equal lots, as the Israelitish army in the land of Canaan by
Joshua. In every one of these ways there must not only be
confiscations, but confiscations to such a proportion as may
answer to the work intended.
Confiscation of a people that never fought against you, but
whose arms you have borne, and in which you have been victorious,
and this upon premeditation and in cold blood, I should have
thought to be against any example in human nature, but for those
alleged by Machiavel of Agathocles, and Oliveretto di Fermo, the
former whereof being captain-general of the Syracusans, upon a
day assembled the Senate and the people, as if he had something
to communicate with them, when at a sign given he cut the
senators in pieces to a man, and all the richest of the people,
by which means he came to be king. The proceedings of Oliveretto,
in making himself Prince of Fermo, were somewhat different in
circumstances, but of the same nature. Nevertheless Catiline, who
had a spirit equal to any of these in his intended mischief,
could never bring the like to pass in Rome. The head of a small
commonwealth, such a one as was that of Syracuse or Fermo, is
easily brought to the block; but that a populous nation, such as
Rome, had not such a one, was the grief of Nero. If Sylvia or
Caesar attained to be princes, it was by civil war, and such
civil war as yielded rich spoils, there being a vast nobility to
be confiscated; which also was the case in Oceana, when it
yielded earth by earldoms, and baronies to the Neustrian for the
plantation of his new potentates. Where a conqueror finds the
riches of a land in the hands of the few, the forfeitures are
easy, and amount to vast advantage; but where the people have
equal shares, the confiscation of many comes to little, and is
not only dangerous but fruitless.
The Romans, in one of their defeats of the Volsci, found
among the captives certain Tusculans, who, upon examination,
confessed that the arms they bore were by command of their State;
whereupon information being given to the Senate by the general
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