XXX. I am persuaded, that if we were to investigate nicely, the cause or origin, of all the heroic actions that are to be met with in the profane annals, we should find many more children of vice, than of virtue among them. The anxious hope of reward, has been the occasion of winning more battles, than the love we bear to our country. How many triumphs have been owing to emulation and envy! Alexander was stimulated by the glory of Achilles, Cæsar by that of Alexander; and Pompey, when he gave battle, had his attention more fixed on the victories of Cæsar, than the troops of the enemy. Many have done great things, from much more criminal incitements; for they have made their obsequies a ladder, wherewith to ascend to tyranny. How many have served a state, with a view of making the state subservient to themselves, and have first made it victorious, in order afterwards to enslave it! This was frequent and common among the most celebrated men of Greece. For this reason, eminent services to the republic became so suspicious in Athens, that they devised the law of ostracism to punish them as crimes; and they condemned to banishment, those who distinguished themselves by their great and conspicuous actions. XXXI. You see the same thing happen with regard to services done to private people, that you do in those rendered to a state, which is, that we frequently attribute to motives of fidelity and affection, what the person employed, executed only with an eye to his own interest; but when the dependence ceases, the real or true motive immediately displays itself. XXXII. So that upon making it just estimate of things, we shall find, that the world is full of hypocrites; some who wear the deceitful appearance of particular virtues, and others who are dissemblers with respect to all of them. The emperor Frederic the third said, as we are told by Æneas Silvius, that there was not any man whatever, who had not a spice of the hypocrite in his composition.