at a time when she was most
flourishing, been deprived of her freedom by Pisistratus under a false
show of good-will, remembering, after she regained her liberty, her
former bondage and all the wrongs she had endured, became the relentless
chastiser, not of offences only on the part of her citizens, but even
of the shadow of an offence. Hence the banishment and death of so many
excellent men, and hence the law of ostracism, and all those other
violent measures which from time to time during the history of that city
were directed against her foremost citizens. For this is most true which
is asserted by the writers on civil government, that a people which has
recovered its freedom, bites more fiercely than one which has always
preserved it.

And any who shall weigh well what has been said, will not condemn Athens
in this matter, nor commend Rome, but refer all to the necessity arising
out of the different conditions prevailing in the two States. For
careful reflection will show that had Rome been deprived of her freedom
as Athens was, she would not have been a whit more tender to her
citizens. This we may reasonably infer from remarking what, after the
expulsion of the kings, befell Collatinus and Publius Valerius; the
former of whom, though he had taken part in the liberation of Rome,
was sent into exile for no other reason than that he bore the name of
Tarquin; while the sole ground of suspicion against the latter, and what
almost led to his banishment, was his having built a house upon the
Caelian hill. Seeing how harsh and suspicious Rome was in these two
instances, we may surmise that she would have shown the same ingratitude
as Athens, had she, like Athens, been wronged by her citizens at an
early stage of her growth, and before she had attained to the fulness of
her strength.

That I may not have to return to this question of ingratitude, I shall
say all that remains to be said about it in my next Chapter.

CHAPTER XXIX.--_Whether a People or a Prince is the more ungrateful._

In connection with what has been said above, it seems proper to consider
whether more notable instances of ingratitude are supplied by princes or
peoples. And, to go to the root of the matter, I affirm that this vice
of ingratitude has its source either in avarice or in suspicion. For a
prince or people when they have sent forth a captain on some important
enterprise, by succeeding in which he earns a great name, are bound in
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