CHAPTER VII

ROME AND VENICE

A) Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Arte della Guerra

[I]

J. H. WHITFIELD has rightly warned students of Machiavelli against commencing their interpretation of his thought with Il Principe and confining it to the Principe and the Discorsi.1 The present study, which is indeed confined as regards Machiavelli to the two works named, may seem to ignore Whitfield’s warning as it ignores much more in recent Machiavelli scholarship; but there is a reason for this. We are engaged in an attempt to isolate “the Machiavellian moment”: that is, to isolate the continuous process in the history of ideas which seems the most promising context in which to treat his contribution to that history; and the enterprise is selective, in the sense that it does not commit us to interpreting the totality of his thought or the totality of its development. “The Machiavellian moment” entails less a history of Machiavelli than a historical presentation of Machiavelli, and within the context that has so far been established, the Principe and Discorsi are selected—as Guicciardini’s discorsi and Dialogo have been selected—because they may be used to present those aspects of his thought which tell us most about the context and about his role in it. The test of this method is its ability to narrate a process actually taking place in the history of ideas, and to show that Machiavelli and Guicciardini were, and are to be understood as, major actors in it; the aim is not to provide a complete intellectual biography—if such a thing can be written—of either man.

This inquiry, then, which has long been principally concerned with the politics of time, has assumed the further shape of an investigation of the concept of virtue. We have distinguished two meanings of the term, each of which has something to do with time and something to do with the Aristotelian concept of form. By the institutionalization of civic virtue, the republic or polis maintains its own stability in time and develops the human raw material composing it toward that political life which is the end of man. By the exercise of a partly nonmoral virtù, the innovator imposes form upon fortuna: that is to say, upon the sequence of happenings in time disordered by his own act. In Machiavelli’s Discorsi (Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy) and his Arte della Guerra (The Art of War), both these concepts are brought together, and an analysis of these works may start from the conceptual framework used to interpret Il Principe. In the earlier work, the innovator has need of virtù because he has disturbed the fabric of custom by which a previously existing government was legitimized; it is this that has exposed him to fortuna and the unpredictable wills of men. The test which virtù exists to meet, but never quite surmounts, is that of modifying men’s natures from what custom has made them after custom itself has ceased to be operative. All through Il Principe, however, the customary community is exemplified in the hereditary monarchy or principality, whose subjects are simply habituated to obeying a particular man or family. The republic is certainly included in the category of those political structures by disturbing which the innovator renders himself vulnerable to fortuna, but we found cause to suspect that something more than customary allegiance gave it solidarity: when men have been accustomed to liberty, we were told, the memory of it does not leave them and they cannot be reconciled to princely rule. We found it not altogether impossible to interpret this as meaning that the experience of citizenship—of what Guicciardini called participazione—had changed their natures in a way that mere custom could not. Custom at most could affect men’s second or acquired natures, but if it was the end of man to be a citizen or political animal, it was his original nature or prima forma that was developed, and developed irreversibly, by the experience of a vivere civile.

Machiavelli’s thought can now be related to a Savonarolan tradition, and at this point the notion of civic virtue takes on added depths of meaning. It was the virtue, as it was the end, of man to be a political animal; the polity was the form in which human matter developed its proper virtue, and it was the function of virtue to impose form on the matter of fortuna. The republic or polity was in yet another sense a structure of virtue: it was a structure in which every citizen’s ability to place the common good before his own was the precondition of every other’s, so that every man’s virtue saved every other’s from that corruption part of whose time-dimension was fortuna. The republic was therefore a structure whose organizing principle was something far more complex and positive than custom.

But not only was it a fact of experience and history that such structures of virtue could become corrupt and disintegrate; it was, by a terrible paradox, inherent in the very nature of republics that this should be so. The republic attempted to realize a totality of virtue in the relations of its citizens with one another, but did so on a footing that was temporally and spatially limited. Because it had a beginning in time, it must both offer an account of how that beginning had been possible and acknowledge that, since it must in theory have an end, its maintenance was no less problematic than its foundation. Because it had a site or location in space, it was surrounded by neighbors with whom its relations were not governed by the virtue existing only as between citizens. Temporally if not spatially, it faced problems arising from the fact that it was in its own way an innovator; spatially if not temporally, it was involved in a world of unlegitimated power-relationships. The structure of virtue inhabited the domain of fortuna, in part at least for the reason that its virtue was itself an innovation, and in consequence it must possess its share of that virtù which imposed form on fortune. Study of the “new prince” had already shown that this was largely a question of manipulating human behavior which was unlegitimized and power-centered. The Machiavellian ambiguities did not simply disappear once a republic was founded; they survived in its internal as well as its external relations, and the republic might suffer corruption in the former no less than defeat in the latter. But whereas the prince whose virtù failed lost his stato, the citizens whose republic failed lost their virtue, in the sense of their citizenship.

For Florentine theorists concerned with republican values, therefore, it was both a practical and a theoretical problem of the first order to show how republics came into being and how they might be maintained. The stakes were very high, being nothing less than the establishment of virtue as a principle of active life; the risks were equally high, because of the difficulty of grounding the enterprise on any but an insecure and transitory foundation. In Guicciardini we have located a tradition of optimate thought, looking in many ways back to Savonarola, which accepted that there was a Florentine impulse toward liberty, an acquired characteristic rooted in the deep but shifting sands of inherited tradition and “second nature,” and sought means of transforming this into a fulfilled prima forma. Pessimistically but persistently, Guicciardini since 1512 had been exploring the theoretical realm of Aristotelian polity and mixed government, and the less remote exemplary realm of the 1494 constitution and the Venetian model. This train of thought, seeking to combine aristocratic leadership with governo largo, seems to have been carried on by the circle who met in the Orti Oricellari after Bernardo Rucellai’s death in 1514.2 This group, aristocratic in membership yet popular in their sympathies, seem to have included men who admired Venice as attaining the structure of virtue through the principle of blending the simple forms of power. Guicciardini’s absence in the grim world of the papal territories prevents our regarding him as a member of the Oricellari circle. Machiavelli, who did belong to it, was prevented by birth and belief from sharing its aristocratic idealism, and his Discorsi, as we shall see, are best interpreted as a systematic dissent from the Venetian paradigm and a diffuse pursuit of the consequences of that dissent. Guicciardini’s Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze, which at times reads like a series of replies to leading ideas of the Discorsi, carries on the optimate and philo-Venetian tradition. We may treat the two works as expounding different approaches to the problem of the republic, while studying in later chapters the strange way in which these ideas came together to form the classical republican tradition of northwest Europe and the Atlantic world.

[II]

Whereas Guicciardini began with the inherited disposition of the Florentines toward liberty, and remained throughout the Dialogo anchored within the context of Florentine institutions, Machiavelli, true to form, operated at a higher level of theoretical generality. Like Il Principe, the Discorsi open with a typology, a classification of republics in terms of their modes of origin. All cities are founded either by natives of the territory or by immigrants;3 their founders, at the moment of institution, are either independent or remain dependent on some external power, and cities in the latter category, lacking liberty in the first place, rarely come to much. In what reads like a direct challenge to the Salutatian tradition, Machiavelli adds that Florence, a foundation of either Sulla or Augustus, is such a city,⁴ a point he will take up again in the Florentine Histories and use to develop his argument that Florence has never succeeded in achieving stability of either dominion or liberty.5 In the present work, he declares (after an interlude on whether cities should be founded in barren or in fertile lands),⁶ it is not his intention to deal with cities in this category, but only with those which have been wholly autonomous from the moment of origin;⁷ a fairly clear indication that Florence is not a principal object of reference in the treatises which are to follow.

Reverting to a schematic treatment, Machiavelli next distinguishes between those cities which have been founded by a legislator⁸ such as Lycurgus, whose work was so near perfection that nothing needed to be added to it;⁹ those whose initial foundation was imperfect and which consequently are so unfortunate as to be obliged to reform themselves; those which have degenerated from their foundations; and those whose initial institution was radically unsound.¹⁰ This classification, crucial to all that follows in the three books of the Discorsi, turns out on inspection to have a number of implications. In the first place, the distinction is not simply that between all-wise and less-wise ordinatori, but also that between foundation by a single lawgiver and foundation in circumstances that do not permit of attribution to uno solo at all. Solon was less effective than Lycurgus;¹¹ Romulus, as we shall see, comes somewhere between the two; but Machiavelli is concerned with modern republics as well as ancient, and cities such as Venice, whose foundations occurred within the Christian era, do not look back to single legislators, but at best to patron saints who were not truly founders. The possibly paradigmatic history of Venice begins with a leaderless swarm of refugees, whose subsequent ascent in the scale of civic virtue presents a problem in explanation.12 Since Machiavelli does not in fact regard Venice as the model to be followed, this particular problem does not trouble him unduly; but the Discorsi are throughout to focus on those situations in which, because the legislator was imperfect or non-existent, the citizens have been called upon to reform their own ordini and themselves—those in which the matter has had to shape itself into form.

It is also apparent that the distinction being drawn is one between relative freedom from, and relative subjection to, the accidents of time. Lycurgus gave the Spartans “by a single act, all the laws they needed”; thereafter they had only to conserve them, and though—as we shall learn later on—this may be difficult, it is nothing compared to the problems facing those cities which have received their laws “by chance (caso), at several times (piú volte) and through accidental happenings (accidenti), as Rome did.”¹³ To have had a perfect legislator is to enjoy that stability which is freedom from time; to be in any other position is to have to rely on one’s own virtù in the context of fortuna. But once again, as we did in Il Principe, we descend from the legislator as ideal type through varying degrees of the insecurity of virtù. To have started with vicious institutions is to be in a hopeless condition; to be obliged to reform the laws by efforts originating within an imperfectly formed body is to be unhappy in comparison with Sparta. Nevertheless, republics which started with good but imperfect institutions may become perfect per la occorrenzia degli accidenti; we know that fortuna responds favorably only to virtù, and the implication is reinforced by Machiavelli’s observation that self-improvement is difficult for the familiar reasons that make innovation dangerous.¹⁴ The way is now open to consideration of the case of Rome, where Romulus failed to render the kingship perpetual but did his work well enough to permit its transformation into an exceptionally successful republic. But the typology is significantly incomplete. The case of a republic where the citizens had from the beginning to manage without a legislator to guide them is envisaged but not specified; and in particular we are left wondering what Machiavelli thought of Venice, where there had never been a legislator but exceptional stability had from the beginning supposedly obtained. It is not certain that we are ever to hear in full.

