The Books on the Family

Leon Battista Alberti - The Books on the Family

Page 5

...to be conquered. Fortune only holds sway over those who submit to her.

And in how many ways was Fortune seen—exerting all her power and malice at Cannae, Trebia, and Trasimene These represent Rome’s most devastating military defeats against Hannibal during the Second Punic War (218–216 BCE)., among the Gauls, in the Spains, and in other places—working against the Latin armies? She fought with no less hatred and rage than our most cruel and monstrous enemies, laboring in many ways to oppress and strike down our empire, our glory, and all of Italy, which was growing marvelously from day to day through constant and innumerable triumphs! And who could ever recount how often and in what ways Fortune herself was iniquitous and hostile toward us, both in those times and afterward, stirring up envy in peoples, princes, and nations, and sowing hatred and malevolence against us throughout the whole world?

Yet she was never able, through any of her fury or bestial impulse, to break the spirits of those good patrician Latin senators. By conquering and overcoming every adversity, they tamed and oppressed all proud peoples, reduced the entire world into provinces, and fixed the borders of our incredible Latin empire even beyond the bounds and circuits of the earth A rhetorical exaggeration common in Renaissance humanism, suggesting the Roman Empire reached the edges of the known world..

Thus, our Latin ancestors were able to oppose and withstand every enemy onslaught because, despite any ill fortune, those most virile spirits and divine minds never ceased in their will; for by willing they were able, and by being able they knew how to grow and increase through their triumphs. Their immense glory was often interrupted by envious fortune, yet it was never denied to virtue original: virtú; as long as they judged virtuous works, along with the good disciplines of the fatherland, to be the ornament and eternal strength of the empire, fortune ultimately followed them only as a compliant and favorable companion.

And as long as those elevated and divine spirits, those grave and most mature counsels, and that most integral and firm faith toward the fatherland flourished in them; and as long as the love of public affairs carried more weight with them than private ones, and the will of the fatherland more than their own desires—