# 5. What it is that causes a Hereditary Prince to lose his Kingdom

Since Servius Tullius left no heirs, Tarquin the Proud, who had killed him, entered into secure possession of the kingdom, for he had nothing to fear from the kind of thing that had injured his predecessors. Though this way of obtaining a kingdom is abnormal and odious, yet, had Tarquin respected the ancient institutions of former kings, he would have been in a strong position, and would not have antagonized the senate and the populace so that they sought to deprive him of it. The reason for his expulsion, then, was not that his son, Sextus, had ravished Lucretia, but that he had violated the laws of the kingdom and ruled tyrannically. He deprived the senate of all authority and took it into his own hands. Business which used to be transacted in public assemblies to the senate’s satisfaction, he carried on in his palace, accepting the responsibility and its consequences. The result was that before long Rome had lost all the liberties she had enjoyed under previous kings. Nor did it suffice to have made the patricians his enemies; he aroused also the animosity of the plebs by setting them mechanical tasks to do, quite different from those which his predecessors had set them to do; so that by filling Rome with instances of his cruelty and pride, he had already aroused in the minds of all Romans a spirit of revolt, ready to break out should occasion arise. Hence, if the Lucretia incident had not occurred, something else would have happened and would have led to the same result. Whereas, if Tarquin had behaved like the other kings, when his son, Sextus, committed his crime, Brutus and Collatinus would have appealed to Tarquin to avenge it, and not to the Roman people.

From this princes should learn, therefore, that they begin to lose their state the moment they begin to break the laws and to disregard the ancient traditions and customs under which men have long lived. And if, when they have been deprived of their state, they should ever become so prudent as to realize with what ease principalities may be held by those who think wisely, their loss will inevitably become much more bitter and will condemn them to a punishment greater than that to which they have been condemned by other men. For it is much easier to acquire the affection of good men than of bad, and to obey laws rather than to override them.

If they would discover how to behave in order to do this, all they have to do is to glance at the looking-glass in which the lives of good men are reflected: Timoleon the Corinthian, for instance, Aratus the Sicyonian and such-like; in whose lives they will find both governors and governed enjoying such security and contentment that it should make them desire to imitate them, which they can do easily for the reasons aforesaid. For when men are well governed, they do not go about looking for further liberty; as was the case with the peoples governed by the two persons mentioned above, for they insisted on their remaining princes so long as they lived, though more than once both of them sought to retire to private life.

Since in this and in the two preceding chapters we have dealt with the disaffection aroused against princes and with the conspiracy organized by the sons of Brutus against their country, and with those made against Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius, it will not be beside the point, I think, to discuss conspiracies at length in the next chapter, since they constitute a topic of which both princes and private persons should take due note.





Book Three



[DISCOURSE 6]


[On Conspiracies]