# Chapter 2 CHAPTER III Machiavelli's Intention: The Discourses UPERFICIAL readers of the Prince who are not altogether careless will approach the Discourses with the expectation that that book is devoted to republics or to peoples as distinguished from princes.This expectation will not be altogether disappointed.Since to speak about peoples is less danger- ous than to speak about princes,the Discourses can be expected to be more outspoken than the Prince.We have seen that it is so in an im- portant respect:our information concerning Machiavelli's manner of writing is derived primarily and chiefly from the Discourses. The Discourses cannot be described simply as a book on re- publics.At the beginning,Machiavelli indicates the intention of the book by presenting himself as another Columbus,as the dis- coverer of a hitherto unexpected moral continent,as a man who has found new modes and orders.But just as men generally were good at the beginning of the world or of societies,Machiavelli, who imitates in his books "the things of the world,"is good at the beginnings of his books.Accordingly,at the beginning of the Discourses he appears to proclaim the daring character of his enter- prise without any reserve: he does not seem to conceal anything. 》86 《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI He seems to explain his daring action by his concern with the common good:he did not write the Discourses in order to better his fortune.Above all,the new modes and orders prove to be the modes and orders of antiquity and hence very old modes and orders. The ancient modes and orders are new because they have been forgotten,or buried like ancient statues.Machiavelli must then disinter them: no trace of ancient virtue,the origin and progeny of the ancient modes and orders,remains.But he does not claim that he is the first or the only modern man to become aware of the ancient modes and orders.Everyone knows of them and many admire them.But everyone thinks that they cannot be imitated by modern man.The purpose of the Discourses is not simply to bring to light the ancient modes and orders but above all to prove that they can be imitated by modern man.Machiavelli's enterprise therefore requires knowledge of things modern as well as of things ancient;it cannot be the work of a mere antiquarian.The prevail- ing unbelief concerning the possibility of imitating ancient virtue is partly due to the influence of Christianity.Modern men do not believe that ancient virtue can be imitated because they believe that man now belongs to a different order of things than formerly or that his status has changed or that he has been miraculously transformed.Machiavelli does not deny that modern men differ from ancient men.But this difference,he holds,is due entirely to a difference in education and in knowledge of“the world.”If modern men were properly educated and properly taught,they could imitate the ancients.Modern men regard the imitation of antiquity as not so much physically as morally impossible.They be- lieve that the ancient modes and orders ought not to be imitated: they have been taught to regard the virtues of the ancients as re- splendent vices or to reject the concern of the ancients with worldly glory in the name of the Biblical demands for humility and charity.1 It is therefore not sufficient for Machiavelli to exhibit specimens of ancient virtue;it is incumbent upon him to prove that the virtue of the ancients is genuine virtue.To prove that ancient virtue can be imitated and ought to be imitated is tantamount to refuting the claims of Biblical religion. According to an opinion which is venerable because of its age, Machiavelli's intention in the Discourses is to reduce the lessons MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》87《 implicitly or even unconsciously conveyed through the narrative of an ancient historian to general rules which even very mediocre minds can easily understand.This opinion is misleading for a number of reasons.In the first place,it arises from disregarding the major obstacle which has to be overcome before the general rules derived from ancient practice can be accepted as good rules. Secondly,it arises from disregarding what Machiavelli explicitly says concerning the intention of his book.In the Preface to the First Book where he indicates his intention,he speaks of the ex- amples of the ancients but not of rules derived from those examples. On a later occasion he says:"And truly,not without cause do the good historians ...put down certain cases with particulars and distinctly so that posterity can learn how to defend itself in similar situations."This would indicate that the reduction to rules of what the good historians teach is a trivial or pedantic business altogether unbecoming a new Columbus.Machiavelli does say in the Preface to the First Book that "the civil laws are nothing but decisions given by the ancient jurists which,reduced to order,teach our present jurists to judge."But he does not make this remark on the jurists in order to say that he will do in regard to ancient political prac- tice what the present-day jurists do(or perhaps what their ancient and medieval teachers did)in regard to ancient judicial practice. He makes that remark in order to show that in limited or sub- ordinate matters modern men do imitate the ancients and thus to lead up to the demand that modern man should imitate the ancients in the greatest matters.He goes on to say that“Medicine is noth- ing but the experiences made by the ancient physicians on which the present physicians found their judgments."The modern physi- cians,who are more interesting to Machiavelli than the modern lawyers,differ from the ancient physicians not because they reduce to rules what the ancient physicians did but because they do not have access to certain experiences or observations except through the reports of the ancient physicians,probably because dissection is no longer practiced but rather frowned upon.The ancient physicians then are not truly imitated by the modern physicians. The true imitator of the ancient physicians is Machiavelli:the ancient physicians'anatomy of simple bodies is the model for his anatomy of mixed bodies.The anatomy of mixed bodies itself is wholly new. The anatomy of the mixed bodies is the indispensable 》88《 THOUGHTSON MACHIAVELLI condition for elaborating any reliable rules regarding the treat- ment of mixed bodies,whereas no equivalent of anatomy is needed in order to reduce to rules the decisions of the ancient lawyers: the lawyers can and must take for granted the law,the positive law which is not a mixed body but a product of a mixed body,and they cannot go back behind that product.In the context,the reference to something like rules in the case of the lawyers and the complete silence about rules in the case of the physicians is a sign of the fact that law occupies a lower rank than medicine. While differing from the modern physicians by the fact that he is an anatomist,Machiavelli is in the same position as they are in- sofar as he too is compelled to rely on reports by the ancients: to anatomize an excellent republic is not possible for him on the basis of immediately available phenomena since no excellent re- public is at present near at hand.It goes without saying that in speaking about modern pursuits which in one way or another imi- tate ancient pursuits,Machiavelli does not speak of theology:"the Christian sect...has destroyed every memory of ancient theol- ogy."But it is noteworthy that he does not mention in this context the fourth of the four faculties:he does not suggest that the present philosophers imitate the ancient philosophers.² The ancient modes and orders which Machiavelli desires to show can be imitated and ought to be imitated by modern men are those of ancient Rome.The Roman historian of Rome's glory is Livy.For the experience,the first-hand knowledge,of the mixed body to be dissected,Machiavelli will rely on Livy.The Discourses are explicitly devoted to the first ten Books of Livy.Machiavelli seems to promise a continuation to be devoted to the other Books of Livy which have been preserved.8 But as he indicates by making the number of the chapters of the Discourses equal to the number of Books of Livy's History,the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy are meant to cover the whole ground covered by Livy's whole work.Machiavelli's analysis of the Roman republic would be incomplete if it did not include an analysis of the destruction of the Roman republic and therewith,as matters stand,of the destruction of vigorous republican life in the world for at least a millennium and a half,but the Discourses include such an analy- sis.4 In other words the Discourses,imitating Livy's History,follow Rome from her beginning until the beginning of Christianity.Yet MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》89《 Machiavelli may have had an additional reason for creating the impression that he was dealing merely with the events recorded in Livy’s first ten books.It is not sufficient to say that he was particularly concerned with the Roman republic in its state of incorruption ,for according to him Rome was still incorrupt at the time of the Second Punic War and even by the middle of the second century B.C.5 He indicates his true reason by saying that Rome reached her ultimate greatness in about 266 B.C.,i.e.,imme- diately before the outbreak of the First Punic War.The period immediately preceding the First Punic War was treated by Livy in his second decade,which is lost.Machiavelli then was particu- larly concerned with Livy's first ten books because they are the only remains of the only Livian books which deal with the rise of Rome from her humble origins up to her ultimate greatness: the growth of Rome up to its completion naturally takes precedence over her decay.Rome reached her ultimate greatness when she ruled(most of)Italy and had not yet embarked on foreign con- quests.Hence the full title of the Discourses draws our attention to a united and free Italy,freed and united by a hegemonial re- public,be it Rome or Florence,and not by a prince.In a be- comingly subdued manner,Machiavelli suggests a practical alter- native to the practical proposal proclaimed in the last chapter of the Prince. In order to show that the Roman modes and orders can be imitated and ought to be imitated by modern men,Machiavelli would have to show in each case that the Roman practice was sound and the corresponding modern practice is unsound.He also would have to show that one or another modern state successfully followed the Roman practice,unless he could presuppose or estab- lish that what men did once they can do always.At any rate, through understanding the intention of the Discourses one is led to a definite expectation regarding the general character of each of its 142 discourses or chapters.This expectation must be modified immediately with a view to the very great dissimilarities among those chapters.There are chapters which contain only ancient ex- amples;there are chapters which contain only modern examples; there are chapters which contain only ancient examples none of which is Roman;there are chapters which contain only ancient and Turkish examples.7 The longest chapter(III 6)is about 72 》 90《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI times as long as the shortest chapter(I 48).It is curious that the longest chapter is the one which has the shortest chapter heading (two words)ever to occur in the book;8at the opposite pole we find two chapters(I 55,III 30)whose headings consist of thirty- five words.Thirty-nine chapter headings contain proper names; in thirty-seven cases the men or societies mentioned are ancient, in one case(I I2)they are modern,and in one case(III 36)they are both ancient and modern.Connected with this is the fact that only thirty-three chapter headings refer to the past by the tense in which they are framed. In spite or rather because of these and other irregularities,one is entitled to speak of the typical chapter of the Discourses and to seek for it.That chapter which at first glance is the most atypical is the chapter on conspiracies(III 6).It is followed by a chapter, the iooth chapter of the book,which,I am inclined to think,is meant to be the typical chapter.That chapter stands out from the group of chapters to which it belongs(III I-Io)because it is the only one in that group that is not explicitly connected with the following or the preceding chapter by a reference at its end or at the end of the preceding chapter.The typical chapter of the Discourses is“unconnected”in this sense.The heading of the typical chapter does not contain any proper names and it is framed in the present tense:it expresses a permanent fact regarding man as man.The heading is less shocking than the body of the chapter: while in the heading of Discourses III 7 Machiavelli uses the ex- pression "without blood,"he speaks in the body of the chapter of “the blood and the death”of"innumerable men”;of one kind of change of regime he says that those changes were always such as to make him shudder who reads of them,to say nothing of some- one else.Machiavelli desires to remain silent about those changes, not however because they are so appalling but because the histories are full of them:the Discourses do speak of things which make shudder him who reads of them,to say nothing of him who is faced by them,provided those horrible things are not well known; the Discourses deal with the hidden causes of those horrors or with the terrors inherent in the ultimate causes or with the initial terror.In the chapter under consideration,one Roman and one modern(Florentine)example are mentioned.The Roman example occurs in Livy.But no reference is made to Livy(or to any other MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》9I《 writer)in any manner or form nor is any passage from Livy(or any other writer)quoted in the original or in the Italian.In the chapter the two references to"the histories"underline the fact that no reference is made to Livy in particular:every reference to Livy(or to any other writer)and every quotation from Livy(or from any other writer)requires an explanation.The examples used are parallels,not specimens of opposites;the same kind of event happened in ancient Rome and in modern Florence.While knowledge of the events is supplied by"the histories"or by the author's experience,Machiavelli selects the parallel events,lets us see that the ancient and the modern examples are identical in the decisive respect,and indicates the identical cause.These mental oper- ations culminate in the formulation of a rule which reveals the connection between one typical phenomenon as the cause and an- other typical phenomenon as its effect.The rule in question could not have been discovered through the study of ancient political practice because it is derived from a comparison of an ancient and a modern event.We are thus induced to wonder whether it is the ultimate intention of the Discourses to prove the superiority of the ancients to the moderns. But let us return to the beginning.The initial impression ac- cording to which the author of the Discourses is a bold innovator is immediately afterward overlaid by the impression that he is merely the restorer of something old.Certainly the primary pur- pose of the book is to prove that the ancient modes and orders can and ought to be imitated or that those modes and orders are the best.The book as a whole constitutes this proof.But one cannot begin to prove anything if one cannot start from principles which are universally or generally granted.The readers of Machiavelli, being adherents of the established modes and orders,are opposed to the modes and orders which he recommends.He must appeal to principles which those readers will grant him.We learn from the Preface to the First Book that those readers,besides being adherents of the established modes and orders,are also admirers of classical antiquity.There exists a prejudice in favor of classical antiquit y to which Machiavelli can appeal.He fully enters into the spirit of this prejudice as a prejudice.It is significant that whereas the Epistle Dedicatory of the Prince refers to the differ- ence between the ancients and the moderns,the Epistle Dedicatory 》92《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI of the Discourses is silent about that difference.We are expected to lose sight of modernity,to lose ourselves in antiquity,in the admiration for antiquity and in the imitation of antiquity.Machia- velli demands that the admirers of antiquity be consistent and imi- tate antiquity not only in subordinate matters but in the most im- portant matters as well.He desires to make admiration for antiquity complete:the last and most important part of the return to antiquity, or of the ascent to antiquity,will take place under the guidance of the most competent ancient,of Livy. Machiavelli argues dia- lectically or ironically. The appeal to the half-hearted admirers of antiquity,to the followers of the via del mezzo,is insufficient.Not all readers can be presumed to be "humanists."Let us not forget the many who could read and who had followed Savonarola.Savonarola had praised Pope Gregory the Great for having burned the works of Livy.9 From this we understand why in the early part of the Discourses,in the first 36 chapters of the I42 devoted to Livy, Machiavelli is very hesitant to refer to Livy,to say nothing of quoting from Livy.His first task is to establish the authority of Livy and,prior to this,the authority of classical Rome.He does this by appealing to what is common to both opposite parties. Both appeal to antiquity,be it classical or Biblical antiquity.In some way they seem to assume that the good is the old,be it the old established or something disestablished.Machiavelli begins his argument by appealing to the equation,so natural to man,of the good and the old.If the good is the old,the best must be the oldest.From this we understand why Machiavelli in the first chap- ter praises the kingdom of Egypt so highly.The kings of Egypt or their subjects deserve higher praise than even Alexander the Great,for the kingdom of Egypt existed “in the most ancient antiquity.”It goes without saying that this praise is entirely pro- visional.When,in the beginning of the Second Book,he surveys the temporal sequence in which virtue resided in different ancient kingdoms,he assigns the first place to Assyria and is silent about Egypt.Even if Egypt as the oldest kingdom had been the best kingdom,we could not know this in any precise and useful way; the ancient Egyptians would deserve higher praise than Alex- ander the Great if we knew more about them.10 Granting that the best is the oldest,one is compelled to be satisfied with that MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》93《 oldest which is sufficiently known.Since one must then com- promise,one might as well prefer to the oldest simply that oldest which is one's own.For the Tuscan Machiavelli this would seem to mean that he should choose old Etruria.In fact he recommends to the present Tuscans that they imitate the ancient Tuscans.The ancient Tuscans resembled the present Swiss since they too were sturdy republicans and formed a league of independent and equal republics.Besides,being most powerful on sea and on land,the Tuscans controlled a large part of Italy and were prevented by their political organization from acquiring territory outside of Italy.Ancient Etruria endured for a long time,famous for empire, arms,religion and virtue while having her own customs and her own ancestral language.But what is true of the exceedingly pious ancient Egyptians,is almost equally true of the almost equally pious ancient Tuscans:hardly any reliable reports about them remain.11 No choice then is left to Machiavelli except to return to ancient Rome: ancient Rome satisfies the conditions both of being the heritage of the Italian Machiavelli and of being sufficiently known .It is sufficiently known through Livy.We shall then follow Livy.In meditating upon things Roman we shall cling as much as possible to the sequence of events as recorded by Livy.We shall defer to the text of Livy.We shall cherish it.We shall harken to it in filial affection,in patient docility,in pious reverence until it has revealed to us its full message.In pious reverence we shall avert our eyes from Livy's own references to the derivative or untrustworthy character of many of the tales which he retells: we shall not even allude to those jarring references.We shall use Livy in the way in which the theologians use the Bible.Just as Livy is Machiavelli's Bible,the Romans are his chosen people:a man who dares to promise a land will not hesitate to choose a people.Just as the Bible does not teach that the best modes and orders were the oldest,neither does Livy teach it;nothing prevents us from believing that the Roman republic marks a great advance beyond the Roman kingship. The Bible, reputedl y the oldest record of the most ancient an- tiquity and the authentic record of the Mosaic laws and orders, is bypassed by Machiavelli as he moves from ancient Egypt to ancient Rome.He mentions Moses in the first chapter of the Dis- courses when speaking of peoples which are compelled to leave 》94《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI their native land and to seek a new homeland for themselves.In the same chapter he draws our attention to the question of the goodness of the Mosaic laws but he does not answer it there or elsewhere in the Discourses. He says later on that Moses framed laws with a view to the common good,but he says the same thing of Solon whose laws he criticizes severely:the goodness of laws requires more than that the end of the laws be good.On the other hand he bestows the highest praise on Moses'native land and its ancient kings.Those ancient kings would deserve more praise than “others whose memory is still fresh.”This praise of the ancient Egyptians is immediately followed by praise of the kingdom of the Sultan and the order of the Mamelukes,i.e., by praise of infidels.12 It is clear that Machiavelli fails to imitate Biblical antiquity or at any rate to recommend its imitation.But the indications men- tioned do not show the reasons for this refusal.The problem posed by Biblical antiquity remains behind him like an unconquered fortress. The deeds and institutions which Livy celebrates are not al- ways of such a nature as to command instant approval and admira- tion.At first glance the Roman modes and orders appear to be inferior to those of Sparta.The Spartan polity was established by a single wise man at one stroke in the beginning;hence Sparta was never in need of improvement and therefore of dangerous change;she was always perfectly stable;she preserved her polity and her freedom without any corruption for more than eight hun- dred years.But::the Roman polity was established in a fortuitous manner and in answer to accidents as they arose;therefore Rome was unstable and constantly imperiled;her liberty lasted for less than four hundred years.In Sparta there was harmony between the nobility and the commons because she kept all her citizens poor and hence virtuous;Rome was constantly shaken by the conflict between her insolent nobles and her ambitious plebs.Sparta was organized for just defense whereas Rome was organized for unjust expansion.Machiavelli must therefore defend the Roman polity against its critics.He is strangely reticent as to the identity of those critics;in the crucial context he does not mention a single proper name.Before discussing the quality of the Roman republic he refers to"those who have written of republics,"i.e.,to the traditional political philosophers.1³It is on the basis of what is MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》95《 taught by the most famous traditional political philosophers that Rome necessarily appears inferior to Sparta or that"many con- demn"the Romans.Machiavelli is then compelled to defend the Roman polity against the ancient philosophers just as the theo- logians are compelled to defend the Bible and its teachings against the ancient philosophers.He is compelled to attack the philos- ophers in the name of his authority. His argument in Discourses I 2-6 is reminiscent of theological apologetics.However,since he defers to the prejudice in favor of antiquity,he must proceed cautiously in taking issue with ancient philosophy.His refusal to identify“those who have written of republics”is a consequence of this caution.But how cautious a man can be often depends more on the conduct of others than on himself.As Machiavelli informs us,there is disagreement among the traditional political philos- ophers:it is not his fault that he must take sides.But he is not so presumptuous as to settle the controversy by himself.Taking the safest course,he adopts the opinion of those political philos- ophers who “according to the opinion of many”are wiser than their opponents.Those wiser thinkers had preferred mixed polities to simple polities.Machiavelli reproduces their doctrine and adopts it.He merely alludes to his disagreement with them by indicating a difference between his own reason and that given by the classi- cal writers for the inadequacy of simple aristocracy.Immediately after making this barely noticeable allusion,he explicitly and em- phatically accepts a premise which has been demonstrated by all political philosophers.Arguing from this premise,he then ex- plicitly takes issue with the anti-Roman“opinion of many”and even dares to say that “many inconsiderately condemn”the vio- lent strife between the Roman nobility and the Roman plebs;that violent strife,he contends,was the cause of Roman freedom and Roman greatness.Yet at the end of this wholly new praise of dis- cord,he turns for support and comfort to Cicero's On Friendship.14 Only after so much preparation does he meet the issue posed by the seeming superiority of Sparta to Rome:is not the less demo- cratic and more stable Spartan polity preferable to the more democratic and less stable Roman polity?Here he is confronted with the difficulty that democracy was controversial within Rome herself,between the people and the senate.He is compelled to choose not between two sects of ancient philosophers but between 》96《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI two parties into which his own authority is divided;this division seems to render nugatory that authority.He is compelled to fall back on his own reason.He reaches a decision in favor of Rome and against Sparta.The