“Many speakers to the House the other night in the debate on the reduction of armaments seemed to show a most lamentable ignorance of the conditions under which the British Empire maintains its existence. When Mr Balfour replied to the allegations that the Roman Empire sank under the weight of its military obligations, he said that this was ‘wholly unhistorical.’ He might well have added that the Roman power was at its zenith when every citizen acknowledged his liability to fight for the State, but that it began to decline as soon as this obligation was no longer recognised.”—Pall Mall Gazette, 15th May 1906.

Philopoemen, “the last of the Greeks,” born 252 B.C., died 183 B.C.

During the rioting between the Cancellieri and Panciatichi factions in 1502 and 1503.

. . . against my will, my fate A throne unsettled, and an infant state, Bid me defend my realms with all my pow’rs, And guard with these severities my shores. Christopher Pitt.

“The present chapter has given greater offence than any other portion of Machiavelli’s writings.” Burd, “Il Principe,” p. 297.

“Contesting,” i.e. “striving for mastery.” Mr Burd points out that this passage is imitated directly from Cicero’s “De Officiis”: “Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi, unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est ad posterius, si uti non licet superiore.”