When citizens perfect their own relationships in a context of time, they practice virtù, in the sense that they seek superiority over fortuna; as practiced by the new prince, this is an art of which little theoretical study has been made before Il Principe. But they also practice virtue, in the sense that they establish, maintain and actually improve structures of ethical and political relationships, and here the theoretical literature is very much larger. At this stage, without mentioning the author by name, Machiavelli embarks on a long exposition of Polybius’s theory of the constitutional cycle.15 Since the Discorsi cannot possibly be reduced, as we shall see, to a treatise on how to establish the perfectly balanced constitution that escapes from the cycle into timelessness, it is natural to wonder what he meant to achieve by drawing on Polybius. An answer is to be found toward the end of chapter II, where he repeats his earlier distinction between cities with and without perfect legislators. Lycurgus, on a single occasione—Machiavelli does not use this word here, but it helps if we insert it—established a distribution of power between kings, nobles, and people which maintained itself for more than eight hundred years. Solon failed to do this, and Athens never achieved stability in consequence. But the case of Rome—from which Polybius had developed the whole theory—exhibits the most extraordinary phenomena of all. Here no legislator attempted to integrate the one, few, and many; the kingship established by Romulus fell with Tarquin; under the republic there ensued generations of strife between patricians and plebeians; and yet from all this disunion emerged the constitution admired by Polybius and stable enough to conquer the world.¹⁶

Machiavelli has carried out a drastic experiment in secularization. He has established that civic virtue and the vivere civile may—though not that it is necessary that they should—develop entirely in the dimension of contingency, without the intervention of timeless agencies. The goal defined by Polybius and achieved by Lycurgus may still be to escape from time and change, but there are circumstances in which citizens move toward this goal through the efforts of their own time-bound selves. The interesting case is not that of Sparta, where a formula for timelessness was written in a single moment by a legislator virtually independent of time; it is that of Rome, where the goal was achieved—as nearly as men can achieve it—by the disorderly and chance-governed actions of particular men in the dimension of contingency and fortune. Men who do this escape from fortuna by the exertion of a virtù which is their own and not that of a superhuman legislator, and if they erect a conquering republic—even though that takes generations to achieve—what they set up is more durable, and more virtuous, than any attainment open to the principe nuovo unless he too is a legislator, which we have found to be improbable. But in detaching himself from the type-figure of Lycurgus, Machiavelli has accepted payment of a price which will have momentous consequences. We learned from the conjunction of legislator and prophet in Il Principe that Machiavelli was not free from the need to visualize the republic, or any other body politic, as originating in the realm of the sacred. Being the precondition of virtue in man, it must be created by a virtue more than human. But certain historical ironies arose from the association of the canonical prophet, inspired by the scriptural God, in the class of state-founders along with the pagan hero-legislators acting out of no more than a superhuman grasp of occasione. Moses seemed little more archetypal than Lycurgus, and Christian grace, while remaining part of the concept of the legislator, scarcely appeared as an independent variable in its own right. Irony deepened when one contemplated the temporal principality supposed to have been founded by Peter, the only other figure of the Judeo-Christian pantheon (except perhaps Constantine) to whom the role of legislator by grace could possibly be attributed. In chapter XI of Il Principe there is a withering, but not wholly dismissive, analysis of ecclesiastical principalities such as the states of the church.

These rulers alone have states and do not defend them, subjects and do not keep them in order; and these states, through being undefended, never are snatched away; and their subjects, through not being kept in order, never feel any concern, and do not imagine being alienated from them nor can be. These states alone, then, are secure and happy.17

The author of the Tao Te Ching, from which these sentences might almost come, would have said there was nothing here that needed explaining, but to Machiavelli there is. Since neither virtue nor fortune (as he specifically says)¹⁸ can account for the fact that such principalities exist and survive, we are reminded of the joke that they must be of divine institution since no merely human foundation conducted with such knavish imbecility could last a fortnight. Machiavelli echoes this jest with the perhaps not wholly ironical comment that since they are ordained and maintained by God, it would be impious and imprudent for the human mind to attempt analysis of such matters.¹⁹ But he further says that they are maintained by ordini antiquati nella religione—laws grown ancient in religion and hence possessing some of the quality of custom—“which are so powerful and of such kind that they keep their princes in power, in whatever manner they act and live.”²⁰ If the dispositions of providence are beyond finding out, they cannot be used to explain the behavior of mankind. The ecclesiastical principality can be thought of as a species of customary community, more stable than the hereditary monarchy in that it matters even less what the prince is and does. When, especially in the Discorsi, we resume a perspective in which the figures of classical antiquity are as visible as those of the Judeo-Christian canon, we are reminded that there have been other religions than this, which can only have been founded by human action. A new category of innovators emerges, and we are told:

Of all men who have been praised, those have been praised the most who have been the authors and founders of religions. Next come those who have founded republics or kingdoms. After these are celebrated those who have commanded armies and enlarged their kingdom or that of their fatherland. To these may be added men of letters.…21

A complex distribution of emphasis is going on here. Insofar as the prophet is thought of as doing something explicable in human terms, he is the founder of a structure which possesses some property that makes it even more durable than a structure of inherited allegiance. For this reason he ranks above the legislator; yet we know that the legislator, at least if he is to found a republic, aims at creating a structure of virtue, which is once again something more than a structure of custom. Machiavelli is working toward his contention that a substructure of religion is a prerequisite of civic virtue, and that Rome could not have endured without the contribution of Numa Pompilius, her second king, who devoted his life to developing a religion and implanting it in the natures of the Romans.²² But if religion is a prerequisite of civic virtue because it can change men’s natures, it is not virtue itself if that can exist only in a civic frame. This thought will become part of Machiavelli’s subordination of religion to politics, his critique of Christianity on the grounds that it gives men other than civic values.²³ The prophet may rank above the legislator, on the grounds that in any event his work is the most durable; but the prophet should aim at being a legislator and providing a religion which will serve as a substructure for citizenship. It also follows that religious usages are only a part of whatever constitutes civic virtue, and here we should note that after the prophet and legislator the warrior is next to be praised. Romulus was a lawgiver and a warrior, who could “establish civil and military institutions without the aid of divine authority”; Numa was a lawgiver in the sense that he was the author of Roman religion; and there are apparently contradictory passages in Book 1 of the Discorsi, devoted to the problem of which figure is more to be praised and studied.²⁴ On the one hand, Numa’s work was more difficult than his predecessor’s, since it is easier to teach men military skill and valor than to change their natures by religion; on the other, Numa’s successors wisely chose to follow the ways of Romulus, since the hostility of their neighbors rendered a peaceful policy too dependent on “time and fortune.” We look back to the antitheses of Il Principe: the unarmed and the armed prophet, the cautious man and the daring; and we have returned to the world of fortuna and virtù. It is clear that custom, religion, and the military spirit all enter into some as yet undefined concept of civic virtue; that virtue in this sense is not separable from the virtù that seeks to master fortuna; and that there are many types of legislator in addition to the ideal figure we met in Il Principe. All these are key ideas in the conceptual structure of the Discorsi.

It looks, then, as if Machiavelli was in search of social means whereby men’s natures might be transformed to the point where they became capable of citizenship. The combination of Romulus and Numa suggested ways in which the legislator might be freed from the necessity of acting merely as the “armed prophet” of Il Principe, who must coerce men the instant they ceased to believe in him; but this freed him at the same time from the need to be the superhuman demiurge we met in the same chapter, who needed only occasione to speak the word that transformed the unshaped matter. The legislator-prophet is an even rarer figure in the Discorsi than in the Principe, because the legislator’s virtù is becoming less significant than the social and educational processes he sets in motion, and he can thus afford to live in time and be a lesser figure than Lycurgus or Moses. But in diminishing the role of the legislator, Machiavelli has diminished his need of the Savonarolan doctrine that the establishment of the republic—the prima forma—must be the work of grace. If men do not need the superhuman in order to become citizens, but achieve citizenship in the world of time and fortune, the earthly and heavenly cities have ceased once again to be identical; and this again may be an ethical as well as a historical distinction. We are moving back to the point at which it is seen that “states are not governed by paternosters,” and civic ends—including the virtue of citizenship—are divorced from the ends of redemption. This is to be the most subversive suggestion contained in the Discorsi—more so, it may well be argued, than any to be found in Il Principe.

[III]

The stage is now set for Machiavelli to offer the daring and arresting hypotheses which are the foundation of the Discorsi, and both of which Guicciardini was to find unacceptable.25 The first is that the disunion and strife among nobles and people was the cause of Rome’s attaining liberty, stability, and power²⁶—a statement shocking and incredible to minds which identified union with stability and virtue, conflict with innovation and decay, but increasingly intelligible once we have reminded ourselves of the ambiguities of virtù. The Romans were innovating in a context not yet sufficiently stable to permit of legitimized behavior, when they established by their own efforts a structure of legitimacy; we must consequently look for actions not themselves legitimate, which nevertheless contributed to such a result. But if union arises from disunion, it comes about through irrational rather than rational action. Of this the inscrutable workings of fortune might seem the only possible explanation, and indeed Machiavelli says once that chance (caso) and once that fortuna brought about what a legislator (ordinatore) had failed to do.²⁷ But fortuna is not a term exclusive of virtù; it is a response to it; and we are therefore to look for a special virtù which the Romans displayed at this stage in their history. With Il Principe in mind, we are aware that virtù in these circumstances is more likely to take an active than a passive, a daring than a prudent form, and will exhibit qualities of both the lion and the fox. Here, however, it must appear in the behavior of individuals and groups of citizens toward each other, rather than in the solitary mastery of a prince over his environment, and its social and ethical content must of necessity be greater. Virtù must be constitutive of virtue.

There follows a summary of early Roman constitutional history.²⁸ Though Romulus and his successors did their work less than perfectly, the laws they established were not unsuited to a vivere libero.²⁹ When the kings turned to tyranny—a reader with the Polybian cycle in mind would note this as a normal instance of corruption following imperfectly stabilized power—much remained to be done for the establishment of freedom. Consequently, the kingly power was not abolished at the expulsion of Tarquin, but was retained in the form of the consulate and now shared authority with the nobility in the senate. When the nobles in their turn became corrupt and arrogant, it was not necessary to destroy the whole frame of government in order to check their power, since that was already limited to some degree by the consuls. The tribunes of the people were established to give weight to the popular voice, and Rome was now a mixed and “perfect” society in which each of the three elements was able to hold back the others from excess.30

In this less than absolutely clear narrative, it is evident that the decisive step was taken early and accounts for the establishment of the consulate at the expulsion of the kings. Machiavelli does not specify the causes of this measure, though he may have linked it with a fear lest the Tarquins should return; this fear, he says, caused the nobles to behave moderately toward the people for as long as it lasted.³¹ But the emphasis laid on the statement that Rome had laws suited to liberty even before becoming a free city indicates that Romulus and his successors made a legislative contribution of some kind. Machiavelli takes issue with those—Guicciardini was to be one of them—who hold that Rome was an inherently disorderly republic, saved from destruction only by good fortune and extraordinary military prowess. The error here, he says, is to forget that where there is good military organization, there must also be good laws; and where there are buoni ordini and buona milizia, there will almost certainly be buona fortuna also.³² Good laws produce in addition buona educazione, which is exhibited at Rome by the relative bloodlessness of the struggles between the orders—down at least to the time of the Gracchi—and the comparative ease with which concessions were made.³³ The means by which the plebeians asserted their demands were to demonstrate, to close their shops, to refuse military service, and to march out of the city, none of which was really as destructive of order as it may appear. A republic which desires to make use of its people—the phrase is pregnant with meaning for the next stage of the analysis—ought to allow them means of expressing their aspirations,34 which in free peoples are seldom harmful to liberty; such a people fears only oppression and has the capacity to understand when its fears are mistaken.³⁵

We have still no definition of the “freedom” first established in the people by the kings, but links are emerging which connect it in some way with military service. Buoni ordini produce both buona milizia and buona educazione; the liberty of the Roman plebs consisted at least partly in its ability to refuse military service, and from its buona educazione Machiavelli seems to deduce the relative bloodlessness of civil conflict and the progressive improvements of the constitution by which conflicts were resolved. Freedom, civic virtue, and military discipline seem then to exist in a close relation to one another.

