# CHAPTER IV —_That an Usurper is never safe in his Princedom while those

CHAPTER IV.—_That an Usurper is never safe in his Princedom while those
live whom he has deprived of it._


From what befell the elder Tarquin at the hands of the sons of Ancus,
and Servius Tullius at the hands of Tarquin the Proud, we see what an
arduous and perilous course it is to strip a king of his kingdom and
yet suffer him to live on, hoping to conciliate him by benefits. We
see, too, how the elder Tarquin was ruined by his belief that he held
the kingdom by a just title, since it had been given him by the people
and confirmed to him by the senate, never suspecting that the sons of
Ancus would be so stirred by resentment that it would be impossible to
content them with what contented all the rest of Rome. Servius Tullius
again, was ruined through believing that he could conciliate the sons
of Ancus by loading them with favours.

By the fate of the first of these kings every prince may be warned that
he can never live securely in his princedom so long as those from whom
he has taken it survive; while the fate of the second should remind all
rulers that old injuries are not to be healed by subsequent benefits,
and least of all when the new benefit is less in degree than the injury
suffered. And, truly, Servius was wanting in wisdom when he imagined
that the sons of Tarquin would contentedly resign themselves to be the
sons-in-law of one whom they thought should be their subject. For the
desire to reign is so prevailing a passion, that it penetrates the
minds not only of those who are rightful heirs, but also of those who
are not; as happened with the wife of the younger Tarquin, who was
daughter to Servius, but who, possessed by this madness, and setting at
naught all filial duty, incited her husband to take her father’s
kingdom, and with it his life; so much nobler did she esteem it to be a
queen than the daughter of a king. But while the elder Tarquin and
Servius Tullius lost the kingdom from not knowing how to secure
themselves against those whom they had deprived of it, the younger
Tarquin lost it from not observing the ordinances of the old kings, as
shall be shown in the following Chapter.