The essential writings of Machiavelli (2 page)

1.
Clizia
, Preface; see also
The Discourses
, Book II, Preface and chapters 39 and 43, and Book III, chapter 1, and the
Florentine Histories
Book III, chapter 1, and Book V, chapter 1; cf.
The Prince
, chapter 6.

2.
As J.G.A. Pocock argues in
The Machiavellian Moment
(Princeton University Press, 1975).

3.
This Lorenzo is not to be confused with his grandson of the same name, to whom
The Prince
is dedicated.

E
DITOR’S
N
OTE

Born in a city which more than any other spoke in a way
that was ideal for expressing itself in verse and prose.

N
ICCOLÒ
M
ACHIAVELLI

When Machiavelli set out to write his final great work,
Florentine Histories
, his contract with Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici stipulated that Machiavelli would compile “the annals and chronicles of Florence” but also specified that it was up to him in what tongue he chose to do so, “Latin or Tuscan.” In the early 1500s Latin was the language of intellectual discourse and high literature. Machiavelli, throughout his life as a literary and political writer, championed a new and vibrant Italian idiom based on the Tuscan speech of Florence, an idiom which the great Florentine writers of his time who chose not to write in Latin could bolster with Latin or Latinate words.

The contract to write
Florentine Histories
was drawn up in 1520. At that time Machiavelli had been exiled from Florentine political life for eight years and was living on his farm in straitened circumstances after a decade of being in the center of Florentine politics as the foremost adviser to the Gonfalonier Piero Soderini. But in 1520, when Soderini offered him a prestigious and profitable position in Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik), Machiavelli made a surprising choice: After years of desperate attempts to return to political life, he now declined Soderini’s offer. He opted instead to become Florence’s official historiographer at about half the salary he had earned a decade earlier as Soderini’s right-hand man. To Machiavelli, being a literary figure was of greater importance.

This interest in elegant writing manifested itself throughout Machiavelli’s career. Judging by what has come down to us, his prose first came to notice when he was thirty. We have discourses written in an official capacity, pieces such as “Discourse on Pisa” and “On Pistoian Matters,” which are incisive analyses of urgent political problems that Florence was facing. They are remarkable not only for their immediate sizing up of issues, but also for their clear and beautiful prose. In a piece believed to be from that time, “How Duke Valentino Killed the Generals Who Conspired Against Him,” Machiavelli describes the brutal and cunning means by which Cesare Borgia (Duke Valentino) eliminated rivals who crossed him. The controlled prose describing the mounting menace of Borgia’s murderous tactics is given a touch of lyricism as Machiavelli describes the landscape, retarding the action:

Whoever approaches Senigallia has on his right the mountains, with foothills that come so close to the sea that there is often only a narrow strip of land between them and the waves. Even in those places where the foothills are further inland, the strip is never more than two miles wide. Senigallia lies a bow’s shot from these foothills, and less than a mile away from the shore. There is a little river by the city that washes the walls facing toward Fano.

Machiavelli’s manuscripts reveal how carefully he edited his own work: words crossed out, sentences chiseled down for concision, a lofty Latin word replaced by a simpler and more direct Italian one. The slightly hyperbolic and pompous
redundando in utilità
(literally: “redounding in benefit”) of a first draft is changed into the simpler
retornando utilità
(“returning benefit”).

The translator must keep in mind that words change their meanings and nuances over the centuries:
Virtù
, for instance, in modern Italian, primarily means “virtue” in the modern English sense, but in Machiavelli’s Italian it had a range of meaning depending on the context. It principally reflected the Latin
virtus
—excellence, manliness, strength, vigor, bravery, and courage. In Renaissance Italian it also took on shades of “skill,” “competence,” and “virtue” in the modern sense. Machiavelli uses the word in many forms throughout his works:
virtuoso, virtude, virtutis, virtuosissimo, virtuosissimamente. Religione
is another word that has different shades of meaning in Machiavelli’s Italian. Mostly it means “religion” in the modern sense, but it can also reflect the Latin original
religio:
conscientiousness, moral obligation, duty.

Throughout his works Machiavelli was refracting ancient texts, particularly in
The Discourses on Livy
. Where he was specifically responding to Latin and ancient Greek texts, I have translated the passages from the original in the footnotes.

—

Machiavelli took himself seriously as an important literary figure of his time. When in
Orlando Furioso
his contemporary Ludovico Ariosto has the poet return from the sea of writing to the shore of reading, he encounters a crowd of literary figures of the day—but not Machiavelli.
^*
He was angry at being omitted.

Today, Machiavelli’s most widely read work is
The Prince
, and the three books of
The Discourses on Livy has
a more limited readership. But the vast body of Machiavelli’s important and compelling works is unjustly neglected. This volume presents a wider panorama of Machiavelli’s many guises as a political philosopher and literary figure. His work has been clouded by centuries of controversy, but as you read through
The Prince, The Discourses on Livy
, and his historical and literary masterpieces, a clearer sense of their powerful, multilayered texture emerges—precisely the texture that has led to so much debate and disagreement.