decision seems to depend on demonstra- tion,but in setting forth the decision Machiavelli says four times “I believe.”15 Has he then demonstrated the superiority of Rome to Sparta,or has he merely shown that,before the tribunal of unassisted reason,the case for Rome is as strong as the case for Sparta,so that one is free to believe in the superiority of Rome? Does he imitate an apparent ambiguity of theological apologetics? However this may be,the first step of Machiavelli's argument con- sists in establishing through demonstration,or faith,or both,the authority of ancient Rome and therewith the authority of Livy who celebrated ancient Rome.Only after he has taken this step can he as it were identify himself with Livy and enter on those discourses which are properly and even explicitly discourses on Livy. Machiavelli cannot identify himself with Livy completely.The intention of the Discourses cannot be identical with that of Livy's History.This is true on at least two levels.The intention of an apologist is not identical with that of his authoritative text;the apologist is confronted with such arguments against his authoritative text as are not met by that text.Besides,Livy's purpose is to set forth the greatness of ancient Rome but not to prove the superiority of ancient Rome to modernity.Machiavelli cannot then be a com- mentator on Livy;he has to perform an important task which Livy did not perform.Machiavelli does not emphasize this point; not before the gist chapter of the Discourses does he explicitly indicate the difference between Livy's theme and his own purpose. He there mentions an event which Livy had mentioned with an apology for mentioning it.The event was a war waged on Italian soil,but not a war in which Romans were engaged:Livy's theme is strictly Roman.Machiavelli's purpose,on the other hand,does not limit him to things Roman.In the chapter in question,he dis- cusses "How vain both the faith and the promises of those are who find themselves outside of their fatherland."He explicitly limits himself to two examples while indicating that there are other ex- amples.Neither example is Roman or modern.Both examples con- tain references to Asia.Not only is Machiavelli's subject not MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》97《 limited to Rome;it includes things which happened in Asia;ul- timately his subject is not Roman at all.In the present case we may wonder whether the fatherland which he has in mind is any father- land on earth.At any rate,Machiavelli reasons about matters of state,while Livy is an historian.Machiavelli knows important his- torical facts which Livy could not have known.He must then make important additions to Livy.On the other hand,it goes without saying that he will not repeat what Livy has made sufficiently clear.16 Since Machiavelli's intention is not identical with Livy's,it cannot be expected that the plan of the Discourses should be identi- cal with the order of Livy's History.Machiavelli divides the Discourses into three Books,each of which is devoted to a sub- ject of its own:the internal affairs of Rome that were transacted on the basis of public counsel(I),the foreign affairs of Rome that were transacted on the basis of public counsel(II),both pri- vate and public affairs of Romans that were transacted on the basis of private counsel(III).17At the beginning of the oth chapter he indicates the following division of subject matter:founders,reli- gion,militia.At the beginning of the 66th chapter he indicates that the preceding chapters of the Second Book had dealt with the Roman policy of aggrandizement but in the sequel he will go on to discuss the Roman procedure in the waging of war.These remarks show that he desires to order the happenings which Livy narrates in their temporal sequence and therefore somewhat cha- otically;he desires to follow not the Livian sequence but the essential order of subject matter.He follows a plan of his own. He therefore selects Livian stories with a view not only to their throwing light on the nature of political things but likewise to their fitting into his plan.Hence there occur a considerable number of cases in which the examples taken from Livy follow one another in the Discourses in a way altogether different from the way in which they follow one another in Livy;and likewise there occur a considerable number of cases in which a series of chapters of the Discourses is manifestly held together by no other bond than that supplied by the identity of trans-historical subject matter(grati- tude,character of the multitude,etc.).W hen Machiavelli says that something will be discussed "in its place,"he means that it will be discussed in its place within his plan and not in its temporal place.18 》98《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI At the same time he betrays an unmistakeable tendency to follow the order of Livy's History.At the beginning of the 8th chapter he retells a Livian story without making any reference to his source;yet he introduces his discourse on that story as a remark on "this text"; he thus leads us to expect that every discourse is related to some Livian text regardless of whether this is explicitly said or not.The I3th chapter deals with a subject that Machiavelli had sufficiently treated in another work;he discusses that subject in the Discourses only because a certain Livian passage invites such a discussion;in Livy's History that Livian passage immediately follows the Livian passage discussed in the preceding chapter of the Discourses. The I3oth chapter begins with a reflection which is said to have been occasioned by a remark of Livy.The subject of the 6oth chapter is introduced with a view to "the order of the history”;"the order of the history”is not the same as "our order,"the order estab- lished by Machiavelli of which he speaks elsewhere.1⁹What then, in general,is the relation between the Livian order and the Machia- vellian order?Let us begin at the beginning.The first I5 chapters are manifestly ordered according to Machiavelli's own plan;that plan is to some extent made explicit;Machiavelli draws our atten- tion to it by noting that he has deviated from the Livian order and that he may have deviated from his own plan.20 In the rest of the First Book there no longer appears a manifest plan.Yet one cannot say that Machiavelli therein simply follows the Livian order:dis- courses related to the expulsion of the Roman kings(I 16-18)pre- cede discourses related to the first three Roman kings(I 19-24). However if we consider the references to Livy in I 16-60,we see that they strictly follow the Livian order;they lead us in a straight way from the beginning of Livy II towards the end of Livy VII.21 On the other hand,Machiavelli does not follow the Livian order in I I-I5,i.e.,in a group of chapters which is manifestly governed by a clear and even partially explicit plan.The authority of the Livian order asserts itself in proportion as the light coming from Machia- velli's own plan is dimmed.Yet we must not overlook the fact that only I3 of the 45 chapters in I 16-60 and more specifically only 3 of the 24 chapters in I 16-39 contain references to Livy:the Livian order ruling these sections resembles a thin cover which is torm in many places rather than a strong bond;Machiavelli merely pretends to follow the Livian order.Hence Machiavelli's manner MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》99《 of following the Livian order constitutes a problem:when the Livian order is followed,there must be a Machiavellian reason for it.When a number of chapters are linked exclusively by the Livian order,i.e. ,when the study of their subject matter,conducted with ordinary care,reveals no other link between the chapters than the Livian order,one ought not to assume that these chapters are not governed by Machiavelli's own plan;one should rather assume that Machiavelli's own plan has gone completely underground.Or, to state without reservation what we believe,the Livian order con- ceals Machiavelli's plan.There are three ways in which Machiavelli indicates his plan.In the first place,he sometimes connects a num- ber of chapters by explicitly referring in one chapter to the next until the true or apparent end of a section has been reached.In this way he suggests that I 2-8,I 25-27,III I-6,III 8-10,and III I9-23 each form a section.22 The second and most important way in which one can discover Machiavelli's plan is the study,conducted with the proper care,of the subject matter discussed.It is not suffi- cient to understand the purport of a given chapter taken by itself. Par operi sedes:23 it is also necessary to raise the question of why the teaching concerned is transmitted in the context in which it is transmitted ,and not to let this question drop if the event com- mented upon follows temporally or in the Livian order an event commented upon in the preceding chapter:the second event sel- dom immediately follows the first event in Livy's narrative;hence one must raise the question regarding the principle which guides Machiavelli's selection of events.In Discourses I 39 Machiavelli shows that the same accidents can frequently be observed among different peoples.The accidents which he uses as examples illus- trate the foolish humors of the people,i.e.,of the common people; the same kind of accident due to the foolish humors of the common people happened both in modern Florence and in ancient Rome. The preceding chapter had dealt with the difference between Flor- ence as a weak republic and Rome as a strong republic.Remem- bering the preceding chapter,one realizes in reading I 39 that the difference between strong Rome and weak Florence cannot be due to the difference of the popular humors in the two cities but must be traced to the dissimilarity of their ruling classes.Accord- ingly,the function of I 39 is to contribute toward the exposition of the essential character of a virtuous ruling class:that chapter 》I00《 proves to be the central chapter of the section devoted to the essen- tial character of a virtuous ruling class as exemplified by the Roman ruling class or the continuous founders of Rome.This conclusion is not contradicted by the fact that I 39 is connected by an emphatic reference with I I3,the central chapter of the section manifestly devoted to religion;the Florentine ruling class differs from the Roman ruling class precisely in regard to religion:the Roman rul- ing class made“a good use”of religion.The third way in which Machiavelli indicates his plan is by the use of hints.But this subject is better relegated to a note.24 The Second Book confronts us with a somewhat different situ- ation:by the time we have reached the Second Book,we are sup- posed to have learned something about the substance as well as the mode of Machiavelli's teaching;therefore the devices used by the author can and must be varied to some extent.In the beginning of the Second Book we are not welcomed,as we were in the begin- ning of the First Book(I 2-8),by a series of explicitly connected chapters.On the other hand,the beginning of the Second Book does present the same disregard of the Livian order and the same degree of explicitness regarding Machiavelli's own plan as does the beginning of the First Book.25 The number of chapters which contain references to Livy is proportionately much greater in the Second Book than it was in the First:while of the 6o chapters in the First Book only 18 contain such references,of the 33 chapters of the Second Book 22 chapters do.26 If we take into account the fact,which we explained above,that Machiavelli could not well refer to Livy in the opening chapters of the Discourses,and if we therefore compare the 33 chapters of the Second Book with the last 33 chapters of the First Book,we notice more clearly the amazing progress in the emphatic use of Livy:of the last 33 chapters of the First Book only I contain references to Livy.All the more noticeable is the fact that the references to Livy in the Second Book do not strictly follow the Livian order through a long series of chapters as they did in the bulk of the First Book;the equivalent of the order of Livy references in I r6-60 which leads us in a straight way from the beginning of Livy II toward the end of Livy VII,is the order of Livy references in II 28-32,which leads us in a straight way from about the last third of Livy V toward the end of Livy X.In spite of,or because of this,Machiavelli adapts MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》 IOI《 his own plan to the Livian order in the Second Book more closely than he had done in the First Book;in the Second Book he some- times uses the Livian order as a means for indicating his own plan, which is not guided by chronology;he indicates beginnings of new sections by deviating from the Livian order,or, more pre- cisely,by returning in the order of his Livy references from a later Livian passage(say,Livy IX 20)to an earlier Livian passage (say,Livy VIII 13).²7 At the same time,he continues to use such devices for indicating his plan as he had already used in the First Book,namely,the expressions “in the following chapter”occur- ring at the end of chapters,28“not foreign to(my)purpose”oc- curring at the beginning or end of chapters,²⁹and“everyone knows."30 A particular difficulty is created by Machiavelli’s remark in II 4 that a certain point will be made“at the end of this matter,” for the remark cannot refer to the end of the section to which II 4 belongs,namely the end of II 5.He thus indicates that the division of the Second Book into sections interferes somehow with the unity of a certain “matter ”or that in the Second Book he discusses a broad subject whose treatment requires,to say the least,more than one section.At the beginning of II 15 he connects that chap- ter with the preceding one by speaking of "this same matter and ...these same beginnings of the war between the Latins and the Romans”;he thus may indicate that the "matter"in question is not identical with a historical subject like a given war or the be- ginnings of a given war.31 For in itself“a matter”may of course mean both a historical subject like the Roman Decemvirate and a trans-historical subject like ingratitude.32 In other words,“a matter"may mean a Livian story or a Machiavellian topic.When Machiavelli says toward the end of I 34,“to turn to our matter, I conclude,"and thus distinguishes between“our"matter and“my” conclusion,he means “to turn from my discourse to the matter reported by Livy”;he thus supplies us incidentally with the simple formula for his use of Livy and the Livian order:Machiavelli im- presses his form on the matter supplied by Livy.But to return to the cryptic expression“at the end of this matter”which occurs in II 4,the context makes it clear that the “matter”in question is the contrast between the unarmed modern states and the armed ancient states and the demand following from the understanding of that contrast,that the modern states ought to imitate the ancient 》I02《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI modes and orders.If one assumes that"the end of this matter" will coincide with the end of some chapter,one notices that it is impossible to decide without guessing what Machiavelli means by “the end of this matter”;and if one does not make that assumption, one will be confronted by an even greater difficulty.The ends of the following chapters meet the requirement stated in II 4:II 18, 20,24,30,33,III I5,27,3I,36.We believe that"the end of this matter"is the end of the Second Book(II 33),and that the cryptic statement in II 4 therefore gives us more precise information con- cerning the subject matter of the whole Second Book than do the thematic statements.That subject matter is not merely Roman foreign policy insofar as it was directed by public counsel or,as Machiavelli suggests elsewhere,the militia;33 the Second Book is devoted in a much higher degree than the two other Books to the contrast between the armed ancient states and the unarmed modern states,between"the weak world"of modernity and the strong world of antiquity,between "the unarmed heaven"³4 and the armed heaven,i.e.,to the causes,the origin,and the essential character of the contrast between the moderns and the ancients.In spite of a certain preponderance of ancient"matter"in the Second Book,we are entitled to say that the theme of that Book is the critical analysis of modernity or,as Machiavelli intimates by occasionally using “modern”and“Christian”synonymously,of Christianity;for the ancient examples are necessary to provide a provisional standard for the judgment on modernity.35 The Second Book would then have a twofold function:it is devoted to the foreign policy and the wars of the Romans or to the militia,and it is devoted to the critical analysis of modernity.To see the connection between the two themes one has merely to remember these three points.There is a certain similarity between warfare proper and spiritual warfare,or between a militia proper and a spiritual militia.The problem con- cerning the militia proper can be reduced to the alternatives of a citizen army and an auxiliary army;these alternatives have a certain similarity with the alternatives of a citizen priesthood and a priest- hood subject to a foreign head.According to Machiavelli,there is a certain similarity between the rule exercised by ancient Rome the rule of both is to some extent indirect.36 The Third Book combines external features of the first two 》IO3《 Books.37 It also combines their subject matter;in the Third Book, chapters devoted to domestic affairs alternate in an irregular way with chapters devoted to foreign affairs or war.This is not alto- gether surprising,for the domestic affairs of the Romans are char- acterized by the enmity or the conflict between the nobility and the plebs.38 At any rate,the Third Book "repeats"the two preceding Books from a new point of view.In his first statement relating to the organization of the Discourses as a whole,Machiavelli had made use of two divisions:the division into domestic and foreign affairs and the division into public and private counsel;and he had assigned to the First Book the combination of “domestic affairs”and“public counsel”;in the second statement he had in fact assigned to the Second Book the combination"foreign affairs”and“public coun- sel”;one could therefore expect that a Third and a Fourth Book would each be devoted to one of the two remaining combinations; in his last statement which occurs near the beginning of the Third Book he makes it clear by speaking of"this third book and last part"that the Third Book will deal with both the domestic and foreign affairs of the Romans as far as they were based on private counsel.39 While this description is provisional,it is not therefore unimportant:proper names of individual human beings occur in chapter headings only in the Third Book.40 Yet Machiavelli does not speak in the last statement of “private counsel”;he mentions in it however“private benefits.”Could the Third Book deal pri- marily with private deliberations of Romans which were directed toward the private benefit of the individuals concerned?In his second statement he distinguishes between the deliberations,dis- cussed in the First Book,of"the Romans" concerning domestic affairs and the deliberations of"the Roman people"concerning foreign affairs.Could he have already dealt in the First Book with private deliberations of the Romans?A central chapter of the First Book is explicitly devoted to the violent struggle in Rome over the agrarian law;Machiavelli there praises the patience and industry with which the Roman senate or nobility prevented the enactment of the agrarian law;the Roman nobles opposed the agrarian law be- cause they loved property,i.e.,because each Roman noble loved his property.One of the means which they employed was to oppose a tribune of the plebs to that tribune who had proposed the agrarian law.In a passage to which Machiavelli does not refer,Livy says 》I04《 THOUGHTSON MACHIAVELLI that certain senators who had some private claims on certain trib- unes used this influence in order to gain the support of those trib- unes;this would seem to constitute a kind of private deliberation not wholly divorced from thought about the private benefit of the individuals concerned.As we learn from the sequel in Livy,there soon came a moment when the ordinary means employed by the senate appeared to be inadequate;the senators therefore abandoned "public counsels"and resorted to“private counsels”which were guided by the consideration that the nobles must reach their imme- diate objective “by fair means or foul”;the result was the murder of an obnoxious tribune of the plebs.41 Machiavelli does not say a word about this"Machiavellian"deed,about this classic example of private counsel.Instead he devotes the next chapter to the praise of"the generosity and prudence of the senate."This obtrusive si- lence teaches us more than one lesson.In the first place,we see that if the First Book deals with such private deliberations as were directed toward private benefits,it deals with them only in a very subdued manner,and hence that private deliberations of this kind may very well be the peculiar theme of the Third Book.Above all, we see that the common way of studying the relation of the Dis- courses to Livy is defective because it disregards that Machiavellian use of Livy which reveals itself only through the suppression of Livian stories.This was the reason why,in considering the relation between Machiavelli's plan and the Livian order,we limited our- selves so strictly to the references to Livy as distinguished from the mere use of Livian passages:whether Machiavelli refers or does not refer to Livy in a given place can easily be seen,and the col- lection of his references to Livy is a finite piece of work;but to achieve clarity about his use of Livy is an infinite task:its comple- tion would require complete understanding of every sentence of the Discourses and of Livy;for Machiavelli can be presumed to have read Livy with infinitely greater penetration than people like ourselves are capable of. The first eight chapters of the Third Book deal with the ques- tion of how to maintain a regime and a religion and how to establish a regime;they take up the theme of the founder.2 The oth chap- ter“depends⁴3 on the 8th,and the roth chapter"depends"on the gth;the oth and roth chapters prepare and even constitute the al- most insensible transition from the theme"founder"to the theme 》IO5《 “captain”which is manifestly discussed in chapters I2-15.We sug- gest that III I-I5 constitute the first section of the Third Book, and that this section is devoted to the theme“the founder- captain."4 The next section begins with emphatic references to the themes “true virtue”and “republic."Instead of"republic”we may also say“the people”or "the multitude.”45 Since according to Machiavelli,the multitude is the locus of morality and of piety the argument shifts insensibly to a discussion of the moral qualities. Or,perhaps more precisely,since the founder-captain is a prince, and prince and people are correlative,certain characteristics of the founder-captain can only be brought out in the context of a discussion of the moral qualities which are required for ruling the multitude.This context gives occasion for throwing light on the two types of founder-captains which are figuratively represented by Hannibal and Manlius Torquatus on the one hand,and by Scipio and Valerius Corvinus on the other.46 The section beginning with the i6th chapter ends with the 34th chapter,i.e.,with a chap- ter which repeats the theme of I 58,the most important chapter of the section on the multitude in the First Book.The last section of the Third Book begins with a remark which must be quoted again: "How dangerous a thing it is to make oneself the head of a new thing which concerns many people,and how difficult it is to man- age it and to bring it to its consummation and,after it has been brought to its consummation,to maintain it,would be too long and too exalted a matter to discuss;I reserve it therefore for a more convenient place."Who will be so inhuman as to believe that Machiavelli was so inhuman as to whet the appetite of the earnest reader and leave it completely unsatisfied?We believe him on his word that he will not "discuss that long and exalted matter."But is there no mean between discussion and complete silence?Is there no “place”other than the lines of a book?Is a series of intimations not“a convenient place”for transmitting“a matter too long and too exalted to discuss"?Seeing that Machiavelli is a discoverer of new modes and orders,of something new which concerns many people,who desires that these new modes and orders be adopted and maintained and who therefore must give thought to the ques- tion by what procedures they may be adopted and maintained, the matter too long and too exalted to discuss is his own enterprise insofar as it depends upon the cooperation of "the young."In a 》106《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI word,we believe that the last section of the Discourses deals ob- liquely with Machiavelli's enterprise:he selects from Livy VII-X such stories as properly understood throw light on his strategy and tactics.He conceals the most exalted theme by scattering its parts,i.e.,by presenting its parts not according to their intrinsic order but according to the purely accidental order of their Livian equivalents.47We have discussed an example of his intimations- his discussion of manifest blunders committed by an enemy(III 48)—on an earlier occasion.At present,it is necessary to note that the last sections of the First and Second Books have the same theme as the last section of the Third Book.48 The last section of the First Book will be discussed in the proper place.Here we shall discuss briefly the last section of the Second Book. Machiavelli begins the last section of the Second Book,i.e.,the 33rd chapter,with a remark as to what one ought to do in order to profit from reading "this Livian history,"i.e.,Livy's work in general;this is the only reference to Livy which occurs in the chapter.While leading us to expect that he will in that chapter dis- cuss more than one procedure of the Roman people and senate,he in fact discusses only one such,namely,their giving very great discretionary power to the captains of their armies.He then speaks of what the Romans did when they had decided upon a war,"for instance,against the Latins,"but in the chapter he discusses only an incident in a war against the