The second major hypothesis of the Discorsi is put forward in 1, 5 and 6. The question initially raised is whether something called “the guardianship (guardia) of liberty” is better entrusted to the nobles or to the people,³⁶ and as Guicciardini was early to point out, it never becomes very clear whether “guardianship” means a preponderance of power or some specialized form of authority.³⁷ But it emerges before long that Machiavelli is not talking about the distribution of power or the construction of a constitution, so much as exploring the relationship of military and political virtù. He assumes from the start that Sparta and Venice entrusted “guardianship” to the nobles, Rome to the people. All three have been presented as successful examples of the balanced constitution, but where Sparta enjoyed this condition from the time of Lycurgus and Venice attained it through the deliberations of her citizens and the aid of fortune, Rome arrived at it through internal strife and a process of development. An equation of some kind is being established between peaceful stability and the aristocratic principle. Early in chapter V, Machiavelli says unequivocally that liberty lasted longer in Sparta and Venice than at Rome, where the plebeian desire to engross all offices led to the ascendancy of Marius and the ruin of the republic; so that if we were to attach the normal value to the attainment of the greatest possible stability and duration, we would clearly opt for the aristocratic version of liberty.³⁸ But Machiavelli does not leave it there, or make the choice indicated by his argument. Embarking on a discussion of which is the more dangerous to a republic, the desire of the nobles to keep what they have (a monopoly of office) or the desire of the people to acquire what they have not (unrestricted entry into office), he says, parenthetically as it were, that the crucial question is whether the republic is to grow and establish an empire, as was always the aim of Rome, or simply to maintain its independence, as was originally the sole purpose of Sparta and Venice.³⁹

The ideal type of perfectly stable government has already been equated with aristocratic predominance; now we learn that the ideal of stability itself is not the only value to be pursued, since a republic may pursue empire at the sacrifice of its own longevity—a choice which involves a preference for a more popular form of government. The point here is in part Machiavelli’s concern, typical of his generation, with the republic’s ability to control its external environment.⁴⁰ All cities have enemies and live in the domain of fortune, and it must be considered whether a defensive posture does not expose one more to unexpected change than a bold attempt to control it; the antithesis between prudence and audacity is at work again. But the crucial association is that between external policy and the distribution of internal power. Sparta and Venice, for as long as they were able to avoid the pursuit of empire and to adopt the posture of the prudent man who waits upon events,41 did not need to arm the people or to concede them political authority; consequently they were able to enjoy stability and internal peace. Rome resolved upon empire, upon a daring attempt to dominate the environment, and consequently upon innovation and upon a virtù which would enable her to control the disorder which her own actions had helped to cause. She had therefore to arm the people, to suffer the strife caused by their demands for more power, and to make concessions to those demands.⁴² The arming of the plebeians contributed to Rome’s military greatness; the struggle between the orders to the consolidation of a mixed government; but some continuing disequilibrium, yet to be analysed, to shortening the life of Roman liberty. Rome is, as it were, the “new prince” among republics, and Machiavelli would rather study Rome than Venice as he would rather study the new prince than the hereditary ruler: the short view is more interesting than the long, and life in it more glorious. But unlike the hereditary ruler, Sparta and Venice did not escape the domain of fortune; from defending their independence, they were led to dominate their neighbors and this task proved too much for the Spartan military elite as for the mercenaries employed by Venice; indeed, it destroyed the internal constitution of Sparta, and Machiavelli plainly would not have cared if the same thing had happened to Venice. A republic which could avoid all contact with her neighbors might limit her arms and live in aristocratic stability for ever; but since this cannot be done,⁴³ to reject expansion is to expose oneself to fortune without seeking to dominate her—the thought of chapter XXV of Il Principe is being repeated. The Roman path does not guarantee against ultimate degeneration, but in the present and foreseeable future—in the world of accidental time, in short—it is both wiser and more glorious.44

But there is more to Roman virtù than the will of an aggressive republic to dominate in a disordered world. It has already been made clear that the military discipline established by the first kings had something to do with the development of liberty and stability in the republic; and now we have learned that there is an intrinsic connection between military expansion, the arming of the plebeians and the vivere popolare. What we need next is to understand the relations existing in Machiavelli’s mind between the military and civic capacities of the individual—in shorter language, between the soldier and the citizen. Evidence on this question is scattered through the pages both of the Discorsi and of the Arte della Guerra, written, it seems, in 1519-1520, not long after the completion of the Discorsi; the two works can without overinterpretation be brought together.

“The Art of War,” while almost inevitable as an English translation of the title of the later book, misses something of the richness of the original. L’arte della guerra has a double meaning: it signifies both the “art” of war in the sense of the creative skill of generalship, and the “profession” of war, in the sense in which the principal skilled occupations of Florence were organized into greater and lesser arti or guilds. But the arte della guerra is not like any other; it is true that Machiavelli is writing in part to show how the business of war can become as honorable and useful to the republic as, say, the arte della lana—the woolen-manufacturers’ guild on which so much in Florentine economics and politics depended—but his central point is that it must on no account become a separately organized profession to which men look for the whole of their living. A soldier who is nothing but a soldier is a menace to all other social activities and very little good at his own. We have returned, of course, to the well-worn theme of Machiavelli’s hatred of mercenaries and his exaltation of the civic militia, but the relation of this theme to Aristotelian theory of citizenship is the vital point if we wish to understand his political thought. A man who should devote the whole of his energies to the arte della lana and none to participation in public affairs would appear in classical theory as less than a citizen and a source of weakness to his fellows; but a man who should devote the whole of his energies to the arte della guerra—Machiavelli sometimes uses phrases like “make war his arte”45—is an infinitely greater danger. The banausic tradesman is pursuing a limited good to the neglect of the common good, and that is bad; he may set that good in the place of the good of the city, and that is worse, as it would be if the arte della lana were to become the exclusive government of Florence; but the banausic soldier is far more likely to do this, and to do it in a far more antisocial way, because his arte is to exercise the means of coercion and destruction. For a whole string of reasons, therefore—from the unreliability of condottieri to the danger of Caesarian tyranny—it is important “to restrict the practice of this art to the commonwealth” (al pubblico lasciarla usare per arte).⁴⁶ This arte, more than any other, must be a public monopoly; only citizens may practise it, only magistrates may lead in it, and only under public authority and at the public command may it be exercised at all.

The paradox developed in Machiavelli’s argument is that only a part-time soldier can be trusted to possess a full-time commitment to the war and its purposes. A citizen called to arms, with a home and an occupation (arte) of his own, will wish to end the war and go home, where a mercenary, glad rather than sorry if the war drags on indefinitely, will make no attempt to win it.⁴⁷ Because the citizen has his own place in the body politic, he will understand that the war is being fought to preserve it; a mercenary with no home but the camp may become the instrument of tyranny over the city he was hired to defend—a tyranny which may well be exercised by a Pompey or Caesar, once a citizen but now so far perverted as to use the sword as an instrument of political power. Machiavelli presses these arguments with a vigor that was to earn them three centuries of close attention, but they are limited to the extent that they explain why only the citizen can be a good soldier. The contention that only the soldier can be a good citizen is also being made, but much less explicitly. The thought implementing it is complex, but rests in part on some assertions made in the preface:

And if, in every ordering of a city or kingdom, the greatest care is taken to keep men faithful, peaceable and full of the fear of God, in military government this care should be doubled. For of whom should the commonwealth require greater faith than of him who must promise to die for her? In whom should there be more love of peace than in him who may be attacked only in war? In whom should there be more fear of God than in him who, having to submit himself to infinite dangers, has greatest need of Him?48

Military virtù necessitates political virtue because both can be presented in terms of the same end. The republic is the common good; the citizen, directing all his actions toward that good, may be said to dedicate his life to the republic; the patriot warrior dedicates his death, and the two are alike in perfecting human nature by sacrificing particular goods to a universal end. If this be virtue, then the warrior displays it as fully as the citizen, and it may be through military discipline that one learns to be a citizen and to display civic virtue. In the anatomy of early Roman virtue given in the Discorsi, Machiavelli seems to depict it as built on military discipline and civic religion, as if these were the two socializing processes through which men learned to be political animals. He distrusted Christianity—or at least he divorced it from the political good—because it taught men to give themselves to ends other than the city’s and to love their own souls more than the fatherland.49 But if it followed that no end was to transcend the social, the social good must cease to be transcendent. Of early Roman religion Machiavelli said that it was founded principally on augury, men regarding as divine that which offered means of foretelling the future.⁵⁰ Pagan religion, which he preferred to Christianity as a social instrument, served a purpose identical with that of the republic: the control of fortune. But the republic, being a structure of action, did this better than augury; the lies and fallacies of the latter were justified if they gave men confidence in themselves, helped them display military virtù—most of Machiavelli’s anecdotes of Roman religion have to do with augury and auspices before battle⁵¹—and so to develop that dedication of oneself to a common good which was the moral content of pagan religion and is the essence of civic virtue. It was their civic religion which made the Roman plebeians good soldiers; their military discipline and their civic religion which made them attentive to the public good in the midst of civil conflict, and thus able to control their future in the teeth of augury where necessary.⁵²

It is evident by now that Machiavelli is employing the concept of armed virtù to transform the question of the participation of the many in citizenship. The usual way of defending a governo largo was to assert that the many were peaceable, desired little more than the enjoyment of a private liberty, had common sense enough to reject what was not for their own good and moral sagacity enough to elect and defer to their natural superiors in the civic elite. Machiavelli used this line of argument in the Discorsi, and again in a work contemporary with the Arte della Guerra, the “Discourse on Reforming Florentine Government Written at the Request of Pope Leo X”;53 but he does not, as Guicciardini repeatedly does, elaborate it into a theory of the distribution of functions between the many and the few. His emphasis is as always on innovation, fortuna, and virtù; we shall see that the Discorsi is in part a treatise on the different forms which may be assumed by the fixed quantity of virtù there is in the world at any one time, and on how this quantity may be conserved and canalized. In Roman virtue he has discovered a new form of active virtù which is peculiar to the many, and exists only in dynamic warrior states which arm the people and give them civic rights; and his debt to the militia tradition in Florentine theory, plus his experience under Soderini in actually organizing a militia, leads him to ground citizenship upon military virtue to the point where the former becomes the outgrowth of the latter. The plebeian as Roman citizen is less a man performing a certain role in a decision-making system than a man trained by civic religion and military discipline to devote himself to the patria and carry this spirit over into civic affairs, so that he conforms to the dual model of the Machiavellian innovator displaying virtù and the Aristotelian citizen attentive to the common good. The Roman plebs displayed virtù in demanding their rights, virtue in being satisfied when their demands were granted.

