TWO
WHILE The Prince illustrates the role of rhetorical politics in principalities, the Discourses argues that this rhetorical flexibility is a structural feature of the life of republics and the reason for their superiority to other forms of government:
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. (3.9.417–18)
a republic has a fuller life and enjoys good fortune for a longer time than a principality, since it is better able to adapt itself to diverse circumstances owing to the diversity found among its citizens than a prince can do. For a man who is accustomed to act in one particular way never changes, as we have said. Hence when times change and no longer suit his ways, he is inevitably ruined. (431)
In proposing that republics are better able to respond to change and contingency, the Discourses responds to what Pocock has described as the “original sin” of Machiavellian politics: precisely because the prince’s virtù is a source of innovation, it also sets in motion patterns of action whose consequences are beyond the prince’s control.1 If The Prince reveals a politicized version of original sin, of the unforeseen results of individual action and the inability of the prince to change with changing circumstances, the Discourses offers a politicized version of paradise regained, a this-worldly republic whose greater virtù is generated from among its citizens. Yet, while the Discourses responds to the problems of innovation and stability dramatized in The Prince by showing that the flexibility demanded by a rhetorical politics leads logically to republicanism, like The Prince it rejects the identification of virtù with success. Machiavelli’s rhetorical politics makes republicanism a more plausible argument for political longevity, but it cannot guarantee the republic as the necessary result of tyranny in practice.
Despite the overt argument in favor of republicanism, Renaissance readers recognized that the Discourses and The Prince were similar in topic and method. They saw that in both texts Machiavelli recommends the use of force and fraud, the theatrical display of violence, the politic feigning of religion; in both he argues that political legitimacy is a consequence of de facto power combined with the arts of persuasion; and in both he attacks the assumptions of humanist rhetoric and imitation, while borrowing from them in practice. Judging from the (usually unattributed) quotation of Machiavelli’s works by Renaissance readers, often no distinction was made between The Prince and the Discourses, while those readers who did comment on the republicanism of the Discourses tended to see it as the logical outcome of Machiavelli’s description of tyranny in The Prince.
My aim in this chapter is to propose an interpretation of the Discourses in conformity with these observations and thus to further my reader’s appreciation of the Renaissance reception of Machiavelli’s rhetorical politics. While in chapter 1 I was particularly concerned with the vexed topics that later Renaissance readers came to associate with the Machiavel, in this chapter I want to elucidate the dual reception of Machiavelli as dispassionate political analyst purveying a storehouse of political arguments and as idealistic republican offering a critique of the status quo. First, I demonstrate that the Discourses, like The Prince, offers a critique of the humanist doctrine of imitation and its moralizing rhetoric of exemplarity; and I argue that, like The Prince, the Discourses dramatizes a tension between a practical and an instrumental conception of rhetoric—between rhetoric as a critique of the status quo and rhetoric as the neutral codification of argument. Second, I illustrate the critical use of rhetoric by analyzing Machiavelli’s attack on the humanists’ rhetoric of consensus and his related argument for the superiority of the Roman republic to other forms of government. Finally, I show how Machiavelli’s own examples undermine the republican thrust of his text by offering political strategies that are equally relevant to the prince.