Tuscans.That incident was the conduct of the consul Fabius who had crossed the Ciminian Forest with his army without having had permission from the senate. On his return from the expedition he found two legates who or- dered him in the name of the senate not to cross the Ciminian Forest. This order of the senate does not exactly support the thesis,stated in the heading and restated more forcefully within the chapter,that the Romans gave the captains of their armies great discretionary powers.When we turn to the Livian text,we see that Machiavelli has made a minor change:Livy speaks not of two legates but of "five legates with two tribunes of the plebs."But this minor change indicates a major change or a major silence.Machiavelli does not tell us how the difficulty obstructing the passage through the Ciminian Forest was overcome.The Ciminian Forest was thought to be impassable and no Roman had ever entered it.The consul's brother,M.Fabius,offered to explore it.M.Fabius had 》I07《 been educated in Tuscany,was learned in Tuscan letters,and knew the Tuscan language well.So he ventured among the Tuscans “in a bold disguise.”What secured him against detection was how- ever less Tuscan learning,or even his disguise,than the fact that “it was repugnant to belief that an outsider would enter the Ciminian Forest.”49 Machiavelli is another Fabius:it is the incredi- bility of his enterprise which secures him against detection,i.e., against the detection of the intransigence and awakeness with which he conducts his exploration of hitherto unknown territory and thus prepares the conquest of that territory by his brothers. We agree with the commonly held opinion according to which Machiavelli,having decided to write Discourses on Livy, must at some point or other begin to refer to Livy or even to quote Livy. But it cannot be indifferent to us at what precise point he for the first time introduces Livy.The first reference to Livy or the first Latin quotation from Livy will be no longer for us a trivial fact but an amazing occurrence;it will elicit neither empty curiosity nor yawning but disturbing wonder.Since,other things being equal, a Latin quotation from Livy which occurs in an Italian book re- veals a more powerful presence of Livy than does an Italian summary of a Livian passage,we turn our attention first to the first Latin quotations from Livy.These quotations occur in the section which is explicitly devoted to the Roman religion(I II-15). Their introduction was properly prepared.Machiavelli had estab- lished the authority of the Roman republic by taking issue with classical political philosophy and with the aristocratic Roman tra- dition.In that context he had criticized certain critics of ancient Rome but had not openly criticized any ancient writers in his own name.In the section which immediately precedes the section on religion,i.e.,in the section explicitly devoted to the founders (I 9-Io),he takes issue with the opinion “perhaps"held by"many” according to which Romulus is to be blamed for having murdered his brother;he refutes that opinion by having recourse,not to any authority,but to“a general rule”without however saying a word as to whether that general rule is generally accepted.When, in chapter 4,he had attacked the opinion of “many”which con- demned Rome for the discord between the plebs and the senate, he had eventually referred to the authority of Cicero.But now, when the deed to be excused is no longer shouting in the streets 》Io8《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI or the closing of shops,as it was in the fourth chapter,but murder, the murder of one's only brother,he does not betray any need for support by authority.Or,if one wishes,one might say that the authority of the divine founder of Rome enables Machiavelli to oppose to the false general rule which unconditionally forbids murder the true general rule which allows murder under certain conditions.Thereafter,he openly blames in his own name those ancient writers who servilely praised Caesar,while he praises those ancient writers who obliquely blamed Caesar:50 his preferring the latter to the former is no longer supported by"the opinion of many."At the most,one could say that he appeals tacitly from a late Roman opinion to the opinion embodied in the republican practice of ancient Rome.However this may be,51 immediately before beginning the section on religion,he takes the extreme step of suggesting that the Rome which Romulus found was a corrupt city,i.e.,that in the beginning men were not good but corrupt. Such is the background against which Livy himself,speaking his native tongue,makes his first appearance.The first Latin quotation from Livy occurs in the chapter(I 12)in which Machiavelli at- tacks the opinion of"many"according to which the well-being of the Italian cities stems from the Roman Church.Against that opinion he adduces “two most powerful reasons which,according to me,suffer no denial."Yet however powerful these reasons may be according to him,he cannot take issue with the highest authority existing in his age and country without having the support of some- thing more powerful than any reason,namely,another high author- ity.To take issue with the Roman Church in the section of the Discourses which is devoted to the religion of the ancient Romans means to question the modes and orders of the established religion with a view to the modes and orders,rediscovered by Machiavelli, of the ancient religion,or to hold up the modes and orders of the ancient religion for imitation by modern men.Whatever may be true of the introduction or restoration of civil or military modes and orders,52 the introduction or restoration of religious modes and orders requires,as Machiavelli asserts,the support of divine author- ity,true or feigned,or at least,we may add,the support of authori- tative historians who transmit the original authority to later ages; for religious modes and orders lack those “evident reasons”of which purely political modes and orders are capable:religious MACHLAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I09《 modes and orders rest on belief.53 Livy must take the place of the Bible;Machiavelli's Bible permits him to uphold a teaching opposed to the teaching of the Bible.Machiavelli makes an effort to enter into the spirit of ancient piety:while quoting from Livy in Latin the words "Wilt thou go to Rome?"which Roman soldiers had addressed to the image of Juno in a Tuscan town after its conquest,he omits Livy's remark that the question might have been prompted by“youthful jocularity.”54 It may seem incred- ible that Machiavelli should have longed for the revival of the worship of the Queen Juno.He teaches explicitly that states which desire to keep themselves incorrupt should maintain the established religion.This does not prevent him however from treating the Christian Savonarola's speaking with God as an exact parallel to the pagan Numa Pompilius'simulated converse with a nymph:the success of Savonarola in Florence proves that the achievement of Numa,the founder of the religion of the ancient Romans,can be repeated now.55 The least one would have to say is that Machiavelli is impartial as between paganism and Christianity. In accordance with his desire to keep a nice balance,he mentions in the section on religion“God”seven times and“god”or “gods” seven times.56 Furthermore,however strongly he may have rec- ommended that the contemporary Christian states ought to main- tain the Christian religion,he believed that the Christian religion had in fact not been maintained in its purity but had declined and that its ruin might be near.He,as it were,applies to his own time the words quoted by him in Latin which Livy had used about the decline of the religion ancient in Livy's time,i.e., in the time in which the Christian religion emerged.57 Whatever long-range pros- pect this remark might suggest it is safer to leave it here at saying that from Machiavelli's point of view the imitation of the ancient Romans as regards religion means that one should use the Christian religion in the manner in which,according to him,the ancient Romans had used theirs.He conveys this lesson by retelling certain Roman stories and by making minor changes in them.He retells the story of how an ancient Roman,“a citizen grave and of author- ity,"had used religion for quieting the common people.When tacitly taking up the same matter in a later chapter,he adduces only a Florentine example and speaks of “a man grave and of author- ity”who quieted the common people:the"man,"as distinguished 》IIO《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI from the“citizen,”was a bishop"who is now a cardinal."Ac- cording to Livy,the Roman who quieted the plebs,was a consul; Machiavelli transforms him into a citizen,a man who did not hold at the time a politico-military command;he thus prepares the tran- sition to the bishop in Florence.58 The lesson is obvious:the men in ancient Rome who quieted the plebs by means of religion were citizens,not necessarily priests,for in ancient Rome religion was civil religion;the imitation of ancient Rome would consist in using Christianity as a civil religion.Machiavelli also retells the story of how a Roman consul overcame the difficulty caused by the indis- cretion of some hen-men,a special kind of soothsayers,by having “the prince”of the hen-men killed and by describing that dead "prince"to his army as a liar.In Livy's version no “prince”of the hen-men is mentioned,nor does Livy's consul call the hen-man in question a liar.Machiavelli stresses the hierarchic structure of the Roman order of soothsayers and injects some non-Livian venom into the consul's words.As Livy tells us,the soothsayers (haruspices) were aliens from Tuscany.59 Machiavelli's changes of the Livian stories are meant to facilitate the imitation of the ancient Romans by modern men,an imitation which is compatible with the formal maintenance of the Christian religion.As he says elsewhere,"up to the coming of the Longobards,the Pontiffs did not acquire any other authority except that which was given to them on account of their manners and their doctrine.In the other things they obeyed the emperors or the kings,and were sometimes killed by them,and used by them in their actions as servants."60 But we must not lose sight of the Latin quotations from Livy.While Machiavelli had quoted in each of the chapters I2 and 13 one Latin sentence from Livy he quotes two of them in chapter I5, the last chapter of the section.In that chapter it is shown how the Romans,led by the same consul who destroyed and discredited "the prince of the hen-men,"overcame by their virtue the obstinacy which their foreign enemies had acquired by virtue of religion: Roman arms proved to be superior to Samnite religion.Machiavelli thus prepares the first repetition of the section on religion-a repe- tition in which he contrasts“the quiet and religious”Roman king Numa Pompilius,the founder of the ancient religion,with his successor who,"armed with prudence and arms,""recovered the reputation of Romulus."61 MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION: The Discourses 》III《 The three chapters which contain the first four Latin quota- tions from Livy are preceded by II chapters and followed by 24 chapters in which no such quotations occur.This isolation,for which there is no parallel in the book,enhances the suggestive power of the quotations discussed.Those first four quotations are separated from the next quotations by an interval of unique length. Machiavelli compensates us for the extraordinary thrift which he practices,after having whetted our appetite, by a rare act of prodigality:in the first chapter in which he begins for the second time to quote Livy in Latin—in order from then on to quote him in Latin with some degree of regularity-he gives us six Latin quota- tions from Livy.This density occurs in the first chapter of the Discourses in which he discusses with complete neutrality the poli- cies required for saving liberty and the policies required for estab- lishing tyranny.In order to show how a potential tyrant can be successful he studies the actions of Appius Claudius,the founder of all public and private law in Rome,who failed in his attempt to establish tyranny and whose laws retain their force despite his ruin and violent death.62 This neutrality which to us at any rate appears in the same light in which it sometimes appears in the Dis- courses,namely ,as the height of political immorality and therefore perhaps as the height of immorality simply,is a heresy comparable in gravity to the neutrality between paganism and Biblical religion. It would seem then that the Latin quotations from Livy as strands of Machiavelli’s web are ominous rather than humanistic.As for the connection in Machiavelli's mind between Biblical religion and tyranny,we refer to the suggestion which he makes in Discourses I 26.63 Machiavelli begins to refer to Livy sometime before he begins to quote Livy.He begins to refer to Livy immediately after he has established the authority of Rome by proving the superiority of Rome to Sparta.In order to establish the authority of Rome and hence of Livy,he could not use Livyand he did not need Livy; the data supplied by the sixth book of the Greek Polybius,the unnamed supplier of the chief"matter" of Discourses I 2-6,are necessary and sufficient.The two chapters in which the first refer- ences to Livy occur(I 7-8)do not fit perfectly into what might seem to be the proper order,as Machiavelli indicates at the begin- ning of the oth chapter:if he had strictly adhered to that order, 》II2《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI Livy would not have appeared at all prior to the section on religion. What induced or compelled Machiavelli to deviate from the ap- parently proper order?He begins to refer to Livy when discussing a concomitant of a democratic Roman institution,the plebeian tribunate.The tribunes of the plebs were among those who had authority to accuse people before public tribunals.The first refer- ences to Livy occur in the two chapters which are devoted to the beneficial character of public accusations requiring proof and to the pernicious character of calumnies or of sowing sinister opin- ions about fellow citizens among the people.Ancient Rome had adopted the right policy in regard to both accusations and calumnies. But the exact opposite is true of modern Florence.The first refer- ences to Livy occur in the two chapters in which the superiority of ancient Rome to modern Florence becomes for the first time the theme,or starting from which the intra-classical alternative ‘Rome- Sparta'is superseded as it were once and for all by the alternative ‘ancient republics-modern republics.'Othe r considerations apart, recourse to Livy becomes necessary in proportion as the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns becomes thematic or other- wise important.One is entitled to say that in the two chapters in question there is a somewhat stronger emphasis on Florence than on Rome.64 One of the victims of the bad Florentine arrange- ment was“a kind of prince of the city.”One may wonder whether in discussing the alternative of accusations and calumnies,which is linked up with the difference between ancient Rome and modern Florence where Savonarola had been so successful,Machiavelli was not thinking of the sermons of Savonarola,the unarmed prophet, which are"full of accusations of the worldly wise and of invec- tives against them."Savonarola distinguished “two armed hosts, one which fought under God and this was he and his followers,while the other fought under the devil,and this was the opponents."65 Descriptions of one's opponents in such terms are certainly not accusations in Machiavelli's sense of the word.One may wonder, in other words,whether the difference here discussed between an- cient Rome and modern Florence must not be understood in the light of the difference between civil and trans-political religion. It is true that Machiavelli does not refer only to modern Florence; despite the fact that,as he says,the previous examples are sufficient, he adds an example from ancient Tuscany.That example shows MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》II3《 that ancient Tuscany suffered from the same bad arrangement as modern Florence.We may note in passing that Machiavelli supplies us here as it were accidentally,with that critique of ancient Tus- cany which is an important step on the way from the most ancient antiquity to ancient Rome.But however this may be,ancient Tus- cany too,in contradistinction to ancient Rome,was the home and center of religion.As regards ancient Rome,the example adduced by Machiavelli shows that Manlius Capitolinus,having become out of ambition a leader of the plebs and having in this capacity calum- niated the nobles,suffered capital punishment through the action, not of course of the tribunes of the plebs,but of a patrician dictator, the leader of the patriciate.In modern Florence too the calum- niators were"friends of the people."In modern Florence how- ever the calumniators succeeded in driving "the great men to de- spair."66 It is necessary to compare the context of the first Livy quotations with the context of the first references to Livy.The first Livy quotations occur when Machiavelli discusses the ancient reli- gion and therewith the greatest contrast between the ancients and the moderns.The first references to Livy occur when Machiavelli explicitly discusses a much less fundamental and less general con- trast between ancients and moderns.But,as may have become clear, this does not necessarily mean that the mere references to Livy do not lead the reader towards the fundamental issue.In fact, they may even lead him into a deeper stratum of the fundamental problem;the first references to Livy are very suggestive regarding the relation between the common people and religion in general, and between the common people and Biblical religion in particular. It would be dangerous to generalize from this observation regarding the difference between the first quotations from Livy and the first references to Livy.This much however can safely be said:while, as goes without saying,Livy is present everywhere in the Dis- courses,the meaning of that presence,visible or invisible,might escape the reader if Machiavelli had notoisolated his first references to Livy and his first quotations from Livy and thus given us some directives. Machiavelli was compelled to establish the authority of Rome because the superiority of the Roman modes and orders to all others,for example the Spartan,was not obvious or universally ad- mitted.In that context he had to speak of certain alleged defects of Rome which he did not deny but of which he asserted in effect that they are the inevitable concomitants of the best modes and orders.Later on,when defending the fratricide committed by the founder of Rome,he refers again to Sparta;there he silently re- tracts his initial statement according to which the state and the laws established by Lycurgus lasted for more than 8oo years with- out corruption of those laws or without any dangerous tumult: the Spartans had deviated from the laws of Lycurgus by the time of King Agis,i.e.,about 6oo years after Lycurgus;Agis who tried to restore the ancient laws was murdered by the ephors;Agis' successor,who shared Agis'desire massacred“all the ephors and anyone else who could oppose him”and yet failed to restore com- pletely the laws of Lycurgus.67 The stature of Rome is thus still more enhanced than it was after the original proof of Rome's superiority to Sparta and after the first proof of Rome's superiority to Florence had been completed.This does not mean,of course,that every Roman was a most excellent man:Machiavelli speaks of the corruption of Roman royalty and of the corruption of the Roman people which was caused by the party of Marius.In spite of this, "the example of Rome is preferable to any other example"because it is more instructive than any other.Above all,certainly the lead- ing Romans under the republic,or at any rate the consuls,were “always most excellent men.”The high point in the praise of Rome is probably reached in Machiavelli's contrasting the moderate char- acter of the foundation of the Roman republic with the inhuman character of the foundation of the principalities of David and of Philip of Macedon;for the remark about David already suggests what Machiavelli will explicitly say later about the foundation laid by Moses in the context of the only explicit reference to the Bible which occurs in the Discourses:"he who reads the Bible judiciously, will see that Moses was forced,in order that his laws and his orders should prosper,to massacre innumerable human beings who,moved by nothing but envy,opposed his designs."68 Not long after that high point has been reached,and at the very beginning of the second half of the First Book,more or less in the region where Machiavelli begins to follow the Livian order even in his use of Livy,a fundamental change makes itself felt.Rather abruptly,if circumspectly,he begins to criticize the Roman republic as it was in its most incorrupt period,69 and he goes on to do so though MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》II5《 returning again and again to the praise of Rome.Two Roman generals,not indeed consuls but military tribunes with consular power,preferred the disgrace of their fatherland to a minor sacrifice of their pride.The senate once acted contrary to the rule that one must not postpone benefiting the people until a third power forces one to do so.70 While defending the Roman institution of dictator- ship by means of “most evident reasons”against the opinion of “some writer”who had not“considered the matter well”and whose verdict"has been quite unreasonably believed,"i.e.,while tracing a powerful error to its weak beginning,Machiavelli makes it clear that that Roman institution was not superior to a different Venetian institution which fulfilled the same purpose equally well:71 the modes and orders of ancient Rome are not simply the model for the moderns.Thereafter he speaks explicitly,if with due euphemism, of"the defect"of the Roman agrarian law.That defect was per- haps immediately caused by the dilatory policy of the senate but it was certainly in the last analysis caused by what,without the use of euphemism,would have to be called the avarice of the Roman nobility.It was owing to that avarice that Rome,in contrast to Sparta,did not comply with the basic rule that the public should be kept rich and all citizens be kept poor.In the context of this criticism of Rome,Machiavelli accepts the opinion of"the ancient writers"as to the working of certain passions and,most important, refers to Livy by name for the first time since the end of the section on religion:72 Livy proves to be not only the celebrator of Rome but also her critic.Livy is no longer needed only for trans- mitting to modern men the counterauthority which enables Machia- velli to attack the established authority;from this point forth he is also needed to discredit that counterauthority.In other words, the authority is henceforth no longer the practice and the polity of ancient Rome,but Livy,a book:only from here on is Livy Machiavelli's Bible or his counterpart of the Bible.Just as the authority of the Bible is admittedly not weakened but strength- ened by the fact that it contains the records of how the children of Israel were stiff-necked and went a-whoring after other gods, the authority of Livy is not weakened but strengthened by the fact that he enlightens us concerning the misdeeds of the Romans and the defects of the Roman modes and orders.It is in the 39th chapter that Machiavelli draws the decisive conclusion from his 》I16《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI criticism of the Romans:diligent examination of things past en- ables one not only to foresee what would happen in every republic in the future if the necessary remedies are not applied in time,and to apply the remedies used by the ancients,but also to discover the proper remedies in case the ancients did not use or know them. Since the Roman modes and orders have been shown to be defective in more than one respect,we are forced to conclude that,ac- cording to Machiavelli,a progress beyond the ancient modes and orders is necessary,or that modes and orders which are new,not only relatively but simply,must be sought.73 Far be it from us to deny the genuine character of Machiavelli's admiration for ancient Rome.But there is a great difference between genuinely admiring an- cient Rome and believing that ancient Rome is the peak of all possible achievements.The ancient Roman polity was a work of chance,if of chance often prudently used;74 the ancient Romans discovered their modes and orders absent-mindedly or by accident,and they clung to them out of reverence for the ancestral.Machiavelli, however,achieves for the first time the anatomy of the Roman republic,and thus understands thoroughly the virtues and the vices of that republic.Therefore he can teach his readers how a polity similar to the Roman and better than the Roman can be deliberately constructed.What hitherto has been a lucky accident, and therefore essentially defective,can become from now on,on the new continent discovered by Machiavelli,the goal of rational desire and action.It is for this reason that the modes and orders recommended by Machiavelli,even those which he took over bod- ily from ancient Rome,are rightly described by him as new modes and orders.Even if the content of those modes and orders remains the same,their character is wholly new.The Discourses truly con- vey then,as Machiavelli promises at the beginning of the book, new modes and orders.Just as the Prince, the Discourses present a wholly new teaching which is shielded by a conventional or tra- ditional exterior.But whereas the Prince conveys the wholly new teaching regarding the foundations of society,the Discourses con- vey in addition the wholly new teaching regarding the structure of society,i.e.,of the best society. It would be wrong to believe that Machiavelli's emphatic blame, in the next chapter,of what may seem to be the biggest blunder committed by the early Roman republic,namely,the creation of 》I20《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI seeing that he directs his widely audible accusations against the ambitious prelates and that he knows that the people cannot but be averse to his radical innovations.The chapter under discussion may be described as