But contrariwise, it is
almost without instance contradictory that ever any government was
disastrous that was in the hands of learned governors. For
howsoever it hath been ordinary with politic men to extenuate and
disable learned men by the names of pedantes; yet in the records of
time it appeareth in many particulars that the governments of
princes in minority (notwithstanding the infinite disadvantage of
that kind of state)--have nevertheless excelled the government of
princes of mature age, even for that reason which they seek to
traduce, which is that by that occasion the state hath been in the
hands of pedantes: for so was the state of Rome for the first five
years, which are so much magnified, during the minority of Nero, in
the hands of Seneca, a pedenti; so it was again, for ten years'
space or more, during the minority of Gordianus the younger, with
great applause and contentation in the hands of Misitheus, a
pedanti: so was it before that, in the minority of Alexander
Severus, in like happiness, in hands not much unlike, by reason of
the rule of the women, who were aided by the teachers and
preceptors.
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