The analysis of the Arte defines both the moral and the economic characteristics of the citizen warrior. In order to have a proper regard for the public good, he must have a home and an occupation of his own, other than the camp. The criterion is identical with that applied to the Aristotelian citizen, who must have a household of his own to govern so that he may not be another man’s servant, so that he may be capable of attaining good in his own person and so that he may apprehend the relation between his own good and that of the polis. The mercenary soldier is a mere instrument in another man’s hand; but the citizen-warrior is more than an instrument in the public hand, since his virtù is his own and he fights out of knowledge of what it is he fights for. We have seen that for Bruni and Guicciardini, loss of liberty and the corruption of the body politic occurred when men, by compulsion or out of effeminacy, expected from others what they should have expected from themselves as members of the public. It is clear that this would apply, in a double sense, when a city ceased to use its own citizens in its armies and employed mercenaries instead. The citizens would be corrupted because they permitted inferiors to do for them what should be done for the public good; the mercenaries would be agents of that corruption because they performed a public function without regard for the public good; and any ambitious individual could set himself above the republic and destroy it, by bringing the unthinking mercenaries to do for him what should only be done for the public, but had been allowed by unthinking citizens to pass out of public control. If we now examine the theory and the instances of corruption set out by Machiavelli in the Discorsi, we shall observe how far it is founded on the concept of the individual citizen’s autonomy and how far the test of that autonomy is his willingness and ability to bear arms.

Corruption appears, initially, as a generalized process of moral decay whose beginnings are hard to foresee and its progress almost impossible to resist. The constitutional order is rooted in the moral order, and it is the latter which corruption affects; on the one hand there cannot be buoni ordini without buoni costumi, but on the other, once buoni costumi have been lost there is a very slender chance that buoni ordini alone will succeed in restoring them. Institutions are dependent on the moral climate and laws which work well when the people are not corrupt produce effects the reverse of those desired when they are.54 For this reason we should study the failure of the Gracchi, who with the best of intentions precipitated the ruin of Rome by attempting to reactivate the institutions of her former virtue.⁵⁵ When Machiavelli lays down that political and religious bodies must be preserved by being brought back to their initial principles,⁵⁶ he does not mean that a corrupt state can make a fresh beginning57 and start again, or that the Polybian cycle is reversible, but that the onset of corruption must be prevented by exemplary and probably punitive enforcement of the principii at intervals of ten years or thereabouts;⁵⁸ we must refrain from entering the time-process as far as it is possible to do so. Institutional devices may reinforce and renew themselves, and may even prevent the onset of corruption, so long as corruption has not actually begun; once it has, however, they are probably powerless. The advantage of institutional machinery for reinforcing the principii every now and again is that otherwise the beginnings of corruption can only be detected by the prescience of a wise man, who (assuming that he exists at all) will find it hard to convince his neighbors, and increasingly hard the more they are actually corrupted. The tragic perplexity of the situation is that corruption is easily visible only after it has taken general hold, and by this time the costumi of the people will have changed, so that old laws and remedies no longer apply. Under these conditions, Machiavelli suspends his normal preference for bold action over temporization; it is wrong to legislate, as the Gracchi did, contrary to established customs even when these are corrupt, and Cleomenes of Sparta did better by conducting a blood-purge of the corrupted elements before attempting to restore the laws of Lycurgus.59 If you cannot do this you should temporize;⁶⁰ but there is clearly not much more to be hoped for from a time-process governed by increasing corruption than from one governed by fortuna. The only real hope lies in the absolute power of one man of transcendent virtue, who will end corruption by restoring virtue in the people. But he faces an even harder task than the charismatic legislators of Il Principe; for whereas they found their peoples completely anomic and plastic, so that they owed nothing to fortune but the occasione, he finds a people corrupt and an environment delivered over to fortune by the perversity of their behavior. In these circumstances, even the armed prophet may fail; the methods by which he seizes power may corrupt even him,⁶¹ and should this not happen, his charisma will not restore the people to virtue in one lifetime,⁶² so that they will return to their vomit at his death (as de Gaulle is supposed to have prophesied of the French). The chances that one superhuman legislator will be succeeded by another are clearly remote, though in view of Machiavelli’s insistence on military and religious virtù (as exemplified in Romulus and Numa) as the two tools of creative state-founding, it is interesting that he did not use the instances of the warrior Joshua succeeding to the prophet Moses, or of the judges succeeding him as inspired war leaders. The attempt to discover legislators in the prophets of Jewish and sacred history is not significantly resumed in the Discorsi.

Down to this point it might seem as if corruption were little more than an extension of fortuna—an irrational succession of divergencies from a norm, uncontrollable because unpredictable and inherently subversive of order. But in reality the phenomenon is subjected to a more detailed analysis than this suggests. It is noteworthy how often in his treatment of corruption Machiavelli employs teleological language: laws and constitutions, even structures of virtue, are forma, and the legislator and law-enforcer (not to mention the reformer) seek to impose form on the materia of the republic, which is of course its human constituent matter. In certain chapters of the Discorsi we note a habit of using materia as a quasi-colloquial term for the population of a city; but in the theory of corruption its employment is technical.63 What happens as corruption develops, we are told, is that the materia itself undergoes change, and the reason why old laws lose their efficacy when this happens is that the same form cannot be imposed upon, or educed from, different matter. It is at times almost suggested that the Romans ought to have devised new laws to suit their changed state, though as long as this change is summarized as corruption it must seem virtually impossible that they could have done so.

There seems a certain ambiguity as to whether the materia is changing into something else or merely decomposing. But we recall that to Savonarola reformation had been a question of restoring the prima forma, and as this meant to him no less than the end of man, which was to know God through living virtuously, he had looked on reformation as a total restoration of man’s moral nature, to be carried out only through grace. As other Florentine intellects had increasingly equated virtue with the vivere civile, its necessary conditions had appeared increasingly temporal; and time was governed by such forces as use and custom, the creators of “second nature.” If the materia’s aptitude to assume the forma of republican virtue was governed by its second nature, a condition determined by time, then change within the materia might be qualitative change from one temporal condition to another. Accordingly, the question could arise of how far the prince or the legislator could modify the second nature, or structure of custom, which was the product of time and circumstance. Since the republic was a structure of virtue, it was more than a structure of custom; yet virtue was rooted in buoni costumi, and these could become corrupted in time, so that the materia itself was changed and less capable of virtue. On the one hand, virtue appeared an ideally realized state, from which there could be no change but degeneration; on the other, it was seen to rest in temporally determined conditions, so that the loss of virtue could be described in terms of historical and qualitative change—even though such a description must be circumscribed by ideas of what was conducive or nonconducive to virtue.

There is consequently a sociological as well as a merely moral analysis of corruption to be found in the Discorsi. At the end of the first chapter (1, 17) in which corruption is considered, Machiavelli says unequivocally that corruption has a cause, other than the generalized wickedness of men.

Such corruption and lack of aptitude for liberty arise from inequality in a city; and in order to restore equality it is necessary to use the most extraordinary of means, for which few have the knowledge or the will.64

What this “inequality” is we are not told in any formal expository way; it is necessary to collect evidence about Machiavelli’s thoughts on the subject. In the next chapter, devoted to explaining how the old laws of Rome became inoperative under corruption, he says that after the Romans had conquered all their enemies and had ceased to fear them, they began electing to office, not those best fitted for it, but those most skilled at gaining the favor (grazia!) of others. They next descended to giving office to those who had most power, so that fear of the powerful dissuaded good men from seeking office themselves and even from speaking freely in public.65 These are the conditions under which reform becomes almost impossible. A republic having got so far will not reform itself; since the laws have become inoperative, reform must be carried by violent means; and since some men are now more powerful than the law they must be controlled by the almost kingly power of one man, who will find it difficult to restore either law or liberty by the means he must adopt.⁶⁶ It looks as if some quasi-cyclical return to monarchy has become nearly inevitable.

But if the above constitutes an account of the rise of “inequality,” that term connotes neither inequality of wealth nor inequality of political authority—there is no reason to suppose that Machiavelli objected to either—but a state of affairs in which some individuals look to others (Guicciardini’s particulari) when they should be looking to the public good and public authority; and “equality” must be a state of affairs in which all look to the public good alike. Corruption is the rise of factions, of overmighty citizens, a moral condition affecting the powerful and their dependents with equal corrosiveness; and its origins in this instance are purely moral, a change of Roman costumi for the worse. We are not told at this stage of any social conditions which would necessarily carry corruption with them, but it is easy to imagine, given the equation of citizen with self-maintained warrior that runs through Machiavelli’s theories of the militia and the popular state, that they would have something to do with the many’s nonpossession or surrender of the means of war.

In 1, 55, the concepts of corruption and inequality recur in a way that constitutes a social analysis of the conditions propitious and unpropitious to republican government. The latter, Machiavelli says, becomes altogether impossible where there are many persons of the kind he calls gentiluomini. These are either such as live in luxury off the returns from their landed estates, or—more dangerous still—such as have in addition castles and subjects (sudditi). Naples, Rome, the Romagna, and Lombardy “are full of these two sorts of men”; unfortunately, it is not quite clear from the context whether Machiavelli has in mind the two “sorts” of gentiluomini, military and nonmilitary, or the two classes of castle-dwelling lords and their sudditi. The latter is at least a possible interpretation, since it is the power of the gentiluomini that makes them incompatible with free government, and it is hard to see what power the idle absentees of the first category exert. It is the absence of signori di castella from Tuscany, as well as the extreme rarity of gentiluomini, that makes republican life there at least possible; and just as a republic cannot be established unless the gentiluomini are first wiped out, since otherwise the materia is so corrupt that laws cannot govern it and kingly power must be set up, so a kingdom or principality cannot be established where there is equality unless an ambitious few are given castles and men, and made dependent for them on the monarch.67 Here Machiavelli’s thought has nearly caught up with that of Lodovico Alamanni, except that he stresses the baron where Alamanni stressed the courtier.

If it is the castles and retainers of the gentiluomini that make them a cause of inequality and corruption, the uncorrupt republic must be a state lacking military dependencies and one characteristic of “equality” must be that all are warriors alike. There must be the political conditions which permit the arming of all citizens, the moral conditions in which all are willing to fight for the republic and the economic conditions (lacking in the case of a lord’s retainers) which give the warrior a home and occupation outside the camp and prevent his becoming a suddito, creato, or mercenary whose sword is at the command of some powerful individual. The economic independence of the warrior and the citizen are prerequisites against corruption. If these conditions are lacking, a city which eschews expansion and cuts itself off from the world may still limit its armies and its citizen body and escape corruption; in spite of the contempt with which Machiavelli describes Venetian policies, he never quite says that Venice has been corrupted by the employment of mercenaries. But a city which had chosen popular government, aggressive virtù, and an armed people, and then allowed the citizen-soldiers to become the clients and retainers of a powerful few, would be miserably corrupt indeed. This had been the ultimate fate of Rome. Machiavelli gives two principal causes for the collapse of the Roman republic.68 The first⁶⁹ is the revival by the Gracchi of the law limiting landownerships and dividing conquered lands among the people, which caused such hatreds between nobles and people that each faction appealed to its own military leaders and their armies; the second⁷⁰ is the prolongation of military commands, which tempted the armies to forget public authority and become the partisans of the politicians who commanded them. It is noteworthy that neither statement quite explains the corruption of the Roman citizen-soldier, and curious (as James Harrington observed) that Machiavelli never quite arrived at the point of uniting the two explanations by saying that the distribution of lands fell under the control of soldier-politicians, so that armies became the clients and factions of their generals, who alone could reward them, until the most successful imperator emerged to rule Rome with his now mercenary army. But this thesis became a commonplace with civic humanists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose thought in this and other regards was based on premises entirely Machiavellian: with Harrington, Montesquieu, Jefferson, and Gibbon.

