principalities. For even if the prince be new, the institutions of the state are old, and are so organised as to receive the elected the same as though he were their hereditary lord.

But to return to our subject, I say that whoever reflects carefully upon the above discourse will find that the ruin of the above mentioned emperors was caused by either hatred or contempt; and he will also see how it happened that, whilst some of them having proceeded one way and some in the opposite, in some instances the one had a happy, and the other an unhappy end. For in the case of Pertinax and Alexander, both being new princes, it was useless and dangerous for them to attempt to imitate Marcus, who had inherited the empire. And in the same way it was ruinous for Caracalla, Commodus and Maximinus to imitate Severus, for neither of them possessed the noble qualities necessary to enable them to follow in his footsteps.

A prince, therefore, who has but recently acquired his principality, cannot imitate the conduct of Marcus Aurelius; nor is it necessary for him to imitate that of Septimius Severus. But he should learn from Severus what is necessary to found a state, and from Marcus what is proper and glorious for the preservation of a state that is already firmly established.