the most extreme specimen of his criticism of Rome,since it suggests a certain superiority of modern Florence to ancient Rome.85 Before turning to Roman examples,he speaks of two Florentine examples.In discussing the first Florentine ex- ample,he exculpates Florence from what amounts to a criticism by“many”;in discussing the second Florentine example,he exhibits the cleverness of the Medici.Later he cites three examples of how the Romans rendered their enemies obstinate.The first of these examples is supplied by the Romans'conduct toward the Samnites which led to the disaster of the Caudine Forks;it would have been easy for the Romans to say,and in this particular case they would have said with perfect justice,that they had a quarrel only with the ambitious few among the Samnites;but the Romans did not avail themselves of this opportunity.In the I5th chapter,we recall, Machiavelli had retold the story of how the Romans overcame by their virtue the obstinacy which the Samnites had acquired by "virtue of religion."In the present case,the Samnites were rendered obstinate by"virtue of necessity."The second of the three Roman examples shows how a Roman commander⁸8 unnecessarily made the Veientes obstinate.Machiavelli does not tell us that prior to the incident retold by him,the Roman consuls had made their own soldiers obstinate by means of religion87 or that the Romans had acted like the Samnites.The last of the three examples shows how the Romans drove the Volsci,led by Messius,into extreme ob- stinacy.Machiavelli quotes in Latin a part of the speech with which Messius exhorted his soldiers;in the part omitted by him, Messius says:"Do you believe that some god will protect you and carry you away from here?"88 Here we are meant to see how an enemy of Rome was driven by necessity into “operating per- fectly”precisely by his subjective certainty that he and his army will not be saved by any god. Time and again we have become bewildered by the fact that the man who is more responsible than any other man for the break with the Great Tradition should in the very act of breaking prove to be the heir,the by no means unworthy heir,to that supreme art of writing which that tradition manifested at its peaks.The MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I2I《 highest art has its roots,as he well knew,in the highest necessity. The perfect book or speech obeys in every respect the pure and merciless laws of what has been called logographic necessity.The perfect speech contains nothing slipshod;in it there are no loose threads;it contains no word that has been picked up at random; it is not marred by errors due to faulty memory or to any other kind of carelessness;strong passions and a powerful and fertile imagination are guided with ease by a reason which knows how to use the unexpected gift,which knows how to persuade and which knows how to forbid;it allows of no adornment which is not imposed by the gravity and the aloofness of the subject matter; the perfect writer rejects with disdain and with some impatience the demand of vulgar rhetoric that expressions must be varied since change is pleasant.The translations of Machiavelli as well as of other great writers,even if they are done with ordinary competence,are so bad because their authors read books composed according to the rules of noble rhetoric as if they had been brought forth in compliance with the rules of vulgar rhetoric.In a famous letter Machiavelli has testified to what he owed to the writers of antiquity and their creations.In the evening,when entering his study he put on regal and courtly clothes and thus properly dressed he entered into the ancient courts of the men of antiquity who received him lovingly.There he fed himself on that nourishment which alone was his and for which he was born;there he united himself wholly with the ancients,and thus did not fear poverty,forgot every anguish,and was not frightened by death.Because of his nature and his devotion he came to sur- pass Livy.The peculiar charm and the peculiar remoteness of the Discourses are due to the fact that a part of their teaching is transmitted not only between their lines,but as it were between the covers of the Discourses and those of Livy's History.Machiavelli draws our attention to utterances of Livy or of Livy's characters which he does not quote and to which he does not even refer, strictly and narrowly speaking.Those utterances,if read in the light of Machiavelli's suggestive context,take on a non-Livian meaning and then illumine the Machiavellian context;the thought which is transmitted in this way is not conveyed by the Discourses read by themselves nor by Livy's History read by itself.Machiavelli expects his reader less to have read Livy and other writers than to 》I22《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI read them in conjunction with the Discourses after he has read the Discourses once or more than once.89 He certainly expects his reader to read Livy with more than ordinary care or,to return to the surface,with profound reverence.90 This reverence need not be weakened by the changes which Machiavelli makes in the Livian stories or in the Livian text.Not all theologians always refrained from modifying the Biblical stories and from quoting Scripture inexactly.Such seeming liberties taken with the sacred books may well subserve the pious concern with applying the Biblical message to oneself and to one's generation.The analogy of the Bible and Livy would not be perfect if Livy were not Machiavelli's authority in theology or its equivalent.Livy is Machi- avelli's authority as regards Fortuna and her workings.It is Livy who,according to him,through a Roman example proves at length and with most efficacious words the power of Heaven or Fortuna over human affairs.The Livian proof is so complete that,as Machi- avelli notes,no modern examples are needed to confirm the Livian thesis.Machiavelli reproduces the Livian proof in one of the two chapters whose headings consist of almost literally translated Livian statements.The Livian statement which heads the chapter contain- ing that Livian proof is the only chapter heading in either book which pronounces dogmatically on the power and workings of Fortuna.91 Once we have taken Machiavelli's acceptance of Livy's author- ity as seriously as we must,we become amazed by the relative rarity of quotations from Livy and even references to Livy.We slowly begin to dare to ask ourselves whether Livy is after all the highest authority for him or whether he did not regard certain other classical writers as more important than Livy.Accordingly we note that Livy is never mentioned in the Prince.Livy is an historian,whereas Machiavelli reasons about matters of state.That is to say,Livy supplies him with matter,with examples;the con- clusions drawn from the examples(only a part of which are supplied by Livy),or the light which illumines the matter,or the reasoning which leads up to the causes of the events recorded by Livy and other historians is Machiavelli's.92 As we observe next,Machiavelli tacitly changes Livy's stories and thus perhaps tacitly criticizes Livy.Very slowly,very circumspectly,does he begin to attack Livy explicitly and,after having done so,he very rarely,but all the 》I23《 more impressively,returns to that attack.The first explicit attack on Livy occurs in the 58th chapter,i.e.,about 2o chapters after he had begun explicitly to criticize ancient Rome.But already in the 49th chapter he openly grants that Livy's History may be defective in a point of some importance,namely,in a point con- nected with the issue of“accusations and calumnies.”In the same chapter,speaking of Florence,he indicates that“true memory” of Florentine affairs is not available beyond a certain date.Could the possible defect of Livy's History be due to the fact that he did not have “true memory”of the event which he records in the passage referred to by Machiavelli?Certain it is that Livy himself speaks in that passage of the uncertainty regarding events which are remote in time.93 Machiavelli then is not absolutely silent about the questionable character of Livy's stories and about Livy's own references to that questionable character.In the 16th chapter he had already spoken of the things “which are read in the memories of ancient histories”:Livy's History,and certainly its first ten Books,consist of such memories of ancient histories.94 But even what is known through truly historical records, i.e.,through such records of past events as were set down by contemporaries of those events,is less truly known than what everyone can see now;it is an object of belief rather than of per- ception.95 It is for this reason that Machiavelli can substitute his summaries of Livian stories for the Livian stories themselves by sometimes describing summaries which lack any reference to Livy as"those texts”and then suggest that "those texts"are the work of Livy and Machiavelli jointly:Machiavelli can vouch for them as well or almost as well as could Livy himself.96 It may be for this reason that he sometimes makes trivial changes in Livy's reports:whether the early Romans waged war in a given year against one neighboring tribe,say the Aequi,and not against another, say the Volsci,is not sufficiently established by the fact that Livy says they did.Even if an historian is trustworthy regarding his facts,he is not necessarily trustworthy regarding his selection of facts; historians are inclined to regard as most worthy of being remembered that which is miraculous or spectacular. When Machi- avelli retells the story of the Decemvirate,he barely refers to the Virginia incident which is told at such length by Livy,to say nothing of the fact that he does not mention that heinous crime 》I24《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI when speaking of Appius Claudius'mistakes.97 It is also significant that the first historian explicitly quoted as stating a general cause, the cause of a kind of human conduct,is not Livy but Tacitus.98 Eight chapters later Machiavelli summarizes an observation of "the ancient writers"regarding human conduct in general,and thereafter gives a“discourse”of his own in which he states the cause of the phenomenon observed by the ancient writers.There- after he indicates that the most fundamental truth regarding man can be known more easily by the moderns than by the ancients because that truth is most easily discerned by considering “present and ancient things"together.99 Long after all these preparations have been completed does Machiavelli praise Livy for the first time.In the chapter preceding the one in which he explicitly quotes Livy in Latin for the first time after the central chapter of the section on religion,i.e.,in the third chapter before the one in which he states explicitly for the first time that Livy's History may be defective,he says:"Since Titus Livius most prudently gives the reason why this arose,it does not seem to me not to be to the purpose to state precisely his words ..."The most prudent reasoning of Livy includes the following two remarks:the Roman nobility,while disapproving of the violence done by their sons to the plebs,preferred,if the line had to be overstepped,that it should be overstepped by their own people rather than by their domestic enemies;and:it seems as if it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer wrong.It is easy to see why this Livian reasoning should appear to Machiavelli to be"most prudent."But the praise of this particular Livian reasoning implies that Livy does not always reason"most prudently"about the events which he narrates:the very praise of Livy reveals a comprehensive criti- cism of Livy.Moreover,Livy appears equally to accuse the nobility and the plebs of dangerous ambition;but Machiavelli,in his own discourse which immediately follows his restatement of Livy's reasoning,observes complete silence regarding the ambition of the plebs:he speaks of the ambition of individuals who exploit the desire of the common people for protection and monetary support. Caesar is perhaps the greatest example of such individuals.Machi- avelli here quotes a sentence which Sallustius had put into Caesar's mouth and calls that sentence“most true."100 Why Livy's reasoning is not “most true”is indicated in the chapter following.Retelling 》I26《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI says,quite casually as it might seem,that"it is good to reason about everything"whereas he says in the Prince that "one ought not to reason about Moses since he was a mere executor of the things which were commanded to him by God""and that one ought not to reason about ecclesiastical principalities,"for,since they are exalted and maintained by God,it would be the work of a presumptuous and temerarious man to discuss them."104 The 18th chapter of the Discourses begins with“I believe”whereas the preceding chapter begins with“I judge.”The distinction between "believing"and “judging"reminds us of a passage in the first chapter of Seneca's De vita beata: “Everyone prefers to believe rather than to judge. One never judges but always believes regarding the things which are vital.Error transmitted from hand to hand always turns us to and fro and throws us down headlong,and we perish through following examples taken from others.We shall be cured if we were but to secede from the crowd.As it is,however,the people, the defender of its own evil,stands firm against reason."If we desire to understand Machiavelli's thought,we must pay great attention to the kinship which according to Seneca exists between “believing"and "the people.”105 In the 58th chapter Machiavelli explicitly takes issue with Livy and“all other historians”or,as he says shortly afterward,with “all writers.”Does he enlarge the scope of his attack as he presses forward or as he takes breath,or does he suggest that all writers, i.e.,all writers that preceded him,are in a sense historians?He certainly continues with these words:"I do not judge nor shall I ever judge it to be a defect to defend any opinion with reasons, provided one does not even wish to use in such defense either authority or force."106 He could not have stated more clearly and more gently the principle that only reason,as distinguished from authority,can command his assent.To reject authority on principle means to reject the equation of the good with the old and hence of the best with the oldest;it means to derogate from the reverence for old men,the men most akin to the olden times.The First Book of the Discourses,which almost opens with the praise of the most ancient antiquity literally ends with the praise of the many Romans who"triumphed in their earliest youth."And the Second Book begins with a rebuke of the irrational inclination natural to men to praise the ancient times.Machiavelli addresses his passionate MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I27《 and muted call to the young-to men whose prudence has not enfeebled their youthful vigor of mind,quickness,militancy,im- petuosity and audacity.107 Reason and youth and modernity rise up against authority, old age,and antiquity.In studying the Discourses we become the witnesses,and we cannot help becoming the moved witnesses,of the birth of that greatest of all youth move- ments:modern philosophy,a phenomenon which we know through seeing,as distinguished from reading,only in its decay,its state of depravation and its dotage. The subject concerning which Machiavelli challenges“all writers"is the wisdom and the constancy of the multitude.Oppos- ing the whole tradition and "the common opinion,"he contends that the multitude is wiser and more constant than is a prince:not without reason does one compare the voice of the people,“a universal opinion,"to the voice of God.It may easily appear that Machiavelli was the first philosopher who questioned in the name of the multitude or of democracy the aristocratic prejudice or the aristocratic premise which informed classical philosophy.He preferred the more democratic Roman polity to the less democratic Spartan polity.He expressed the opinion that the purpose of the people is more honest,or more just,than the purpose of the great. It is true that he did not favor the rule of the multitude:all simple regimes are bad;every so-called democracy is in fact an oligarchy unless it verges on anarchy.108 But his bias in favor of the multitude enabled or compelled him not to identify himself simply with the aristocratic or oligarchic republicanism of the classical tradition: the just demands of the common people may also be satisfied by a prince and even by a tyrant.This is one reason why the argument of the Discourses consists partly of a movement away from re- publics toward principalities and even toward tyrannies,why Machiavelli appears in some discourses to be completely neutral in the conflict between free states and tyrannies,or why he some- times seems to blur the distinction among tyrannies,principalities and republics.It is no accident,I believe,that the most shocking or the most “Machiavellian”passage of the Florentine Histories is the speech addressed by a Florentine plebeian in the year 1378 to the Florentine plebs.The Florentine plebs had committed arson and robbery and was afraid of punishment;the plebeian leader of the plebs exhorts his audience to double the evils they had com- 》 I28《 THOUGHTSON MACHIAVELLI mitted and to multiply the arson and the robberies,for small faults are punished while great and grave ones are rewarded;they should not be frightened by the ancient blood of their adversaries,for since all men had the same beginning,all men are of equally ancient blood or by nature all men are equal,and only poverty and wealth make them unequal;great wealth and great power are acquired only by fraud or by force;faithful men always serve and good men are always poor;they should not be frightened by their con- science,for where there is fear of hunger and prison there cannot be and ought not to be fear of hell;God and nature have so estab- lished it that the things which men desire can be acquired by evil acts rather than by good ones.At any rate one may say that when indicating the character of the ruling class in the Discourses, Machiavelli views the ruling class from the plebeian point of view.109 Yet one may say with equal right that he views the plebs to some extent from the patrician point of view.110 At present we must limit ourselves to a more precise consideration of the 58th chapter of the Discourses,the only chapter in the very heading of which Machiavelli asserts the superiority of the multitude to a prince.He attacks "the common opinion"according to which the multitude is inferior in wisdom to princes,and he contends that the voice of the multitude,"a universal opinion,"is likely to be right.But is not "the common opinion"about the wisdom of the multitude“a universal opinion”?And does not "universal opinion" assert that “universal opinion”is likely to be wrong?Does not then the oracular voice of the multitude deny wisdom to the multitude? Must Machiavelli not question the authority of universal opinion in order to establish the authority of universal opinion?Must he not say that universal opinion must be wrong so that universal opinion can be right and that universal opinion must be right so that universal opinion can be wrong?Against this one might try to argue as follows:"the common opinion"of“all writers”is not “a universal opinion,”i.e.,an opinion of the multitude or of the people;111 eleven chapters earlier Machiavelli had contended that the opinion of the people is likely to be right regarding particulars, whereas it is likely to be wrong regarding generalities;hence even if not only writers but the peoples themselves were to deny wisdom to the peoples,this verdict,being a judgment on something general,may well be wrong and yet the people may be wise in 》I29《 particular matters;in the very 58th chapter Machiavelli does not go beyond contending that the multitude or the people is marvelous in foreseeing its own evil and its own good,i.e.,its particular good or evil here and now.Yet in the earlier discussion he had shown how easy it was for the Roman senate to deceive the people or the plebs in regard to particulars.Granted that the multitude possesses sound judgment on particulars,such judgment is of little value if the context within which the particular comes to sight is beyond the ken of the multitude:by changing the context one will change the meaning of the particular.And the generalities regarding which the people is admittedly incompetent are an important part of that context:sound judgment regarding particulars is impossible if it is not protected by true opinion about generalities.Hence the multi- tude is frequently more moved by things which seem to be than by things which are.Hence Machiavelli can comfort the prince by the thought that he can easily deceive the many about his char- acter,i.e.,about a particular,and he must warn republics that the people,which is allegedly marvelous in foreseeing its own evil and good,desires frequently its own ruin because it is de- ceived by false appearance of good and is easily moved by grand hopes and valiant promises.In the 58th chapter itself,Machia- velli says that the people can grasp that truth which it hears. This remark means,in the light of earlier remarks,that the people cannot find the truth by itself.By itself,it is ignorant;it is in need of guidance;it must be compelled or persuaded by prudent citizens to act sensibly.The Roman senate was a body of such prudent citizens.112 What is particularly striking in the 58th chap- ter is that Machiavelli compares therein the wisdom of the multi- tude or of the people with the wisdom of princes,i.e.,of kings, emperors and tyrants,without saying a word about the wisdom of"the princes,"i.e.,the ruling class,in a republic.Instead,he tacitly substitutes in a considerable part of the argument of that chapter “republics”for “multitude,”and thus tacitly contrasts the wisdom of princes,not with the wisdom of the multitude,the common people or the plebs,but with the wisdom of the Roman senate,and therewith renders the true issue completely invisible.113 The true issue becomes visible once one reflects on the fact that the multitude or the plebs needs guidance.This guidance is sup- plied ordinarily by laws and orders which,if they are to be of 》I30《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI any value,of necessity originate in superior minds,in the minds of founders or of princes.Of princes thus understood-and princes thus understood include the series of first rate men who were responsible for the continuous foundation of Rome-Machiavelli says in the 58th chapter that they are superior to the peoples because they alone are fit to establish new laws and orders,whereas peoples are superior to princes as regards the maintaining of modes and orders already established.In other words,"princes" are the founding or innovating or rational element in society,while the people is the preserving or conservative element:once the people begins to abhor or to love something,i.e.,things of a certain status or character,it clings to that opinion for centuries.The people is the repository of the established,of the old modes and orders,of authority.Therefore one may provisionally say that the peoples are by far superior to princes in glory.But however this may be,one must say with finality that the peoples are by far superior to princes in goodness;for goodness or morality is essentially preserving or conservative,and not innovating or revo- lutionary,whereas the prototype of princes is Romulus the fratri- cide.114 The peoples are the repository of morality.After all that has been said this does not mean that the peoples always or even mostly act morally or even that they are fundamentally moral; belief in morality is not yet morality.Machiavelli illustrates the conservative character of the people by the fact that the Roman people hated the very name of kings for many centuries.Yet in the same context he declares that"the opinion unfavorable to the peoples arises because of the peoples every one speaks without fear and freely,even while the peoples reign,but of princes one always speaks with a thousand fears and a thousand respects.” The Roman people could hardly have hated the very name of kings for many centuries after the expulsion of the Roman kings, and yet always have spoken of kings with a thousand fears and a thousand respects.Considering the violent struggle between the Roman plebs and the Roman senate or the Roman "princes,"the contradiction cannot be resolved unless one assumes that “princes” does not always designate monarchs or even human government in general.We suspect that Machiavelli sometimes uses “princes”in order to designate superhuman powers.And vice versa,since he sometimes uses “human beings”for designating the people,com- MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I3I《 mon men or the subjects,115 there is no reason that he should not, on the proper occasion,use"the people"to designate human beings as distinguished from superhuman beings.At any rate,for the same reason for which the peoples are the repository of morality, they are also the repository of religion.116 We are compelled here to make an observation similar to that which we made when we considered Machiavelli's first emphatic blame of ancient Rome.The explicit and emphatic character of his disagreement with Livy's judgment on the multitude does not correspond with what we may call the reality of this disagreement. While forgoing recourse to authority,to say nothing of recourse to force,Machiavelli does not forgo recourse to guile.He does not seriously disagree with Livy's judgment on the multitude.He does disagree with Livy,and with“all writers,”on the status of morality. This is not to deny that by questioning the traditional view of the status of morality he is freed to question the traditional view of aristocracy or the rule of men of moral worth.But questioning the traditional view of aristocracy is very different from adopting the extremely populist view which he seems to adopt in the 58th chapter.The traditional doctrine asserted the moral superiority of“the better people.”According to Machiavelli,his dissection of the Roman republic entitles him to judge that the ruling class deserving of the name is necessarily superior to the multitude in foresight,but is most certainly not morally superior;rather it is morally inferior to its subjects.To the extent to which he ironically accepts the major premise that human