The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy: nevertheless they lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it.

–The Prince,
Niccolò Machiavelli

Which detail best supports the idea that princes who do not destroy or occupy their principalities will not keep them?

“The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy.”
“The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, dismantled them.”
“They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws.”
“He who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it.”

“The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, dismantled them.”

Explanation:

Niccolò Machiavelli uses the well documented example of Roman expansion over various principalities to argue that anyone who conquers a place must destroy its existing political institutions otherwise they will not be able to control it.

This pragmatic idea is supported by the juxtaposition between the Greeks who were unsuccessful and the ruthless Romans who were.

However, this  statement is persuasive but not entirely true as Rome also allowed considerable cultural freedom to its principalities and did not simply destroy them.

the hunger games, written by  suzanne collins, is fiction in the young adult genre, which is not my age group, but i found myself unable to put it down. its combination of nerve-racking tension, thrilling action, and engaging love story kept me up until the wee hours. i was surprised at how completely engrossing the plot was. like  brave new world, this story is set in a future where the government oppresses its people, but the book also borrows ideas from the greek myth of theseus and the minotaur.

divided into 12 districts, ruled by an oppressive government located at the  capitol. katniss everdeen, a 16-year-old girl from district 12, takes her younger sister’s place as one of 24 “tributes” selected every year to participate in the hunger games at the capitol.

while i found this book absolutely enthralling, i was surprised it was aimed at an audience of young adults. it seems extremely intense for anyone younger than 16 or 17. for example, there is a scene where one young tribute is slowly eaten alive by wolf-like creatures all night long, and katniss has to finally throw a weapon at him to end his misery. i found this a little too disturbing when i considered the age of the character.

the intensity of the action was something one would find in a more mature book, but the age of the characters and the simplicity of the prose were aimed at a much younger audience. in addition, this book was written in present tense, which i found annoying, but that’s more of a personal preference than a stylistic fault. it was also edited somewhat poorly, but that rarely distracted from the plot. for example, the author often spoke in sentence fragments to describe how katniss felt, which might have been an attempt to reflect on her thought process, but i found it disorienting to read a lot of really short sentences all together. it would have been better to vary the sentence length on occasion, but the story was still coherently.

overall,  the hunger games  was an excellent, enthralling read that i highly recommend. if it was more clearly marked for older teens, it would have been better, but it was a fantastic book with a wonderfully creative plot.

happy to .

pls mark as brainliest.