greatness, he composed around the year 1300 the last four fifths of the
treatise De regimine principum which was ascribed as a whole to
Aquinas and enjoyed the latter’s enormous authority. Book 2 of the
work, the first by Ptolemy, develops the theme of the founding of cities.
To do it successfully a ruler needs natural wealth—woods, vineyards,
and flocks—but also artificial wealth in the form of a well-filled treasury
and a gold and silver coinage to fuel the economy. Money assures
against future necessity for everyone. In this respect in particular
Ptolemy sees the royal state (status regalis) as having a universal quality
(quamdam universalitatem) which is ‘common to all the people subject
to it’. ‘The state of lords’ is by its nature communicable (communica-
tivus) to those under them—both its strength and mode of operation—
but this cannot happen without a stable coinage, weights and measures,
and safe roads, just as a smith or carpenter cannot work without instru-
ments (bk. 2, caps. 7, 12–14). The king and every other lord should take
care for ‘the conservation of his state’ by maintaining the poor from the
public purse (cap. 15).^26
The state of the ruler thus merges with, and begins to absorb, the
state of the community he rules. Ptolemy differs from Aquinas as to
what is the best status regiminisfor the people. The final and most
essential requirement for successful government is a corps of officials,
and what decides whether the regime is ‘political’ or ‘despotic’ is
whether these act as free men or slaves. Regimen regaleoften comes
into the category of the despotic (bk. 2, caps. 8–10). Ptolemy thinks a
political regime best answers ‘the common necessity of human life’ to
constitute a civitas, and that it already existed in the status innocentiae,
‘the wholesome state of human nature’ (status integer humanae
naturae) before the fall (bk. 2, cap. 9; bk. 4, cap. 2). The faults of the
Jews showed why despotic kingship was introduced, and was indeed
necessary for most peoples, both ancient and modern (bk. 3, caps. 7–8),
but the republic of the ancient Romans was a much better historical
model of good government. Combining sacred and secular history
Ptolemy’s book 3 traces the exercise of power from God’s granting of
dominion to the ancient Romans because of their ‘most holy laws and
civil goodwill’ (leges sanctissimas et civilem benevolentiam) to the estab-
lishment of the principate of Augustus, which was ordained to make
way for the monarchy of Christ, the fifth and final monarchy after the
Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman empires.^27
The common good 259(^26) Ptolemy of Lucca’s continuation of the De regimine principum,in S. Thomae Aquinitatis
Opuscula Omnia,270–426; Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2
vols. (Cambridge UP, 1978), i. 52–5; C. T. Davis, ‘Roman Patriotism and Republican
Propaganda: Ptolemy of Lucca and Pope Nicholas III’, Speculum, 50 (1975); J. M. Blythe,
Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages(Princeton UP, 1992),
cap. 6.^27 Cf. Blythe, Ideal Government, 100.