H. Dawary
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SECOND BOOK
PREFACE
"Men always praise ancient times--- but not always reasonably--- and accuse the present; they are lovers of past things in such a mode that they celebrate not only those ages nown to them through the memory that writers have left of them, but also those that once they are old they remember having seen in their youth. When this opinion of theirs is false, as it most often is, I am persuaded that the causes that lead them to this deception are various. The first I believe to be that the truth of ancient things is not altogether understood and that most often the things that would bring infamy to those times are concealed and others that could bring forth their glory are rendered magnificent and very expansive. For most writers they obey the fortune of the victors , so that, to make their victories glorious, they not only increase that has been virtuously worked by them but also render illustrious the actions of their enemies. They do it so that whoever is born later in whichever of the two provinces, the victorious or the defeated, has cause to marvel at those men and those times and is forced to praise and love them most highly.
Besides this, as men hate things either from fear or from envy, two very powerful causes of hatred come to be eliminated in past things since they cannot offend you and do not give you cause to envy them. But the contrary happens with those things that are managed and seen. Since the entire knowledge of them is not in any part concealed from you, and together with the good, you know many other things in them that displease you, you are forced to judge them much inferior to ancient things, even though the present may in truth deserve much more glory and fame than they. I am not reasoning about things pertaining to the arts, which have so much clarity in themselves that the times can take away or give them little more glory than they may deserve in themselves, but am speaking of those pertaining to the life and customs of men, of which such clear testimonies are not seen.
I reply, therefore, that the custom written about above of praising and blaming is true, but it is not at all always true that to do so is to err. For it is necessary that they sometimes judge the truth, for since human things are always in motion, either they ascend or they descend. A city or a province is seen to be ordered for the political way of lie by some excellent man and to go on for a time, always increasing toward the best by the virtue of that orderer. He who is born then, in such a state, and praises ancient times more than modern deceives himself; and his deception is caused by the things that were said above. But they who are born later in that city or province, when the time has come for it to descend toward the worse side, do not deceive themselves then. And in thinking about these things proceed, I judge the world always to have been in the same mode and there to have been as much good as wicked in it. But the wicked and the good vary from province to province, as is seen by one who has knowledge of those ancient kingdoms, which varied from one to another because of the variation of customs, though the world remained the same. There was this difference only that where it had first placed its virtue in Assyria, it put it in Media, then in Persia, until it came to be in Italy and Rome. And if no empire followed after the Roman Empire that might have endured and in which the world might have kept its virtue together, it is seen nonetheless to be scattered in many nations where they lived virtuously, such as the kingdom of the Franks the kingdom of the Turks, that of the sultan, and the peoples of German today--- and that Muslim sect earlier, which did so many great things and seized so much of the world after it destroyed the eastern Roman Empire.
The virtue that is desired and is praised with true praises past times more than present could be deceived. But whoever is born in Italy and in Greece and has not become either an ultramontane in Italy or a Turk in Greece has reason to blame his times and to praise the others, for in the latter there are very many things that make them marvellous and in the former there is nothing that recompenses them for every extreme misery, infamy, and reproach--- there is no observance of religion, of laws, and of the military by they are stained with every type of filth. And these vices are so much detestable as they are in those who sit as tribunals, command everyone and wish to be adored." Pg. 123-124 Discourses on Livy, Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield & Nathan Tarcov
PREFACE
"Men always praise ancient times--- but not always reasonably--- and accuse the present; they are lovers of past things in such a mode that they celebrate not only those ages nown to them through the memory that writers have left of them, but also those that once they are old they remember having seen in their youth. When this opinion of theirs is false, as it most often is, I am persuaded that the causes that lead them to this deception are various. The first I believe to be that the truth of ancient things is not altogether understood and that most often the things that would bring infamy to those times are concealed and others that could bring forth their glory are rendered magnificent and very expansive. For most writers they obey the fortune of the victors , so that, to make their victories glorious, they not only increase that has been virtuously worked by them but also render illustrious the actions of their enemies. They do it so that whoever is born later in whichever of the two provinces, the victorious or the defeated, has cause to marvel at those men and those times and is forced to praise and love them most highly.
Besides this, as men hate things either from fear or from envy, two very powerful causes of hatred come to be eliminated in past things since they cannot offend you and do not give you cause to envy them. But the contrary happens with those things that are managed and seen. Since the entire knowledge of them is not in any part concealed from you, and together with the good, you know many other things in them that displease you, you are forced to judge them much inferior to ancient things, even though the present may in truth deserve much more glory and fame than they. I am not reasoning about things pertaining to the arts, which have so much clarity in themselves that the times can take away or give them little more glory than they may deserve in themselves, but am speaking of those pertaining to the life and customs of men, of which such clear testimonies are not seen.
I reply, therefore, that the custom written about above of praising and blaming is true, but it is not at all always true that to do so is to err. For it is necessary that they sometimes judge the truth, for since human things are always in motion, either they ascend or they descend. A city or a province is seen to be ordered for the political way of lie by some excellent man and to go on for a time, always increasing toward the best by the virtue of that orderer. He who is born then, in such a state, and praises ancient times more than modern deceives himself; and his deception is caused by the things that were said above. But they who are born later in that city or province, when the time has come for it to descend toward the worse side, do not deceive themselves then. And in thinking about these things proceed, I judge the world always to have been in the same mode and there to have been as much good as wicked in it. But the wicked and the good vary from province to province, as is seen by one who has knowledge of those ancient kingdoms, which varied from one to another because of the variation of customs, though the world remained the same. There was this difference only that where it had first placed its virtue in Assyria, it put it in Media, then in Persia, until it came to be in Italy and Rome. And if no empire followed after the Roman Empire that might have endured and in which the world might have kept its virtue together, it is seen nonetheless to be scattered in many nations where they lived virtuously, such as the kingdom of the Franks the kingdom of the Turks, that of the sultan, and the peoples of German today--- and that Muslim sect earlier, which did so many great things and seized so much of the world after it destroyed the eastern Roman Empire.
The virtue that is desired and is praised with true praises past times more than present could be deceived. But whoever is born in Italy and in Greece and has not become either an ultramontane in Italy or a Turk in Greece has reason to blame his times and to praise the others, for in the latter there are very many things that make them marvellous and in the former there is nothing that recompenses them for every extreme misery, infamy, and reproach--- there is no observance of religion, of laws, and of the military by they are stained with every type of filth. And these vices are so much detestable as they are in those who sit as tribunals, command everyone and wish to be adored." Pg. 123-124 Discourses on Livy, Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield & Nathan Tarcov
