# CHAPTER 31 — Strong Republics and Excellent Men Retain in Every Kind of Fortune the Same Spirit and Dignity

Among the other magnificent things that our historian has Camillus say and do, to show how an excellent man must be made, he puts these words into his mouth: ‘My resolution has never gained anything from dictatorship, any more than it lost anything through exile.’ * His words show that great men always remain the same in every kind of fortune, and if it varies, now by elevating them, now by oppressing them, they themselves never change but always keep a firm resolve, joined in such a manner to their way of life that anyone can easily recognize that fortune has no power over them. Weak men govern themselves differently: they become vain and intoxicated with good fortune, attributing all the good they receive to an exceptional ability they have never known. As a result, they become insufferable and hateful to all those around them. This situation then brings about some sudden change in their luck, and upon looking such a change in the face, they immediately fall into the opposite fault and become vile and abject. From this arises the fact that princes of this type, in times of adversity, think more about fleeing than about defending themselves, like men who, having badly used their good fortune, are unprepared for any defence.

This ability and this flaw, which I say can be found in a single man, can also be found in a republic, and as an example, there are the Romans and the Venetians. No bad luck ever made the former abject, nor did good fortune ever make them insolent, as became evident after their defeat at Cannae or their victory over Antiochus, for after their defeat, even though it was extremely serious in being the third, they never became frightened and still sent forth their armies; they refused to pay ransom for their prisoners contrary to their practices, nor did they send envoys either to Hannibal or to Carthage to sue for peace but, leaving all such abject behaviour aside, they thought only of war, arming the old men and their servants for lack of soldiers. This fact, recognized by Hanno the Carthaginian, as was mentioned above, * demonstrated to that senate how little account should be taken of the defeat at Cannae. Thus, it was seen that in difficult times the Romans were never afraid nor were they humbled. On the other hand, prosperous times never made them insolent; for, when Antiochus sent ambassadors to Scipio to ask for an agreement before they engaged in the battle in which Antiochus was defeated, Scipio dictated to him certain conditions for the peace; these were that he should withdraw into Syria and leave the rest up to the will of the Roman people. Antiochus rejected this agreement and after engaging in battle and losing, he again sent ambassadors to Scipio with the charge of accepting all the conditions imposed upon them by the victor; to them, Scipio proposed no new pacts other than those he had offered before his victory, adding these words: ‘When Romans are defeated, they do not become discouraged; nor, when they win, do they become insolent.’ *

It is evident that the Venetians have done exactly the contrary of this, because in times of good fortune, thinking that they earned it with an exceptional ability they do not possess, they had become so insolent that they called the king of France a son of St Mark; they did not respect the church; they could never gain enough territory in Italy; and they had it in mind to create a universal empire like the Romans. Later, when good fortune abandoned them and they suffered a semi-defeat at Vailà * at the hands of the king of France, they lost not only all their territory through rebellion but a good part was given over to the pope and to the king of Spain because of their cowardice and baseness of heart; they debased themselves to such an extent that they sent ambassadors to the emperor to become his tributary, and they wrote the pope letters full of cowardice and submission to move him to compassion. In four days, and after no more than a semi-defeat, they came to this state of unhappiness, because once their army had fought a battle, during its retreat only about half of it actually fought and was defeated, so that one of the quartermasters who saved himself arrived in Verona with more than 25,000 soldiers on foot or on horseback. Thus, if in Venice or in their institutions any measure of exceptional skill had existed, they could easily have regrouped, faced their fortune once again, and have been in time either to conquer or to lose more gloriously, or even to gain a more favourable accord. But their cowardice of spirit, caused by the quality of their institutions, which were not good in matters of war, * caused them to lose, all at once, their state and their courage. This will always happen to anyone who acts as they did. For this matter of becoming insolent in good fortune and abject in bad fortune arises our of your mode of conduct and the education with which you have nourished yourself; when it is weak and vain, it makes you similar to itself; when it is otherwise, it also brings you a different destiny and, making you more knowledgeable about the world, it causes you to rejoice less in the good and grieve less over the bad. Whatever one says about a single person can also be said of many people who live in a republic and who reflect the state of perfection of its own way of life.

Although it has been said elsewhere * that the foundation of all states is a good militia, and that where this is not a reality, neither good laws nor any other good thing can exist, I do not feel it is superfluous to repeat this, because at every point, in the reading of this history, this necessity is everywhere evident, and it is evident that a militia cannot be good if it is not trained, and that it cannot be trained if it is not composed of your own subjects. For no one is always at war, nor is that possible, but it is necessary to train the militia in times of peace, and it is impossible to carry out such exercises with others rather than with one’s own subjects because of the expense. Camillus, as we said above, had gone with his army against the Etruscans, and once his soldiers had seen the size of the enemy army all of them were terrified, since they felt themselves to be so inferior to the Etruscans that they could not withstand their attack. When news of this bad attitude in the field reached Camillus’ ears, he came out and went through the camp speaking now to these soldiers and now to those, drawing that notion out of their heads, and finally, without organizing the battlefield in any other manner, he declared: ‘everyone will act in accordance with his training and habit.’ * Anyone who will carefully consider this expedient and the words he said to them to fill them with enough courage to confront the enemy will realize that he could neither say nor do any of these things to an army that had not first been organized and trained both in peace and in war, because a commander cannot trust soldiers who have not learned to do anything, nor believe that they will do anything good: even if a new Hannibal were to command them, he would be brought to ruin. Thus, since a commander cannot be everywhere while a battle is raging, if he has not first organized things so that in every location he can have men who share his spirit and even his rules and modes of conduct, then he must of necessity come to ruin. If a city is, therefore, armed and organized like Rome, and every day its citizens, in private and in public, have the opportunity to test their ability and the power of their fortune, it will always happen that they will act with the same spirit on all occasions, and they will maintain the same dignity. But when they are unarmed and depend only upon the throws of fortune rather than upon their own ability, they will change with fortune and will always give the same account of themselves that the Venetians have given.