The Anatomy of Melancholy

For this reason the republic of Ragusa, the Swiss, and the United Provinces, in all their aristocracies or democratic monarchies, if I may call them that, exclude these degrees of hereditary honour. They allow only the learned, wise, discerning, and well-educated to hold office, like the Athenian Areopagites. The Chinese follow the same customs: no one among them is noble by birth. They choose magistrates from their philosophers and doctors; their civic nobles are drawn from those who are “morally noble,” noble in virtue. “Nobility, as formerly, comes from office, not from nature,” as in ancient Israel. Their office was to defend and govern their country in war and peace, not merely to hawk, hunt, eat, drink, and gamble, as too many do.

Their Loysii, mandarins, scholars, licentiates, and those who have risen through their own merit are their only noblemen, the people thought fit to govern a state. Why, then, should anyone who has worth in other respects be ashamed of his birth? Why should a man who leaves noble descendants not be respected as much as one who had noble ancestors? Indeed, why not more? For “more people worship the rising sun”: we mostly adore the sun as it rises. How much better to say, “In virtue I outshone my ancestors,” and boast of one’s virtues rather than one’s birth!

Cathesbeius, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, was a slave by condition, but second to no king in worth, valour, and courage; for that reason, as Giovio writes, he was elected emperor of the Mamluks. That poor Spaniard Pizarro was made Marquis of Anatillo by Charles V for his valour. The Turkish pashas are all such men.

Pertinax, Philip the Arab, Maximinus, Probus, Aurelius, and others rose from common soldiers to emperors. Cato, Cincinnatus, and others became consuls; Pius II, Sixtus V, John II, Nicholas V, and others, popes. Socrates, Virgil, Horace—“born of a freedman father.” The kings of Denmark, some say, trace their pedigree to one Ulfo, the son of a bear. “A great man often comes from a humble cottage”: many a worthy man comes out of a poor cottage.

Hercules, Romulus, Alexander—by Olympias’s confession—Themistocles, Jugurtha, King Arthur, William the Conqueror, Homer, Demosthenes, Peter Lombard, Peter Comestor, Bartolus, Pope Adrian IV, and others were born outside marriage. In almost every kingdom, the oldest families began with princes’ illegitimate children. Our annals’ worthiest commanders, finest minds, great scholars, and boldest spirits have been of low birth. In his Subtleties, Cardano gives a reason why they are usually more capable than others in body and mind, and consequently more fortunate.

Castruccio Castracani, a poor child found in a field and exposed to misery, became prince of Lucca and Siena in Italy, a thoroughly accomplished soldier and a worthy commander. Machiavelli compares him to Scipio or Alexander. It is a wonderful thing, he says, for anyone who considers it, that all those, or most of them, who have performed the greatest exploits on earth and surpassed the other great men of their time have invariably been born in some lowly, obscure place, or to poor, obscure, lowly parents.