ir thoughts mark what they say of Catiline, than whom Caesar is more
hateful, in proportion as he who does is more to be condemned than he
who only desires to do evil. Let him see also what praises they lavish
upon Brutus, because being unable, out of respect for his power, to
reproach Caesar, they magnify his enemy. And if he who has become prince
in any State will but reflect, how, after Rome was made an empire, far
greater praise was earned those emperors who lived within the laws, and
worthily, than by those who lived in the contrary way, he will see that
Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus and Marcus had no need of
praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were
defended by their own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and
the attachment of the senate. In like manner he will perceive in the
case of Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, and ever so many more of those evil
emperors, that all the armies of the east and of the west were of no
avail to protect them from the enemies whom their bad and depraved lives
raised up against them. And were the history of these emperors
rightly studied, it would be a sufficient lesson to any prince how to
distinguish the paths which lead to honour and safety from those which
end in shame and insecurity. For of the twenty-six emperors from Caesar
to Maximinus, sixteen came to a violent, ten only to a natural death;
and though one or two of those who died by violence may have been good
princes, as Galba or Pertinax, they met their fate in consequence of
that corruption which their predecessors had left behind in the army.
And if among those who died a natural death, there be found some bad
emperors, like Severus, it is to be ascribed to their signal good
fortune and to their great abilities, advantages seldom found united in
the same man. From the study this history we may also learn how a
good government is to be established; for while all the emperors who
succeeded to the throne by birth, except Titus, were bad, all were good
who succeeded by adoption; as in the case of the five from Nerva to
Marcus. But so soon as the empire fell once more to the heirs by birth,
its ruin recommenced.

Let a prince therefore look to that period which extends from Nerva to
Marcus, and contrast it with that which went before and that which came
after, and then let him say in which of them he would wish to have
been born or to have reigned. For during these times in which good