# CHAPTER 17 — That You Should Not Offend a Man and Then Appoint Him to an Important Governmental Post

A republic must carefully consider whether or not to place anyone in any important administrative post who has been offended in some noteworthy way by others. Claudius Nero, who left the army with which he was opposing Hannibal, and with part of it went off to the Marches to look for the other consul in order to engage Hasdrubal in battle before he joined up with Hannibal, had found himself on a previous occasion confronting Hasdrubal in Spain. Having closed in on him with his army in a location that forced Hasdrubal either to fight to his own disadvantage or to die of starvation, Claudius Nero was so cleverly held off by Hasdrubal with certain arrangements for a treaty that the latter slipped through his hands and deprived Claudius Nero of the opportunity to defeat him. Once this was learned in Rome, it earned the condemnation of both the senate and the people, and he was criticized in an offensive way throughout the city, much to his dishonour and disdain. But later, when he was made consul and was sent to oppose Hannibal,he chose the above-mentioned policy, which was extremely dangerous, so much so that all of Rome remained doubtful and anxious until news of the rout of Hasdrubal arrived. Later, when Claudius was asked why he had taken such a dangerous decision, in which without dire necessity he had almost gambled Roman liberty away, he replied that he had done it because he knew that if he succeeded, he would regain the glory that he had lost in Spain, and that if he failed and this decision of his had the opposite outcome, he realized that he would avenge himself upon the city and those citizens who had so ungratefully and shamelessly insulted him. * When the passions of such offences can be so powerful in a Roman citizen and at a time when Rome was still not corrupt, one must imagine how powerful they would be in a citizen of another city that was not like Rome in those days. Since no certain remedy can be offered for such disorders which arise in republics, it follows that it is impossible to organize an everlasting republic, because its downfall can come about in a thousand unforeseen ways.