Ridutte in ordine: Reading Livy
We can begin our exploration of the rhetorical politics of the Discourses by turning to Machiavelli’s remarks on his method in the proem to book 1. As in The Prince, Machiavelli uses the humanist vocabulary of imitation to stage his own innovation in politics. In particular, he attacks the aestheticizing tendency of humanist imitation, offering in its place a systematic reduction of ancient history to a compendium of useful examples, whose intended effect is to revive Florentine virtù. While generations of readers have remarked on Machiavelli’s reductive and fragmentary style, viewing it as a sign of Machiavelli’s break with his predecessors or of his fatal love of dramatic effect, it has not generally been recognized that Machiavelli explicitly redefines humanist imitation in terms of reduction. Reducere (to reduce to smaller compass and to lead back) describes not only Machiavelli’s method in collecting examples but also his exemplary return to the first principles of the Roman republic. Consider the following passage:
Considerando adunque quanto onore si attribuisca all’antiquità, e come molte volte, lasciando andare infiniti altri esempli, un frammento d’una antiqua statua sia suto comperato gran prezzo, per averlo appresso di sé, onorarne la sua casa e poterlo fare imitare a coloro che di quella arte si dilettono, e come quegli dipoi con ogni industria si sforzono in tutte le loro opere rappresentarlo; e veggiendo da l’altro canto le virtuosissime operazioni che le istorie ci mostrono, che sono state operate da regni e da republiche antique, dai re, capitani, cittadini, latori di leggi ed altri che si sono per la loro patria affaticati, essere piú presto ammirate che imitate, anzi, in tanto da ciascuno in ogni minima cosa fuggite, che di quella antiqua virtù non ci è rimasto alcun segno: non posso fare che insieme non me ne maravigli e dolga. (123–24)
When, therefore, I consider in what honour antiquity is held, and how—to cite but one example—a bit of old statue has fetched a high price that someone may have it by him to give honour to his house and that it may be possible for it to be imitated by those who are keen on this art; and how the latter then with great industry take pains to reproduce it in all their works; and when, on the other hand, I notice that what history has to say about the highly virtuous actions performed by ancient kingdoms and republics, by their kings, their generals, their citizens, their legislators, and by others who have gone to the trouble of serving their country, is rather admired than imitated; nay, is so shunned by everybody in each little thing they do, that of the virtue of bygone days there remains no trace, it cannot but fill me at once with astonishment and grief. (97–98; translation modified)
This passage is usually, and correctly, read as an argument for systematic as opposed to dilettantish or eclectic study of the ancients. But the place of aesthetic admiration in this opposition also needs to be noted. While Machiavelli seems at first to be contrasting the active appropriation of antiquity on the part of artists and craftsmen to the neglect of such imitation by statesmen and citizens, there is clearly another way in which the merely aesthetic imitation of ancient fragments is an activity of limited worth in his eyes. Hence the implied contrast between the modern collector of old statues, who purchases his honor on the market, and the ancient king, general, citizen, or legislator, who achieves it through great deeds. The virtuous modern collector, we may extrapolate, is not the art connoisseur but rather the political counselor whose advice makes it possible for his prince to reproduce in action the achievement of the ancients.
Accordingly, after allying the aesthetic imitation of antiquities to the merely passive admiration of ancient virtù, Machiavelli argues that the way to undo the mesmerizing aesthetic effect of ancient authority is to reduce Rome’s political achievement to the collection of decisions it originally was—to reduce the history of Rome, that is, to a collection of examples. This reduction is the essential prelude to correct imitation of antiquity:
perché le leggi civili non sono altro che sentenze date dagli antiqui iureconsulti, le quali, ridutte in ordine, a’ presenti nostri iureconsulti iudicare insegnano. Né ancora la medicina è altro che esperienze fatte dagli antiqui medici, sopra la quale fondano e’ medici presenti e’ loro iudizii. Nondimanco, nello ordinare le republiche, nel mantenere li stati, nel governare e’ regni, nello ordinare la milizia ed amministrare la guerra, nel iudicare e’ sudditi, nello accrescere l’imperio, non si truova principe né republica che agli esempli delli antiqui ricorra. (124)
For the civil law is nothing but a collection of decisions, made by the jurists of old, which the jurists of today have tabulated in orderly fashion for our instruction. Nor, again, is medicine anything but a record of experiments, performed by doctors of old, upon which the doctors of our day base their prescriptions. In spite of which in constituting republics, in maintaining states, in governing kingdoms, in forming an army or conducting a war, in dealing with subjects, in extending the empire, one finds neither prince nor republic who repairs to antiquity for examples. (98)2
This is an astonishing statement when one considers the humanist love of ancient examples; but, as we read on, we discover that collecting examples is only the first step. For, as Machiavelli complains in the passage that follows, his humanist contemporaries do read the ancients but have “fail[ed] to appreciate the significance of what they have read” (124, 98). Along with the corruption of contemporary Florence and related to it, reading has itself undergone a process of degeneration: it has become an aesthetic practice that gives rise to pleasure rather than an experience that leads to virtù in the realm of politics. Just as corrupt cities need periodically to be returned or “reduced” to their first principles, so Machiavelli proposes to return the reader to the practice of imitation by reducing or collecting examples from the history of Rome in such a fashion that the reader will be led to understand their significance. In fact, he suggests that the examples he has chosen are already informed by an act of interpretation, a judgment of their relevance to contemporary affairs: his commentary on Livy “will comprise what I have arrived at by comparing ancient with modern events” (125, 99). On the one hand, then, Machiavelli proposes that politics emulate law and medicine, which have recourse to systematic records of the decisions and experiments of the past. On the other, Machiavelli appears as the exemplary humanist reader, who recalls his contemporaries to the critical activity of imitation.
