Strong Republics and Excellent Men Retain the Same Courage and Dignity in Any Fortune
Among the other admirable things that our historian has Camillus say in order to show how an excellent man ought to be constituted, he puts these words in his mouth: My Dictatorship neither gave me courage, nor did my exile diminish it. By which words it is seen how great men are always the same in any fortune; and if it should change, exalting him now, oppressing him then, he does not change but always keeps his courage, and this is joined with his way of living so that everyone easily knows that fortune does not have power over him. Weak men conduct themselves otherwise; for becoming vain and inebriated by good fortune, they attribute all the good that they obtained to that virtu which they will never know: Whence it arises that they become unbearable and odious to all those who are around them. And when there is a sudden change of fortune, as soon as they come face to face with the cause, they come quickly into that other defect, and become vile and abject. From which it happens that Princes thus constituted, in adversity, think more of fleeing than of defending themselves, like those who, for having ill used that good fortune, are unprepared for any defense [against a reverse]. This virtu and this vice which I say are found in an individual, are also found in a Republic, and in example there are the Romans and the Venetians.
No ill fortune ever made the Romans become abject, nor did good fortune ever make them become insolent, as was manifestly seen after the defeat they experienced at Cannae, and after the victory they obtained against Antiochus: for this defeat, although it was most grave for having been the third one, never made them cowardly, but sent out new armies: they did not want to go against their institutions by ransoming their prisoners, nor did they send to Hannibal or Carthage to seek peace: but keeping out all these abject thoughts, they thought always of [continuing] the war, arming old men and slaves for want of men. When this thing became known to Hanno, the Carthaginian, (as was said above) he pointed out to that Senate how little account they [the Romans] took of the defeat at Cannae. And thus it is seen that times of difficulty did not dismay them or render them humble. On the other hand, prosperous times did not make them insolent; for when Antiochus, before they had come to the battle with them, and in which he had been defeated, sent ambassadors to Scipio seeking an accord, [and] Scipio gave him certain conditions for peace, which were that he should retire inside Syria, and leave the rest [of the country] to the control of the Romans: Which accord Antiochus refused, and coming to battle, and losing it, he again sent ambassadors to Scipio with the commission that they should accept all those conditions which were given them by the victor: to whom he [Scipio] did not propose other terms than those which he had offered before he he had won, adding these words: The Romans do not lose their courage when defeated, nor become insolent when they win.
The opposite of this was seen to be done by the Venetians, who, in good fortune (which they seemed to think they gained by that virtu which they did not have), had come to such insolence that they called the King of France a son of Saint Mark, they did not respect the Church, nor recognize any other [power] in Italy, and had presupposed in their minds the creation of an empire similar to the Roman one. Afterwards, when good fortune abandoned them, and they suffered a partial defeat at Vaila at the hands of the King of France, they not only lost all their State by rebellion, but, through cowardice and abjection of spirit, gave a good part [of their territory] to both the Pope and the King of Spain, and were so demoralized that they sent ambassadors and made themselv............