# 30. Really Powerful Republics and Princes do not purchase Alliances with Money, but obtain them by means of the Virtue and the Reputation of their Forces

The Romans were being besieged in the Capitol, and, though they expected help from Veii and from Camillus, were in such bad case owing to famine that they came to terms with the Gauls and agreed to pay them so much gold. They were weighing out the gold agreed upon when Camillus arrived with his army; whereupon fortune, says the historian, decided that ‘the Romans should not by purchase save their lives’.

This kind of thing is not only noticeable in this case but characterizes the behaviour of this republic throughout. We never find the Romans purchasing towns, or paying in order to obtain peace. They always acquired both by virtue of their arms. Nor do I think that this has ever happened in the case of any other republic. Among other indications of the power of a strong state one looks to the terms on which it lives with its neighbours. When it is so governed that, to obtain its friendship, its neighbours become its tributaries, it is a sure sign that the state is powerful; but when the said neighbours, though inferior in strength, extract payment from it, it is a sure sign of its weakness.

As one runs through Roman history, one sees how the Massilians, the Aedui, the Rhodians, Hiero of Syracuse, king Eumenes and king Masinissa, who were neighbours with estates bordering on the empire of Rome, were ready to incur expense and pay tribute in order to obtain the friendship of Rome, and in return ask only for her protection. In weak states one finds just the opposite. To begin with, in our own state, Florence, in times past when its reputation stood at its highest, there was no lord in the Romagna who did not receive payment from it. It also made grants to the Perugians, the Castellani and all its other neighbours. Had this city been armed and strong, everything would have been just the contrary, for to secure its protection many states would have paid money to it, and would have sought to purchase its friendship, not to sell their own.

Nor are the Florentines the only people who have thus demeaned themselves since the Venetians and the King of France do the same thing; for the latter, great as his kingdom is, habitually pays tribute to the Swiss and to the King of England. This all comes from depriving the people of arms, and from the fact that this king and the other states mentioned have chosen rather to enjoy the present advantage of being able to despoil their people and of being able to avoid an imaginary rather than a real danger, instead of so acting as to secure their people’s goodwill and to make their state happy for ever. A malpractice such as this, though it may bring a little temporary quiet, in time becomes the cause of crises, disaster and irremediable ruin. It would take too long to relate how often the Florentines, the Venetians, and this kingdom, have bought off wars and submitted to an ignominy which the Romans submitted to but once. It would take too long to recount how many towns the Florentines and the Venetians have purchased in which one afterwards saw disorder, and how they failed to protect with steel what gold had purchased. The Romans kept up their standards so long as they remained free; but when they fell under the yoke of the emperors, and the emperors began to behave badly and to prefer the shadow to the sun, they, too, began to make grants sometimes to the Parthians, sometimes to Germany, sometimes to other neighbouring peoples; which was the first step towards that great empire’s downfall.

Such are the inconveniences, then, that arise from depriving your people of arms.53 And there is a worse trouble, too, for the greater the force of the enemy’s attack, the weaker do you find yourself; for he who lives in the aforesaid way treats ill the subjects who reside within his domain, but treats well those who live on its confines in order to have people well disposed to keep the enemy off. It thus comes about that, in order the better to keep the enemy off, he subsidizes the lords and peoples who are his next-door neighbours, with the result that the states which he has thus kept going, offer a modicum of resistance on the frontiers, but, when the enemy has crossed them, no further remedy is available. Such states do not see that their way of proceeding is incompatible with any kind of good order. For it is the heart and the vital parts of the body that have to be strengthened, not its extremities, since without them the body can survive, but, if the former be injured, it dies; yet such states keep unarmed the heart, but arm the hands and the feet.

What this lack of order has done for Florence is clear, and may be seen any day; for when an army crosses its frontiers and gets near its heart, it finds itself without further remedy. Of it the Venetians also gave proof a few years ago, and, if their city had not been girt about by water, it would have been the end of it. In France this experience is not found so frequently, for it is so large a kingdom that it has but few enemies superior to it. None the less, when the English attacked this kingdom in 1513, the whole realm was in trepidation, and the king and everybody else thought that a single defeat would spell ruin to the king and to the state. Very different was it in the case of the Romans, for the nearer the enemy approached to Rome the greater he found the city’s power of resistance to be. When Hannibal invaded Italy, one sees how, after three defeats and the death of so many generals and soldiers, it was still able, not merely to withstand the enemy, but to win the war. All this comes from having fortified well the heart, but of the extremities made less account. For of basic importance in this state were the people of Rome, the people known as Latins, the other parts of Italy associated with it, and its colonies. Thence came the vast number of soldiers which enabled it to fight and to hold the whole world. That this is so may be seen from the question asked by Hanno, the Carthaginian, of the messengers who came from Hannibal after the rout at Cannae. Having made much of Hannibal’s exploits, they were asked by Hanno whether the Roman people had sent to ask for peace, and whether among the Latins and in its colonies any town had revolted against the Romans. To both questions the answer was in the negative, whereupon Hanno remarked: ‘This war, then, is still in as full swing as it was at the start.’

We see from this discourse and from what I have said in other places, how great is the difference between the procedure of present-day republics and that of ancient republics. We see, too, how, because of this, astonishing acquisitions are made and astonishing losses occur daily. For where men have but little virtue, fortune makes a great display of its power; and, since fortune changes, republics and governments frequently change; and will go on changing till someone comes along, so imbued with the love of antiquity that he regulates things in such fashion that fortune does not every time the sun turns round get a chance of showing what it can do.