Here we begin to see the analogy Machiavelli develops throughout the Discourses between Rome’s ability periodically to return to its first principles and his own ability as an author to return the reader to the first principles of political virtù. But we also see that Machiavelli’s pragmatic reduction of Livy’s history to a collection of maxims and examples, which are by definition open to interpretation, may run counter to his desire to convince his Florentine readers to imitate the virtù of the Roman republic. As later readers were quick to recognize, Machiavelli’s “commentary” on Livy does not slavishly follow the Livian narrative but rather exemplifies a pragmatic approach to the text, one that is more concerned to “draw practical lessons” than to admire—and preserve—Livy’s work as an aesthetic whole. To read Machiavelli as he read Livy might be to reduce Machiavelli’s own texts to a series of fragments, which could then be put to new, not necessarily republican, uses. In commenting on the problems of reading—of “reducing” and “leading back to”—the ancients, Machiavelli thus stages the conflict between the indeterminacy of examples, their availability for use in utramque partem, and his own rhetorical argument for the superiority of Rome. His remarks on method register the tension between rhetoric as the neutral codification of arguments and as a critique of the status quo, and help to explain how Machiavelli can be read as both a dispassionate political analyst and a committed republican theorist. This tension informs the Discourses as a whole.3
A Rhetoric of Conflict
Machiavelli’s encomium of the Roman republic is the most important instance in the Discourses of a rhetorical politics in which conflict is not equated with humanist argument in utramque partem but with a dialectical critique of the status quo. Beginning in book 1, chapter 2, Machiavelli argues that the excellence of the Roman republic—its liberty and power—was the result of the class conflict between the nobles and the plebs. This is at once Machiavelli’s most striking departure from Livy and his most obvious break with the dominant humanist rhetoric of social and political consensus.4 Yet, Machiavelli declares his allegiance to rhetorical thinking here as well. For, just as he uses the humanist language of imitation to propose an activist imitation of the ancients, so he uses the language of rhetoric—specifically, rhetorical debate—in order to argue that Rome’s superiority emerges from within a rhetorical and dialectical analysis of politics.
Ma vegnamo a 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: . . . onde sendo diventata la Nobilità romana insolente . . . si levò il Popolo contro di quella; talché, per non perdere il tutto, fu costretta concedere al Popolo la sua parte; e dall’altra parte il Senato e i Consoli restassono con tanta autorità che potessono tenere in quella republica il grado loro. (1.2.134)
In spite of the fact that Rome had no Lycurgus to give it at the outset such a constitution as would ensure to it a long life of freedom, yet owing to the disunion between the plebs and the senate, so many things happened that chance effected what had not been provided by a lawgiver. So that, if Rome did not get fortune’s first gift, it got its second. . . . This came about when the Roman nobility became so overbearing . . . that the populace rose against them, and they were constrained by the fear that they might lose all, to grant the populace a share in the government; the senate and the consuls retaining, however, sufficient authority for them to be able to maintain their position in the republic. (110–11; translation modified)
Livy had attributed Rome’s success to fortuna, and Machiavelli appears to follow Livy’s account in attributing Rome’s success to caso or chance. But this gloss on Livy’s fortuna also subtly changes the meaning of that term from fate to contingency—a shift of meaning that is apparent as well in the passage above in the use of terms such as accidenti (accidents) and sortire (to fall out; literally, to obtain or choose by lot).5 At the same time, Machiavelli identifies such accidents with the contingent, yet productive conflict between the nobles and the plebs. In this way, he redefines Rome’s fortune as disunion.6
Machiavelli’s point about the beneficial effects of conflict was controversial for his contemporaries, not least of all because under the Medici they had themselves experienced how easily class conflict could degenerate into faction. Furthermore, the concern with the destructive consequences of faction had been a commonplace in Florentine chronicles, histories, and political treatises—whether of scholastic or humanist persuasion—from the thirteenth century on. Giovanni Villani began his discussion of Florence by remarking, “[The] Florentines are always at war and in dissension among themselves; and this is no surprise since they are derived from two peoples so contrary and with such inimical and diverse customs—that is, the noble and virtuous Romans and the rude and aggressive Fiesolani.”7 In his Florentine Histories Machiavelli announced his intention to describe these conflicts in detail by noting “From such divisions came as many dead, as many exiles, and as many families destroyed as ever occurred in any city in memory.”8 Yet, while authors of the period seemed to agree that faction and discord could be avoided by equating the individual and the common good, both the rhetorical and scholastic tradition begged the question of how to identify the two in practice.9 Machiavelli’s aim in the Discourses was to show how class struggle in Rome provides a model of a nonfactional polity that nevertheless acknowledges the existence of different and conflicting interests; his name for this effective identification of the individual and the common good in the passage quoted above and elsewhere is “disunion.” In his revision of the humanist rhetoric and politics of consensus, conflict is seen to be a source of strength rather than weakness and is inseparable from increased political representation for the people (1.4.136–38, 113–15).
