# 20. Two Virtuous Princes, of whom one immediately succeeds the other, do Great Things: and, as in Well-ordered Republics there is of necessity such a Virtuous Succession, their Acquisitions and their Increase also is great

When Rome got rid of her kings, with them vanished the dangers entailed by the accession of a weak or a bad king. For the sovereign power was now vested in consuls, who acquired it not by heredity or by trickery or by violence inspired by ambition, but came into this power by the free votes of the people, and withal were very able men. Under their virtuous rule Rome thrived and fortune favoured her time and again, so that she attained to her highest pitch of greatness in as many years again as she had been subject to kings.

How this came about is clear. For, if the immediate succession of one virtuous prince by another suffices for the conquest of the world, as it did in the case of Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great, a republic should be all the more successful, since, thanks to its practice of electing its rulers, it has not merely a succession of two highly virtuous rulers, but an infinite number each succeeding the other; and this virtuous succession may always be kept up in a well-ordered republic.