of 80,000 men were
to be made by the penny, yet was the commonwealth able to maintain such
a one above three years without levying a tax. But it is against all
experience, sense, and reason that such an army should not be soon
broken, or make a great progress; in either of which cases, the charge
ceases; or rather if a right course be taken in the latter, profit comes
in: for the Romans had no other considerable way but victory whereby to
fill their treasury, which nevertheless was seldom empty. Alexander
did not consult his purse upon his design for Persia: it is observed by
Machiavel, that Livy, arguing what the event in reason must have been
had that King invaded Rome, and diligently measuring what on each
side was necessary to such a war, never speaks a word of money. No
man imagines that the Gauls, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Lombards, Saxons,
Normans, made their inroads or conquests by the strength of the purse;
and if it be thought enough, according to the dialect of our age, to say
in answer to these things that those times are past and gone: what money
did the late Gustavus, the most victorious of modern princes, bring out
of Sweden with him into Germany? An army that goes upon a golden leg
will be as lame as if it were a wooden one; but proper forces have
nerves and muscles in them, such for which, having L4,000,000 or
L5,000,000, a sum easy enough, with a revenue like this of Oceana, to be
had at any time in readiness, you need never, or very rarely, charge the
people with taxes. What influence the commonwealth by such arms has had
upon the world, I leave to historians, whose custom it has been of old
to be as diligent observers of foreign actions as careless of those
domestic revolutions which (less pleasant it may be, as not partaking
so much of the romance) are to statesmen of far greater profit; and this
fault, if it be not mine, is so much more frequent with modern writers,
as has caused me to undertake this work; on which to give my own
judgment, it is performed as much above the time I have been about it,
as below the dignity of the matter.

But I cannot depart out of this country till I have taken leave of my
Lord Archon, a prince of immense felicity who having built as high with
his counsels as he digged deep with his sword, had now seen fifty years
measured with his own unerring orbs.

Timoleon (such a hater of tyrants that, not able to persuade his brother
Timophanes to relinquish the tyranny of Corinth