powerful enough herself to take
possession of the entire country, while, at the same time, preventing
any one else from doing so, has made it impossible to bring Italy under
one head; and has been the cause of her always living subject to many
princes or rulers, by whom she has been brought to such division and
weakness as to have become a prey, not to Barbarian kings only, but to
any who have thought fit to attack her. For this, I say, we Italians
have none to thank but the Church. And were any man powerful enough to
transplant the Court of Rome, with all the authority it now wields over
the rest of Italy, into the territories of the Swiss (the only people
who at this day, both as regards religion and military discipline, live
like the ancients,) he would have clear proof of the truth of what I
affirm, and would find that the corrupt manners of that Court had, in
a little while, wrought greater mischief in these territories than any
other disaster which could ever befall them.

CHAPTER XIII.--_Of the use the Romans made of Religion in giving
Institutions to their City, in carrying out their Enterprises, and in
quelling Tumults._

Here it seems to me not out of place to cite instances of the Romans
seeking assistance from religion in reforming their institutions and in
carrying out their warlike designs. And although many such are related
by Titus Livius, I content myself with mentioning the following only:
The Romans having appointed tribunes with consular powers, all of them,
save one, plebeians, it so chanced that in that very year they were
visited by plague and famine, accompanied by many strange portents.
Taking occasion from this, the nobles, at the next creation of tribunes,
gave out that the gods were angry with Rome for lowering the majesty
of her government, nor could be appeased but by the choice of tribunes
being restored to a fair footing. Whereupon the people, smitten with
religious awe, chose all the tribunes from the nobles. Again, at the
siege of Veii, we find the Roman commanders making use of religion to
keep the minds of their men well disposed towards that enterprise. For
when, in the last year of the siege, the soldiers, disgusted with their
protracted service, began to clamour to be led back to Rome, on the
Alban lake suddenly rising to an uncommon height, it was found that the
oracles at Delphi and elsewhere had foretold that Veii should fall that
year in which the Alban lake overflowed. T