CHAPTER XLII

HOW EASILY MAN MAY BE CORRUPTED

It should be noted also in the matter of the Decemvirate how easily men are corrupted and make themselves become of a contrary nature, even though [they are] good and well educated; [and], considering how those youths whom Appius had chosen to surround him begun, for the little advantages that followed from it, to be friendly to that tyranny, and that Quintus Fabius, one of the number of the second Ten, being a very good man, [but] blinded by a little ambition and persuaded by the malignity of Appius, changed his good habits into the worst, and became like, him. Which, if well examined, the Legislators of Republics or Kingdoms will more promptly restrain human appetites and take away from them the hope of being able to err with impunity.