The Books on the Family

Leon Battista Alberti - The Books on the Family

Page 3

As soon as the Macedonian princes Referring to the Diadochi, the rival successors of Alexander the Great who fought over his empire. began each to look after his own private interests, and to be solicitous not for the public empire but curious for their private realms, discords immediately arose among them. Scorching flames of hatred were kindled between them, and their souls burned with the torches of greed and fury—now to do injury, now to take revenge. And those very same arms and triumphal hands, which had occupied and subjected the liberty and strength of innumerable peoples, which had encompassed such a vast empire, and with which the name and fame of the Macedonians was already most celebrated throughout the whole world—these same most invincible arms, subjected to the private appetites of the few remaining hereditary tyrants, were the ones which tore apart and scattered their every law, every equity and goodness, and pursued every sinew of their formerly feared strength. Thus, then, the Macedonians ended their hard-won happiness—not by fortune, but by their own folly—and found themselves in a short time without empire and without glory. Greece also held victory, glory, and empire within herself, so long as she was devoted and diligent no less in ruling, regulating, and restraining the minds of her citizens than in adorning herself with delights and ennobling herself above others with pomp.

And regarding our Italy, is the same not manifest? While our best, most holy, and most ancient disciplines were observed by us; while we were eager to make ourselves like our ancestors and with virtue virtue: the Italian virtù, signifying manliness, skill, and civic effectiveness we strove to surpass the praise of those who came before; and while our people considered their every work, industry, and art, and indeed their every possession, to be owed and obligated to the fatherland, to the public good, and to the benefit and utility of all citizens; while wealth, blood, and life were offered up to maintain the authority, majesty, and glory of the Latin name The "Latin name" refers to the Roman state and its cultural identity.—was there then any people to be found, was there any most ferocious barbarian nation, that did not fear and obey our edicts and laws? That marvelous empire without borders, that dominion over all peoples with our—