excellence is moral excellence,he arrives at the conclusion that the multitude is simply superior to “princes.”This does not mean that the acceptance of that major premise is arbitrary. Machiavelli is a bringer of new modes and orders.He is a revolutionary,i.e.,his adversaries have on their side the laws and everything respected and honored.Com- pared with the powers which he attacks,he may very well appear as he describes himself,namely,a being of a low and abject condi- tion;and, as he teaches,one rises from such a condition through fraud rather than through other means.He is “a man of the people” not only in the literal sense,and the meaning of his turning from Latin to the vulgar tongue is not exhausted by what every school- boy is supposed to know.His plebeian leader who encourages the plebs not to be frightened by conscience,i.e.,by fear of hell,is 》I32《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI a caricature of Machiavelli,but the caricature of a man reveals something of the man himself.Still,even a plebeian leader is not simply a plebeian,and a leader of the plebs is not necessarily him- self a plebeian.Yet as a rebel agairst everything that is respected, Machiavelli must certainly adapt himself to the taste of the vulgar, if he desires to get a posthumous hearing for his new modes and orders.This is one reason why he displays a bias in favor of the extreme and spectacular.A Fabius Maximus Cunctator is neces- sarily unpopular;he can never demonstrate to the populace the soundness of his opinion;his opinion is bound to appear abject.117 Even less popular will be the man who has discerned with perfect clarity the true and natural principles on which men like the empirical Fabius act instinctively:the true opinion about the most general,the most comprehensive things can never become popular opinion;it will necessarily appear to the populace to lack glamor and even to be abject and degrading.Machiavelli cannot train his readers in discovering for themselves the lowly but true principles which he can only intimate,except by appealing on dif- ferent occasions to different principles all of which are respectable or publicly defensible but which contradict one another:the contradiction between them may lead some readers to the true principles in their nakedness.Thus he mitigates his attack on the Roman Church by appealing to original Christianity.He mitigates his attack on Biblical religion by praising religion in general.He mitigates his attack on religion by praising humanity and goodness. He mitigates his analysis of the bad and inhuman conditions of goodness and humanity by cursing tyranny and by blessing liberty and its prize,the eternal prudence and generosity of a senate.He mitigates the impact of his unsparing analysis of republican virtue at its highest by paying homage to the goodness and religion of the common people and to the justice of their demands.He mitigates the impact of his unsparing analysis of the defects of the common people by his appeal to a patriotism which legitimates the policy of iron and poison pursued by a most ferocious lion and a most astute fox or which legitimates the kind of rule known traditionally as tyranny.118 We are now in a position to describe more adequately than was hitherto possible the relation between Machiavelli's two books.The first impression according to which the Prince is devoted to prin- MACHLAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I33《 cipalities and the Discourses are devoted to republics is not mis- leading.The characteristic theme of the Prince is the prince in the most exalted sense,the bringer of new modes and orders or the founder.The characteristic theme of the Discourses is the people as the maintainer of established modes and orders,119 or as the reposi- tory of morality and religion.If it is true,as I believe it is,that the Bible sets forth the demands of morality and religion in their purest and most intransigent form,the central theme of the Dis- courses must be the analysis of the Bible.This does not mean that the Discourses are silent about founders.On the contrary,the Discourses articulate the phenomenon of the founders much more thoroughly than does the Prince:the Discourses deal not only with heroic founders like Cyrus and Theseus but likewise with the series of “continuous founders”such as the Roman senate,and with the founder-captain like Romulus who in the Prince is mentioned in only a single chapter-to say nothing of the founder-captain Ma- chiavelli himself.The contention that the characteristic theme of the Prince is the founder as distinguished from the repositories of morality and religion,means that the perspective of the people does not predominate in the Prince in the way in which it predominates in the Discourses.In the Discourses,even the founders themselves are viewed in the perspective of the society already founded.Hence, the Discourses make considerable use of the distinction between kings and tyrants and they speak with proper frequency and em- phasis of the common good and of the conscience;hence Machia- velli speaks in the Discourses sometimes of"we Christians."The Discourses in other words come closer than the Prince to what is generally or popularly accepted.But for the same reason the Dis- courses go much further than the Prince in the detailed analysis, resolution or destruction of the generally accepted:the attack in the Discourses on"all writers"has no parallel in the Prince.And if Machiavelli had not written the Discourses,people would not speak as frequently and as easily as they do of Machiavelli’s“pagan- ism.”But if he had not written the Prince,it would not be as manifest as it is that he transcends the standpoint of the people in the direction of the standpoint of the founder.All this merely confirms his suggestion that each of the two books contains every- thing he knows but that in the Prince he has condensed everything he knows in the highest degree possible:only in the Discourses 》I34《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI does he have room and leisure for beginning with what is"first for us”and for leading up to what is “frst by nature.” Furthermore,we are now in a position to defend Machiavelli to some extent against the observation of a modern critic that he completely distorts the meaning of Livy's stories and falsifies their spirit.This criticism is fully justified if it is meant to imply that Machiavelli knew what he was doing.He consciously uses Livy for his non-Livian purposes.He deliberately transforms the Roman ruling class as it was into a ruling class as,according to him,it should have been;he makes the Roman ruling class "better"than it was;he transforms a group whose best members were men of outstanding virtue and piety into a group whose best members, being perfectly free from all vulgar prejudices,were guided ex- clusively by Machiavellian prudence that served the insatiable desire of each for eternal glory in this world.From Machiavelli's presentation one receives the impression that prior to Numa Pom- pilius there was no religion in Rome:Machiavelli is silent about the Livian testimonies to the religious character of Rome's founda- tion by Romulus.He may well have adopted Polybius'account of the beginnings of civil societies because that account is silent about gods and religion.120A Livian story gives Machiavelli occa- sion to praise "the generosity and prudence"which the Roman senate showed in a reply it gave to Roman allies;the Livian senate referred in its reply to “the sudden wrath of the gods”;the Machia- vellian senate is too "generous and prudent"or too good a knower of"the things of the world”to mention“the sudden wrath of the gods."121 The Livian eye-witnesses to the ruin of the wicked legislator,Appius.Claudius,mutter,each man to himself,that there are gods after all and that they do not neglect human things and that pride and cruelty receive their divine punishment which, though late,is nevertheless not light;the same event gives occa- sion to Machiavelli for the reflection that it is imprudent and use- less to leap from humility to pride and from pity to cruelty without duly taking the intermediate steps.122 According to Livy,the Roman pontiffs had a voice in the deliberations connected with Camillus'having vowed to Apollo a tithe of the booty taken in Veii;the Roman pontiffs have disappeared in Machiavelli's re- statement; here as elsewhere he does everything to obliterate the MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I35《 Roman pontiffs or the role that they played in the ancient Roman republic.123 According to Livy,the Roman people acquitted Hora- tius Cocles from punishment for having slain his sister chiefly because they admired his steadfastness and virtue;according to Machiavelli,they acquitted him since they were moved by"the prayers of the father."124 According to Livy,when the Gauls en- tered Rome after their victory at the Allia,the Roman senate resolved that the men of military age and the able-bodied senators should retire into the citadel and the Capitol together with their wives and children,for it would not have been human to prevent the wives and mothers from saving themselves although they could not contribute anything to the defense of what was left of Rome; according to Machiavelli,the women stayed in the town as prey to the Gauls because purely military considerations prevailed.Ac- cording to Livy,the Romans were greatly concerned in that calam- ity with defending the citadel and the Capitol because those places were the dwellings of the gods,and with defending the gods themselves as well as the Vestal virgins and the sacred things belonging to the Roman people;Machiavelli does not even allude to this part of the story.125 According to Livy,both gods and men prevented the Romans from living redeemed;Machiavelli makes him say that Fortuna did not wish that the Romans live redeemed by gold.126 When referring to Livy's account of the self-sacrifice of the elder P.Decius Mus,Machiavelli suppresses every mention of the religious character of that act of devotion,an act meant to expiate the whole wrath of the gods,to draw upon Decius all the threats and dangers,offered by the supernal and infernal gods,or to relieve of religious fear the minds of the Romans;he merely alludes to what he had indicated elsewhere(in the section on religion)about how one might make soldiers obstinate;instead he expatiates on the order which the Romans followed in their armies and in battles,and which Livy had admittedly explained at length in the same context.127Quoting in the Second Book some Latin words from a Livian speech which begins with the remark that he immortal gods have made the Roman senate the master of the fate of Latium,Machiavelli leaves it open whether those words are words of Livy or of a Livian character;there can be no question hat they are not the words of Machiavelli.In the whole Second 》I36《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI Book,Machiavelli speaks only once of gods or God;summarizing an argument of an ancient writer,he says that the Romans built more temples“to Fortuna than to any other god.”128 By the end of the First Book of the Discourses the reader is supposed to have liberated himself completely from belief in any authority.The Preface to the Second Book,being a “repetition” of the Preface to the First Book,summarizes the results of the First Book insofar as they affect the problem of authority in gen- eral.The first Preface had identified the new modes and orders, discovered by Machiavelli with the ancient modes and orders, and it had appealed to the prejudice in favor of antiquity.The second and last Preface exhibits the irrational character and the causes of that prejudice.Machiavelli does not deny that in a given part of the world the men of the present may be justified in regard- ing themselves as inferior to their forebears with respect to virtue. But this does not mean that virtue is the preserve of antiquity and especially of classical antiquity.There is at present as much virtue in the world as there was at any time in the past,only virtue does not now reside where it resided in classical antiquity.It resides now in Northern Europe and in Turkey rather than in Greece and in Italy.This is partly due to the change in education and therefore to the change in religion.But if a contemporary Christian born, say,in Greece becomes a Turk,i.e.,an infidel—a pagan or worse than a pagan-he has no reason to blame the present age or to long for antiquity.The prejudice in favor of antiquity is partly caused by the distorted accounts which we have of ancient times.Most writers are so servile as to magnify the virtues and conceal the vices of the powerful ones of their time,whereas it is possible to acquire perfect knowledge regarding "present actions."In a word, most histories are utterly unreliable.Hence the glory deriving from deeds is less solid than the glory deriving from the production of works of art:works of art can be as present to any later age as they were to the age in which they were brought forth.We had been told originally that the men most highly praised,whether rightly or wrongly,are the founders of religion:they are even more highly praised than the founders of republics or kingdoms who in their turn are more highly praised than men of letters.We are told almost immediately afterward that no glory or posthumous fame surpasses that of the founder or restorer of a city,like Romulus. MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I37《 We are now given to understand that the glory of any doer is inferior to that of excellent artists or writers.129 In the First Book,Machiavelli had not dared openly to question Livy's judgment before the 58th chapter.In the Second Book he questions it already at the beginning of the first chapter.He dis- agrees with Livy on no less a subject than the power of Fortuna. Livy as well as many others held the opinion that Rome owed her empire to luck rather than to virtue.Machiavelli refuses to “confess” this in any way:he,as it were,defends the virtue of the Romans against Livy.His criticism is directed,however,less against Livy than against Plutarch,“a most weighty writer.”We may note in passing that he never anywhere in the Discourses applies to Livy an epithet of equal force;he merely calls him“a good historian.”180 Plutarch claimed that his opinion was supported by the"confession" of the Roman people itself which had built more temples to Fortuna than to any other god.Machiavelli does not question Plutarch's contention that the Roman people ascribed its well-being to Fortuna rather than to its own virtue.Silently contradicting what he had said in the 58th chapter about the value of the voice of the people, but silently confirming what he had indicated there in regard to that subject,he attaches no importance to the opinion of the Roman people on the source of its well-being.In defending the virtue of the Roman people against its own opinion,he questions the wisdom of the Roman people.He directs his attack against Plutarch rather than against Livy because he is not quite certain that Livy shared the opinion of the Roman people regarding the power of Fortuna;it is less Livy who speaks about the power of Fortuna than Livy's Romans whom Livy"makes speak"on that subject.Livy was perhaps wiser than his Romans.Perhaps he did not"confes"everything that his Romans believed.While being the mouthpiece of pagan theology,he was perhaps also its critic.131 Nowhere in the First Book had Machiavelli even alluded to the problem posed by the difference between Livy and Livy's char- acters.Only once therein did he make an explicit distinction between an author and a character of that author:he said that Sallustius "put"a certain sentence"into the mouth of Caesar."132 In the Second and Third Books,however,he refers II times to the difference between Livy and his characters by using expressions like “Livy makes someone say or do certain things"or“Livy put these 》I38《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI words into the mouth of someone."But this is not the only difference between the treatment of Livy in the First Book on the one hand, and in the Second and Third Books on the other.Only in the two last Books do we find what we may strictly speaking call sermons on texts,133 i.e.,discourses opening with a Latin quotation which functions as “text”for the discourse in question.There occur altogether 3 such discourses;only Livian texts are used in the manner indicated.In this connection we may note that references to a"text"occur proportionately more frequently in the Second Book and in the corresponding parts of the Third Book than in the First Book.1³4 Finally,only in the two last Books does Machiavelli speak of Livy as a "witness"(testimone) or of his “testimony” (testimonio) or of his“ vouching ”(fare fede) for something.135 We cannot help suspecting that these peculiarities of the treatment of Livy in the two last Books are connected with the specific themes of these Books.The Second Book deals with foreign policy and warfare or with the militia;the Third Book repeats the themes of the First and Second Books.With one exception,it is only in such chapters of the Third Book as are devoted to foreign policy or military matters that the peculiarities of the kinds mentioned occur;the exception is a passage dealing with Camillus,"the most prudent of all Roman captains."136 The reader will remember what was stated earlier at some length regarding the ambiguity of the themes “militia,warfare and foreign policy.” After having alluded to the difference between Livy and his characters for the first time in the first chapter of the Second Book,Machiavelli does not return to that subject before the I3th chapter of the same Book.The I3th chapter forms the center of a section the meaning of which is not obvious.The section is immediately preceded or appropriately prefaced by the only chapter of the Discourses in the very heading of which Machiavelli explicitly attacks a “common opinion”and in the body of which he shows that Livy expresses his disagreement with a“common opinion"more effectively by silence than he could have done by speech.The I3th chapter of the First Book forms the center of the section devoted to the religion of the Romans.But neither the I3th chapter of the Second Book nor the section to which it belongs can be said to deal with a specifically Roman subject. Non-Roman examples preponderate in that section.Among the 7 MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I39《 utterances quoted in the whole series of chapters from Discourses II 4 to II 18 inclusive,6 are utterances of men who were not Romans and one is an utterance of Livy about people who were not Romans.The chapter immediately preceding the chapter under consideration is the quaestio disputata which opens with 7 arguments from authorities,6 of which are of non-Roman origin,one of the latter having been taken from poetic fables.The chapter in question itself is devoted to the subject of fraud as a chief means for rising from a low to a great position.Among the individuals who are said to have risen through fraud,Cyrus,a new prince of the highest rank,a founder, is treated most extensively;for even founders and precisely founders are compelled to“color their designs.”It is no accident that Machiavelli stresses the difference between authors and their characters in such a context:not the men who use fraud on a grand scale but those who write concerning such men may, under certain conditions,reveal that fraud.To reveal those condi- tions may be said to be the chief purpose of our chapter.As for the fraud committed by Cyrus,Machiavelli refers to Xenophon.“Xeno- phon in his life of Cyrus shows this need for deceit.The first expedi- tion which he makes Cyrus make is full of fraud,and he makes him seize his kingdom with deceit and not with force ...He makes him deceive...."The evidence supplied by Xenophon's Education of Cyrus is then not historical.Having realized"this need for deceit"through observations made perhaps nearer home,Xenophon presents the lesson in a work of fiction the hero of which is a foreign,Asiatic ruler who,according to Machiavelli,was as much a friend of God as Moses.As for Livy,he laid bare the fraud through which Rome rose to greatness by using a victim of Roman fraud,an enemy of Rome as his mouthpiece.137 Whereas Xenophon speaks in his own name about the fraud committed by a foreign ruler,Livy speaks through the mouth of a foreigner about the fraud committed by his own rulers.No one,it seems,speaks in his own name about the deception which is the source of the being or the well-being of his own commonwealth.Being"a good historian," Livy was not so servile as to suppress truths which were unpalatable to his own people and,being wiser than the Romans,he outwitted them.He uses a noble deception to lay bare an ignoble deception. This is not the only case in which he reveals a harsh truth about the Romans through the mouth of an enemy of Rome.In the 135th 》I40《 chapter THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI of the Discourses,Machiavelli uses a single example in order to establish the rule that promises made by states under duress ought not to be kept;the example seems to be inadequate as appears at once if one reads Machiavelli's summary with ordinary care.If one turns therefore to Livy,one sees that the incident in question taken by itself is wholly irrelevant for supporting Machi- avelli's rule.To say nothing of the fact that in the.Livian story the obligatory character of promises made under duress is taken for granted by everyone,a Roman consul who had promised peace to the Samnites under duress recovers for the Romans the right to recommence war under favorable conditions by having recourse to an amazing piece of legal fiction sanctioned by sacred law.The leader of the pious Samnites,the victim of Roman piety, understandably felt that the Romans always put the appearance of justice on acts of fraud and were not ashamed to use in broad daylight mockeries of religion,mockeries of the mysterious power of the gods,as puerile cloaks for breaches of faith;for that Samnite thought that wars are just and pious by virtue of their necessity and not by virtue of religious techniques.While putting this judgment on Roman piety into the mouth of an enemy of Rome, Livy on this occasion says in his own name that in this case the Romans perhaps committed a breach of faith.188 All the more striking is Machiavelli's reticence;he does not even refer to Livy and hence to the simple Samnite's remark about the Romans' hypocrisy.We cannot deny that there is a shocking contrast between the simple rule laid down by the irreligious Machiavelli and the complicated evasion of the opposite rule by the pious Romans.The shock may make us aware of the hidden argument which he directs against his opponents:the principles of his opponents lead to unctuous hypocrisy because those principles are at variance with the nature of things.In the Io5th chapter of the Discourses,Machi- avelli explicitly quotes with approval some words from a speech by another enemy of Rome,the Volscian Messius,and immediately thereafter explicitly ascribes to Livy a thought which is expressed, and as it is expressed,in that speech:he imputes to Livy the senti- ment of a Livian character.But there is no reason why only that thought and not also other parts of Messius'speech should have to be regarded as thoughts of Livy.In that part of Messius'speech about which Machiavelli is silent,Messius says to his soldiers:"Do MACHLAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I4I《 you believe that some god will protect you?”And he means by this that no god will protect them.139 According to Machiavelli's rule for reading Livy as he applies it in this very passage,this denial of divine protection would have to be ascribed to Livy him- self.Yet it is not Livy but a Livian character who expresses that sentiment.If one reads the statement of Messius-Livy which we have quoted,in the light of the whole chapter in which Machiavelli quotes another statement of Messius-Livy,one sees that the senti- ment expressed in our quotation may well be ascribed to Machiavelli himself.It would appear then that Machiavelli stands in the same relation to Livy in which Livy stands to some of his characters: he states what he regards as the truth through sentences of Livy often unquoted but always alluded to;Machiavelli's Livy is a character of Machiavelli. By using a variety of characters as his mouthpieces,Livy was enabled both to expound the principles on which the Romans ad- mittedly acted or in which they believed,and to criticize them. His Histor y contains the truth about pagan Rome because it con- tains not only what one may call the official Roman version but likewise the known or presumptive judgment on Rome by Rome's enemies,and therewith the detection of the fraud inherent in the Roman version.As for Machiavelli,he uses Livy's work first as a counter-authority or a counter-Bible;he tacitly replaces the doctrine of the Bible by the doctrine of the Romans which is transmitted by Livy,or he replaces it by the doctrine of Livy.Thereafter he explicitly questions the authority of Livy and thus draws our attention to what he had done tacitly in regard to the Bible.To mention only one example,by stating that Livy's History is possibly defective in an important point,he makes us aware of the possibility that the Biblical records are defective in decisive points.Livy both expounds and criticizes Roman piety and pagan theology. To the extent to which Livy expounds pagan theology,Machiavelli can use him for suggesting an alternative to Biblical theology or for sowing doubts regarding Biblical theology.To the extent to which Livy criticizes Roman theology,Machiavelli can use him as a model for his own criticism of Biblical theology.By making Livy's criticism less visible than his conformism,he presents Livy as his model or transforms him into his model and thus indicates his own procedure.For there is hardly a single passage in either the Dis- 》I42《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI courses or the Prince in which Machiavelli unambiguously reveals his complete break with the Biblical tradition,although there occur in each of the two books many passages which are devoid of mean- ing if they are not taken as allusions to that break.These passages can easily be overlooked and if they are not overlooked their bearing can easily be minimized since