[IV]

A sociology of liberty, then, is emerging, founded very largely upon a concept of the role of arms in society and in a vivere civile; and at its negative pole, the concept of corruption is tending to replace that of the mere randomness of fortuna. This of course is a consequence of the politicization of virtue, which has made the latter’s decline explicable in political terms. On the one hand, corruption is still an irreversible, one-way process, part of the mutability and entropy of sublunary things; personality and polity may be kept in equilibrium or may decay, and there is no third possibility; but on the other hand, the concepts of autonomy and dependence, which the notion of arms serves to organize, are beginning to offer an objective and almost materialist, as opposed to a subjectively ethical, explanation of how corruption may occur. Men lose their virtù because they have lost their autonomy, and their autonomy does not consist solely in their virtù; the Roman republic was not destroyed by the mysterious power of the volubil creatura, but through describable causes whose consequences were not arrested while there was yet time.

But although secondary causes are rapidly encroaching upon the figure of fortuna, there is a deeper sense in which the virtù-fortuna polarity is still operative; and this is integral to the Discorsi’s democratic theory. By basing the popular republic on the virtù of the armed citizen, Machiavelli had transformed the problem of popular participation from one of knowledge to one of will. In the mainstream of Aristotelian theory, the many possessed a knowledge based on experience, which made them capable of electing their superiors and exercising a judgment of policies that differed little from the judgment of use, custom, and tradition. To Machiavelli, however much he might praise it,71 this was too slow-moving and entrusted too much to the aristocracy to suit a world of sudden dangers and challenges to the very existence of states. Accordingly, he had substituted the armed popular state, the senatus populusque, which could both confront its enemies and display a disciplined and dynamic will to alter and improve its internal relationships. The strength of Rome was that it could mobilize the maximum of virtù for purposes both military and civic, and continue doing so for centuries. But in the last analysis all depended on virtù as a quality of the individual personality, a devotion to the respublica which rested on political, moral, and economic autonomy. If the citizen in arms had all these things, and buona educazione besides, he would display Roman virtù, though higher than that he could not rise. Republics mobilized more virtù than monarchies, and the multiplicity of their leadership made them more flexible and adaptable to the shifts of fortuna than could be expected of the single personality of the ruling individual;⁷² it was only when changed circumstances (probably corruption) necessitated alterations in their structure that the need to obtain consensus made them slow to act.73 For all this, however, success was a function of virtù and virtù was a matter of the autonomy of personalities mobilized for the public good. Only in republics could it be mobilized, and every republic was a finite particular in which only a finite number of individuals could be trained and assembled to display virtù. However defined, the virtù of every individual depended on the virtù of every other; its decline was impossible to arrest once it was well started; and it must be manifested in arms as well as in citizenship, in the external world of war as well as in the civic world of justice. Once it was established that the governo largo, which aimed at maximizing participazione, required an armed many and a republic organized for expansion, then civic virtue became dependent upon the republic’s ability to conquer others, a virtù displayed in a world where fortuna ruled and giustizia did not. Florence could not be a republic if she could not conquer Pisa; but the Pisans could not be virtuous if they could not stop her.

The militarization of citizenship makes the Discorsi in an important sense more morally subversive than Il Principe. The prince existed in a vivere so disordered that only if he aimed as high as Moses or Lycurgus did he undertake any commitment to maintaining civic virtue in others; but the republic can be morally and civilly virtuous in itself only if it is lion and fox, man and beast, in its relation with other peoples; the image of the centaur found in Il Principe⁷⁴ may be repeated at a higher level of complexity. Recognition of this duality, relatively easy for Polybius who had a less developed concept of a God who might be directing the universe on principles of justice, was for Machiavelli directly linked with his implicit refusal to treat the republic as a creature of grace. Its justice was spatially and temporally finite; toward other republics it could display only a virtù militare, and its ability to do this was determinative of its ability to maintain civic virtue internally. Virtuous republics were at war with one another. For this reason the Christian virtues and the civic could never coincide; humility and the forgiveness of injuries could have no place in the relations between republics, where a prime imperative was to defend one’s city and beat down her enemies. Machiavelli does indeed insist that “if religion had been maintained in the beginnings of the Christian republic according to the precepts of its founder, Christian states and republics would be more united and happier than they are,”75 and that Christianity does not prohibit us from loving and defending our country;⁷⁶ but he also makes it plain, both that a pursuit of other-worldly felicity makes us endure injuries to our republic as well as to ourselves,⁷⁷ and that the civic virtues flourished best when there was no mercy to enemies and the defeat of a city meant death or slavery to its inhabitants.⁷⁸ The implications of the vivere civile are becoming pagan, secular, and time-bound; it is most itself in a world where there is no religion but augury and no values that transcend those of this life.

If the republic does not exist in a dimension of grace, religion may be seen as existing in a dimension identical with that inhabited by the republic. At the beginning of Book III, we are told that all the things of this world have a time-limit set to their existence, but that only those run the course appointed for them by heaven which keep their bodies unaltered as at first organized (ordinato) or change in such a way as to bring them back to their first principles. This is especially true of mixed bodies, such as republics or religions (sette).⁷⁹ In just what sense a religion is a corpo misto Machiavelli does not specify—the conventional answer, once given of the church by Savonarola, was that it was a compound of heavenly and earthly things⁸⁰—but, in order to leave no doubt that la nostra religione can be considered among the cose del mondo, he examines the work of Francis and Dominic in imitating the poverty of Christ and thus restoring religion verso il suo principio. The orders founded by these saints then preached that wicked rulers should not be disobeyed but their punishment left to God, with the result that the wicked do as they please, not fearing a punishment in which they do not believe. The wicked in question are corrupt princes of the church rather than secular tyrants; but this, says Machiavelli, is how religion has been maintained by a rinnovazione which the saints carried out.81 The irony at the expense of the reforming orders and their attempt to restore clerical poverty could not be much plainer; and it does not seem that the faithful who attend to the teachings of Francis and Dominic will pay much attention to the liberty or civic virtue of their republics.

The dimension of grace being thus lost, the republic and its virtue ceased to be universal and became once more spatially and temporally—it will enhance the contrast if we say “historically”—finite. In time and space there were many republics and the virtue of each abutted upon the virtue of others. To admit this was to confront the problem of showing how a republic, any more than a prince, could reconstitute an Italy which was already partly organized into republics. Savonarola had been able to envisage Florence as reforming the world only in a context of apocalypse and only in terms which seemed to promise that city earthly riches and power. To Machiavelli that route was not open, and the relations of a republic with other republics presented a problem of real difficulty. Confederation, hegemony, and naked dominion seemed to be the available possibilities, and if the last was ruled out as radically unstable, the first was open to the same criticism as the aristocratic republic: voluntarily to limit expansion was too dangerous. Rome, the expanding democracy, had taken the middle path, and Machiavelli devotes much space⁸² to examining and recommending the various devices by which the Romans associated their allies and former enemies with themselves in relations which were those of subordination without involving the conscious loss of all freedom. It is partly in this context that we should view the famous, if slightly opaque, dictum that to be ruled by a free people is worse than to be ruled by a prince, apparently because the prince desires your love and allegiance and so may respect your customs, whereas the free people, being morally self-sufficient, have no interest in anything other than your total subjection.83 The Romans sought to avoid exerting this tyranny, but Machiavelli has no illusions about their long-term success. They could manage their relations with the formerly free republics of Italy, but once their rule was extended to peoples who had always been less than free and whom they governed accordingly, the Italians found themselves assimilated to the status of the barbarian provincials.⁸⁴ In this way, “the Roman empire destroyed by force of arms all the republics and free cities,” so that their virtue could never afterwards recover; and this, together with the spread of other-worldly values, explains the weakened love of liberty displayed by moderns as compared with ancients. It was the Roman conquest of Tuscany which ultimately caused Florence’s inability to develop as a free and stable republic.85

Since military (and consequently civic) virtue is both emulative and competitive, the loss of virtue in the other peoples helped cause the decline of virtue in the Romans themselves; and this is in part⁸⁶ the context in which Machiavelli propounds the view that the amount of virtù in the world at any one time is finite,⁸⁷ and that when it is all used up through corruption there will be some kind of cataclysm, after which a few uncorrupted barbarian survivors will emerge from the mountains and begin again.⁸⁸ The theory is cyclical and presupposes a closed, because not transcended, system in the human and moral world; the neo-stoic overtones recall the aeternitas mundi of the heterodox Aristotelians. Machiavelli arrives at it both through his abandonment of the dimension of grace and through his decision to regard virtue as existing only in republics—that is, in finite quantities themselves finite in number, space, and time; we should remind ourselves that the only alternative to a cyclical aeternitas mundi was a Christian eschatology. But it follows that virtue itself, not merely a virtù limited to new princes, has now become cannibal—Shakespeare’s “universal wolf” that “last eats up himself.” If the republic quarreled with grace, the consequences were universal. The truly subversive Machiavelli was not a counselor of tyrants, but a good citizen and patriot.

A republican scheme of history therefore continued to be fortuna-dominated and cyclical, a matter of finite quantities of energy, rarely mobilized, inclined to be self-destructive and moving toward total entropy until some unpredictable force should mobilize them again. Machiavelli’s contributions to republican theory were extraordinarily original, but were based on and limited to his decision that military dynamism was to be preferred before the search for stability. It was this decision that led him to investigate the military and social bases of political action and personality; but meanwhile, other minds were making the more traditional decision in favor of stability and, without abandoning the problems of arms and war, were turning back toward the Venetian example, which they used as a paradigm for exploring the constitutional distribution of power. The combination of their thought with Machiavelli’s helped to form the classical republican tradition of early modern England and America.

1 J. H. Whitfield, Discourses on Machiavelli (above, ch. IV, n. 63), pp. 17, 43, 57-58, 111, 141-42.

² For discussion of this group, and the problems of dating raised by Machiavelli’s association with them, see Gilbert, “Bernardo Rucellai and the Orti Oricellari” (above, ch. IV, n. 27), pp. 101-31, and “The Composition and Structure of Machiavelli’s Discorsi,” Journal of the History of Ideas 14, no. 1 (1953), 136-56; Whitfield, Discourses, pp. 181-206; and Baron, “Machiavelli: the Republican Citizen and the Author of The Prince,” English Historical Review 76 (1961), 217-53.

³ Discorsi, I, 1; Opere, p. 91.

⁴ Opere, p. 92. “E per non avere queste cittadi la loro origine libera, rade volte occurre che le facciano progressi grandi, e possinsi intra i capi dei regni numerare. Simile a queste fu l’edificazione di Firenze, perché (o edificata da’ soldati di Silla o a caso dagli abitatori dei monti di Fiesole, i quali confidatisi in quella lunga pace che sotto Ottaviano nacque nel mondo si ridussero ad abitare nel piano sopra Arno) si edificò sotto l’imperio romano, ne pote ne’ principii suoi fare altri augumenti che quelli che per cortesia del principe gli erano concessi.”

⁵ Istorie Fiorentine, II, 2; Opere, pp. 620-22. See also Discorsi, I, 49, where the statement that Florence has failed to overcome her unfree origins is even more specific. Cf. Nicolai Rubinstein, “Machiavelli and Florentine Politics,” in Gilmore, ed., Studies on Machiavelli, pp. 21-22.

⁶ Discorsi, I, 1; Opere, pp. 93-94.

⁷ II, 2, the opening sentences; Opere, p. 95.