While readers of the Discourses have agreed on Machiavelli’s equation of Rome’s good fortune with class conflict, the emphasis on conflict has itself given rise to conflicting interpretations. To some, beginning with Guicciardini, it looks like yet another example of Machiavelli’s dualistic world view, his theatrical preference for conflict over consensus.10 Such readers have seen the dualistic tendency of Machiavelli’s arguments as a symptom of his extremism—his rejection of humanist mediocritas or the middle way. Others have construed this dualism as evidence of Machiavelli’s pragmatic concern to secure the state through the almost mechanistic counterpointing of conflicting interests. While neither of these interpretations does justice to the complexity of the Discourses, it is particularly the second alternative that Machiavelli’s reflections on Roman conflict in the next chapters are designed to avoid.
In book 1, chapters 5 and 6, Machiavelli stages the comparison of Rome to ancient Sparta and modern Venice in order to show that his rhetorical politics does not simply involve a disinterested analysis of the facts on both sides of the question, but rather a dialectical argument in which the Roman republic emerges as the better form of government, the better argument. I use the term argument advisedly, since throughout these chapters Machiavelli uses the language of debate, discourse, argument on both sides of a question, to describe not only the choice between Rome and Venice or Sparta, but also the dispassionate weighing of ends that is superseded by Rome’s properly dialectical mode of political reasoning. He thus establishes an analogy between his own rhetoric and the rhetorical approach to politics that he sees embodied in ancient Rome.
Machiavelli begins chapter 5 by self-consciously debating “into whose hands it is best to place the guardianship of liberty” (1.5.139, 115)—the people’s (as in Rome) or the nobles’ (as in Sparta and Venice): “If we appeal to reason arguments may be adduced in support of either thesis; but if we ask what the result was, the answer will favour the nobility, for the freedom of Sparta and of Venice lasted longer than did that of Rome” (139, 116). Although such a statement might suggest that political decisions between contrary courses of action and contrasting forms of government should be made on the basis of results, Machiavelli insists that the choice between the criteria of reason and results is itself debatable. As in The Prince, Machiavelli’s rhetorical politics is not pragmatic in the sense of being simply success- or result-oriented. For the value of success—here equated with stability and longevity—is not a given but must itself be an object of deliberation.
E veramente chi discorressi bene l’una cosa e l’altra, potrebbe stare dubbio, quale da lui fusse eletto per guardia di tale libertà. . . .
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 cosa come Roma; nel secondo può imitare Vinegia e Sparta. (1.5.140)
And, truly, he who reasons well on both sides may be in doubt which he would select as the guardians of liberty. . . .
