23

23. On bad means to a good end

[Reflections on the health and sickness of States, mainly arising from reading Jean Bodin.]

[A] Throughout the whole system governing the works of Nature there can be found an amazing analogy and correspondence which shows that it is neither fortuitous nor controlled by a variety of Masters. The maladies and the characteristics of our bodies can also be found in States and polities; like us, kingdoms and republics are born, flourish and fade into decrepitude. We are subject to a surfeit of humours which serves no purpose and is harmful. The humours themselves may be good (and the doctors fear them particularly: they say that since nothing within us remains stable, health when perfect can be too positive and vigorous and should be tamed and diminished by the Art of medicine for fear that our nature, being unable to remain fixed in any one place yet having no possibility of further improvement, should suddenly collapse in disorder: that is why they prescribe for athletes purgations and bleedings so as to draw off that superabundance of health); the humours may be also bad, which is the usual cause of illness.

Ailing political systems may often show a similar surfeit, and various sorts of purges are normally used for it. Sometimes, to take the load off the country, a great multitude of families are given leave to seek better conditions elsewhere, to some other nation’s detriment. It was in this way that our ancient Franks left the depths of Germany and came and took over Gaul, driving out the original inhabitants. Thus too were formed those huge waves of humanity which poured into Italy under Brennus and others; so too the Goths and the Vandals, like the peoples who at present hold Greece, abandoned their native lands to settle more spaciously elsewhere. There are scarcely two or three corners in the world which have not experienced such migrations.

That was the way the Romans built their colonies: when they thought that their City was becoming excessively big they relieved it of the people they needed least, sending them off to inhabit and farm the lands which they had conquered. And sometimes they deliberately kept up wars with some of their enemies, not only to keep their men in training, fearing that idleness the Mother of decadence might bring some worse trouble upon them –

[B] Et patimur longæ pacis mala; sævior armis, Luxuria incumbit

[We are suffering the ills of a prolonged peace: luxury, more savage than war, is crushing us]1

– [A] but also to serve as a good phlebotomy for the Republic and to ventilate a little of the excessively mind-stirring heat of their young men, pruning and pollarding the branches of a stock growing rampant from too much energy. They sometimes used their war against the Carthaginians for this purpose.

King Edward III of England would not include in the general peace established with our French King at the Treaty of Bretigny their quarrel over the Duchy of Brittany: he wanted somewhere to unload his fighting-men and to dissuade the multitude of Englishmen who had served him across the Channel from pouring back into England.

One of the reasons why King Philip agreed to dispatch his son Jean to the wars in Outremer was that he could take with him a large number of the hot-blooded young men to be found in his army.

There are many today who use similar arguments, wishing that the heat of the civil commotions among us could be diverted into some war against our neighbours, fearing that those aberrant humours which now dominate the body politic would, if not decanted elsewhere, continue to maintain our troubles at fever-pitch, finally entailing our complete collapse. And indeed a foreign war is a distemper much less harsh than a civil war: but I do not believe that God would look favourably on so wicked an enterprise as our attacking and quarrelling with a neighbour simply for our own convenience.

[B] Nil mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo, Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris.

[O Nemesis, ye Rhamnusian Virgin, grant that I may desire nothing so much that I should wrench it from its rightful owner.]2

[A] Yet so wretched is our condition that we are often driven to the necessity of using evil means to a good end. Lycurgus, the most virtuous and perfect lawgiver there ever was, introduced a most iniquitous way of training his Spartan citizens in temperance: he compelled their slaves the Helots to get drunk so that the Spartans should see them lost and wallowing in their wine and so hold the excesses of that vice in horror.3

Even more wrong were those who in Ancient times permitted that criminals who had been condemned to any kind of death might be cut up alive by doctors so as to reveal our inner organs in their natural state and so establish greater certainty in their Art; for if we really must indulge in depravity, we are more to be excused if we do so for the good of the soul than for the good of the body: as did the Romans who trained their citizens in valour and in contempt for death and danger by those frenzied spectacles of gladiators and swordsmen who fought to the death, hacking at each other and killing each other while they looked on:

[B] Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi, Quid mortes juvenum, quid sanguine pasta voluptas?

[For what else can be meant by those mindless impious shows, by those slaughterings of young men and that pleasure fed on blood?]

Such slaughter lasted until the time of the Emperor Theodosius:

Arripe dilatam tua, dux, in tempora famam, Quodque patris superest, successor laudis habeto. Nullus in urbe codat cujus sit pæna voluptas. Jam solis contenta feris, infamis arena Nulla cruentatis homicidia ludat in armis.

[O thou, our Leader, succeed to your father’s glory and grasp such honour as he set aside for our times… Let no man be any longer killed in Rome to provide entertainment… Let the infamous arena be content with wild beasts alone and no more make a sport of murder wrought with blood-stained weapons.]

[A] It was indeed a wonderful and very fruitful example for training the people that they should have every day before their eyes a hundred, two hundred or even a thousand pairs of men bearing arms, hacking each other to pieces with such extreme strength of courage that never was heard a single word of weakness or of pity, never a back was turned, never was an opponent’s blow cowardly dodged even but rather were necks offered to swords and presented to blows. Several of them who were mortally covered with many a wound, before lying down to die in the arena sent messages to the spectators to inquire whether they were pleased with their service. It was not enough that they should fight and die with constancy: they had to do it cheerfully: with the result that if they were seen to be reluctant to die there was booing and cursing.

[B] The very maidens egged them on.

Consurgit ad ictus;Et, quoties victor femm jugulo inscrit, illa Delitias ait esse suas, pectusque jacentis Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi.

[The vestal virgin jumps to her feet with each blow and every time the victor lunges his sword through his opponent’s throat she cries, ‘Oh, what fun!’ And when one of the men is struck to the ground, she twists her thumb round to have him dispatched.]4

[A] To provide such examples the earlier Romans used criminals only; afterwards they used innocent slaves and even freemen who sold themselves for this purpose – [B] they included Senators and Roman knights; and women too.

Nunc caput in mortem vendunt, et funus arenæ, Atque hostem sibi quisque parat, cum bella quiescunt.

[Now they each sell their own persons to die in the arena: when all is at peace they find a foe to attack.]

Hos inter fremitus novosque lusus, Stat sexus rudis insciusque ferri, Et pugnas capit improbus viriles.

[Among these tumultuous new sports you see women, clumsy and unused to arms, fighting frenetically with the men.]5

[A] That is something that I would have found most strange and unbelievable were it not that in our Civil Wars we have become daily accustomed to seeing thousands of foreigners pledging for money their very life-blood in quarrels which are no concern of theirs at all.