⁸ The word for this is sometimes ordinatore, but Machiavelli prefers periphrases such as uno solo, il quale ordino, etc. Latore delle leggi is found in II, 1; Opere, p. 205.

⁹ Opere, pp. 95, 98, 99, 107.

¹⁰ Opere, p. 95: “Talché felice si può chiamare quella republica la quale sortisce uno uomo si prudente che gli dia leggi ordinate in modo che, sanza avere bisogno di ricorreggerle, possa vivere sicuramente sotto quelle; e si vede che Sparta le osservò piú che ottocento anni sanza corromperle o sanza alcuno tumulto pericoloso. E pel contrario tiene qualche grado d’infelicità quella città che non si sendo abbattuta a uno ordinatore prudente, è necessitata da se medesima riordinarsi: e di queste ancora è piú infelice quella che è piú discosto dall’ordine; e quella ne è piú discosto che co’ suoi ordini e al tutto fuori del diritto cammino che la possa condurre al perfetto e vero fine, perché quelle che sono in questo grado è quasi impossibile che per qualunque accidente si rassettino.”

¹¹ Opere, pp. 98-99.

¹² I, 1; Opere, pp. 91-92: “… cominciarono infra loro, sanza altro principe particulare che gli ordinasse, a vivere sotto quelle leggi che parevono loro piú atte a mantenerli. Il che successe loro felicemente per il lungo ozio che il sito dette loro, non avendo quel mare uscita, e non avendo quelli popoli che affliggevano Italia navigli da poterli infestare, talché ogni piccolo principio li pote fare venire a quella grandezza nella quale sono.”

¹³ Opere, p. 95: “… alcune le hanno avute a caso ed in piú volte e secondo li accidenti, come ebbe Roma.” In II, 1, Machiavelli reverts to this theme and explains that fortuna is not the cause or agency of Roman greatness; we might render his meaning by saying that it is the context.

¹⁴ Ibid.: “Quelle altre che, se le non hanno l’ordine perfetto, hanno preso il principio buono e atto a diventare migliore, possono per la occorrenzia degli accidenti diventare perfette. Ma sia bene vero questo: che mai non si ordineranno sanza periculo, perché gli assai uomini non si accordano mai ad una legge nuova che riguardi uno nuovo ordine nella città, se non è mostro loro da una necessità che bisogni farlo; e non potendo venire questa necessità sanza periculo, è facil cosa che quella republica rovini avanti che la si sia condotta a una perfezione d’ordine.”

¹⁵ II, 2; Opere, pp. 96-99.

¹⁶ Opere, pp. 99-100: “… Roma, la quale non ostante che non avesse uno Licurgo che la ordinasse in modo nel principio che la potesse vivere lungo tempo libera, nondimeno furo tanti gli accidenti che in quella nacquero, per la disunione che era intra la Plebe ed il Senato, che quello che non aveva fatto uno ordinatore lo fece il caso. Perché se Roma non sortí la prima fortuna, sortí la seconda: perché i primi ordini suoi se furono difettivi, nondimeno non deviarono dalla diritta via che li potesse condurre alla perfezione … alla quale perfezione venne per la disunione della Plebe e del Senato, come nei dua prossimi seguenti capitoli largamente si dimosterrà.”

¹⁷ Opere, p. 37: “Costoro soli hanno stati, e non li defendano; sudditi, e non li governano; e li stati, per essere indifesi, non sono loro tolti; e li sudditi, per non essere governati, non se ne curano, ne pensano ne possono alienarsi da loro. Solo adunque questi principati sono sicuri e felici.”

¹⁸ Opere, p. 36: “… si acquistano o per virtù o per fortuna, e sanza l’una e l’altra si mantengano …”

¹⁹ P. 37: “Ma sendo quelli retti da cagione superiori alle quali mente umana non aggiugne, lascerò il parlarne; perché sendo esaltati e mantenuti da Dio, sarebbe offizio di uomo prosuntuoso e temerario discorrerne.”

²⁰ Pp. 36-37: “… sono sustentati dalli ordini antiquati nella religione, quali sono suti tanto potenti e di qualità che tengono e’ loro principi in stato, in qualunque modo si procedino e vivino.”

²¹ Discorsi, I, 10; Opere, p. 118: “Intra tutti gli uomini laudati, sono i laudatissimi quelli che sono stati capi e ordinatori delle religioni. Appresso dipoi quelli che hanno fondato o republiche o regni. Dopo a costoro sono celebri quelli che, preposti agli eserciti, hanno ampliato o il regno loro o quello della patria. A questi si aggiungono gli uomini litterati …”

²² I, II, generally.

²³ See below, n. 76.

²⁴ I, II; Opere, p. 123: “E vedesi, chi considera bene le istorie romane, quanto serviva la religione a comandare gli eserciti, ad animire la Plebe, a mantenere gli uomini buoni, a fare vergognare i rei. Talché se si avesse a disputare a quale principe Roma fusse piú obligata, o a Romolo o a Numa, credo piú tosto Numa otterrebbe il primo grado: perché dove è religione facilmente si possono introdurre l’armi, e dove sono l’armi e non religione, con difficultà si può introdurre quella.”

I, 19; Opere, p. 144: “… pensò che a volere mantenere Roma bisognava volgersi alla guerra, e somigliare Romolo, e non Numa. Da questo piglino esemplo tutti i principi che tengono stato: che che somiglierà Numa lo terrà o non terrà secondo che i tempi o la fortuna gli girerà sotto; ma chi somiglierà Romolo, e sia come esso armato di prudenza e d’armi, lo terrà in ogni modo, se da una ostinata ed eccessiva forza non gli è tolto.” It should be noted how the language used of the prince armato di prudenza e d’armi echoes that used in Il Principe, ch. 11, of the principe naturale who is safe against anything but una estraordinaria ed eccessiva forza. See above, ch. 6, n. 4.

²⁵ See below, ch. 8; and generally his Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli.

²⁶ I, 2-6.

²⁷ See above, n. 16, and the reference there cited.

²⁸ Opere, pp. 99-100.

²⁹ Ibid.: “Perché Romolo e tutti gli altri Re fecero molte e buone leggi, conformi ancora al vivere libero; ma perché il fine loro fu fondare un regno e non una republica, quando quella città rimase libera vi mancavano molte cose che era necessario ordinare in favore della libertà, le quali non erano state da quelli re ordinate.”

³⁰ Ibid.: “perfezione” used twice and “perfetta” once.

³¹ I, 3; Opere, pp. 100-101.

³² I, 4; Opere, p. 101: “… contro la opinione di molti che dicono Roma essere stata una republica tumultuaria, e piena di tanta confusione che se la buona fortuna e la virtù militare non avesse sopperito a’ loro difetti, sarebbe stata inferiore a ogni altra republica. Io non posso negare che la fortuna e la milizia non fussero cagione dell’imperio romano; ma è mi pare bene che costoro non si avegghino che dove è buona milizia conviene che sia buono ordine, e rade volte anco occorre che non vi sia buona fortuna.”

³³ Ibid., p. 102: “Né si può chiamare in alcun modo con ragione una republica inordinata, dove sieno tanti esempli di virtù, perché li buoni esempli nascano dalla buona educazione, la buona educazione dalle buone leggi, e le buone leggi da quelli tumulti che molti inconsideratemente dannano; perché che esaminerà bene il fine d’essi, non troverrà ch’egli abbiano partorito alcuno esilio o violenza in disfavore del commune bene, ma leggi e ordini in beneficio della publica libertà.”

³⁴ Ibid.: “… dico come ogni città debbe avere i suoi modi con i quali il popolo possa sfogare l’ambizione sua, e massime quelle città che nelle cose importanti si vogliono valere del popolo …”

³⁵ Ibid., pp. 102-103: “E i desiderii de’ popoli liberi rade volte sono perniziosi alla libertà, perché e’ nascono o da essere oppressi, o da suspizione di avere ad essere oppressi. E quando queste opinioni fossero false e vi è il rimedio delle concioni, che surga qualche uomo da bene che orando dimostri loro come ei s’ingannano: e li popoli, come dice Tullio, benché siano ignoranti sono capaci della verità, e facilmente cedano quando da uomo degno di fede è detto loro il vero.”

³⁶ I, 5, title: “Fove piú sicuramente si ponga la guardia della libertà, o nel popolo o ne’ grandi …”

³⁷ “I do not understand the title of the question, that is, what it means by placing the guardianship of freedom with the people or the nobles, because it is one thing to say who is to have power, the nobles or the plebs—and of this Venice is an example, for there it is so far in the hands of the nobles that all the plebs are excluded—and it is quite another thing, where all take a share in government, to say who should have special responsibility or care for the defence of liberty, placed either in plebeian magistrates or in noble ones.” Cecil and Margaret Grayson, eds. and trans., Francesco Guicciardini: Selected Writings (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 70.

³⁸ Discorsi, I, 5; Opere, p. 103: “E se si andasse dietro alle ragioni, ci è che dire da ogni parte; ma se si esaminasse il fine loro, si piglierebbe la parte de’ Nobili, per avere la libertà di Sparta e di Vinegia piú lunga vita che quella di Roma.”

³⁹ Ibid., p. 104: “Ed in fine chi sottilmente esaminerà tutto, ne farà questa conclusione: o tu ragioni d’una republica che voglia fare uno imperio, come Roma, o d’una che le basti mantenersi. Nel primo caso gli è necessario fare ogni case come Roma; nel secondo può imitare Vinegia e Sparta, per quelle cagioni, e come nel seguente capitolo si dirà.”

⁴⁰ The whole of 1, 6, requires to be read in this connection.

⁴¹ Opere, p. 109: “… se la è difficile a espugnarsi, como io la presuppongono, sendo bene ordinata alla difesa, rade volte accaderà o non mai che uno possa fare disegno di acquistarla. Se la si starà intra i termini suoi, e veggasi per esperienza che in lei non sia ambizione, non occorrerà mai che uno per paura di sé le faccia guerra; e tanto piú sarebbe questo, se e’ fussi in lei constituzione o legge che le proibisse l’ampliare. E sanza dubbio credo che potendosi tenere la cosa bilanciata in questo modo, che e’ sarebbe il vero vivere politico e la vera quiete d’una città.”

⁴² Opere, p. 108: “… dare luogo a’ tumulti e alle dissensioni universali il meglio che si può, perché sanza gran numero di uomini e bene armati non mai una republica potrà crescere, o se la crescerà mantenersi.”

⁴³ Opere, p. 109: “Ma sendo tutte le cose degli uomini in moto, e non potendo stare salde, conviene che le salghino o che le scendino, e a molte che la ragione non t’induce, t’induce la necessità; talmente che avendo ordinata una republica atta a mantenersi non ampliando, e la necessità la conducesse ad ampliare, si verrebbe a tor via i fondamenti suoi ed a farla rovinare piú tosto. Cosi dall’altra parte, quando il Cielo le fusse si benigno che la non avesse a fare guerra, ne nascerebbe che l’ozio la farebbe o effeminata o divisa; le quali due cose insieme, o ciascuna per sé, sarebbono cagione della sua rovina.”

