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
Camillus, he was forthwith commanded to march against Tusculum
which doing accordingly, he found the Tusculan fields full of
husbandmen, that stirred not otherwise from the plough than to
furnish his army with all kinds of accommodations and victuals.
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