# 43. That Men who are born in the same Country display throughout the Ages much the same Characteristics

Prudent men are wont to say – and this not rashly or without good ground – that he who would foresee what has to be, should reflect on what has been, for everything that happens in the world at any time has a genuine resemblance to what happened in ancient times. This is due to the fact that the agents who bring such things about are men, and that men have, and always have had, the same passions, whence it necessarily comes about that the same effects are produced.72 It is true that men’s deeds are sometimes more virtuous in this country than in that, and in that than in some other, according to the type of education from which their inhabitants have derived their mode of life.

Knowledge of the future based on the past is also facilitated when we find a nation which for a long time has had the same customs, which has been, for instance, consistently grasping or consistently deceitful, or which has had any other such vice or virtue. Thus, whoever studies the past history of this our city of Florence and compares what happened then with what has happened in quite recent times will find the German and French peoples imbued with avarice, pride, ferocity and unreliability, for all these four characteristics of theirs have at different times done much harm to our city. In regard to untrustworthiness, for instance, everybody knows how often money was given to King Charles VIII, and how he promised to restore the fortresses of Pisa and never did so; whereby this king displayed alike his untrustworthiness and no small avarice.

But let us pass over these recent events. Everybody will have heard of what happened in the war which the Florentines waged against the Visconti, Dukes of Milan. Since the Florentines had no other expedient available, they considered bringing the Emperor into Italy that his standing and his forces might be of avail in the attack on Lombardy. The Emperor promised to come with a strong army to join them in their war with the Visconti, and to protect Florence against that power, on condition that the Florentines gave him a hundred thousand ducats on his starting out and another hundred thousand when he should arrive in Italy; to which terms the Florentines agreed. Having been paid the first instalment, and then the second, when he got to Verona he turned back without doing anything, pleading that he was held up by those who had not fulfilled the agreements he had made with them. So that, had Florence neither been driven to it by necessity nor overcome by passion, but had read about and become acquainted with the habits of barbarians in ancient times, she would not have been misled by them on this occasion and on many others, since they have always been the same and have behaved everywhere and to everybody in the same way.

This may be seen from what they did of old to the Tuscans. The latter were much harassed by the Romans by whom they had often been put to flight and routed. It became clear to them that with their own forces they could not resist such attacks, so they made an agreement with the Gauls who had settled on the Italian side of the Alps whereby in return for a sum of money they were to join forces with them and to march against the Romans. The result was that, having accepted the money, the Gauls refused to take up arms on their behalf, alleging that they had accepted it not on the understanding that they should make war on the enemies of Tuscany but that they should abstain from pillaging Tuscan territory. So that, owing to the avarice and untrustworthiness of the Gauls, the Tuscan peoples at once lost their money and the help they had hoped to get from them.

Thus we see that in the case of the ancient Tuscans and in that of the Florentines, the Gauls adopted the same policy; from which it is easy to judge how much reliance rulers can place in them.