⁴⁴ Ibid.: “Pertanto non si potendo, come io credo, bilanciare questa cosa, né mantenere questa via del mezzo a punto, bisogna nello ordinare la republica pensare piú onorevole, ed ordinarla in modo che quando pure la necessità la inducesse ad ampliare, ella potesse quello ch’ella avesse occupato conservare. E per tornare al primo ragionamento, credo ch’e’ sia necessario seguire l’ordine romano e non quello dell’altre republiche, perche trovare un modo mezzo infra l’uno e l’altro non credo si possa; e quelle inimicizie che intra il popolo e il senato nascessino, tollerarle, pigliandole per uno inconveniente necessario a pervenire alla romana grandezza.”

⁴⁵ E.g., Opere, p. 503: “… (la) guerra, che è l’arte mia … essendo questa una arte mediante la quale gli uomini d’ogni tempo non possono vivere onestamente, non la può usare per arte se non una republica o uno regno; e l’uno e l’altro di questi, quando sia bene ordinato, mai non consenti ad alcuno suo cittadino o suddito usarla per arte; né mai alcuno uomo buono l’esercitò per sua particulare arte.”

⁴⁶ Opere, p. 505: “E dico che Pompeo e Cesare, e quasi tutti quegli capitani che furono a Roma dopo l’ultima guerra cartaginese, acquistarono fama come valenti uomini, non come buoni; e quegli che erano vivuti avanti a loro, acquistarono gloria come valenti e buoni. Il che nacque perché questi non presero lo esercizio della guerra per loro arte, e quegli che io nominai prima, come loro arte la usarono.” P. 507: “Debbe adunque una città bene ordinata volere che questo studio di guerra si usi ne’ tempi di pace per esercizio e ne’ tempi de guerra per necessità e per gloria, e al publico solo lasciarla usare per arte, come fece Roma. E qualunque cittadino che ha in tale esercizio altro fine, non è buono; e qualunque città si governa altrimenti, non è bene ordinata.”

⁴⁷ Ibid.: “… se uno re non si ordina in modo che i suoi fanti a tempo di pace stieno contenti tornarsi a casa e vivere delle loro arti, conviene di necessità che rovini: perché non si truova la piú pericolosa fanteria che quella che è composta di coloro che fanno la guerra come per loro arte; perché tu sei forzato o a fare sempre mai guerra, o a pagargli sempre, o a portare pericolo che non ti tolgano il regno.”

⁴⁸ Opere, p. 496: “E se in qualunque altro ordine delle cittadi e de’ regni si usava ogni diligenza per mantenere gli uomini fedeli, pacifichi e pieni del timore d’Iddio, nella milizia si raddoppiava. Perché in quale uomo debbe ricercare la patria maggiore fede, che in colui che le ha a promettere di morire per lei? In quale debbe essere piú amore di pace, che in quello che solo dalla guerra puote essere offeso? In quale debbe essere piú timore d’Iddio, che in colui che ogni dì sottomettendosi a infiniti pericoli ha piú bisogno degli aiuti suoi?”

(The Ricciardi edition of the Opere, which is being cited here, does not contain the full text of the Arte della Guerra and this must be sought elsewhere.)

⁴⁹ Discorsi, II, 2; see below, n. 77.

⁵⁰ I, 12; Opere, p. 126: “La vita della religione Gentile era fondata sopra i responsi degli oracoli e sopra la setta degli indovini e degli aruspici; tutte le altre loro cerimonie, sacrifici e riti, dependevano da queste. Perché loro facilmente credevono che quello Iddio che ti poteva predire il tuo futuro bene o il tuo futuro male, to lo potessi ancora concedere.”

⁵¹ I, 13-15.

⁵² Opere, p. 132: Papirius defied the auguries and won a battle; Appius Claudius defied them and lost; “di che egli fu a Roma condannato, e Papirio onorato: non tanto per avere l’uno vinto e l’altro perduto, quanto per avere l’uno fatto contro gli auspicii prudentemente, e l’altro temerariamente. Né ad altro fine tendeva questo modo dello aruspicare, che di fare i soldati confidentemente ire alla zuffa, dalla quale confidenza quasi sempre nasce la vittoria.”

⁵³ Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze a instanza di Papa Leone, in Tutte le Opere di Niccolo Machiavelli, ed. Francesco Flora and Carlo Cordié (Rome: Arnaldo Mondadori Editore, 1949), 11, 526-40. He insists that the universalità dei cittadini must be given back the autorità which rests on membership in the Consiglio Grande (p. 534), but adds that “li pochi cittadini non hanno ardire di punire gli uomini grandi” (p. 537) and that if arrangements are made to restore popular access to office by degrees, “non veggiamo ancora come la universalità dei cittadini non si avessi a contentare, veggendosi rendute parte delle distribuzioni, e l’altre vedendo a poco a poco cadersi in mano” (p. 538).

⁵⁴ Discorsi, I, 18; Opere, p. 140: “E presupporrò una città corrottissima, donde verrò ad accrescere piú tale difficultà; perché non si truovano né leggi né ordini che bastino a frenare una universale corruzione. Perché cosí come gli buoni costumi per mantenersi hanno bisogno delle leggi, cosí le leggi per osservarsi hanno bisogno de’ buoni costumi. Oltre a di questo, gli ordini e le leggi fatte in una republica nel nascimento suo, quando erano gli uomini buoni, non sono dipoi piú a proposito, divenuti che ei sono rei. E se le leggi secondo gli accidenti in una città variano, non variano mai, o rade volte, gli ordini suoi: il che fa che le nuove leggi non bastano, perché gli ordini che stanno saldi le corrompono.”

⁵⁵ I, 37: Opere, p. 173: “Del quale disordine furono motori i Gracchi, de’ quali si debbe laudare piú la intenzione che la prudenzia. Perché a volere levar via uno disordine cresciuto in una republica, e per questo fare una legge che riguardi assai indietro, è partito male considerato: e come di sopra largamente si discorse, non si fa altro che accelerere quel male a che quel disordine ti conduce; ma temporeggiandolo, o il male viene piú tardo, o per sé medesimo, col tempo, avanti che venga al fine suo, si spegne.”

⁵⁶ III, 1: Opere, p. 309: “E perché io parlo de’ corpi misti, come sono le republiche e le sette, dico che quelle alterazioni sono a salute che le riducano inverso i principii loro. E però quelle sono meglio ordinate, ed hanno piú lunga vita, che mediante gli ordini suoi si possono spesso rinnovare, ovvero che per qualche accidente, fuori di detto ordine, vengono a detta rinnovazione. Ed è cosa piú chiara che la luce che non si rinnovando questi corpi non durano.

“Il modo del rinnovargli è, come è detto, ridurgli verso e’ principii suoi; perché tutti e principii delle sette e delle republiche e de’ regni conviene che abbiano in sé qualche bontà, mediante la quale ripiglino la prima riputazione ed il primo augumento loro. E perché nel processo del tempo quella bontà si corrompe, se non interviene cosa che la riduca al segno, ammazza di necessità quel corpo.” For the application of this to religions, see below, n. 81.

⁵⁷ Though the sack of Rome by the Gauls comes close to a beginning again from matter reduced to chaos; ibid., pp. 309-10.

⁵⁸ Opere, pp. 310-11: “Le quali cose [Machiavelli has been listing exemplary punishments recounted by Livy and discussed more than once in the Discorsi] perché erano eccessive e notabili, qualunque volta ne nasceva una, facevano gli uomini ritirare verso il segno [more than Cesare Borgia can be said to have achieved by the execution of Ramirro de Orca]; e quando le cominciarono a essere piú rare cominciarono anche a dare piú spazio agli uomini di corrompersi e farsi con maggiore pericolo e piú tumulto. Perché dall’una all’altra di simili esecuzioni non vorrebbe passare il piú diece anni, perché passato questo tempo, gli uomini cominciano a variare con i costumi e trapassare le leggi: e se non nasce cosa per la quale si riduca loro a memoria la pena, e rinnuovisi negli animi loro la paura, concorrono tosto tanti delinquenti che non si possono punire sanza pericolo.” This is true irrespective of the justice of the original principio; Machiavelli goes on to say that the Medici rulers of Florence between 1434 and 1494 used ripigliare lo stato, i.e., to dissolve their own system so as to renew it in its original severity—a procedure recalling the “great purges” and “cultural revolutions” of modern times.

⁵⁹ I, 9 (Cleomenes), 17, 18 (Cleomenes again), 33, 38, 46.

⁶⁰ I, 33: Opere, pp. 164-65: “Dico adunque che, poi che gli è difficile conoscere questi mali quando ei surgano, causata questa difficultà da uno inganno che ti fanno le cose in principio, e piú savio partito il temporeggierle, poi che le si conoscono, che l’oppugnarle: perche temporeggiandole, o per loro medesime si spengono o almeno il male si differisce in piú lungo tempo. E in tutte le cose debbono aprire gli occhi i principi, che disegnano cancellarle o alle forze ed impeto loro opporsi, di non dare loro in cambio di detrimento augumento, e credendo sospingere una cosa tirarsela dietro, ovvero suffocare una pianta a annaffiarla; ma si debbano considerare bene le forze del malore, e quando ti vedi sufficiente a sanare quello, metterviti sanza rispetto, altrimenti lasciarlo stare né in alcun modo tentarlo.”

⁶¹ I, 18; Opere, p. 142: “… a fare questo non basta usare termini ordinari essendo i modi ordinari cattivi, ma è necessario venire allo straordinario, come è alla violenza ed all’armi, e diventare innanzi a ogni cosa principe di quella città e poterne disporre a suo modo. E perché il riordinare una città al vivere politico presuppone uno uomo buono, e il diventare per violenza principe di una republica presuppone uno uomo cattivo, per questo si troverrà che radissime volte accaggia che uno buono, per vie cattive, ancora che il fine suo fusse buono, voglia diventare principe; e che uno reo, divenuto principe, voglia operare bene, e che gli caggia mai nello animo usare quella autorità bene che gli ha male acquistata.”

⁶² I, 17; Opere, p. 139: “… ma morto quello, la si ritorna ne’ primi disordini suoi. La cagione è, che non può essere uno uomo di tanta vita che’l tempo basti ad avvezzare bene una città lungo tempo male avvezza. E se uno d’una lunghissima vita o due successioni virtuose continue non la dispongano, come la manca di loro, come di sopra è detto, rovina; se già con di molti pericoli e di molto sangue e’ non la facesse rinascere.”

⁶³ I, 17; Opere, p. 139: “… dove la materia non è corrotta, i tumulti ed altri scandali non nuocono: dove la è corrotta, le leggi bene ordinate non giovano, se già le non son mosse da uno che con una estrema forza le faccia osservare tanto che la materia diventi buona … una città venuta in declinazione per corruzione di materia, se mai occorre che la si rilievi, occorre per la virtù d’uno uomo che è vivo allora, non per la virtù dello universale che sostenga gli ordini buoni …” I, 18; Opere, p. 141: “… altri ordini e modi di vivere si debbe ordinare in uno suggetto cattivo che in uno buono, nè può essere la forma simile in una materia al tutto contraria.” in, 8; Opere, p. 342: Manlius Capitolinus “venne in tanta cecità di mente, che non pensando al modo di vivere della città, non esaminando il suggetto, quale esso aveva, non atto a ricevere ancora trista forma, si misse a fare tumulti in Roma contro al Senato e contro alle leggi patrie. Dove si conosce la perfezione di quella città e la bontà della materia sua.…” P. 343: “se Manlio fusse nato ne’ tempi di Mario e di Silla, dove già la materia era corrotta, e dove esso arebbe potuto imprimere la forma dell’ambizione sua arebbe avuti quegli medesimi seguiti e successi che Mario e Silla.… Però è bisogno, a volere pigliare autorità in una republica e mettervi trista forma, trovare la materia disordinata dal tempo, e che a poco a poco e di generazione in generazione si sia condotta al disordine …”

⁶⁴ Opere, p. 139: “Perché tale corruzione e poca attitudine alla vita libera nasce da una inequalità che è in quella città, e volendola ridurre equale è necessario usare grandissimi straordinari, i quali pochi sanno o vogliono usare …”

⁶⁵ I, 18; Opere, pp. 140-42.

