There still remains the one contingency which is most likely to bring on such years of dearth as produce the greatest evils; and unfortunately there are no fewer instances of such issues than of those that we have just mentioned. If a king who has governed a kingdom should happen to die, and leave behind three or four sons, and the men who are likely to be made counsellors be all young and full of temerity, though wealthy and of good ancestry, since they have sprung from families that formerly conducted the government with the king,—now if a kingdom should come into such unfortunate circumstances as have been described, with several heirs at the same time, and the evil counsel is furthermore taken to give them all the royal title and dignity, then that realm must be called a rudderless ship or a decayed estate; it may be regarded almost as a ruined kingdom, for it is sown with the worst seeds of famine and the grains of unpeace. For the petty kings, having rent the realm asunder, will quickly divide the loyalty of the people who inhabit the land, both of the rich and of the poor; and each of these lords will then try to draw friends about him, as many as he can. Thereupon each will begin to survey his realm as to population and wealth; and when he recalls what his predecessor possessed, each will feel that he has too little. Then the friends, too, of each one will remind him of and tell about how much the king who ruled before him possessed in wealth and numbers and what great undertakings he set out upon; and it seems as if in every suggestion each one tries to urge his lord to seize upon more than he already has. After that these lords begin to treasure those riches that are of the least profit to the kingdom, namely envy: trivial matters are carefully garnered and great wrath is blown out of them. Soon the love of kinship begins to decay; he who was earlier called friend and relative is now looked upon as an evil-doer, for soon each one begins to be suspicious of the others. But when suspicion and evil rumors begin to appear, wicked men think that good times are at hand, and they all bring out their plows. Before long the seeds of hostility begin to sprout, avarice and iniquity flourish, and men grow bold in manslaying, high-handed robbery, and theft.