All things carefully considered, however, we shall arrive in the end at this conclusion. Either you have in mind a republic that looks to founding an empire, as Rome did; or one that is content to maintain the status quo. In the first case it is necessary to do in all things as Rome did. In the second it is possible to imitate Venice and Sparta. (117; translation modified)
As though to parody argument on both sides of a question, Machiavelli announces that the “conclusion” to such argument is itself debatable: “either . . . or.” Although this conclusion suggests that the choice between empire and stability is a matter of weighing alternative ends, in the next chapter Machiavelli pulls the rug out from under such dispassionate deliberation by claiming that, though Sparta and Venice lasted longer, Rome demonstrated greater virtù or “grandezza” (1.6.143, 121):
Considerando adunque tutte queste cose, si vede come a’ legislatori di Roma era necessario fare una delle due cose a volere che Roma stesse quiete come le sopradette republiche: o non adoperare la plebe in guerra, come i Viniziani, o non aprire la via a’ forestieri, come gli Spartani. E loro feciono l’una e l’altra: il che dette alla plebe forze ed augumento, ed infinite occasioni di tumultuare. Ma venendo lo stato romano a essere piú quieto, ne seguiva questo inconveniente, ch’egli era anche piú debile, perché e’ gli si troncava la via di potere venire a quella grandezza dove ei pervenne: in modo che volendo Roma levare le cagioni de’ tumulti, levava ancora le cagioni dello ampliare. (1.6.143–44)
All things considered, therefore, it is clear that it was necessary for Rome’s legislators to do one of two things if Rome was to remain tranquil like the aforesaid states: either to emulate the Venetians and not employ its plebs in wars, or, like the Spartans, not to admit foreigners. Rome did both these things, and, by doing so, gave to its plebs alike strength, increase and endless opportunities for commotion. On the other hand, had the government of Rome been such as to bring greater tranquillity, there would have ensued this inconvenience, that it would have been weaker, owing to its having cut off the source of supply which enabled it to acquire the greatness at which it arrived, so that, in seeking to remove the cause of tumults, Rome would have removed also the causes of expansion. (121)
With one gesture, Machiavelli dismisses the “either/or” model of political reasoning—debate on both sides of the question—and the consensus model of politics that is represented by Sparta and Venice. Politics is not a matter of choosing between Rome and Sparta or Venice, or of deliberating about what Rome would have had to do to become Sparta or Venice. Nor is it a matter of producing “unione” or consensus within the state. For conflict rather than consensus is the source of strength and greatness. While the political union or consensus (“vivere uniti” [1.6.143]) that results from excluding plebs and foreigners was the cause of Spartan and Venetian stability, Roman virtù was produced dialectically from the disunion—what Machiavelli calls the “controversie” (1.6.141, 118)—of the plebs and the senate. Disunion or class conflict is thus preferable to consensus and stability because it provides a structure or institution that constrains private interest to take the form of public good, that is, a structure that preserves civic liberty and generates greatness and virtù (1.4.137, 114).11
Of particular interest in this argument for Roman superiority is Machiavelli’s own rhetoric. For, by using the vocabulary of rhetorical controversy, he suggests that Rome’s greatness was a consequence of its ability to conduct its politics rhetorically and dialectically.12 Like the rhetoric of Machiavelli’s ideal prince, Rome’s polity includes resources previously excluded from humanist rhetoric: here, the resources of class conflict. In the controversy between Rome and Sparta, Rome emerges as the superior republic because it is the superior “controversialist.” Such incorporation of controversy explains the virtù of Rome’s external, as well as internal, political affairs: for just as Rome’s virtù is both manifest in and a consequence of its ability to give representation to conflicting interests within the republic, so virtù is both the cause and effect of an expansionist foreign policy, which aims not only to conquer but also to integrate and give representation to the conquered within the Roman state. In each case Roman strength is predicated in part on Rome’s decision to represent and to arm those who had been previously excluded—whether the plebs or the conquered people. In this light, Roman imperialism is the best historical example of a rhetorical and dialectical approach to politics.
If Rome is superior to Sparta and Venice because of its greater virtù, a virtù that emerges dialectically from class conflict, it is also greater because, in the end, it includes both the Spartan and the Venetian alternatives. Machiavelli tells us that Rome “did both [of the] things” that Sparta and Venice each separately refused to do: it armed its plebs and admitted foreigners as citizens. Then, with typical irony or—one might say—a dialectical twist, Machiavelli adds that the choice between expansion and stability is illusory because all states eventually will be forced either to expand or to confront internal factions (1.6.145, 123; 2.19.334–35, 335–36), and those, like Rome, that are prepared to, will do so with greater virtù (cf. 1.6.145, 123–24). In Machiavelli’s account of the alternative, Sparta already implies and must yield to Rome.13
Yet, while Machiavelli presents a dialectical argument that reduces rhetoric on both sides of a question to a rhetorical critique in which the Roman republic emerges as superior to Venice and Sparta, a rhetorical politics makes even such dialectical argument contingent. Just as the purpose of the initial contrast between Rome and Sparta or Venice was to show that virtù could not be simply identified with the successful maintenance of the status quo, so in developing the contrast between Rome and Sparta Machiavelli is careful to note that the dialectical “controversie” that were the cause of Rome’s virtù were eventually the cause of its downfall:
Noi abbiamo discorsi di sopra gli effetti che facevano le controversie intra il Popolo ed il Senato. Ora sendo quelle seguitate infino al tempo de’ Gracchi, . . . furono cagione della rovina del vivero libero. (1.6.141)
We have just been discussing the effects produced by the controversies between the populace and the senate. Now, . . . these controversies went on until the time of the Gracchi when they became the causes which led to the destruction of liberty. (118)
As in the case of Venice and Sparta, Rome’s strength is a source of weakness. In ascribing the cause of Rome’s rise and fall to these “controversie,” Machiavelli suggests that virtù is the result of a rhetorical politics that cannot be simply equated with a humanist rhetoric of consensus or with a merely expedient emphasis on success.
