Other men, other families, have played a much more important part than the Borgias in the drama of history; others have committed as great crimes; others have surpassed them in every field of human activity--in fact, no member of the Borgia family ever produced anything of enduring value to Italy or the human race. We are therefore led to ask why Alexander VI., Caesar, and Lucretia Borgia have always aroused such profound interest. Gregorovius ascribes this to the violent contrast of their mode of living--their morals--with the sacredness of the Holy Office. An explanation wholly adequate; for, although there were temporal princes who equalled or surpassed Alexander VI. and Caesar Borgia in wickedness, the Papacy furnishes no other example, in the person of Pope or cardinal, of as great moral obliquity. Caesar had been a cardinal, and in all his projects, after as well as before he relinquished the purple, he was supported by the Pope, his father. Drum and trumpet histories are now fortunately fast becoming obsolete, and it is a truism to say that any man whose claim to fame is based on acts prompted by unbridled egoism can have little, if any, lasting effect upon the progress of the human race. A great scientist, scholar, or inventor may by his discoveries change the mode of living, the institutions of mankind, and, therefore, the subsequent history of humanity. The overthrow of the Feudal System has been ascribed to the invention of gunpowder; and the mariner’s compass, the steam-engine, and the printing-press have altered the very nature of man; the discovery of an anæsthetic or an antitoxin may have greater effect upon the history of mankind than the victories of an Alexander. Mere men of violence, the so-called conquerors, the military geniuses, whom little children were once taught to admire, and whom moral perverts are still wont to exalt--the ferocious egoists, who sigh for more worlds to conquer--are the most useless creatures produced by humanity in the painful course of its evolution. Even had these men never existed the great historic movements with which they were connected would undoubtedly have run their course and reached the same goal. The Roman Empire would have come without Caesar, and without Napoleon France would still have become the Republic. However interesting Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon may be as examples of unbridled egoism, they failed to attain the ends they sought; their conquests did not last; the victories of fraud and violence never can endure.