1. Cicero makes much of a great case which was pleaded in his time before the hundred judges of Rome between the patrician families Marcellus and Claudius, on the question of their lineage. He says that in order to relate what was due by right of lineage and gentility it was necessary ‘to discuss the entire law of lineal descent and kinship’. But to examine the ancestries and sovereign houses of princes issued from a monarch and sovereign prince is far and away a higher discourse than to consider patrician ancestries such as those of the most noble of Rome, descended from a plain senator. Such a discourse is still more difficult, even more hazardous, than it is elevated. Yet, my project commits me to it absolutely, for, having undertaken to discuss orders and dignities, I cannot omit that of princes which among us is the first and highest of all.

2. For the supreme degree of our nobility appertains to those whom we call princes. Communicated to them by honours and as a title of honorary dignity is the name of prince which in effect belongs only to the sovereign. According to its true etymology, ‘prince’ signifies the supreme head, that is, he who has the sovereignty of the state; and this is how we understand it when we speak simply of the prince.