more binding for it: so that oaths, in this case, seem used rather for decorum, reputation, and ceremony, than for fidelity, security, and effectuating. And though these oaths were strengthened with the bonds of affinity, which are the links and ties of nature, and again, by mutual services and good offices, yet we see all this will generally give way to ambition, convenience, and the thirst of power: the rather, because it is easy for princes, under various specious pretences, to defend, disguise, and conceal their ambitious desires and insincerity, having no judge to call them to account. There is, however, one true and proper confirmation of their faith, though no celestial divinity, but that great divinity of princes, Necessity; or, the danger of the state; and the securing of advantage.
This necessity is elegantly represented by Styx, the fatal river that can never be crossed back. And this deity it was, which Iphicrates the Athenian invoked in making a