Explore "Discourses on Livy" by Niccolò Machiavelli on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Of the mischief bred in Rome by the Agrarian Law: and how it is a great source of disorder in a commonwealth to pass a law opposed to ancient usage and with stringent retrospective effect.
It has been said by ancient writers that to be pinched by adversity or pampered by prosperity is the common lot of men, and that in whichever way they are acted upon the result is the same. For when no longer urged to war on one another by necessity, they are urged by ambition, which has such dominion in their hearts that it never leaves them to whatsoever heights they climb. For nature has so ordered it that while they desire everything, it is impossible for them to have everything, and thus their desires being always in excess of their capacity to gratify them, they remain constantly dissatisfied and discontented. And hence the vicissitudes in human affairs. For some seeking to enlarge their possessions, and some to keep what they have got, wars and enmities ensue, from which result the ruin of one country and the growth of another.