ficiently alarming.
Ottaviano Maggi, himself a diplomatist of the brilliant age of the
Renaissance, has left us in his _De legato_ (Hanoviae, 1596) his idea of
what an ambassador should be. He must not only be a good Christian but a
learned theologian; he must be a philosopher, well versed in Aristotle
and Plato, and able at a moment's notice to solve in correct dialectical
form the most abstruse problems; he must be well read in the classics,
and an expert in mathematics, architecture, music, physics and civil and
canon law. He must not only know how to write and speak Latin with
classical refinement, but he must be a master of Greek, Spanish, French,
German and Turkish. He must have a sound knowledge of history, geography
and the science of war; but at the same time is not to neglect the
poets, and never to be without his Homer. Add to this that he must be
well born, rich and of a handsome presence, and we have a portrait of a
diplomatist whose original can hardly have existed even in that age of
brilliant versatility. The Dutchman Frederikus de Marselaer, in his
[Greek: kerukeion] _sive legationum insigne_ (Antwerp, 1618), is
scarcely less exacting than the Venetian. His ideal ambassador is a
nobleman of fine presence and in the prime of life, famous, rich,
munificent, abstemious, not violent, nor quarrelsome, nor morose, no
flatterer, learned, eloquent, witty without being talkative, a good
linguist, widely read, prudent and cautious, but brave and--as he adds
somewhat superfluously--many-sided.

With these theoretical perfections one or two instances of the
qualifications demanded by the exigencies of practical politics may be
cited by way of illuminating contrast. At the court of the empress
Elizabeth of Russia good looks were a surer means of diplomatic success
than all the talents and virtues, and the princess of Zerbst (mother of
the empress Catherine II.) wrote to Frederick of Prussia advising him to
replace his elderly ambassador by a handsome young man with a good
complexion; and the essential qualification for an ambassador to
Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Denmark and Russia used to be that he
should be able to drink the native diplomatists, seasoned from babyhood
to strong liquors, under the table.

_History._--In its widest sense the history of diplomacy is that of the
intercourse between nations, in so far as this has not been a mere brute
struggle for the mastery;[4] in a narrower sense, with which the