Examples in utramque partem
While Machiavelli offers a dialectical defense of the Roman republic, he also has recourse throughout the Discourses to examples of individuals of extraordinary virtù. In so doing, he shows that virtù is not simply the practical effect of conflict or disunion but also a possible cause. By returning to the individualism of The Prince, Machiavelli highlights further the contingency of his own dialectical defense, at the same time that he calls attention to the stereotypical Machiavellism of his exemplary republicans. He thus not only illustrates the compatibility of Machiavellism with republicanism, but also shows that every example of republicanism can be interpreted in the interests of the prince as well. In this way, Machiavelli’s examples of Roman virtù offer commentaries on Machiavelli’s own rhetoric. In the following pages, I discuss two such examples, Numa Pompilius and Junius Brutus, which were of particular interest to later readers.
Numa, Romulus’s successor, is Machiavelli’s example of the lawgiver who uses the appeal to divine authority strategically in order to introduce new institutions and extraordinary laws (1.11). The chapter functions both as an exposure of the ideological function of religion, and as an illustration of the link between the Machiavel’s force and fraud, and republicanism:
[Numa] trovando un popolo ferocissimo, e volendolo ridurre nelle obedienze civili con le arti della pace, si volse alla religione come cosa al tutto necessaria a volere mantenere una civiltà, e la constituí in modo che per piú secoli non fu mai tanto timore di Dio quanto in quella republica. (160)
Numa, finding the people ferocious and desiring to reduce them to civic obedience by means of the arts of peace, turned to religion as an instrument necessary above all others for the maintenance of a civilized state, and so constituted it that there was never for so many centuries so great a fear of God as there was in this republic. (139)
In this example Machiavelli uses the language of “reduction” to describe not the return to republican first principles but rather the pacification of the Roman people. Here religion is a fraud perpetrated on the citizens, and an instrument of compulsion: the citizens were “forced to swear that they would not abandon their country” (161, 140), and this oath was binding because of their fear of God. Not only the defense, but also the good laws of the republic are a consequence of its religion, for religion serves to persuade—or to stupefy—the populace into accepting new laws. When Numa pretended “private conference with a nymph” (161, 140),
il Popolo romano . . . cedeva ad ogni sua diliberazione. Ben è vero che l’essere quelli tempi pieni di religione, e quegli uomini con i quali egli aveva a travagliare grossi, gli dettono facilità grande a conseguire i disegni suoi, potendo imprimere in loro facilmente qualunque nuova forma. (162)
the Roman people accepted all his decisions. True, the times were so impregnated with a religious spirit and the men with whom he had to deal so stupid that they contributed very much to facilitate his designs and made it easy for him to impress on them any new form. (141)
Yet, if the Machiavellian manipulation of “divine worship is the cause of greatness in republics,” it is equally useful to princes: “the security of a republic or a kingdom, therefore, does not depend upon its ruler governing it prudently during his lifetime, but upon so ordering it that, after his death, it may maintain itself in being” (1.12.162, 141–42; my emphasis). Thus, the lesson of Numa is stereotypically Machiavellian but not necessarily republican.