What has perplexed readers for the past five centuries is that Machiavelli’s most popular work,
The Prince
, seems to espouse the ruthless acquisition and maintenance of power by a single ruler, while his significantly more far-reaching book,
The Discourses on Livy
, advocates republican forms of government. How can these two incompatible sides of Machiavelli be reconciled? It is widely believed that
The Discourses on Livy
corresponds to his fundamental beliefs: he interprets the great Roman historian’s
History of Rome
as offering viable models to be emulated in his own time.
The Prince
, on the other hand, is seen as offering viable classical models to a single ruler. Machiavelli hoped that this ruler would be one of the Medici, who in appreciation might restore him to his former high position in politics.

The Essential Writings of Machiavelli
is divided into four parts. The first presents the major political works:
The Prince
, and selections from
The Discourses on Livy, The Art of War
, and
Florentine Histories
. The second part contains Machiavelli’s political essays and treatises. These lesser-known pieces are from the period when Machiavelli was at the height of his political career. They range from strategic analyses of urgent and critical issues that Florence was facing beyond its borders during the first decade of the 1500s to lighter pieces, such as Machiavelli’s irreverent “On the Nature of the French.” The selection of fiction, social satire, historical prose, and theater in the third part shows perhaps the greatest range of Machiavelli’s literary talent.
The Mandrake
is considered one of the most well-crafted theatrical pieces of the Italian Renaissance. It is the only play of the period that is still widely performed in our time. The final part is a brief selection of Machiavelli’s letters to friends and family. They reveal Machiavelli as a caring, witty, sensitive man, and contain some of his most beautiful writing.

*
Albert Russell Ascoli and Victoria Kahn, in
Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 1.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Burton Pike for his encouragement, support, and knowledgeable editorial advice throughout this project. I am also grateful to Albert Russell Ascoli for his encouragement: I benefited from both his advice and his extensive publications over the years on Machiavelli and the Italian Renaissance. I am also grateful to Daniel Javitch for his editorial recommendations, to Nelson Moe, and to Beth Hadas for her insights into Machiavelli’s comic prose. I am especially thankful to Judy Sternlight, my editor at Modern Library, for her tireless support and helpful knowledge of the Renaissance, to Vincent La Scala, and to Jessica Wainwright.

I am particularly grateful to Columbia University’s libraries and the help of Karen Green, the Librarian of Ancient and Medieval History and Religion. Columbia’s substantial Italian Renaissance collection was of great help for the annotation and interpretation of the texts.

—
Peter Constantine

P
OLITICAL
W
ORKS

T
HE
P
RINCE

The Prince
is the first modern treatise of political philosophy, and over the centuries it has remained one of the most influential and most widely read works. It is of outspoken clarity, and yet is one of the most enigmatic works in history. It tells in clear terms how to gain power, how to keep it, and how to wield it, and has often been seen as the product of cold cynicism. Despite its clarity, however, centuries of readers have not been able to agree on what its principles actually are
.

The Prince
was written around 1513 while Machiavelli was in exile from Florence, after the republican government of Piero Soderini was ousted by the Medici. He wrote
The Prince
in the hope of gaining favor with the Medici, but unfortunately did not succeed
.

During Machiavelli’s lifetime
The Prince
circulated in manuscript form and was only published posthumously, in 1532
.

N
ICCOLÒ
M
ACHIAVELLI
TO
H
IS
M
AGNIFICENCE
L
ORENZO
DE’
M
EDICI
¹

Those who wish to win the favor of a prince will generally approach him with gifts of what they value most or what they believe will most delight him. Hence we see princes being offered horses, arms, vestments of gold, precious stones, and similar accoutrements worthy of their grandeur. Wishing to present myself to Your Magnificence with a token of my deepest respect, I have found among my possessions nothing that I value or esteem higher than my knowledge of the deeds of great men. I have acquired this knowledge through my long experience of modern affairs and a lifelong study of ancient times, all of which I have weighed and examined with great diligence and brought together into this small volume, which I am now offering to Your Magnificence. Though I deem this work unworthy of being in Your illustrious presence, my confidence in Your benevolence persuades me that it will be accepted, and that Your Magnificence will recognize that I cannot offer You a greater gift than the prospect of Your understanding in the shortest period all that I have experienced and learned over so many years and with so much danger and hardship. I have not filled this volume with pompous rhetoric, with bombast and magnificent words, or with the unnecessary artifice with which so many writers gild their work. I wanted nothing extraneous to ornament my writing, for it has been my purpose that only the range of material and the gravity of the subject should make it pleasing. Nor do I wish it to be thought presumptuous that a man of low and humble condition like myself should presume to map out and direct the government of princes. But just as a cartographer will descend into the plains in order to study the nature of the mountains, and will then climb the highest peaks in order to study the low-lying land, so, too, only an exalted prince can grasp the nature of the people, and only a lesser man can perceive the nature of a prince.

I hope therefore that Your Magnificence will accept this humble gift in the spirit in which it is offered. Should You condescend to read and consider it carefully You will perceive in its pages my profound desire that Your Magnificence will rise to the greatness that Fortune and Your qualities promise. And should Your Magnificence deign to look down from the lofty summit of Your eminence to these lowly depths, You will see how I have suffered undeservedly Fortune’s great and continuing malignity.

1.
Lorenzo de’ Medici (1492–1519) was the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent.