# CHAPTER V —_How an Hereditary King may come to lose his Kingdom._

CHAPTER V.—_How an Hereditary King may come to lose his Kingdom._


Tarquin the Proud, when he had put Servius Tullius to death, inasmuch
as the latter left no heirs, took secure possession of the kingdom,
having nothing to fear from any of those dangers which had stood in the
way of his predecessors. And although the means whereby he made himself
king were hateful and monstrous, nevertheless, had he adhered to the
ancient ordinances of the earlier kings, he might have been endured,
nor would he have aroused both senate and people to combine against him
and deprive him of his government. It was not, therefore, because his
son Sextus violated Lucretia that Tarquin was driven out, but because
he himself had violated the laws of the kingdom, and governed as a
tyrant, stripping the senate of all authority, and bringing everything
under his own control. For all business which formerly had been
transacted in public, and with the sanction of the senate, he caused to
be transacted in his palace, on his own responsibility, and to the
displeasure of every one else, and so very soon deprived Rome of
whatever freedom she had enjoyed under her other kings.

Nor was it enough for him to have the Fathers his enemies, but he must
needs also kindle the commons against him, wearing them out with mere
mechanic labours, very different from the enterprises in which they had
been employed by his predecessors; so that when Rome overflowed with
instances of his cruelty and pride, he had already disposed the minds
of all the citizens to rebel whenever they found the opportunity.
Wherefore, had not occasion offered in the violence done to Lucretia,
some other had soon been found to bring about the same result. But had
Tarquin lived like the other kings, when Sextus his son committed that
outrage, Brutus and Collatinus would have had recourse to him to punish
the offender, and not to the commons of Rome. And hence let princes
learn that from the hour they first violate those laws, customs, and
usages under which men have lived for a great while, they begin to
weaken the foundations of their authority. And should they, after they
have been stripped of that authority, ever grow wise enough to see how
easily princedoms are preserved by those who are content to follow
prudent counsels, the sense of their loss will grieve them far more,
and condemn them to a worse punishment than any they suffer at the
hands of others. For it is far easier to be loved by good men than by
bad, and to obey the laws than to seek to control them.

And to learn what means they must use to retain their authority, they
have only to take example by the conduct of good princes, such as
Timoleon of Corinth, Aratus of Sicyone, and the like, in whose lives
they will find such security and content, both on the side of the ruler
and the ruled, as ought to stir them with the desire to imitate them,
which, for the reasons already given, it is easy for them to do. For
men, when they are well governed, ask no more, nor look for further
freedom; as was the case with the peoples governed by the two whom I
have named, whom they constrained to continue their rulers while they
lived, though both of them sought repeatedly to return to private life.

But because, in this and the two preceding Chapters, I have noticed the
ill-will which arose against the kings, the plots contrived by the sons
of Brutus against their country, and those directed against the elder
Tarquin and Servius Tullius, it seems to me not out of place to
discourse of these matters more at length in the following Chapter, as
deserving the attention both of princes and private citizens.