they are,as it were,covered over by innumerable others which are either neutral with regard to the problem posed by the Biblical tradition,or else are tolerable from the point of view of believers whose charity is greater than their perspicacity.With some exaggeration one may say that Machiavelli uses Livy as a corpus vile by means of which he can demonstrate how he has tacitly proceeded in regard to the corpus nobilissimum.This twofold use of Livy is related to the twofold character of pagan Rome which was both the enemy of the Christian Church and the model for it. In Discourses II 2,Machiavelli notes that Livy's History is silent as to how the race of Porsenna,king of Tuscany,became extinct.He is here no longer concerned with pointing out the defective character of Livy's History.The remark on the extinction of Porsenna's race is the spearhead of a column of somewhat scattered observations concerning the oblivion of Tuscan things in general, and the cause of that oblivion.We hear next that the memory of most Tuscan things is lost and then that it was lost as a consequence of the destruction of Tuscan power by Rome.This fact made Machiavelli think,as he says,of the causes,and as we may add on the basis of what he does,in particular of the human causes through which the memory of ancient greatness is extinguished.These human causes are the changes of religion and the changes of lan- guage.Machiavelli develops this thought in Discourses II 5,where he refutes an argument allegedly proving that the world had a beginning and where he ascribes to all religions a human,not a heavenly,origin and,on the basis of this,a life span of between 1666 and 3000 years.Reflection on the policy pursued by"the Christian sect"induces him to assert that every new religion attempts to extinguish every vestige of "the old religion,"and induces him to “believe”in particular that the pagan religion destroyed all vestiges of the religion preceding it.The context suggests that the religion preceding the pagan religion was the Tuscan religion. However this may be,the Romans certainly destroyed the power 》I43《 of Tuscany and extinguished the customs and the language of the Tuscans.If we read somewhat more carefully Machiavelli's remarks concerning what the Romans did to the Tuscans,we see that the Romans did not destroy,and did not even attempt to destroy,the religion of the Tuscans;for instance,instead of destroying the image of the Tuscan Juno they made it their own.Hence Machia- velli's "belief”that the pagan religion did to the preceding religion what "the Christian sect desired to do to the pagan sect"is not more than a stage of his argument,a provisional thought which he discards almost immediately after he expresses it.The allegedly universal rule inferred from the policy of Christianity,and of Judaism,toward idolatry is a piece of fiction temporarily con- venient for Machiavelli's purpose.What remains as undeniable truth is the fact that Judaism and Christianity attempted to destroy every vestige of the pagan religion.Here again Machiavelli momentarily overstates the case by saying that"the Christian sect" destroyed “every memory of that ancient theology”by which he primarily means pagan theology.140 A few lines later he says that while Christianity attempted the complete destruction of every vestige of paganism,it failed in that attempt.The two overstate- ments perform one function.By assimilating paganism and Chris- tianity to each other in an absurd fashion,those statements draw our attention to the difference between paganism and Christianity. The Romans could have destroyed every vestige of the Tuscan religion if they had desired to do so,but they did not desire it; persecution of"the old religion,"and in particular “destruction of images,"is peculiar to the Biblical religion as distinguished from the pagan religion.It will do no harm if the allusion to this peculi- arity of Biblical religion reminds us of the hazardous character of Machiavelli's campaign.On the other hand,Christianity failed in its attempt to eradicate every vestige of paganism because it was compelled to retain the Latin and Greek languages and hence to preserve a considerable part of pagan literature,for instance"those books of Livy which the malignity of the times has not intercepted.” Christianity was compelled to permit and even to encourage the study of pagan literature.That study and the admiration for the pagan way of life which it aroused in a few minds could thus become the entering wedge for Machiavelli's criticism of Biblical religion.His praise of ancient Rome is an essential element of his 》I44《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI wholly new teaching,but it is also,and even chiefly,a mere engine of subversion or of what one might call his immanent criticism of the Biblical tradition.Admiration for ancient Rome was the only publicly defensible base from which he could attack the Biblical religion.The properly understood remains of paganism were "the fortress of our hope and salvation,"the solitary elevation which commands the enemy position and which is difficult of access to an army encumbered with baggage but not difficult for men lightly equipped.To apply to Machiavelli his own expression,not being able to blame Caesar he praised Brutus.Christianity,we must add in order to complete Machiavelli's statements,was forced to retain the Latin language because it was not,like Islam,a religion that conquered by force.Christianity was forced to preserve its enemy to some extent.It was then due to the"unarmed"character of primitive Christianity that Machiavelli was enabled to use Livy against Biblical religion.Christianity averted the dangers emanating from the relics of paganism by regarding them as unworthy of faith wherever they contradict the Biblical teaching.For instance, since the Bible is thought to teach that the world was created about 5,000 years ago,one regards the History of Diodorus Siculus as mendacious,“although it gives an account of 40,000 or 50,000 years."By refusing credence to the pagan historians,one arrives at the conclusion that what those historians report as regards the modes and orders of pagan Rome is not true and even is impossible and hence cannot be imitated.141 To refute this conclusion as well as all its questionable premises,Machiavelli must first restore the credibility of the pagan historians and especially of Livy.He does this,to begin with,in an exaggerated way by establishing the authority of Livy's History as a kind of Bible.But he must also use such relics of paganism as stem from explicit enemies of Biblical religion,and as are therefore particularly serviceable for correcting the Biblical version of the origins.He gives a specimen of this kind of inquiry by citing in Discourses II 8 a sentence stemming from pagan enemies of the Jews.Livy's History contains both the official Roman version and its correction by the enemies of Rome because Livy used not only Romans but also enemies of Rome as his mouthpieces.The Biblical authors do not use enemies of the Biblical religion as their mouthpieces.142 Biblical religion even attempted to suppress all vestiges of the thought of its enemies. 》I45《 Hence Livy's History is self-sufficient in the sense that it enables its reader to arrive at an impartial judgment about Rome,whereas the critical student of the Bible must rely on potentially or actually anti-Biblical literature in order to discern the truth about the Biblical religion.While the Bible is not self-sufficient in the sense indicated,one could however say that the Biblical tradition as transmitter of pagan thought contains the judgment of its enemies within itself. We conclude our discussion of Discourses II 13 with a brief survey of the principles of historical criticism indicated by Machia- velli.In order to be certain of something which one does not see or has not seen,one needs witnesses in whom one can have faith.A difficulty arises from the fact that the credibility of a witness depends to some extent on the credibility of the events to which he claims to have been a witness.What is "very remote" from"the ordinary and reasonable,"or what is miraculous,is in- credible.But reverence for a certain Roman historian,an"author- ity,"induces Machiavelli to "believe"that historian's report of an event which is very remote from the reasonable.Yet to say nothing of the ambiguity of the term "belief"as used by Machiavelli,he says soon afterward of one and the same actual event which hap- pened in ancient Greece that it was "impossible,"i.e.,impossible as a natural event,and that it was and is regarded by"the writers" as “rare and as it were,without example.”The writers contempo- rary with Machiavelli will have been under no compulsion to treat the“miracles”of the pagans as more than rare natural events.This passage shows how he would have achieved the transition from his thought about the Biblical miracles to fairly candid speech about them had he been in a position to do so.143 He demonstrates his tacit treatment of the Biblical miracles by his explicit treatment of incredible events reported by pagan historians:reports of miracles are at best exaggerated reports of rare events.Only reports of possible events are credible.One arrives at knowledge of the pos- sible by proper generalization from the seen particular.A history does not“create faith”if the possibility of what it asserts is not borne out either by present happenings or by proper generaliza- tion from present happenings.The crucial importance of miracles in the Biblical records compels Machiavelli to adopt as a provisional canon the rule that very extraordinary events reported in the Bible 》I46《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI for which there is no evidence stemming from men not believing in the Bible are not to be believed.He does not believe that one can doubt that there was once a flood through which almost all men perished because“all histories are full”of reports of such floods.Yet since the histories other than the Bible speak only of the destruction by floods of nearly all"inhabitants of a part of the world,"Machiavelli does not believe more than the qualified reports:he tacitly rejects the Biblical report of the Flood as an exaggerated report of a big flood somewhere in Asia.He explicitly says that the survivors of great floods—i.e.,we add,Noah and his family-are“all rude mountaineers who do not possess knowledge of any antiquity and therefore cannot leave such knowledge to their posterity.And if someone who did have such knowledge were to save himself,he would conceal that knowledge in order to make himself a reputation and a name and pervert that knowl- edge after his fashion."144 Any tradition transmitted through Noah would then be no better than fraud,although the Bible describes Noah as a just man.Needless to say,a possible event is not neces- sarily the same thing as an event which has indeed happened. Machiavelli gives some indications of the difficulties which pre- clude certainty as to nocturnal actions in remote places. Discourses II I4 does not properly speaking belong among the chapters in which Machiavelli draws our attention to the difficulty caused by the difference between Livy and Livy's characters.The chapter deals not with deceiving others,but with deceiving oneself. Its purpose is to show that humility is sometimes harmful or, more precisely,that“men often deceive themselves by believing that they can vanquish pride by humility.”The "text"which is alleged in order to "vouch"for this is taken from the same speech by an enemy of Rome from which Machiavelli had quoted in the preceding chapter.The"text"does not speak,as the heading and the beginning lead us to expect,of the humility of the Romans but of their patience and modesty.Nor does Machiavelli himself speak of the humility of the Romans;he speaks only of their patience and,when generalizing from the Roman case,he replaces patience by fear and cowardice:the quasi-promised example of harmful humility or of self-deception regarding the power of humility is not given.The lesson of the chapter is said to be"vouched for" first by Livy and then by the Latin praetor Annius who used cer- MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I47《 tain words which Machiavelli quotes and which are,of course, taken from Livy.Machiavelli's authority is then first Livy and thereafter Livy's authority,the Latin Annius.Livy's vouching for a certain truth is dependent upon Annius'vouching for it.Al- though Machiavelli refrains from saying so,the words used by Annius are as much put by Livy into Annius'mouth as were the words of Annius quoted in the preceding chapter.Annius as a speaker is a creation of Livy.By referring first to Livy and then to Annius,Machiavelli refers then in fact to one and the same source.What this means appears if we remember that,according to him,the Bible is of human origin,consists to a considerable extent of poetic fables,and must be read“judiciously,”i.e.,in the light of non-Biblical or even anti-Biblical thought.Given these premises he must raise the question “Who has spoken to a prophet?” if the prophet says that God has spoken to him,and he must answer that question in merely human terms:the words of God are words which the prophets ascribe to God or put into the mouth of God.It is not God who speaks through the mouth of the in- spired speakers or writers,but the Biblical writers who speak through the mouth of God.What we believe to be reading is the word of God,but what we do read is the word of the Biblical writers.God stands in the same relation to the Biblical writers as the characters of Livy stand to Livy.In the chapter following, Machiavelli first quotes in Latin some words taken from the same speech from which the quotations used in the two preceding chap- ters were taken;he ascribes those words to Annius without refer- ring to Livy;thereafter,he quotes explicitly from Livy,in transla- tion and in direct speech,a saying of another enemy of Rome; that saying had been quoted by Livy in indirect speech,and Livy had pointed out that it might be apocryphal.145Machiavelli omits this qualification.Continuing the argument of the preceding chap- ter,Machiavelli indicates how easily the true origin of utterances can be forgotten and how easily what in the remote past was a rumor can be transformed into a fact immediately accessible to present readers however unlearned.In the chapter following,he says first that Livy“makes”the Roman and the Latin armies equal in certain respects and thereafter that Livy“says”that these armies were equal in the respects in question. By this he seems to indicate that the creativity of Livy is not limited to the speeches which 》I48《 occur in his History but may THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI extend to the deeds which he re- ports.146 In conclusion we note that all the individuals whose utterances are cited in Discourses II I3-18 are enemies of Rome. We have been left in doubt as to whether,according to Machia- velli,Livy“made”his characters not only"say"what they said, but also “made”them“do”what they did according to his History. There is only a single passage which dispels that doubt,namely, the beginning of Discourses III 31.“Among the other magnificent things which our historian makes Camillus say and do in order to show what the make of an excellent man ought to be,he puts into his mouth these words...."Machiavelli questions here the distinction that he had made earlier between those who reason about political life or give rules for political life or determine how princes ought to live,and those who describe the lives of princes or who are historians.By this he does not deny that precisely"the good historians”present,among other things,models of action for the instruction of posterity.For there is a fundamental difference between describing great actions or lives which can serve as models and presenting created or imaginary models like Xenophon's Cy- rus.147 Machiavelli now suggests that“our historian”is not merely an historian,a man who describes what men have done,but that he is also a man who teaches“Oughts”through making his ex- cellent characters say and do things which excellent men ought to say and do,i.e.,through acts of fiction.This remark enables us better to understand what Machiavelli had indicated earlier re- garding the superiority of the best kind of writer to doers and speakers of the highest order:the writer is a creator.We also understand somewhat better how he conceived of the Biblical writers.We may try to express his thought as follows:the Biblical writers present themselves as historians,as human beings who report what God said and did,while in fact they make God say and do what in their opinion a most perfect being would say and do;the ground of what presents itself as the experience of the Biblical writers is their notion of a most perfect being;that notion is so compelling that the“Ought"comes to sight as"“Is”;this connection is articulated by the ontological proof;there is no way which leads from "the things of the world"to the Biblical God; the only proof which commands respect,although it is not a gen- uine proof,is the ontological proof.It is hardly necessary to add MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I49《 that Machiavelli's explanation in merely human terms of the root of Biblical belief presupposes his denial,his destructive analysis of the phenomenon known to us as the conscience.Nor will it be surprising that the other quotations from Livy which occur in Discourses III 3I are ascribed to Livian characters without any reference to Livy himself. By consciously making some Roman captains say and do what excellent captains ought to say and do,Livy magnifies the Roman republic or ascribes to it a perfection which is perhaps impossible. He"celebrates"Rome as Machiavelli says as the end of the first chapter of the Discourses.There is only one other occasion on which Machiavelli speaks again of Livy's“celebrating"Rome or Romans. Discourses III 25 deals with“the poverty of Cincinnatus and of many Roman citizens."148 This noble poverty is“celebrated by Livy with golden words"which Machiavelli quotes in the origi- nal.Immediately afterward he quotes in translation certain words of Cincinnatus himself,The dictator Cincinnatus had relieved a Roman army,which through the fault of the consul commanding it,had become besieged by its enemies;the consul and his army had contributed to the raising of the siege and the complete de- feat of the enemy.Through the words quoted by Machiavelli, Cincinnatus deprived the consular army of every share in the rich booty which the dictator's army had taken,and deprived the consul himself of his command because of his proved ignorance of how to be a consul.We are no longer concerned with the fact that we find here in Machiavelli's own text the example of a consul who did not know how to be a consul,although Machiavelli had told us earlier that the consuls elected by the Romans in the good old times were“always most excellent men."Or could a man be“a most excellent man"and at the same time a poor consul?It ap- pears that the words of the Livian character which are not quoted in Latin are not “golden”precisely because they show the value, if not of gold,at least of what can be obtained by gold.If we turn to Livy,we see that Cincinnatus'noble poverty was not al- together freely chosen.Whether rightly or wrongly,his violent son Caeso had been accused of homicide and had been heavily fined;the fine was cruelly exacted from Cincinnatus,who had to "sell all that he had."It is for this reason that he lived on the famous small farm where he was found behind the famous plow 》I50《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI by the men who brought him the message that he had been named dictator.While celebrating with golden words the noble poverty of a great Roman,Livy also reveals those causes of his poverty which were not golden.Because he consciously created perfect cap- tains Livy is able to indicate the difference between the“Ought”149 and the "Is,"between imagined perfection and“factual truth.” By merely alluding to the“factual truth”in regard to Roman poverty and related subjects and thus to some extent concealing that"factual truth,"Machiavelli deliberately impairs the self- sufficiency of Livy's History.He thus assimilates Livy's History to the Bible as he conceived of it. After having indicated that Livy makes one of his captains say and do certain things in order to show how an excellent man ought to act,Machiavelli owes us an answer to the question regarding the function of this blurring of the difference between history and political philosophy.After having shown in Discourses III 32 that one can make an army obstinate against its enemy,not only"by virtue of religion,"but by some“great villainy”as well,he turns in the next chapter to the question of how a captain can make his army confident of victory.Among other things,the captain must con- ceal or minimize the things which when viewed from afar suggest dangers.Apparently no such salutary deception is possible regard- ing things open to everyone's easy inspection.“The Romans used to make their armies acquire that confidence by way of religion.” The Romans controlled what is essentially elusive and hence fright- ening by means of religion.One may create obstinacy by virtue of some great villainy,but one needs religion for creating hope. No good and wise Roman captain would ever start an action without having used auguries and auspices,thus having convinced the soldiers that the gods were on their side.How great an importance the Romans attached to religion or how strongly they disapproved of the neglect of religion is shown best by"the words which Livy uses in the mouth of Appius Claudius."Appius Claudius had to defend in an assembly of the people the sacred custom of treating the auguries and auspices,i.e.,the foundation of the pagan religion, as a preserve of the patricians,or the sacred custom of keeping the plebs at a distance from those sacred things.The defense had become necessary on account of the machinations of domestic enemies of the patriciate—of leaders of the laity as laity,as one might MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I5I《 say.150 Among the words used by Appius Claudius there are some which he puts into the mouth of plebeians who mock religion. Those mockers regard the very foundations of religion,the things which assure men of divine help,as “little things.”We do not know this from the mouths of the mockers themselves.The Roman critics of the Roman religion do not express their opinion within our hearing.Perhaps they do not dare to speak in public on this subject and therefore are condemned to failure and oblivion.Livy uses characters of one of his characters in order to inform us about Roman criticism of the Roman religion.Appius Claudius adopts the words “little things”as applied to religion and its ground;so does Livy who puts these words into Appius Claudius'mouth; so does.Machiavelli who uses these words in his own name when commenting on the Livian speech.The expression or the thought migrates from the minds of the mockers through the mouths of a Livian character and of Livy himself to Machiavelli.The movement, started by nameless characters of a Livian character,reaches its end in Machiavelli.The mockers are mistaken,say Appius Claudius, Livy and Machiavelli in unison,for they are blind to the usefulness of religion: the belief of the people in“those little things”is the source of the well-being of the commonwealth.The question is whether the mockers were altogether mistaken.The leaders of certain enemies of the Romans tried to use their own soldiers'and the Romans'concern with"little things”in order to defeat the Romans.Their calculation was not altogether unreasonable;they did not put their reliance in“little things”but in other men's reli- ance on "little things,"i.e., in a big thing.But they came to grief because they forgot that the Roman leaders did not put their trust in"little things."Machiavelli quotes some words said by Livy which the historian put into the mouth of the Roman dictator Cin- cinnatus addressing his master of the horse.The enemies of the Romans put their trust,says the dictator,not,as one should,in arms and courage ,but in chance,or,as Machiavelli interprets this,in very minor or“weak”accidents or in things of little weight or in vain things.Both Livian characters who are introduced in this chapter as mouthpieces of Livy are patricians;the one who speaks to the people defends the little things;the other who speaks to another patrician disparages the little things.The little things mentioned by the first speaker are not the same as those which 》I52《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI the second speaker has in mind: the former are the auguries and the auspices proper,the second are any irrelevant accidents which for very weak reasons appear to be comforting or frightening.But there is a connection between the two kinds of little things:the Roman religion served the purpose of mastering chance through the belief in gods and the worship of gods who,as perfect beings,are thought to favor the just or pious.Machiavelli here presents Livy as revealing the truth about the Roman religion by using as his mouthpieces Roman authorities addressing two different types of audience.151 When speaking of the Livian mouthpieces in Discourses III 33, Machiavelli does not say,as he ordinarily does,that the characters in question“said”what they said but that they"say”it:the chapter which is severely limited to Roman "matter"does not deal with“ancient history.”The chapter ends with a brief discussion of a mode of procedure employed by Fabius in a campaign "in a new land against a new enemy";this mode"deserves to be imi- tated."Not Appius Claudius nor Cincinnatus but Fabius serves as a model.But nowhere in the chapter does Machiavelli say any- thing against moderns who fail to imitate the Romans.Perhaps there are moderns who imitate Appius Claudius and Cincinnatus. On the other hand,when Machiavelli returns to the chief theme of the chapter in Discourses III 36,he stresses the inferiority of “the militia of our times”to the Roman militia.The only quotation occurring in III 36 is taken from a Livian speech,and it touches on the subject of religion.It is the only quotation occurring in the Third Book in which gods are mentioned;but"the gods"and “auguries”are preceded respectively by"men"and "the edicts of commanders."Machiavelli