CHAPTER IV.: vices that have made the great the prey of the small.

1. Those ancient princes deceived themselves when they thought that the art of well governing their states consisted in knowledge, in writings, in making a cautious reply, in inditing a clever letter, in displaying in their words and sayings smartness and quickness, in skilfully contriving a fraud, in adorning themselves with gems and with gold, in sleeping and eating with greater splendor than others, in surrounding themselves with luxuries and indulging in licentiousness, in bearing themselves towards their subjects with avarice and pride, in spoiling in idleness, in bestowing grades in the army by favor, in treating with neglect whoever had distinguished himself by some

praiseworthy action, and in requiring that their words should be accepted as the responses of oracles. Unhappy men! they did not perceive that by all this they prepared themselves to fall victims to whoever chose to attack them. Witness Italy, where three of the most powerful states were pillaged and laid waste, because the princes who governed them persisted in similar errors, and lived in the same disorder.