Sicily, and another to guard the harams of Persepolis, these were
the frequent and probable consequences of national calamities.
Hence, among the Greeks, patriotism became a governing principle,
or rather an ungovernable passion. Their legislators and their
philosophers took it for granted that, in providing for the
strength and greatness of the state, they sufficiently provided
for the happiness of the people. The writers of the Roman empire
lived under despots, into whose dominion a hundred nations were
melted down, and whose gardens would have covered the little
commonwealths of Phlius and Plataea. Yet they continued to employ
the same language, and to cant about the duty of sacrificing
everything to a country to which they owed nothing.

Causes similar to those which had influenced the disposition of
the Greeks operated powerfully on the less vigorous and daring
character of the Italians. The Italians, like the Greeks, were
members of small communities. Every man was deeply interested in
the welfare of the society to which he belonged, a partaker in
its wealth and its poverty, in its glory and its shame. In the
age of Machiavelli this was peculiarly the case. Public events
had produced an immense sum of misery to private citizens. The
Northern invaders had brought want to their boards, infamy to
their beds, fire to their roofs, and the knife to their throats.
It was natural that a man who lived in times like these should
overrate the importance of those measures by which a nation is
rendered formidable to its neighbours, and undervalue those which
make it prosperous within itself.

Nothing is more remarkable in the political treatises of
Machiavelli than the fairness of mind which they indicate. It