Secret of Secrets

...vices, either avarice or prodigality: if he wishes to take counsel for himself, he ought with the highest diligence to provide a faithful, discreet, and chosen man from many, to whom he ought to entrust the commonwealth to be dispensed and the riches of the kingdom to be preserved.

Annotation.

The division of kings into four modes is referred to Pythagoras in the Ticino edition.

On the shunning of avarice and prodigality.

O Alexander, I firmly say to you: whoever of kings superfluously continues donations beyond what his kingdom is able to sustain, such a king is undoubtedly destroyed, and destroys his kingdom. I say, therefore, again that which I have never ceased to say to your clemency, that the shunning of prodigality and avarice, and the acquisition of liberality, is the glory of kings and the perpetuity of kingdoms. And this happens when a king abstains from and withdraws his hand from the goods and possessions of his subjects. Whence I found it written in the precepts of the great doctor Hermogenes that the light and pure goodness, the clarity of intellect, and the fullness of law, and the sign of perfection in a king is abstinence from the money and possessions of his subjects. This was the cause of the destruction of the kingdom of the Chaldeans; where, because the superfluity of expenses exceeded the revenues of the cities, and thus with revenues and expenses failing, the kings extended their hands to the things and revenues of others. The subjects, therefore, because of the injury, cried out to the high and glorious God, who, sending a strong wind, afflicted them vehemently; and the people rose up against them and completely wiped their names from the earth. And had not the glorious God assisted them and sent what He sent, that kingdom would have been utterly destroyed. Know, therefore, that riches are the cause of the duration of the animal soul, and they are a part of it, and such an animal cannot endure if such life is destroyed. One must, therefore, guard greatly against superabundance and the superfluity of expenses; so that, therefore...