24.—“Moreover, by adding greater power to evil wish, greater harm is added also; and when the prince is able to do that which he wishes, then there is great danger that he will not wish that which he ought. Hence Bias well said that office shows what men are:[438] for just as vases with some crack in them cannot easily be detected so long as they are empty, yet if liquid be poured in they at once show where the flaw is;—so corrupt and vicious minds seldom disclose their defects except when they are filled with authority; because then they do not suffice to bear the heavy weight of power, and hence run all lengths and scatter on every side the greeds, the pride, the bad temper, the insolence, and those tyrannical practices, which they have within them. Thus they recklessly persecute the good and wise and exalt the wicked, and in their cities they permit neither friendships nor unions nor understandings among their subjects, but maintain spies, informers and murderers, in order that they may frighten and make men cowardly, and sow discords to keep men disunited and weak. And from these ways there then ensue countless ruin and losses to the unhappy people, and often cruel death (or at least continual fear) to the tyrants themselves; because good princes are not afraid for themselves, but for those whom they rule, while tyrants fear even those whom they rule; hence the greater the number of people they rule and the more powerful they are, so much the more do they fear and so many more enemies do they have. “How frightened and of what uneasy mind do you think was Clearchus, tyrant of Pontus,[439] every time he went into the market-place or theatre, or to a banquet or other public place? who, as it is written, was wont to sleep shut up in a chest. Or that other tyrant, Aristodemus the Argive?[440] who made a kind of prison of his bed: for in his palace he had a little room hung in air, and so high that it could be reached only by a ladder; and here he slept with one of his women, whose mother took away the ladder at night and replaced it in the morning. “A wholly different life from this, then, ought that of the good prince to be, free and safe and as dear to his subjects as their very own, and so ordered as to partake both of the active and of the contemplative, as much as may comport with his people’s weal.” 25.—Then my lord Gaspar said: “And which of these two lives, my lord Ottaviano, seems to you more fitting for the prince?” My lord Ottaviano replied, laughing: “Perhaps you think I imagine myself to be that excellent Courtier who ought to know so many things and apply them to that good end which I have set forth; but remember that these gentlemen have described him with many accomplishments that are not in me. Therefore let us first take care to find him, for I leave to him both this and all things else that belong to a good prince.” Then my lord Gaspar said: