CHAPTER ONE
ON WHETHER THE EMPIRE THE ROMANS ACQUIRED WAS A RESULT OF SKILL OR OF FORTUNE

Many have been of the opinion—among them Plutarch, a writer of great importance—that in acquiring its empire the Roman populace was favored more by Fortune than by skill.¹⁴⁹ One of Plutarch’s arguments is that the Romans plainly attributed all their victories to Fortune, since they built more temples to Fortune than to any other deity. It seems that Livy was of the same opinion, because he rarely has a Roman speak of skill without adding to it the role that Fortune played. I, however, reject this view entirely, as I do not believe it can be sustained. If no republic was as successful in expanding its territories as Rome, this is because there has never been a republic better organized than Rome to accomplish such expansion. It is the skill of Rome’s armies that enabled it to acquire its empire, while the organization and procedures established by Rome’s founder enabled it to maintain what it acquired, as I shall discuss later in greater detail.

The historians claim that if Rome never fought two major wars at the same time, it was due to Fortune, not to the skill of its populace. The Romans did not fight a war against the Latins before the Romans crushed the Samnites so totally that they then had to wage a war to defend them.¹⁵⁰ The Romans did not have to fight the Etruscans until they had subjugated the Latins and almost entirely crushed the Samnites. If two of these powers had joined forces when they were whole and strong, one could easily imagine them destroying Rome. Be that as it may, it never came about that the Romans had to fight two major wars at the same time: In fact, it always seemed that when one war began, another ended, and when one war ended, another began. This is clear from the sequence of the wars they fought, because if we set aside the wars before Rome was taken by the Gauls,¹⁵¹ we see that while the Romans battled the Aequi and the Volsci, no other state waged a war against the Romans while the Aequi and the Volsci were still powerful. It was only after Rome was victorious that the war against the Samnites began,¹⁵² and though the Latins rebelled against the new Roman dominion before the Samnite War was over, by the time the rebellion took place the Samnites had already allied themselves with Rome, which then used Samnite soldiers to curb the Latins’ insolence.¹⁵³ Once the Latins were crushed, the Samnite War resurged,¹⁵⁴ and after the Samnites were beaten by constant routs, the war against the Etruscans began. When this war was over, the Samnites rose again when King Pyrrhus arrived in Italy¹⁵⁵ After King Pyrrhus was repulsed and sent back to Greece, the Romans initiated their first war against the Carthaginians, a war that had barely ended when all the Gauls, from both sides of the Alps, conspired against the Romans until they were finally defeated after a great massacre between Popolonia and Pisa, where today the tower of San Vincenti stands.

Once this war was over, for the next twenty years there were wars of minor importance, because the Romans fought only the Ligurians and whatever Gauls were left in Lombardy This period continued until the beginning of the Second Punic War, which kept Italy engaged for sixteen years. When the Punic War ended with supreme glory for Rome, the Macedonian War began, and when that war ended there was another with Antiochus and Asia.¹⁵⁶ After this victory there was no prince or republic in all the world who could oppose the Roman forces, alone or in joint effort.

Yet even before this last victory, anyone who considers the sequence of these wars and how they were conducted will see great skill and wisdom linked with Fortune. The reason for this good fortune is quite clear, because it is most certain that when a prince or populace reaches such powerful standing that all neighboring princes or populaces are afraid of attacking them individually and of being attacked by them, it is inevitable that no one will assault them unless they are forced to do so. The powerful prince or republic can choose what neighbor to engage in battle while attentively calming the others, who can be assuaged easily enough because of their deference to power and the deceptiveness of the methods used to assuage them. Other states that are more distant and do not have much contact with the powerful prince or republic will regard the matter as far off and of little concern. These distant states will continue in their mistaken view until the blaze of war reaches them. By that time their only means of extinguishing it will be with their own forces, which will no longer be sufficient, as the enemy will have become too powerful.

I would like to pass over how the Samnites stood by and watched the Romans conquer the Volsci and the Aequi, and, in order not to be too long-winded, will begin with the Carthaginians, who, in the days when the Romans were battling the Samnites and the Etruscans, were very powerful and greatly revered, as Carthage already held all of Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily and parts of Spain. Carthage, because of its power and its distance from the provinces of Rome, never sought to attack the Romans or come to the aid of the Samnites or the Etruscans. The Carthaginians, in fact, acted as one does when everything is progressing in one’s favor, even forming alliances with the Romans. Nor did they realize their mistake until the Romans had subjugated all the territories between the Roman provinces and those of Carthage and began fighting Carthage for its possessions in Sicily and Spain. The Carthaginians fell into the same trap as had the Gauls, Philip of Mace-don, and Antiochus, who had all been convinced that the Romans would be vanquished by one of the others, and that they themselves would have ample time to defend themselves from the Romans through either peace or war. Hence I believe that the Romans’ good fortune in this matter is of the kind that any prince would have who proceeds as they did and is as skillful as they were.

Here I would have liked to discuss the ways the Romans had of entering the territories of others, had I not discussed this at great length in my treatise on principalities.¹⁵⁷ So I will say only that in new territories, the Romans always did their best to have allies who could serve as a door or ladder enabling them to enter and retain these territories. We see that the Romans entered Samnium with the help of the Campanians, and Etruria with the help of the Camertines; the Mamertines helped them enter Sicily, the Saguntines Spain, the Massinissa Africa, the Aetolians Greece; Eumenes and other princes helped Rome enter Asia, and the Massilienses and the Aedui helped them enter Gaul. The Romans never lacked this kind of support, which facilitated their campaigns and helped them acquire and keep new provinces. States that follow the Roman example will find they need Fortune less than states that do not. To clarify how skill more than Fortune can lead a state to such an empire, we will discuss in the following chapter the character of the peoples whom the Romans engaged in battle, and how determined these peoples were in defending their liberty.

149. Plutarch writes in De fortuna Romanorum, chapter 11: “The smooth course of events, and Rome’s swift expansion and progress to supreme power, proves to all who weigh this matter that Rome’s rule did not arise from the toils and tactics of man but was sped on by divine escort and the winds of Fortune.”

150. The Samnites were a group of tribes of the southern Apennines who united to repel Roman expansion.

151. The Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BCE. The Aequi, an Italic people hostile to Rome, were repulsed by the Romans in 431, but not entirely subdued until the end of the Second Samnite War (304 BCE).

152. The First Samnite War was fought from 343 to 341 BCE.

153. The Romans and the Samnites fought the Latins between 340 and 338 BCE.

154. The Second Samnite War (326–304 BCE).

155. In 281 BCE the Samnites asked Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, for assistance against Rome. He crossed to Italy with some twenty-five thousand men, and won a series of costly victories against the Romans. In 275, however, he suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Beneventum and returned to Epirus.

156. The Second Macedonian War, 200–196 BCE, and the war against Antiochus the Great of the Hellenistic Syrian Empire.

157. Machiavelli is referring to The Prince, chapters 3 and 5.