# CHAPTER 30 — What Means a Prince or a Republic May Employ to Avoid the Vice of Ingratitude; and What Means a Commander or a Citizen May Employ in Order to Avoid Being Overcome by It

To avoid the necessity of having to live with suspicion or to be ungrateful, a prince should personally accompany his military expeditions, as the Roman emperors did in the beginning, as the Turk does in our own times, and as all able leaders have done and still do. When such leaders are victorious, the glory and the territory acquired belong entirely to them; when they are not present, since the glory belongs to others, they feel they cannot make use of the acquired territory without destroying in these others the glory they did not know how to win for themselves, and they become ungrateful and unjust; their loss is, without any doubt, greater than their gain. But when, either on account of negligence or on account of lack of prudence, they remain idly at home and send forth a military commander, I have no other precept to offer them except one they will learn for themselves. But let me say to this commander that since I believe him incapable of avoiding the sting of ingratitude, he should do one of two things: either let him abandon the army and place himself again in the hands of his prince immediately after his victory, taking care to avoid every insolent or ambitious act, so that when his prince has been deprived of every suspicion, he will have reason either to reward him or to refrain from injuring him; or, when this does not seem the proper thing to do, let him boldly take the opposite course of action and consider all the reasons for which he should believe the acquired territory to be his own and not that of his prince, making his troops and subjects well-disposed towards him, making new alliances with his neighbours, occupying all the fortresses with his soldiers, bribing the commanders of his army, and securing himself against those whom he cannot corrupt, and through these means he should seek to punish his lord for the ingratitude that he is likely to show him. No other way exists, but as was explained above, men do not know how to be either entirely wicked or entirely good. It always happens that, immediately after a victory, commanders do not want to abandon their army; they are incapable of comporting themselves with modesty; they do not know how to employ violent measures which are honourable in themselves; and, as a result, remaining undecided, between their own indecision and their ambiguity they are eliminated.

As for a republic, if it wishes to avoid the vice of ingratitude, it cannot employ the same remedy as a prince: that is, that it command in person and avoid sending forth military expeditions, since it is compelled to send one of its citizens. It is, however, proper for me to offer as a remedy the idea that a republic should adopt the same means used by the Roman republic to be less ungrateful than other republics. These arose from the practices of its government: since the entire city, both the aristocrats and the plebeians, took part in warfare, in every era there always arose in Rome so many able men decorated in various victories that the people, who were many in number and kept an eye on each other, never had reason to doubt any one of them. Furthermore, they maintained their integrity so well and were so careful to avoid showing even the slightest trace of ambition, or to give the people reason to harm them because of their ambition, that when any of them reached the rank of the dictatorship, they gained greater glory the sooner they gave that office up. Thus, since such behaviour could not generate suspicion, it did not generate ingratitude. For this reason, a republic that wishes to avoid having any reason for ingratitude must govern itself as Rome did, and a citizen who wishes to avoid the sting of ingratitude should observe the limits observed by Roman citizens.