COSIMO: I wish to turn to what you said first, that my grandfather and those princes of yours would have been wiser to imitate the ancients in things harsh rather than in those delicate; but I wish to offer excuse for my side, because I shall leave the excusing of the other to you. I do not believe there was, in his times, any man who so much detested soft living as he did and was such a lover of that severe life you praise. Yet he realised that neither in his own person nor in those of his children could he follow it, because he was born in an age so corrupt, in which one who wished to depart from the usual habit would be defamed and spoken against by everybody. Because if a naked man, in the summer, under the midday sun should stretch out on the sand, or in the winter in the coldest months on the snow, as Diogenes did, he would be thought crazy. If anyone, like the Spartans, should bring up his children in the country, should make them sleep in the open air, go with their heads and their feet bare, bathe in cold water, in order to bring them to be able to bear distress and to make them have less affection for life and less fear of death, he would be mocked and held to be rather an animal than a man. If anyone also fed on vegetables and despised gold, like Fabricius, he would be praised by few and followed by none. Hence, dismayed by our methods of living at present, he abandoned the ancients, yet whenever he could without causing great astonishment imitate antiquity, he did so.

[The Romans to be imitated in public affairs]

FABRIZIO: You have excused him in this matter with great vigour, and certainly you speak the truth. But I was not referring so much to those severe methods of living as to other methods, more humane and more in harmony with the life of today, which I do not believe that one counted among the leading men of a city would find it difficult to introduce. I shall never depart, in giving examples of anything, from my Romans. If we consider their life and the organisation of their republic, we shall see there many things not impossible for introduction into any state in which there is still left something good.

COSIMO: What are these things you would like to introduce that are like the ancient ones?

FABRIZIO: To honour and reward excellence, not to despise poverty, to esteem the methods and regulations of military discipline, to oblige the citizens to love one another, to live without factions, to esteem private less than public good, and other like things that could easily fit in with our times. About these customs, it is not difficult to be persuaded when one thinks about them enough and takes them up in the right way, because in them so plainly can be seen the truth that every public-spirited nature is capable of receiving. He who accomplishes such a thing plants trees beneath the shade of which mankind lives more prosperously and more happily than beneath this shade.

COSIMO: I do not intend to reply to what you have said in any way, but I wish to let the decision about it be turned over to those who easily can judge it; and I shall direct my speech to you who blame those who in serious and great actions do not imitate the ancients, believing that in this way my intention will be more easily fulfilled. I should like, then, to learn from you why it is that on one side you condemn those who in their acts do not imitate the ancients, and that on the other, in war, which is your profession and in which you are considered excellent, we do not see that you have used any ancient methods, or any showing some likeness to them.

[Ancient example for warfare]

FABRIZIO: You have appeared just where I expected you, because my speech did not deserve any other question, nor was there any other that I desired. And thought I might acquit myself with an easy excuse, nevertheless, for my own greater satisfaction and yours, since the time is propitious, I wish to enter into a longer discussion. Men who wish to do anything ought first with all diligence to make preparations, in order that when an occasion comes, they may be ready to carry out what they have intended beforehand to do. And because when preparations are made cautiously they are not known about, no man can be accused of any negligence, if his plan is not revealed before that occasion. But when it comes, if nothing is done, he appears as not having prepared himself enough to be adequate or as in some respect not having made decisions. Because no occasion has come to me for showing the preparations I have