CHAPTER THREE
ON HOW ROME BECAME A GREAT STATE, DESTROYING THE STATES THAT SURROUNDED IT, AND HOW IT TOOK FOREIGNERS INTO ITS RANKS

“All the while Rome grows on the ruins of Alba.”¹⁶⁶ Those who intend their city to become a great empire must endeavor to fill it with inhabitants, because without an abundance of men it will never become a great city. This can be done in two ways: through love or through force. If it is through love, one must keep the roads open for foreigners who aspire to come live in one’s city, everyone living there willingly. If it is through force, one will destroy the neighboring cities and send their inhabitants to live in one’s own city. Rome followed this practice so diligently that by the time of their sixth king, Rome had eighty thousand men capable of bearing arms. The Romans wanted to adopt the ways of the good farmer who will prune the first branches that a tree sprouts so that it will grow well and produce ripe fruit, and so that the power remaining in the roots can with time make it grow more lushly and bear more fruit. The examples of Sparta and Athens demonstrate that this way of enlarging a state and creating an empire is effective: These two states had powerful armies and the best laws, and yet they did not reach the greatness of the Roman Empire, even if by comparison Rome seemed unruly and disorganized. No other reason for Rome’s greatness can be put forward than the one I have already suggested: Rome had enlarged the body of its state in both these ways and was able to arm eighty thousand men, while Sparta and Athens never surpassed twenty thousand each. This was not the result of Rome’s having a more advantageous location, only that it had a different way of proceeding. Lycurgus, the founder of the Spartan state, believed that nothing would corrupt his laws more than introducing new inhabitants into Sparta, and consequently did his utmost to prevent foreigners mixing with Spartans. Not only did he forbid intermarriage, citizenship, and other interaction that brings people together, but he decreed that only money made of leather could be used in his state. He did this in order to discourage merchants from coming to Sparta with goods or crafts. The result was that the city could never grow in inhabitants. And as all of our actions imitate nature, it is neither possible nor natural that a delicate trunk will be able to sustain heavy branches. Therefore a small republic cannot occupy cities and kingdoms that are more effective or bigger than it is, and if it does, it will meet the same fate as a tree whose branches are larger than its trunk: holding them up with difficulty, the trunk will break in the slightest breeze. This was the case of Sparta, which successfully occupied all the city-states in Greece. And yet the moment Thebes rebelled, all the other cities followed suit and the trunk remained alone and without branches. This could not happen to Rome, as its trunk was so thick that it could support branches of any size. This and other ways of proceeding that I shall describe are what made Rome powerful and great. Livy demonstrated this in his well-chosen phrase: “All the while Rome grows on the ruins of Alba.”

166. Machiavelli quotes Livy (Book I, chapter 30) in Latin: Crescit interea Roma Albae ruinis.