In book 3 of the Discourses, the example of Junius Brutus recapitulates the ambiguous lesson of Numa. Brutus, Machiavelli tells us, executed his sons for conspiring against the republic; in doing so, he performed an exemplary act of violence that recalls Cesare Borgia’s execution of Remirro De Orco, though to different ends. For in the Discourses Machiavelli argues that a leader of extraordinary virtù must intervene to restore the republic to its first principles when a state is corrupt and incapable of regenerating itself. Such leaders perform services not unlike those of founders and legislators: “Horatius Cocles, Scaevola, Fabricius [and others] . . . wrought the same effects in Rome as laws and institutions would have done” (3.1.382, 388). In the example of Brutus, Machiavelli shows the compatibility of force and fraud with republicanism, and comments on his own rhetoric as well:
gli ordini che ritirarono la Republica romana verso il suo principio, furono i Tribuni della plebe, i Censori e tutte l’altre leggi che venivano contro all’ambizione ed alla insolenzia degli uomini. I quali ordini hanno bisogno di essere fatti vivi dalla virtù d’uno cittadino, il quale animosamente concorra ad esequirli contro alla potenza di quegli che gli trapassano. Delle quali esecuzioni . . . furono notabili la morte de’ figliuoli di Bruto, la morte de’ dieci cittadini [etc.]. . . . Le quali cose perché erano eccessive e notabili, qualunque volta ne nasceva una, facevano gli uomini ritirare verso il segno: e quando le cominciarono ad essere piú rare cominciarono anche a dare piúspazio 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 dieci 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 piú punire sanza pericolo. (3.1.381)
the institutions which caused the Roman republic to return to its start were the introduction of plebeian tribunes, of the censorship, and of all the other laws which put a check on human ambition and arrogance; to which institutions life must needs be given by some virtuous citizen who cooperates strenuously in giving them effect despite the power of those who contravene them. Notable among such drastic actions . . . were the death of Brutus’ sons [for conspiring against the republic], the death of the ten citizens [etc.]. . . . Such events, because of their unwonted severity and their notoriety, brought men back to the mark every time one of them happened; and when they began to occur less frequently, they also began to provide occasion for men to practise corruption, and were attended with more danger and more commotion. For between one case of disciplinary action of this type and the next there ought to elapse at most ten years, because by this time men begin to change their habits and to break the laws; and unless something happens [“nasce”] which recalls to their minds the penalty involved and reawakens fear in them, there will soon be so many delinquents that it will be impossible to punish them without danger. (387–88)
In this passage Machiavelli suggests an analogy between Rome and the Discourses: just as Rome needs to be returned to its first principles by the drastic actions of a man of virtù, so the reader of the Discourses needs to be brought back to the mark by shocking examples. Like Brutus, Machiavelli aims to remind the reader (“reducersi a mente”) of the experience of necessity—the reduced circumstances—that he has forgotten. He aims, in other words, to reproduce in reading the experience that led the Romans to form true opinions, the experience that taught them what to praise and blame, what to imitate and avoid. While urging in humanist fashion the voluntary imitation of antiquity, Machiavelli also proves to be a most coercive proponent of Renaissance republicanism. Accordingly, in the passage just quoted, the metaphor of birth (“unless something happens [‘nasce’]”) serves to emphasize not only that the renaissance of classical antiquity and of republican principles is a violent process but also that this violence is not an unfortunate by-product of rebirth but instrumental to it. Both civic allegiance and the correct imitation of antiquity require the forced remembrance of drastic actions. As we will see, although both Brutus and Machiavelli place such drastic actions in the service of the republic, both demonstrate that such Machiavellism may be put to other uses as well.
Brutus is from the outset an exemplary Machiavellian, using both fraud and force in theatrical ways to restore and maintain the republic. Not only did Brutus feign madness in order to appear harmless to the king whom he then overthrew (3.2.384, 391), he also used the rape of Lucretia to coerce his fellow conspirators into swearing an oath of allegiance to the new state:
sopra la morta Lucrezia, intra ‘l padre ed il marito ed altri parenti di lei, ei fu il primo a trarle il coltello della ferita, e fare giurare ai circunstanti che mai sopporterebbono che per lo avvenire alcuno regnasse in Roma. (3.2.384)
on the death of Lucretia he was the first to pull the dagger out of the wound in the presence of her father, her husband and other of her relatives, and to make the bystanders swear that they would never tolerate for the future any king reigning in Rome. (391)
Here Brutus’s actions recall those of Numa, who was able to compel an oath of allegiance by using the threat of divine retribution. In both cases, violence is used theatrically in the service of the state.
