cient Metellius of
Macedon; and that they who know not how to dissemble know not how to
rule, is to give warning to all who have anything to do with them, that
all they say is nothing but lying and deceit:

"Quo quis versutior et callidior est, hoc invisior et
suspectior, detracto opinione probitatis:"

["By how much any one is more subtle and cunning, by so much is he
hated and suspected, the opinion of his integrity being withdrawn."
--Cicero, De Off., ii. 9.]

it were a great simplicity in any one to lay any stress either on the
countenance or word of a man who has put on a resolution to be always
another thing without than he is within, as Tiberius did; and I cannot
conceive what part such persons can have in conversation with men, seeing
they produce nothing that is received as true: whoever is disloyal to
truth is the same to falsehood also.

Those of our time who have considered in the establishment of the duty of
a prince the good of his affairs only, and have preferred that to the
care of his faith and conscience, might have something to say to a prince
whose affairs fortune had put into such a posture that he might for ever
establish them by only once breaking his word: but it will not go so;
they often buy in the same market; they make more than one peace and
enter into more than one treaty in their lives. Gain tempts to the first
breach of faith, and almost always presents itself, as in all other ill
acts, sacrileges, murders, rebellions, treasons, as being undertaken for
some kind of advantage; but this first gain has infinite mischievous
consequences, throwing this prince out of all correspondence and
negotiation, by this example of infidelity. Soliman, of the Ottoman
race, a race not very solicitous of keeping their words or compacts,
when, in my infancy, he made his army land at Otranto, being informed
that Mercurino de' Gratinare and the inhabitants of Castro were detained
prisoners, after having surrendered the place, contrary to the articles
of their capitulation, sent orders to have them set at liberty, saying,
that having other great enterprises in hand in those parts, the
disloyalty, though it carried a show of present utility, would for the
future bring on him a disrepute and distrust of infinite prejudice.

Now, for my part, I had rather be troublesome and indiscreet than a
flatterer and a dissembler. I confess that there may be some mixture of
pride and