The Essays, vol 16 | Page 6

was the same person who is introduced by Gallus under the name of
Lycoris. Gallus doubtless knew her personally.]
Heliogabalus did since as much, calling himself Cybele, the mother of
the gods; and also drawn by tigers, taking upon him the person of the
god Bacchus; he also sometimes harnessed two stags to his coach,
another time four dogs, and another four naked wenches, causing
himself to be drawn by them in pomp, stark naked too. The Emperor
Firmus caused his chariot to be drawn by ostriches of a prodigious size,
so that it seemed rather to fly than roll.
The strangeness of these inventions puts this other fancy in my head:
that it is a kind of pusillanimity in monarchs, and a testimony that they
do not sufficiently understand themselves what they are, when they
study to make themselves honoured and to appear great by excessive
expense: it were indeed excusable in a foreign country, but amongst
their own subjects, where they are in sovereign command, and may do
what they please, it derogates from their dignity the most supreme
degree of honour to which they can arrive: just as, methinks, it is
superfluous in a private gentleman to go finely dressed at home; his
house, his attendants, and his kitchen sufficiently answer for him. The
advice that Isocrates gives his king seems to be grounded upon reason:
that he should be splendid in plate and furniture; forasmuch as it is an
expense of duration that devolves on his successors; and that he should
avoid all magnificences that will in a short time be forgotten. I loved to
go fine when I was a younger brother, for want of other ornament; and
it became me well: there are some upon whom their rich clothes weep:
We have strange stories of the frugality of our kings about their own
persons and in their gifts: kings who were great in reputation, valour,
and fortune. Demosthenes vehemently opposes the law of his city that
assigned the public money for the pomp of their public plays and

festivals: he would that their greatness should be seen in numbers of
ships well equipped, and good armies well provided for; and there is
good reason to condemn Theophrastus, who, in his Book on Riches,
establishes a contrary opinion, and maintains that sort of expense to be
the true fruit of abundance. They are delights, says Aristotle, that a only
please the baser sort of the people, and that vanish from the memory as
soon as the people are sated with them, and for which no serious and
judicious man can have any esteem. This money would, in my opinion,
be much more royally, as more profitably, justly, and durably, laid out
in ports, havens, walls, and fortifications; in sumptuous buildings,
churches, hospitals, colleges, the reforming of streets and highways:
wherein Pope Gregory XIII. will leave a laudable memory to future
times: and wherein our Queen Catherine would to long posterity
manifest her natural liberality and munificence, did her means supply
her affection. Fortune has done me a great despite in interrupting the
noble structure of the Pont-Neuf of our great city, and depriving me of
the hope of seeing it finished before I die.
Moreover, it seems to subjects, who are spectators of these triumphs,
that their own riches are exposed before them, and that they are
entertained at their own expense: for the people are apt to presume of
kings, as we do of our servants, that they are to take care to provide us
all things necessary in abundance, but not touch it themselves; and
therefore the Emperor Galba, being pleased with a musician who
played to him at supper, called for his money-box, and gave him a
handful of crowns that he took out of it, with these words: "This is not
the public money, but my own." Yet it so falls out that the people, for
the most part, have reason on their side, and that the princes feed their
eyes with what they have need of to fill their bellies.
Liberality itself is not in its true lustre in a sovereign hand: private men
have therein the most right; for, to take it exactly, a king has nothing
properly his own; he owes himself to others: authority is not given in
favour of the magistrate, but of the people; a superior is never made so
for his own profit, but for the profit of the inferior, and a physician for
the sick person, and not for himself: all magistracy, as well as all art,
has its end out of itself wherefore the tutors of young princes, who

make it their business to imprint in them this virtue of liberality, and
preach to them to deny nothing and to think nothing so well