does not tell us to whom the speech is addressed.If we turn therefore to Livy,we see that the present case characteristically differs from the two cases discussed in Dis- courses III 33.In the present case a patrician,a dictator,defends the sanctity of religion first in an assembly of his army and then in an assembly of the people,not against nameless plebeian mockers but against another patrician,his master of the horse,Fabius him- self.Fabius had waged a battle contrary to the dictator's strict orders and in the absence of favorable auspices;he had won a splen- did victory.Thereupon the dictator became blinded with anger, burning with fury and athirst for the scourging and the decapitation MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I53《 of the offender.Yet what appeared to the dictator as holy zeal ap- peared to Fabius as uncontrollable cruelty,insane envy and unbear- able pride,as he did not hesitate to say in a public assembly.Strongly supported by the victorious army,by the people and by the senate, Fabius was neither executed nor scourged but lives gloriously for- ever in Machiavelli's pages as a successful defender of liberty.152 Quoc creinoM,nhi li,oia.led his judgment on Rome to some extent through judgments which he put into the mouths of his characters.In this respect,the difference between enemies of Rome and Romans,between Livian characters and characters of those characters,and among the various audiences addressed by those characters are important.We see no reason for doubting that he meant what he indicated in this respect.We judge differ- ently of his assertion that Livy makes characters say or do things in order to teach how excellent men ought to conduct themselves. In Discourses III 31 he says that Livy makes one of his characters say and do certain things"in order to show what the make of an excellent man ought to be.”This assertion regarding Livy's inten- tion is not borne out by the Livian speech to which he refers. There occur only two other passages which resemble the cited Machiavellian remark.In Discourses III 36 he says that through Livy's testimony one can learn from certain words of a Roman leader"what the make of a good militia ought to be."In Discourses III 38 he says that through certain words which Livy makes one of his characters say,one can observe“what the make of a captain in whom his army can have confidence ought to be."In both cases he does not even claim that it was Livy's intention through his report or his fiction to teach an“Ought.”We suggest this explana- tion.Machiavelli momentarily presents Livy as a conscious creator of fictitious or imaginary perfection for the reason stated above. He therewith obscures the character of Livy's History and thus indirectly blurs the difference between the intention of Livy the historian and his own intention.As soon as his own intention be- comes Machiavelli's chief theme,as it does from Discourses III 35 on,he must again bring this difference to light. Machiavelli has discovered new modes and orders which he opposes to the old and established modes and orders.He has dis- covered and explored territory hitherto inaccessible to men of his 》I54《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI kind.He begins a war against the established order—a new war in a new land against a new enemy of the highest possible reputation. But he is a captain without an army.He must recruit his army. He can recruit it only by means of his books.The last section of the Discourses gives the necessary indications regarding his cam- paign and its preparation.He had told us earlier that in order to be confident of victory,an army must have confidence in the pru- dence of its captain.The proof of Machiavelli's prudence is the Discourses.The make of a captain in whom his army can have confidence is shown by Machiavelli with the words which Livy "makes"one of his characters "say"to his soldiers.In Livy,the quoted words are framed partly in indirect and partly in direct speech.The direct speech begins with the sentence“My deeds, not my words,I wish you to follow."153 The sentence,strictly understood,applies less clearly to ordinary captains than to a captain like Machiavelli.The chapter in which this quotation occurs is as such devoted to the perfect captain simply.154 Yet Machiavelli indicates that the chapter and a part of the preceding chapter form a single"discourse,"the theme of which is less the perfect captain simply than the perfect captain with a new army facing a new enemy in a new war.Machiavelli recommends in this discourse particularly the procedure of Marius,a most prudent captain. Machiavelli chooses Marius because there does not happen to be an equally good example in the career of Fabius although it is Fabius,not Marius,who waged war against a new enemy in a new country.Before engaging in battles,Marius tried to accustom the eyes of his soldiers to the sight of a most terrifying enemy:he made them see that the new enemy which had the highest possible reputation was in fact a disorderly multitude,encumbered with baggage,with useless arms,and some of them even unarmed.For this is the way in which the established order,the venerable tradi- tion contemporaneous with Machiavelli presented itself to him: as oblivious of the fundamental issue and therefore rent into many warring schools or factions,as encumbered with innumerable texts, treatises and discourses,and as boasting of many proofs which were no proofs.Such enemies could be depended upon,like blind Samnites,to forget to occupy"the fortress of our hope and salva- tion”to which he refers in the next discourse(III 39).155 That chapter is the last in which Machiavelli refers to the difference MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I55《 between Livy and his characters.Of all the references to this sub- ject in the entire book,the last reference,which contains the last explicit quotations from Livy or from any other writer,is the clearest.Machiavelli quotes first a Livian character,then he quotes Livy while explicitly distinguishing the words of the Livian character from the words said by Livy himself,and finally he quotes some words which Livy“makes"his character"say.”Of the two sentences which,according to Machiavelli,Livy makes his characte r say, one sentence is obviously said by Livy in his own name:Machiavelli makes Livy make his characters say what Livy himself says or thinks.This clearest reference occurs in the only chapter in the book in which Machiavelli adumbrates what“science” is.156 It is the only chapter in which he sets forth as clearly as possible both the character of his science and the character of his adumbration or figurative presentation of his science;for that figurative presentation is identical with his use of Livy.The chapter deals,not unnaturally,with the relation between war itself and hunting as an image of war,or rather with the question of how a captain can acquire the habit of finding his bearings in“new coun- tries."Its heading says“That a captain ought to be a knower of sites"or places.157 Machiavelli's captaincy requires,as we have seen, that he be a most excellent knower of the proper places in Livy,to say nothing of the proper places in the Bible. We have now considered almost all I I passages in which Machia- velli refers to the problem caused by the difference between the words of Livy and the words of Livy's characters.We are not yet prepared to discuss the two remaining passages which occur in Discourses II 23 and III 15,the latter being the central passage among the II passages under consideration.For the present we must leave it at a remark about Discourses II 23.That chapter is in every respect the center of the three sermons on Livian texts. Only in that chapter do we find all the features that are peculiar to Machiavelli's treatment of Livy in the Second and Third Books.158 The chapter is of special significance because it combines the treat- ment of two themes,each of which is treated in isolation in one of the two other sermons.The first sermon(II 3)is the only chapter of the Discourses which literally begins and ends with one and the same quotation from Livy,namely,the text of the sermon. The quotation attracts our attention for two reasons.In the first 》I56《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI place,it is the only quotation from Livy occurring in the whole division to which the chapter belongs(II I-Io).Above all,it is the first quotation from Livy as Livy that occurs after Machia- velli's open attack on Livy or his destruction of Livy's authority (I 58). In his first sermon Machiavelli comments on Livy's harsh saying"Meanwhile Rome grows by Alba's destruction."Machia- velli makes clear at the end of the chapter that the emphasis is on “two words,"namely,"grows(by)destruction.”His comment is to the effect that one can make a city great both by love,or charity, and by force,or by fear.159 Livy's saying deals exclusively with force.Machiavelli's comment on that saying,however,speaks,to say the least,with equal emphasis of love.He creates the impression that he is a commentator who silently or reverently mitigates the harsh teaching of a sacred text.By this fact he draws our atten- tion to the harshness of the text.160 In the central sermon he indicts "the middle way"between terror and kindness or between destroy- ing defeated enemies and reconciling them.He thus takes up the theme of the first sermon,love and fear.Both the way of love and the way of fear have their uses and,as the first sermon has shown, even the judicious combination of both ways is sensible.What cannot be tolerated is"the middle way,"half measures,the weak compromise.In the very center of the central sermon Machiavelli censures a half measure once taken by Florence;he there defends a policy of harshness against a reason advanced by seemingly wise men;he says that the same reason would make impossible every harshness and every punishment.We see that Machiavelli silently passes over from the indictment of a“middle way”to the indict- ment of an extreme way-of a way of thinking which allows of nothing but love or charity and is therefore incompatible with the nature of things.The extreme opposite to that extreme is not the way of universal and perpetual terror,which no one even seem- ingly wise ever counselled,but the judicious combination of love and terror by virtue of which one either reconciles enemies after one has terrified them into submission or else destroys them if they cannot be reconciled.The first extreme,we see now,is the Christian teaching which forbids resistance to evil;the second extreme is the"natural"teaching;then the middle way between these two extremes can be presumed to be the combination of non- resistance to evil with resistance to evil-a combination which re- MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I57《 minded Machiavelli of the policy of the Romans so severely cen- sured by the simple Samnite.161 Needless to say,Machiavelli knew that the Bible teaches not only love but fear as well.But from his point of view the Biblical combination of love and fear,as dis- tinguished from the natural combination,is fundamentally vicious: the false principle of the primacy of love necessarily leads to all extremes of pious cruelty or pitiless persecution.Not without rea- son is the Second Book,the anti-Biblical Book par excellence, completely silent about God:it speaks only of gods.162 It is neither desirable nor necessary to repeat here what had to be said about Machiavelli's single New Testament quotation and its implication regarding the jealous God of the Bible who demands zealous love. The central sermon contains only one quotation consisting of words which Livy is said to have put into the mouth of a character,namely, of Camillus.163 At the beginning of the quotation,Livy-Camillus says that the gods leave the Romans perfect freedom either to destroy the Romans'enemies or to forgive them:the gods do not command their worshippers to forgive their worshippers'enemies nor do they command their worshippers to destroy their wor- shippers'or the gods'enemies.Paganism left human prudence free to choose the wisest course of action. The third sermon(III ro)opens with a Livian text which gives Machiavelli occasion for censuring an error common to all or most modern men,or which legitimates such censure.The text speaks of a Roman commander who refused to entrust himself to Fortuna.164 This gives Machiavelli occasion to speak of the moderns'entrusting to others the care of their freedom and sur- vival,or of the moderns'trusting in someone other than them- selves.When they send one of their captains on a military mission, they forbid him to engage in battle,and in so doing they believe themselves to imitate Fabius Maximus.But this is nonsense;Fabius did not avoid battle but refused to give battle on ground favorable to his terrifying enemy.The command given to the modern cap- tains is in effect “Join battle as it suits your enemy and not as it suits you."By commanding their captains to avoid battle,they believe that they command them not to entrust themselves to Fortuna but in fact they do command them to entrust themselves to Fortun a,and they forbid them to tempt or try Fortuna. The ancients tried Fortuna;the moderns trust in Fortuna. 》158《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI Machiavelli's use and non-use of Livy is the key to his ques- tioning of the highest authority.He acquired the right to question that authority by first surrendering to it without any reserve. When he was confronted,near the beginning of the Discourses, with a difference of opinion between two sets of writers,he adopted the opinion of those writers who in the opinion of many are wiser than their opponents.Toward the end of the First Book,he made use of the power which had thus accumulated to attack all writers by appealing from authority as such to reason.He thus laid the foundation for what he does in the last two Books,for the intransi- gent and therefore reserved application of the maxim "reason versus authority."The Second Book opens with the censure of the ven- eration for antiquity as such,i.e.,of what one might call the root of the belief in authority.The first chapter of the Second Book opens with an attack on“a most weighty writer”mentioned by name.Only in the last two Books does Machiavelli refer in chapter headings to authorities to whom a thinker as thinker could be subject:the authority of the Romans and the authority of Moses.165 Only in the last two Books does he question“opinions”in chapter headings.166 The center of the central Book(II I0-24)contains the most striking and most coherent,if properly dispersed,refer- ences to the issue"reason versus authority."In II 1o Machiavelli attacks a"common opinion,"but after having established the truth concerning the subject matter without the assistance of any authority,he refers to Livy as the truest witness for the truth. After pointing out in the next chapter the imprudence of trusting in a prince who,perhaps because he is too far away,can help his friends less by his power than by his name,Machiavelli presents us in II 12 with his scholastic disputation in which he adduces seven reasons pro and con from authority and eight reasons pro and con from reason;he reaches his decision without having had recourse to any authority and without having referred to any author.After devoting the next three chapters to Livy and his character Annius,an enemy of the Roman people,and the fol- lowing chapter to the inferiority of“all Christian armies”to the Roman armies,he attacks"the universal opinion of many"ac- cording to which ancient Rome cannot be imitated because of an alleged progress made in the meantime(II 17).This chapter too is a disputation,although less visibly so than II 12.167 Here again MACHLAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I59《 Machiavelli reaches a decision without having had recourse to any authority and without having referred to any author.In II 18, he prefers “manifest reasons”to authority as clearly as possible. On the basis of mere reason he attacks the greatest authority inimi- cal to Rome,that authority being,as we would expect,Hannibal. Yet in order to corroborate the opinion which reason has estab- lished in opposition to the greatest authority,he refers to the authority of traditional political philosophy or to the authority of the tradition of the cultivation of reason.In order to understand this apparent recourse to authority,one would have to start from the fact that immediately afterward in the same chapter Machia- velli speaks of that sin of the Italian princes than which none is greater,namely,the sin of trusting in cavalry rather than in infan- try.The examples which he adduces in order to establish the superiority of infantry to cavalry are less "true"than "beautiful." One of the examples is that of Regulus,who had the presumption to trust that he could defeat cavalry and even elephants with in- fantry;he was defeated,but for no other reason than that he did not have sufficient trust in his infantry:his presumption was not strong or great enough.Carmignuola,on the other hand,presumed that he could defeat infantry with cavalry;he failed,but after having dismounted his cavalry he won:he replaced the wrong presumption by the right presumption,and in accordance with this he behaved humanely toward his defeated enemies.168 In II 19 Machiavelli asserts that a single contemporary example suffices for proving that infantry is superior to cavalry and therewith that the Roman opinion regarding the respective value of infantry and cavalry is superior to the modern opinion. With a view to this "seen”superiority,he demands that one"believe”“that all other ancient orders are true and useful”;this“belief”would have obvi- ated all important modern sins.Lacking such salutary belief,one cannot do better than do the German cities,whose relative success depends however on the recognition by all Germans of “the author- ity”of the emperor—of a prince"who does not have forces"or who,as we may say,is as unarmed as Heaven has become in mod- ern times.In II 24,which is immediately preceded by the central sermon,Machiavelli points out the imprudence of trusting in for- tresses rather than in one's own virtue and prudence;while estab- lishing this fact he refers again to "the authority of the Romans," who“were wise(also)in all their other orders.”Machiavelli,we see again,does not hesitate to oppose in the proper context one authority to another authority,one notion of presumption to an- other notion,or one belief to another belief.169 While Machiavelli frequently defers to Livy's authority and sometimes questions Livy's authority,he never tries to “save"an opinion of Livy after having shown that it is not evidently cor- rect.The only writer mentioned by name who receives such reverential treatment at his hands is Tacitus.170 We must leave open the question whether he awards this honor to Tacitus because he regarded him as the greatest narrator of the deeds and speeches of hateful tyrants,or as the greatest historian who spoke about the origins of Judaism and Christianity,or as both.He certainly did not regard Tacitus as an authority in the strictest sense.As far as we know,the statement which he cites as a statement of Tacitus in order to "save"the opinion that it expresses was invented by Machiavelli:so far from bowing to an authority,Machiavelli treats himself as an authority.171 Besides,his treatment of authority in the group of chapters which as it were begins with the apocryphal statement of Tacitus,and which is located near the center of the Third Book is even more outspoken than that which is found in the center of the Second Book.172 Let us for the time being call that group of chapters(III I9-23)the Tacitean subsection.The Tacitean subsection presents itself as a unit since the chapters of which it consists are linked with each other by explicit refer- ences occurring at the end of four of its chapters.It does not form an independent section of the Discourses.Yet since it consists of five chapters,it reminds one of those sections of the Discourses which consist of five chapters:the sections on the religion of the Romans(I II-I5),on gratitude(I 28-32),on the reduction of the West to Eastern servility(II I-5),on the difference between the conquests made by the Romans and those made by the Jews and others(II 6-Io)and on the origins(II II-I5).The Tacitean subsection is immediately preceded by the chapter in which Machiavelli contrasts the ancients who believed that by ascending a nearby and fairly low elevation they could be saved for some time,and the moderns who believed in false news about a victory. It is followed by the chapters devoted to poverty and to women. The chapter on women contains the only reference to Aristotle 》I6I《 occurring in the Discourses;that reference corresponds to,and thus prepares,the only reference to the Bible as Bible occurring in the Discourses;in the chapter in which Machiavelli refers to the Bible,he draws our attention to what Moses did on his own authority;that chapter immediately precedes the chapter in which he speaks of Livy's transforming an“Ought"into an"Is"by making Camillus say and do certain things.173 This must suffice as regards the suggestive context of the Tacitean sub-section. The Tacitean sub-section opens with a story according to which the cruel and rude commander Appius Claudius failed,and the kind and humane commander Quintius won a victory.From this story Machiavelli draws the tentative conclusion that in order to rule a multitude it is better to be humane and merciful than to be proud and cruel.But Tacitus arrived at the opposite conclusion. Machiavelli therefore considers how both his opinion and Tacitus' opinion can be saved.His opinion,which is based on some evidence, is threatened by the mere fact that Tacitus held the opposite opin- ion:so great is the authority of Tacitus.To save both opinions, Machiavelli makes a distinction.The severity recommended by Tacitus is appropriate for ruling men who are one's subjects al- ways and in every respect.The kindness and mercy recommended by Machiavelli are appropriate for ruling one's fellow citizens in a republic.But since republics are as such superior to monarchies, the opinion of Tacitus may be said to be true regarding the inferior kind of regime whereas Machiavelli's opinion is true of the superior kind of regime:Machiavelli's opinion is truer than Tacitus'opin- ion.In accordance with this,the next chapter(III 20)continues the praise of gentleness and enlarges it so that it becomes almost the praise of moral virtue in general;Machiavelli praises humanity, frankness, charity,mercy,chastity,liberality and affability by using the examples of Camillus,Fabricius,Scipio,and Cyrus.A difficulty arises from the facts that Cyrus was a monarch and that Machiavelli in the preceding chapter had recommended to mon- archs severity rather than kindness.But one could say that the present chapter is concerned with the question of how com- manders should treat foreigners rather than their soldiers;and one could say above all,that the Cyrus there praised,being the work of Xenophon,is a fictitious being.At any rate,after having in fact restated the view of classical political philosophy,which is 》162《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI represented in Machiavelli's books by Xenophon more than by any other writer,Machiavelli shows in the next chapter(III 21) that the opposite qualities,i.e.,certain moral vices,bring fame and victories as great as those brought by the moral virtues mentioned. He shows this by contrasting Scipio with Hannibal.The greatness of a captain is not dependent on morality nor reduced by immorality but depends entirely on amoral virtue,on strength of mind,will or temper,not to say on strength of the soul.Both morality and immorality have their uses because both love and fear sway human beings.But both the qualities which make a captain loved and those which make him feared can become dangerous to him.There- fore a judicious combination of both,a sort of “middle way”is required.We see that the central chapter of the Tacitean subsection takes up the central theme of the central sermon.In the next chap- ter(III 22)Machiavelli turns from the contrast between "Hanni- bal and Scipio(who)accomplished the same effect,the one with praiseworthy,the other with detestable things"to the contrast between Manlius Torquatus and Valerius Corvinus who both used only praiseworthy means.That is to say,he returns from the contrast between morality and immorality to the less radical con- trast between severity and humanity.Both men were equally glori- ous captains although Manlius was harsh and Valerius was gentle. Manlius killed his own son;Valerius never hurt anybody.Manlius' commands were so harsh that"Manlian commands"became by- words.At the same time-and this is emphasized by Machiavelli- he was full of reverence.In order to understand why Manlius was compelled to proceed as strictly and severely as he did,one must “consider well the nature of Manlius from the very moment when Livy begins to mention him."The first thing which Livy mentions of Manlius Torquatus is that he was somewhat slow of speech and unready with his tongue.He had an imperious and inhuman father who hated him because of his speech defect and deprived him of every kind of decent upbringing so that he retained a rude and rustic mind.Machiavelli also refers to Manlius'killing of "that Gaul."As Livy tells us,that Gaul was a man of exceeding size who had challenged the bravest Roman to single combat,who had waited for his opponent"in stupid glee and-for the ancients have thought even this worth mentioning-with his tongue thrust out in derision,"and who was killed by the much smaller Manlius:“To MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I63《 the body of the fallen man Manlius offered no other indignity than to despoil it of one thing,a chain which,spattered with blood,he cast round his own neck.”Manlius must have reminded Machia- velli who had read the Bible“judiciously,”i.e.,in the light of what he had learned to some extent from Livy,of Moses on the one hand and of David on the other.One difference between Manlius and the great men of the Old Testament is noteworthy in the present context:David cut off the head of Goliath who had defied the armies of the living God.174 Whatever may be true of David,and of Moses-for of Moses,who was a mere executor of the things which God commanded him,only a presumptuous