Aphorismes ciuill and militarie amplified with authorities, and exemplified with historie, out of the first quarterne of Fr. Guicciardine.

APHORISME III.

WHen 1 1.1 the Ballast or lading is well stowed in the shippe, shee maketh good way, and saileth faire∣ly: but being vneuenly bestowed, it hindereth her course, and sometimes sinketh her. 2 1.2 As also, where is an equall temperature of the humours, there is perfect health, and a good constitution of the bo∣die: but where these are distempered, and the maligne are predomi∣nant, there the former good habite is turned to some desperate dis∣ease. 3 1.4 So is it in a State, where the vicious and ambitious succeed in the place and authoritie, but not in the vertues and worth of their noble predecessors.

Laurence Medici being dead, who tempered the ambitious hu∣mour of Lodowick Zforza, qualified the iealousies of Ferdinand, pacified the indignations of Alphonso Prince of Calabria, and kept the States of Italy counterpoised in equall ballance: and Pope Innocent the 8. being also now gone, who after a long dis∣position to troubles, had yet at last, some yeares before his death, giuen them ouer, and labored nothing more then peace: Peter Medici succeeds in his fathers place, but not in his vertues:

a man insolently imperious in his cariages, and desperately pre∣cipitate in his deliberations. And Roderigo Borgia a Spaniard enters the Papacie, vnder the name of Alexander the 6. a man though singular in policie and maturitie of iudgement, excel∣lent in counsell, admirable in perswasion, vnmatchable in at∣tempting, vndergoing, and effecting great matters; yet of a most leud and abhominable life, of no faith, no religion, insatiably couetous, immoderately ambitious, barbarously cruell, and fu∣riously enflamed with a burning desire to raise his children to temporall preferments, by warre, bloud, or what meanes soeuer. Vpon these two (a rash young man, and couetous old wretch) together with Zforza the third incendiarie of his countrie, lies iustly all the imputation of putting all Italy into such miserable garboile.

Notes

• 1 1.1

  Mentre la Carica, sta ben compartita, il vascello solca commodissima∣mente leonde: ma se tutto il peso scorre à vna parte, se ne va sozzopra, & sirinuersa.
• * 1.1.1

  Boter. in Caes.
• 2 1.2

  Bonus habitus optima quaedam sanitas.

  Optima corporis constitutio, in moderata similium partium temperie constat, exacta dissimilium mensura.

  Natara temperata ad iustitiam, non ad pondus: in qua quatuor qualitates ad aequilibrium miscentur.
• * 1.3

  Gal. lib. de bon. hab. Id. ibid. Ibid.
• 3 1.4

  Cum Magnates opprimunt subditos, idem est, ac si caput corporis intumes∣cat: vt à membris omnino, vel certè sine magna molestia, ferri non posset.

  Ambitiosi priuatim degeneres, in publicum exitiosi, nihil spei, nisi per discor∣dias habent.

  Nemo eorum qui in Repub. versantur, quos vincat, sed à quibus vincatur, aspicit.

  Vbi in vrbe deteriora vincunt, tum peccata pessundant Ciuitatem.
• * 1.5

  Plato de leg.
• * 1.6

  Seneca.
• * 1.7

  Ibidem.
• * 1.8

  Sophocles.