such a union, this was true of the Roman empire, insofar as by this method it devoured many others. The rest of what you adduce are words, devoid of firm proof.

Go to the second part of Book V