made for bringing the soldiers back into their ancient courses, if I have not brought them back, neither by you nor by others can I be censured. I believe this excuse enough for a reply to your accusation.

COSIMO: It would be enough, if I were sure the occasion had not come.

FABRIZIO: But because I know that you can doubt whether this occasion has come or not, I intend, if you are willing patiently to listen, to discuss at length what sort of preparations must be made beforehand, what sort of occasion has to arise, what sort of difficulty keeps the preparations from being effective and the occasion from coming, and how this thing at the same instant, though the terms seem contrary, is very difficult and very easy to do.

COSIMO: You cannot do, both for me and for these others, a thing more pleasing than this, and if it is not irksome for you to speak, never will it be irksome for us to hear. But because this discourse must be long, I want aid from these friends of mine, with your permission; and they and I beg from you one thing: that you will not be annoyed if sometimes we interrupt you with some urgent question.

FABRIZIO: I am very willing that you, Cosimo, and these other young men should here question me, because I believe that your youth makes you more interested in military matters and readier to believe what I shall say. Men of another age, with their hair white and the blood in their bodies turned to ice, are commonly some of them enemies of war, some beyond correction, believing that the times and not bad customs force men to live thus. So ask questions of me, all of you, with assurance and without hesitation; this I wish both because it will give me a little rest and because I shall be glad not to leave in your minds any uncertainty.

[Professional soldiers cannot be good men]

I wish to begin with your words, in which you said to me that in war, which is my profession, I have not used any ancient methods. On this I say that because this is a profession by means of which men cannot live virtuously at all times, it cannot be practised as a profession except by a republic or a kingdom; and neither of these, when they have been well regulated, has ever allowed one of its citizens or subjects to practise it as a profession, nor has any good man ever engaged in it as his special profession. Because he will never be reckoned a good man who carries on an occupation in which, if he is to endeavour at all times to get income from it, he must be rapacious, fraudulent, violent, and must have many qualities which of necessity make him not good; nor can men who practise it as a profession, the big as well as the little, be of any other sort, because this profession does not support them in time of peace. Hence they are obliged either to hope that there will be no peace, or to become so rich in time of war that in peace they can support themselves. And neither one of these two expectations is to be found in a good man, because from the desire to support themselves at all times come the robberies, the deeds of violence, the murderous acts that such soldiers commit as much against their friends as against their enemies; and from not wishing peace come the deceits that the generals practise against those by whom they are employed, in order that a war may last; and if peace does come, it often happens that the generals, being deprived of their stipends and of their living, lawlessly set up their ensigns as soldiers of fortune and without any mercy plunder a region.