a moderate
estate a temperate, and a lavish fortune a wanton man, and this be
the common course of things, wisdom then is rather of necessity than
inclination. And that an army which was meditating upon flight, has been
brought by despair to win the field, is so far from being strange,
that like causes will evermore produce like effects. Wherefore this
commonwealth drives her citizens like wedges; there is no way with them
but thorough, nor end but that glory whereof man is capable by art or
nature. That the genius of the Roman families commonly preserved itself
throughout the line (as to instance in some, the Manlii were still
severe, the Publicolae lovers, and the Appii haters of the people) is
attributed by Machiavel to their education; nor, if interest might add
to the reason why the genius of a patrician was one thing, and that of
a plebeian another, is the like so apparent between different nations,
who, according to their different educations, have yet as different
manners. It was anciently noted, and long confirmed by the actions of
the French, that in their first assaults their courage was more
than that of men, and for the rest less than that of women, which
nevertheless, through the amendment of their discipline, we see now to
be otherwise. I will not say but that some man or nation upon an equal
improvement of this kind may be lighter than some other; but certainly
education is the scale without which no man or nation can truly know
his or her own weight or value. By our histories we can tell when one
Marpesian would have beaten ten Oceaners, and when one Oceaner would
have beaten ten Marpesians. Marc Antony was a Roman, but how did that
appear in the embraces of Cleopatra? You must have some other education
for your youth, or they, like that passage, will show better in romance
than true story.

"The custom of the Commonwealth of Rome in distributing her magistracies
without respect of age, happened to do well in Corvinus and Scipio; for
which cause Machiavel (with whom that which was done by Rome, and that
which is well done, are for the most part all one) commends this course.
Yet how much it did worse at other times, is obvious in Pompey and
Caesar, examples by which Boccalini illustrates the prudence of Venice
in her contrary practice, affirming it to have been no small step to the
ruin of the Roman liberty, that these (having tasted in their youth
of the supreme honors) had no greater in their age to h