⁶⁶ Ibid., pp. 142-43: “Da tutte le soprascritte cose nasce la difficultà o impossibilità, che è nelle città corrotte, a mantenervi una republica o a crearvela di nuovo. E quando pure la vi si avesse a creare o a mantenere, sarebbe necessario ridurla piú verso lo stato regio che verso lo stato popolare, accioché quegli uomini i quali dalle leggi per la loro insolenzia non possono essere corretti, fussero da una podestà quasi regia in qualche modo frenati. E a volergli fare per altre vie diventare buoni, sarebbe o crudelissima impresa o al tutto impossibile …”

⁶⁷ Opere, p. 205: “Ed a volere in provincie fatte in simil modo introdurre una republica non sarebbe possibile. Ma a volerle riordinare, se alcuno ne fusse arbitro, non arebbe altra via che farvi uno regno: la cagione è questa, che dove è tanto la materia corrotta che le leggi non bastano a frenarla, vi bisogna ordinare insieme con quelle maggior forza, la quale è una mano regia che con la potenza assoluta ed eccessiva ponga freno alla eccessiva ambizione e corruttela de’ potenti.”

P. 206: “Trassi adunque di questo discorso questa conclusione: che colui che vuole fare dove sono assai gentiluomini una republica, non la può fare se prima non gli spegne tutti; e che colui che dove è assai equalità vuole uno regno o uno principato, non lo potrà mai fare se non trae di quella equalità molti d’animo ambizioso ed inquieto, e quelli fa gentiluomini in fatto e non in nome, donando loro castella e possessioni e dando loro favore di sustanze e di uomini, accioché, posto in mezzo di loro, mediante quegli mantenga la sua potenza ed essi mediante quello la loro ambizione, e gli altri siano costretti a sopportare quel giogo che la forza, e non altro mai, può fare sopportare loro.”

⁶⁸ In I, 5, he says that the people became disposed to adore all politicians who attacked the nobility, “donde nacque la potenza di Mario e la rovina di Roma.” In I, 37, the agrarian law appears as the cause of this.

⁶⁹ I, 37.

⁷⁰ III, 24. The theme of the professionalization of the armies by the emperors is further developed in Book 1 of the Arte della Guerra.

⁷¹ I, 58; Opere, p. 212: “E non sanza cagione si assomiglia la voce d’un popolo a quella di Dio: perché si vede una opinione universale fare effetti maravigliosi ne’ pronostichi suoi, talché pare che per occulta virtù ei prevegga il suo male ed il suo bene.”

⁷² III, 9; Opere, pp. 344-45: “E se Fabio fusse stato re di Roma poteva facilmente perdere quella guerra; perché non arebbe saputo variare col procedere suo secondo che variavono i tempi [cf. Il Principe, ch. xxv; above, ch. VI, n. 39]. Ma essendo nato in una republica dove erano diversi cittadini e diversi umori, come la ebbe Fabio, che fu ottimo ne’ tempi debiti a sostenere la guerra, cosí ebbe poi Scipione ne’ tempi atti a vincerla.

“Quinci nasce che una republica ha maggiore vita ed ha piú lungamente buona fortuna che uno principato, perché la può meglio accomodarsi alla diversità de’ temporali, per la diversità de’ cittadini che sono in quella, che non può uno principe. Perché un uomo che sia consueto a procedere in uno modo, non si muta mai, come è detto e conviene di necessità che quando e’ si mutano i tempi disformi a quel suo modo che rovini.”

⁷³ Ibid.: “… in uno uomo la fortuna varia, perché ella varia i tempi ed egli non varia i modi. Nascene ancora le rovine delle cittadi, per non si variare gli ordini delle republiche co’ tempi, come lungamente di sopra discorremo. Ma sono piú tarde, perche le penono piú a variare; perché bisogna che venghino tempi che commuovino tutta la republica, a che uno solo col variare il modo del procedere non basta.”

⁷⁴ Ch. xviii; Opere, p. 56; “mezzo bestia e mezzo uomo.”

⁷⁵ I, 12; Opere, p. 127: “La quale religione se ne’ principi della republica cristiana si fusse mantenuta secondo che dal datore d’essa ne fu ordinato, sarebbero gli stati e le republiche cristiane piú unite, piú felici assai che le non sono.”

⁷⁶ II, 2; Opere, pp. 227-28: “Perché se considerassono come la ci permette la esaltazione e la difesa della patria, vedrebbono come la vuole che noi l’amiamo ed onoriamo, e prepariamoci a essere tali che noi la possiamo difendere.”

⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 227: “La religione antica … non beatificava se non uomini pieni di mondana gloria, come erano capitani di eserciti e principi di republiche. La nostra religione ha glorificato piú gli uomini umili e contemplativi che gli attivi. Ha dipoi posto il sommo bene nella umiltà, abiezione, e nel dispregio delle cose umane: quell’altra lo poneva nella grandezza dello animo, nella fortezza del corpo ed in tutte le altre cose atte a fare gli uomini fortissimi. E se la religione nostra richiede che tu abbi in te fortezza, vuole che tu sia atto a patire piú che a fare una cosa forte. Questo modo di vivere adunque pare che abbi renduto il mondo debole, e datolo in preda agli uomini scelerati, i quali sicuramente lo possono maneggiare, veggendo come l’università degli uomini per andare in Paradiso pensa piú a sopportare le sue battiture che a vendicarle.” Cf. Guicciardini, Ricordi, B 27.

⁷⁸ II, 2, passim.

⁷⁹ Above, n. 56.

⁸⁰ Above, ch. 4, n. 38.

⁸¹ III, 1; Opere, pp. 312-13: “Ma quanto alle sette, si vede ancora queste rinnovazioni essere necessarie per lo esemplo della nostra religione, la quale se non fossi stata ritirata verso il suo principio da Santo Francesco e da Santo Domenico sarebbe al tutto spenta: perché questi con la povertà e con lo esemplo della vita di Cristo, la ridussono nella mente degli uomini, che già vi era spenta; e furono si potenti gli ordini loro nuovi che ei sono cagione che la disonestà de’ prelati e de’ capi della religione non la rovinino, vivendo ancora poveramente, ed avendo tanto credito nelle confessioni con i popoli e nelle predicazioni, che ei danno loro a intendere come egli è male dir male del male, e che sia bene vivere sotto la obedienza loro, e se fanno errori lasciargli gastigare a Dio. E cosí quegli fanno il peggio che possono, perché non temono quella punizione che non veggono e non credono. Ha adunque questa rinnovazione mantenuto, e mantiene, questa religione.”

⁸² II, 2, 3, 4, 19, 23.

⁸³ II, 2; Opere, p. 229: “E di tutte le servitù dure quella è durissima che ti sottomette a una republica: l’una perché la è piú durabile e manco si può sperare d’uscirne, l’altra perché il fine della republica è enervare ed indebolire, per accrescere il corpo suo, tutti gli altri corpi: il che non fa uno principe che ti sottometta … s’ egli ha in sé ordini umani ed ordinari, il piú delle volte ama le città sue suggette equalmente, ed a loro lascia … quasi tutti gli ordini antichi…” Compare Guicciardini, Ricordi, C 107.

⁸⁴ II, 4; Opere, pp. 232-33: “… avendosi lei fatti di molti compagni per tutta Italia, i quali in di molti cose con equali leggi vivevano seco, e dall’altro canto, come di sopra è detto, sendosi riserbata sempre la sedia dello imperio ed il titolo del comandare, questi suoi compagni venivano, che non se ne avvedevano, con le fatiche e con il sangue loro a soggiogar se stessi. Perché come ei cominciorono a uscire con gli eserciti di Italia, e ridurre i regni in provincie, e farsi suggetti coloro che per essere consueti a vivere sotto i re non si curavano di essere suggetti, ed avendo governatori romani ed essendo stati vinti da eserciti con il titolo romano, non riconoscevano per superiore altro che Roma. Di modo che quegli compagni di Roma che erano in Italia, si trovarono in un tratto cinti da’ sudditi romani ed oppressi da una grossissima città come era Roma; e quando ei s’avviddono dello inganno sotto il quale erano vissuti, non furono a tempo a rimediarvi.…”

⁸⁵ II, 2; Opere, p. 228: “Fanno adunque queste educazioni e si false interpretazioni, che nel mondo non si vede tante republiche quante si vedeva anticamente, né per consequente si vede ne’ popoli tanto amore alla libertà quanto allora. Ancora che io creda piú tosto essere cagione di questo, che lo imperio romano con le sue arme e sua grandezza spense tutte le republiche e tutti e viveri civili. E benché poi tale imperio si sia risoluto, non si sono potute le città ancora rimettere insieme né riordinare alla vita civile, se non in pochissimi luoghi di quello imperio.” For references to the Roman overthrow of Tuscan virtue, see pp. 228, 235, 237.

⁸⁶ The context is also that of the question how it is that the memory of former times is now and again completely destroyed, obscuring the problem of whether or not it has existed from eternity. This Machiavelli says is brought about by changes of religion and of language: a concept which in some respects anticipates Gibbon’s “triumph of barbarism and religion.”

⁸⁷ II, proemio, Opere, pp. 218-19: “… giudico il mondo sempre essere stato ad uno medesimo modo, ed in quello essere stato tanto di buono quanto di cattivo; ma variare questo cattivo e questo buono di provincia in provincia, come si vede per quello si ha notizia di quegli regni antichi, che variavano dall’uno alFaltro per la variazione de’ costumi, ma il mondo restava quel medesimo: solo vi era questa differenza, che dove quello aveva prima allogata la sua virtù in Assiria, la collocò in Media, dipoi in Persia, tanto che la ne venne in Italia e a Roma. E se dopo lo Imperio romano non è seguito Imperio che sia durato nè dove il mondo abbia ritenuta la sua virtù insieme, si vede nondimeno essere sparsa in di molte nazioni dove si viveva virtuosamente …”

⁸⁸ II, 5; Opere, p. 236: “Quanto alle cause che vengono dal cielo, sono quelle che spengono la umana generazione e riducano a pochi gli abitatori del mondo. E questo viene o per peste o per fame, o per una inondazione d’acque, e la piú importante è questa ultima: si perché la è piú universale, si perché quegli che si salvono sono uomini tutti montanari e rozzi, i quali non avendo notizia di alcuna antichità, non la possono lasciare a’ posteri.… la natura, come ne’ corpi semplici quando e’ vi è ragunato assai materia superflua, muove per sè medesima molte volte e fa una purgazione la quale è salute di quel corpo, cosí interviene in questo corpo misto della umana generazione, che quando … la astuzia e la malignità umana e venuta dove la può venire, conviene di necessità che il mondo si purchi …”