man would reason¹75-Manlius at any rate did what he did“compelled first by his nature and then by the desire that the commands which his natural appetite had induced him to give,be obeyed."Manlius had and needed strength of mind,will or temper.Valerius how- ever was under no compulsion “to punish the transgressors”and could indulge his humaneness;he was humane also as a speaker. The relation between Manlius and Valerius reminds one of the relation between the founder and the preserver,say,between the severe Septimius and the philosophic Marcus Aurelius.176 In spite of this,or because of this,but certainly in spite of what he had said when taking issue with Tacitus,Machiavelli believes that the way of Manlius is more praiseworthy and less dangerous than the way of Valerius as far as the leading citizens in a republic are concerned. For Manlius'way"is altogether in favor of the public and has no regard at any point to private ambition,for by such a mode one cannot acquire partisans since one shows oneself always as harsh to everyone and loves nothing but the common good."As for princes,the opposite is true:they must walk in the way of Valerius or of Xenophon's Cyrus.A citizen of a republic who would imi- tate Valerius would in ordinary circumstances do harm not only to his fatherland but to himself as well:he would become suspect of striving for tyrannical or royal power.We see that Machiavelli eventually succeeds in saving completely what he called Tacitus' opinion:Tacitus'preference for harshness is appropriate in the case of the preferable regime,whereas Machiavelli's initial preference for gentleness is appropriate in the case of the inferior regime. Tacitus'opinion is truer than Machiavelli's opinion.Machiavelli presents to us the spectacle of his tacit conversion-of his being 》I64《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI converted by Tacitus to Tacitus'creed,of his being converted from his initial belief in mercy and love to the belief in harshness and terror.Tacitus does not use any reason in order to convince Machiavelli,but Tacitus'powerful presence induces Machiavelli to seek better and better reasons in favor of the belief which Tacitus, the better part of Machiavelli,had instilled into Machiavelli's mind. In the Tacitean subsection,Machiavelli makes public his tacit con- version.Whereas in the scholastic disputation the teaching of the poetic fables was true as regards the superior case,177 in the Tacitean subsection the opinion of Tacitus is true as regards the superior case.In conclusion we note that according to Machiavelli,those who write on how a leader ought to act are in favor of gentle- ness whereas the historians like Livy are undecided:the historians come closer to the truth than do the teachers of“Oughts.” Among the many difficulties which the discussion just sum- marized presents,two seem to be particularly important:is severity incompatible with ambition,and are the harsh qualities merely op- posed to the gentle ones(humanity,charity,mercy and so on)? These two questions are answered in the next chapter,the 23rd of the Third Book,which we understand more easily if we re- member that the 23rd chapter of the Second Book is the central sermon.In one of the preceding chapters,M.Furius Camillus had appeared as a representative of the gentle captain.We now learn that Camillus resembled the harsh Manlius rather than the gentle Valerius.Camillus,like Manlius,benefited his fatherland and did some harm to himself since he became hated for his severity:each of the two captains did harm to his ambition.This is not to deny that ambition is best concealed by intransigent and fanatical par- tisanship for the common good or by zealous severity.Hence the central reason that Camillus became hated was not his severity but his creating the suspicion that out of pride he wished to become equal to a god,namely,to the Sun.178 Yet it was less pride or ambi- tion than its manifestation by an overt act which made Camillus hated.Camillus,"the greatest of all captains,"whose deeds and speeches are to some extent fictitious,effected the transition from gentleness to severity or from love to terror,and his compelling passion was,in both states,his pride or ambition.The Tacitean subsection was opened by a reference to the cruel and rude consul Appius Claudius who,to say the least,reminds the reader of the MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》165《 Decemvir Appius Claudius,Rome's legislator par excellence,who was doomed because of his attempt to establish a tyranny and whose laws retained their force despite his violent death.Appius Claudius too failed because he attempted to achieve the transition from mercy to cruelty and from humility to pride without exercising the necessary patience.179 The fact that Appius Claudius and Camillus can be regarded as more or less successful combinations of the type Manlius and the type Valerius implies that the primary phenomenon is the opposition between these two types.Manlius is akin to Papirius Cursor who,out of extreme jealousy,thirsted for the blood of Fabius.180 The Tacitean sub-section is silent about Fabius:Fabius is a captain of a kind entirely different from the captains mentioned in the Tacitean sub-section.The Tacitean sub- section is silent about Machiavelli's model,for Tacitus is less Machia- velli's model than his creation.181 The Discourses end with praise of Fabius:a Roman remains Machiavelli's model to the end.This fact is misleading if it is not “well considered.”The Discourses begin with an equating of the new modes and orders discovered by Machiavelli and the ancient modes and orders.His revolt against the tradition comes to sight first as submission to"the authority of the Romans."Yet before bowing to this or that authority,one must have bowed to the prin- ciple of authority .The principle of authority finds its primary expression in the equating of the good and the ancestral.This equa- tion implies the assumption of absolutely superior or perfect begin- nings,of a golden age or of a Paradise.The ground or origin of the perfect beginning is the supremacy of the Good or of Love or,as we might also say,the rule of Providence.The origin of evil is a fall.Progress is return,betterment is restoration.To perfect oneself means to return to the beginning when men were good,to pre-historical beginnings.Especially if the pre-historical beginnings are assumed to be unknowable,one must rest satisfied with the imitation of a founder-captain who at least excels all other men, if he is not semi-divine or divine.These few words concerning the comprehensive theo-cosmological scheme implied in the prin- ciple of authority will suffice for the understanding of Machia- velli's thought.The comprehensive scheme must be rendered more precise or narrowed down in order to become salutary.Bowing to the principle of authority is sterile if it is not followed by surrender 》166《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI to authority itself,i.e.,to this or that authority.If this step is not taken one will remain enmeshed in the religious longing or the religiosity so characteristic of our centuries,and will not be liberated by religion proper.Since Machiavelli was aware of this relation between the principle of authority and authority itself,his criticism of the authority of the Romans,of the last authority which remained for him,coincides with his criticism of authority as such. We repeat here only two of his indications:in the beginning men were not good but"corrupt,"and the foundation is not a single almost superhuman act at the beginning but a continuous activity of successive rulers who are unambiguously human.182 The most coherent discussion of authority as such occurs in the section on the founder-captain(III I-I5).Mixed bodies,i.e.,states or religions,can be preserved only if they are brought back,from time to time,to their beginnings,or if they are "renewed."In their beginnings,mixed bodies must have had some goodness within them; otherwise they could not have grown:Machiavelli no longer says that in the beginning,mixed bodies,or men,were good simply.He quotes a statement of the physicians concerning the bodies of men; the parallelism of human bodies and mixed bodies shows that mixed bodies in their beginnings are necessarily imperfect.The renovation of a mixed body is a rebirth,and through the rebirth a resumption or recovery of new life and new virtue:the renewed mixed body both is and is not the mixed body in its pristine state.The renewed mixed body could be said to be the mixed body in its pristine state if the renovation consisted in the resumption of the observance of all old laws and orders.In the classic example discussed by Machia- velli,which is the rebirth of Rome after her capture by the Gauls, the Romans,while"resuming the observance of justice and reli- gion,""renewed all orders of their ancient religion”:Machiavelli does not say that the Romans renewed all their ancient orders.While the early pagan Roman republic"renewed all orders of its ancient religion,"St.Francis and St.Dominic,who renewed the Christian religion,succeeded only because of the potency of “their new orders."Speaking of another kind of renovation,Machiavelli indi- cates in what the beneficent effect of all renovation consists.He illustrates that other kind of renovation by seven Roman examples. Five were spectacular executions of outstanding citizens,the sixth was the action of Papirius Cursor against Fabius and the seventh MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》16 7《 was the accusations against the Scipios.The renovation of mixed bodies consists of the renewal of fear in the minds of their members or of putting in men that terror and that fear which the original founders had put into their partisans.This,and not the return to the old modes and orders,is the essence of the return to the begin- ning.Return to the beginning means in all cases introducing new orders.183 Therefore in particular Machiavelli's return to the ancient modes and orders means of necessity the devising of new modes and orders.Ordinary return to the beginning means return to the terror accompanying the foundation.Machiavelli's return to the beginning means return to the primeval or original terror which precedes every man-made terror,which explains why the founder must use terror and which enables him to use terror.Machiavelli’s return to the beginning means return to the terror inherent in man's situation,to man's essential unprotectedness.In the beginning there was terror.In the beginning men were good,i.e.,they were willing to obey because they were afraid and easily frightened.The primacy of Love must be replaced by the primacy of Terror if republics are to be established in accordance with nature and on the basis of knowledge of nature.The beginnings of men were imperfect and low.Man is exposed,and not protected,essentially and from the beginning.Therefore the perfection envisaged by both the Bible and classical philosophy is impossible.But for the same reason for which perfection,and in particular the initial as well as the ultimate Paradise is impossible,there cannot be a Hell.Man cannot rise above earthly and earthy humanity and therefore he ought not even to aspire beyond humanity.Such aspiration merely leads to the most terrible and wholly unnecessary inhumanity of man to man.The tradition which Machiavelli attacks had asserted that "the things which have a bad beginning or principle can never have a good end."But Machiavelli trusts in a“most true"Sallustian text which,after he has improved it to suit his purpose,says that “all evil examples stem from good beginnings."184 Through understanding what he regarded as the fundamental error of the Great Tradition,Machiavelli was compelled to seek and enabled to find fundamentally new modes and orders.Although the communication even of the new modes and orders is dangerous, Machiavelli communicates them out of concern for the common good.He wishes that they be adopted.The new modes and orders 》168《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI are supported by evident reasons.But those reasons cannot be made evident to the people,at least not until it is too late.On the other hand,being unarmed,Machiavelli cannot compel the people to have faith in him.Not only does he completely lack force;he does not even wish to use force.This kind of difficulty was overcome in the olden times,and could be overcome in the present time by recourse to God.Machiavelli has no moral or other objections to pious fraud.Induced not only by his lack of force but by his humanity as well,and trusting in the credulity of most men,he preserves the shadow of the established or at least of the ancient, or“retains the name”while abolishing the substance.By adapting himself to the opinion of the people,he imitates Brutus who,in order to liberate his fatherland,played the fool by speaking,seeing, and doing things against his opinion,and thus pleased the prince; for since"there is nothing in the world except the vulgar,"the most powerful ruler is the people.Yet this accommodation to the opinions of the people endangers his communication;while the new modes and orders might thus be made acceptable,they will be accepted in the wrong spirit.Machiavelli therefore needs readers who are discerning enough to understand not only the new modes and orders but their ultimate ground as well.He needs readers who could act as mediators between him and the people by becoming princes.If he is an unarmed prophet,or a captain without an army who must recruit his army by means of his books,he must first recruit the highest officers directly responsible to him and com- missioned by him.Owing to "the envious nature of men,"he can- not expect to find his first adherents among the men of his genera- tion.He can come into his own only after the natural death of his generation,the generation of the desert,as it were.He must appeal to the elite among the coming generations.185 One is tempted to describe Machiavelli's relation to the young as a potential conspiracy.That chapter of the Discourses which is by far the most extensive is devoted to the subject of con- spiracies,i.e.,of more or less violent changes of modes and orders.186 He opens the chapter with a warning against conspiracies,i.e., against the most subtle,if not the most extreme,form of actively dis- obeying and opposing princes,and he re-enforces that warning by quoting a“golden sentence,”not indeed of David or Paul,but of Tacitus himself.He then shows under what conditions conspiracies MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I69《 are bound to be not only praiseworthy but successful as well.The conspirator must fear to be betrayed by his fellows.The only pro- tection against this danger consists in not communicating one's in- tention to anyone until the moment for the deed has come.You may indeed say anything to one man alone because if he accuses you to the prince,his "Yes"will have no greater weight than your“No.”Bu t“of writing everyone must beware as of a rock.” Conspiracies against the fatherland or a republic are less danger- ous than a conspiracy against the prince.They can be brought to a happy issue by the use of deceit and art alone.But even when conspiring against a republic,one must beware of writing as is shown by the example of the Catilinarian conspiracy.In an in- corrupt republic the attempt is hopeless. One is tempted to say一 and it is one of Machiavelli's grandi prudenze not to resist such temptations-that in an incorrupt republic the thought of conspir- ing against the republic cannot occur to a citizen.A few pages after saying this,he shows by the examples of Spurius Cassius and Manlius Capitolinus that the thought of conspiring against the re- public does occur to citizens of an incorrupt republic.Since both Spurius Cassius and Manlius Capitolinus failed because Rome was incorrupt in their time,Machiavelli wonders whether their failure was necessary.A man may begin,he concludes,to corrupt the people of a republic,but the lifetime of one man cannot possibly suffice to corrupt a republic to the extent that he himself will derive benefit from the corruption:the work which he begins can be completed only by his successors,the young.Even if a man who begins to corrupt a republic could live long enough to finish his work,he would necessarily lack the required patience and thus be ruined.Machiavelli's argument silently shifts from more or less dangerous conspiracies against the fatherland or the common good which,if successful,benefit the conspirators,to patient long-range corruption,which is neither dangerous to the corrupter nor pro- ductive of crude benefits to him.We prefer to say that,being a teacher of conspirators, he is not himself a conspirator.It goes with- out saying that the man who,from the point of view of the estab- lished order,necessarily appears as a corrupter may in truth be the first discoverer of those modes and orders which are simply in accordance with nature. It also goes without saying that whether writing is dangerous or not depends to a considerable extent on 》I70《 THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI whether the writing in question serves a conspiratorial purpose or merely long-range corruption.Machiavelli goes on to say that if a man desires to seize authority in a republic and to impress his evil form on a republic,he must have at his disposal a matter which lictle by little,from generation to generation has become disordered,or a matter which has been disordered by time;for since all things of the world,and therefore in particular mixed bodies,have a limited life span,they necessarily become disordered by the mere passing of time.187 In order to see how near in time Machiavelli believed himself to be to those young men or potential princes or to the conspirators proper who might put into practice the new modes and orders,we must therefore consider what stage of corruption,in his opinion,his matter had reached by his time. The matter on which Machiavelli attempts to impress his form is "the Christian republic."He is certain that despite the rebirth brought about by St.Dominic and St.Francis the Christian republic has reached an advanced stage of corruption:its end may be near. Just as Livy deplored the decay of "the ancient religion,"at the time at which Christianity was emerging,Machiavelli notes the decay of Christianity at the time at which a new dispensation may be imminent.He is certain that the Christian religion will not last forever.It is "the present religion."No republic is perpetual.All religions,just as all other mixed bodies and as all simple bodies, have a life-span,ordained by heaven,beyond which they cannot live;they may die earlier.Religions or sects change two or three times in 5,000 or 6,00o years.It is difficult to say whether Machia- velli regarded as the beginning of Christianity the birth of Jesus or the Crucifixion or the reign of Constantine.Given this ambiguity, his statement implies that,as far as the life span ordained by heaven is concerned,Christianity could well last at least for another cen- tury and a half,and might last for about two more millennia.Yet its actual life span will depend decisively on what its human sup- porters and its human enemies will do.The outcome will depend on prudence and on chance."Two continuous successions of vir- tuous princes are sufficient for conquering the world."What might happen if two virtuous Muslim princes-men comparable to Philip and his son Alexander the Great—would reign in succession?Be- sides,Machiavelli's silence about the Reformation need not be due to ignorance;the fact(if it is a fact)that I5I7 is the date of MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I7I《 the latest event to which he refers in the Discourses does not prove that the Discourses as we have the book was completed prior to Machiavelli's having become aware of Luther’s epoch-making ac- tion.At any rate,Machiavelli saw two ways in which the ancient modes and orders might be destroyed.One was the irruption of bar- barians,especially of the peoples of the North,such as the Scythians, who are at present held back by the Germans,the Hungarians,and the Poles.The other would be the rejuvenation of the West.It is the purpose of the Discourses to prepare this rebirth through awakening primarily the Italian-reading youth.188 The modes and orders which Machiavelli proposes are not simply the sound modes and orders,but new modes and orders. It is of their essence that knowledge of them is not only not coeval with man but is related negatively to Christianity or is post- Christian.The new modes and orders are brought to light by reason analyzing data partly supplied by the Christian republic. The new modes and orders,which are supported only by reason, emerge essentially in opposition to specific old modes and orders which are supported only by authority and force.Machiavelli's critique of the old modes and orders therefore takes on the char- acter of a war waged by an unarmed man,of a spiritual war.This war can be described,with the somewhat free use of Christian terms,as a war of the Anti-Christ or of the Devil who recruits his army while fighting or through fighting against the army led by God or Christ.189 His hope for victory is grounded on two things.His having discovered the new modes and orders and their ultimate ground merely through the use of his natural faculties makes it certain that others,if only a few,can be fully converted to the truth. Besides,the corruption of the established order makes it certain that at least his proposal of new modes and orders will receive a friendly hearing from a large audience.The corruption of a mixed body consists in its disintegration.Machiavelli is con- fronted less by one united mystical body than by a combination of parties which at the outset are entirely hostile to him.Yet every hostile combination can be divided"with a little art,"provided one is so situated that one can sustain the first attacks.In domestic affairs one can divide one's enemies by frightening some or by corrupting some or by appealing to the love of some for the com- mon good;the central mode,i.e.,corruption,is equally applicable 》I72《 THOUGHTSON MACHIAVELLI in war,as Machiavelli emphasizes by the order of his examples. Generally speaking,one can divide any hostile combination by bringing some sacrifice.One must certainly use every artifice which gives the composite body an opportunity to disintegrate and one must avoid every move which would put the enemies under a necessity to remain united or to recover their unity.It is this necessity to divide and thus to defeat the particular hostile combination confronting him which made Machiavelli surpass Livy and devise an entirely new strategy of spiritual warfare.190 But his hope for the success of his teaching rests on the certainty that one of the two parties of which the Christian republic con- sists191 will be attracted by his proposals.One may describe that party provisionally as the Ghibellines,as men who would have gone with Frederick the Second of Hohenstaufen.More precisely that party consists of those who “esteem the fatherland more than the soul"or who,driven and perhaps blinded by passion for the liberty of their fatherland,are more attached to their earthly fatherland than to the heavenly fatherland,or who are lukewarm Christians. They are people"of little faith,"i.e.,of little Christian faith who, impatient of alleged or true abuses of ecclesiastical authority,do not hesitate to attack ecclesiastical authority with more than masculine courage but become afraid once they realize the ultimate conse- quence of their action.192 We have now answered the question of how Machiavelli can hope for the success of his venture.In saying that the unarmed prophets have failed,he exaggerates in order to bring to light the difficulty with which he is faced.The example of the Roman legis- lator par excellence,Appius Claudius,shows that a law can survive the violent death of the legislator,not to say that it can acquire its full vigor through the violent death of the legislator.Yet Appius Claudius had been appointed by the Roman people to frame its laws.The example of Agis shows that by patiently refraining from premature action and by merely leaving writings to posterity one can bring about the desired change without any harm to oneself. Yet Agis did not desire to introduce new modes and orders but merely to restore the ancient modes and orders.By far the most important model for Machiavelli was the victory of Christianity. Christanity conquered the Roman empire without the use of force,merely by peacefully propagating its new modes and orders. MACHIAVELLI's INTENTION:The Discourses 》I73《 Machiavelli's hope for the success of his venture is founded on the success of Christianity.Just as Christianity defeated paganism by propaganda,he believes that he can defeat Christianity by propa- ganda.The Prince,which is dedicated to an actual prince had led up to the suggestion that Machiavelli imitates Moses,the armed prophet.The Discourses, which are dedicated to potential princes, lead up to the suggestion that Machiavelli imitates Jesus,the un- armed prophet.Yet Machiavelli combines the imitation of Jesus with the imitation of Fabius.Fabius,in contradistinction to Decius, judged the slow assault to be preferable and reserved his impetus for the end;choosing the safer way,he gained a more gladdening victory,remaining alive,than the victory which Decius gained by his death.For Decius,imitating his father,sacrificed himself for the expiation of the Romans.193 Besides,whereas the victory of Christianity was ascribed to the unconquerable decree of Divine Providence,Machiavelli's hope rests on his assumption that human prudence can conquer Fortuna.Classical political philosophy had taught that the salvation of the cities depends on the coincidence of philosophy and political power which is truly a coincidence 一 something for which one can wish or hope but which one cannot bring about.Machiavelli is the first philosopher who believes that the coincidence of philosophy and political power can be brought about by propaganda which wins over ever larger multitudes to the new modes and orders and thus transforms the thought of one or a few into the opinion of the public and therewith into public power.Machiavelli breaks with the Great Tradition and initiates the Enlightenment.We shall have to consider whether that En- lightenment deserves its name or whether its true name is Ob- fuscation.