or province present itself to an ambitious prince or commonwealth, than
to be asked to send an army for its defence. On the other hand, he who
is so greedy of conquest as to summon such help, not for purposes of
defence but in order to attack others, seeks to have what he can never
hold and is most likely to be taken from him by the very person who
helps him to gain it. Yet such is the perversity of men that, to gratify
the desire of the moment, they shut their eyes to those ills which must
speedily ensue and are no more moved by example in this matter than in
all those others of which I have spoken; for were they moved by these
examples they would see that the more disposed they are to deal
generously with their neighbours, and the more averse they are to usurp
authority over them, the readier will these be to throw themselves into
their arms; as will at once appear from the case of the Capuans.



CHAPTER XXI.--_That Capua was the first City to which the Romans sent
a Prætor; nor there, until four hundred years after they began to make
War._

The great difference between the methods followed by the ancient Romans
in adding to their dominions, and those used for that purpose by the
States of the present time, has now been sufficiently discussed. It has
been seen, too how in dealing with the cities which they did not think
fit to destroy, and even with those which had made their submission
not as companions but as subjects, it was customary with the Romans
to permit them to live on under their own laws, without imposing any
outward sign of dependence, merely binding them to certain conditions,
or complying with which they were maintained in their former dignity
and importance. We know, further, that the same methods continued to be