Particularly impressive to Machiavelli was Brutus’s presence at the murder of his sons for conspiring against the republic. In this instance, Brutus used violence theatrically not only to compel obedience to the state but also to teach a lesson about imitation and political representation. In thematic terms what occurs in this example is the sacrifice of the part (his sons), and of partisanship, for the whole.14 Brutus’s presence thus testifies to what is important in formal terms—that the realm of representation can be used to distance oneself from, and thereby in some sense control, the realm of necessity or of fortune—in the case of Brutus, the misfortune of his sons’ conspiracy. In staging the death of his sons, Brutus the victim also dramatizes the violence to which he has been subjected, and thus becomes both author and spectator of his own fortune. Violence turns out to be a synecdoche for necessity, and the theatrical staging of it a means (by turning effect into cause) of controlling fortune. Thus in 2.29 (367, 372), Machiavelli writes that “men may second [secondare] their fortune but not oppose it”; but this seconding of nature or willing of necessity—which here takes the double form of the theatrical staging of a violent punishment and seconding it with one’s presence—is itself virtù. Finally, both in the case of the individual and of the republic, what is important for Machiavelli is the secondariness of imitation. For by imitating nature, we willfully take our distance from it, and in this distance resides the possibility of determining rather than being determined by nature, of criticizing rather than reproducing the status quo.
And yet the example of Brutus—like virtù itself—creates as many problems as it solves; for, as Machiavelli reminds us, Brutus’s republican severity can be interpreted pro and contra the republic:
la severità . . . è di uno esemplo raro in tutte le memorie delle cose: vedere il padre sedere pro tribunali, e non solamente condennare i suoi figliuoli a morte, ma essere presente alla morte loro. E sempre si conoscerà questo per coloro che le cose antiche leggeranno, come dopo una mutazione di Stato, o da republica in tirannide o da tirannide in republica, è necessaria una esecuzione memorabile contro a’ nimici delle condizioni presenti. E chi piglia una tirannide e non ammazza Bruto, e chi fa uno stato libero e non ammazza i figliuoli di Bruto, si mantiene poco tempo. (3.3.386; my emphasis)
Of such severity one rarely comes across a case in history in which a father not only sits on a tribunal and condemns his own sons to death, but is present at their death. Those, however, who are familiar with ancient history are well aware that, when the form of government has been changed, whether from a republic to a tyranny or a tyranny to a republic, it is in all cases essential that exemplary action be taken against those who are hostile to the new state of affairs. He who establishes a tyranny and does not kill “Brutus,” and he who establishes a free state and does not kill “the Sons of Brutus,” will not last long. (392–93; my emphasis)
Like the example of Numa, the example of Brutus comments on Machiavelli’s own rhetoric. It illustrates not only the stereotypical Machiavellism of Machiavelli’s exemplary republicans but also the way Machiavelli’s rhetorical politics turns even Brutus into an example in utramque partem.15 It is precisely because a rhetorical politics is available for use by a prince or republic that Machiavelli has been read as both a dispassionate political scientist, arguing on both sides of the question, and as a republican theorist and critic of the status quo. As we will see in the following chapters, Machiavelli’s rhetorical politics also helps to explain his Renaissance reception as a cynic, ironist, and above all, rhetorician.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize Machiavelli’s debt to, as well as his criticism of, the humanist rhetorical tradition. For, even more than the humanists, Machiavelli wanted to devise a political ethic that was capable of responding to the particular without losing its critical force. To the pseudo-objectivity of a certain kind of scientific disinterestedness, Machiavelli opposed the objectivity that is available only to the interested. Thus he did not simply reject the humanist equation of the honestum and the utile, substituting the criterion of efficacy or technical efficiency for that of morality. Instead, Machiavelli criticized both the technical and humanist prudential views of rhetoric—the first, one might say, for lacking idealism and the second for having it in excess. Recognizing that humanist argument in utramque partem was a form of dialectical thinking that had the power to undermine the prudential conception of rhetoric, he attempted to forge a new rhetoric of politics that was simultaneously descriptive and prescriptive—a rhetoric that could generate compelling political arguments for republicanism from within a critical analysis of the status quo. At the same time, he made the indeterminacy of rhetorical argument, its availability for evil as well as good, central to his rhetorical politics. Thus in both The Prince and the Discourses Machiavelli used humanist imitation and rhetoric, particularly the humanist pedagogy of examples, in order to educate the reader to a view of politics that is more deeply rhetorical than that of civic humanism. Machiavelli was disturbing to his Renaissance readers not because he revealed that “politics [is] more than rhetoric” (MM, 63) but because a Machiavellian politics is rhetorical through and through.