Lehal Library

the prince won’t, as I’ve said, have his soldiers’ respect and won’t be able to trust them. A ruler, then, must never stop thinking about war and preparing for war and he must work at it even more in peace- time than in war itself. He can do this in two ways, physically and mentally. Physically, aside from keeping his men exer- cised and disciplined, he should go hunting a great deal, which will toughen up his body. It will also help him get to know different landscapes, how the mountains rise and the valleys open out, the lie of the plains, what rivers and marshes are like. These are things he should study really carefully since this kind of knowledge is useful in two ways. First, he’ll get to know his own country and hence will have a better sense of how it can be defended. Second, familiarity with these places will make it easier for him to grasp the topography of places he needs to understand but hasn’t seen before. The hills, valleys, plains, rivers and marshes of Tuscany, for example, have much in common with those of other areas, so that knowing the lie of the land in one region makes it easier to get to know it in another. The ruler who doesn’t have this facility lacks the first thing a commander needs, because understanding the land helps you find the enemy, lead your army by the right route, choose a place to camp, plan out the battle and lay siege to a town, all in the best way possible. One of the things historians admired about the Achaean leader Philopoemen was that even in peacetime he thought of nothing but military strategy and when he was in the country with his friends he would often stop and ask them: If the enemy were over there on that hill and we were down here with our army, who would be in the better position? How could we attack them without breaking ranks? If we decided to retreat, how would we do it? And if they retreated, how would we go after them? And as he and his friends went along he would list all the predicaments an army can find itself in. He listened to their ideas, expressed and explained his own;