[Frag. XV]

¶To a large extent success consists in planning secretly, acting at the
opportune moment, following one's own counsel somewhat, and in having no
chance to fall back upon any one else, but being obliged to take upon
one's self the responsibility for the issue, however it turns out.
[Footnote: Fragment XV may perhaps be a comment on dictatorships.]
(Mai, p.142.)

[Frag. XVI]

1. They had recourse to civil strife. And the reason is plain. Those
whose money gave them influence desired to surpass their inferiors in
all respects as though they were their sovereigns, and the weaker
citizens, sure of their own equal rights, were unwilling to obey them
even in some small point. The one class, insatiate of freedom, sought
to enjoy the property of the other; and this other, uncontrolled in
its pride of place, to enjoy the fruits of the former's labors. So it
was that they sundered their former relations, wherein they were wont
harmoniously to assist each other with mutual profit, and no longer
made distinctions between foreign and native races. Indeed, both
disdained moderation, and the one class set its heart upon an extreme
of dominion, the other upon an extreme of resistance to voluntary
servitude; consequently they missed the results accomplished by their
previous allied efforts and inflicted many striking injuries, partly
in defence against each other's movements and partly by way of
anticipating them. More than all the rest of mankind they were at
variance save in the midst of particularly threatening dangers that
they incurred in the course of successive wars,--wars due chiefly to