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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2021
This essay offers an alternative to influential interpretations of elites, peoples, and senates in Niccolò Machiavelli's theory of mixed republics. It analyzes in greater depth both Machiavelli's ascription of the morally objectionable and politically dangerous trait of insolenzia to the nobles as a social class; and his justifications for the establishment of senates as institutions that partially remedy the problem of aristocratic insolence—justifications that depart from traditional Ciceronian and Polybian standards. Machiavelli demonstrates in The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories that republics with senates, such as ancient Rome, manage to mollify aristocratic insolence, while those lacking them, like modern Florence, permit such insolence to proliferate unchecked. Moreover, Machiavelli intimates, republics that collectively gather nobles within senate chambers are afforded the opportunity to entirely eliminate aristocratic insolence. The essay concludes with an analysis of senatorial institutions in Machiavelli's “Discursus on Florentine Matters.”
For comments, criticisms, and sage advice I heartily thank Yuna Blajer, Danielle Charette, Steven Klein, Matt Landauer, Natasha Piano, and Catherine Zuckert, as well as Ruth Abbey and three anonymous reviewers for the Review of Politics. I am also grateful to Emily Salamanca and Noelle Norona for excellent research assistance.
1 Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe (De Principatibus), composed circa 1513 and published in 1532, ed. G. Inglese (Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1995), hereafter P; Machiavelli, Discorsi [1513–19], ed. C. Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997), hereafter D; and Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine [1523], ed. Franco Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli,1962), hereafter FH.
2 See Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958) 260; and Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 76–81.
3 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 260.
4 Skinner, Machiavelli, 77–78.
5 See John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Filippo Del Lucchese, The Political Philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Christopher Holman, Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018); Ronald J. Schmidt, Reading Politics with Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Yves Winter, Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); John P. McCormick, Reading Machiavelli: Scandalous Books, Suspect Engagements, and the Virtue of Populist Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018); Gabriele Pedullà, Machiavelli in Tumult: The “Discourses on Livy” and the Origins of Political Conflictualism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); and Camila Vergara, Systemic Corruption: Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-oligarchic Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). For critical evaluations of this scholarly literature, see Zuckert, Catherine H., “Machiavelli: Radical Democratic Political Theorist?,” Review of Politics 81, no. 3 (Summer 2019): 499–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marc Stears, Jérémie Barthas, and Adam Woodhouse, “On Machiavelli as Plebeian Theorist,” Theoria 66, no. 161 (Dec. 2019): 108–16; and Katherine Robiadek, “For the People: Deepening the Democratic Turn in Machiavelli Studies,” Political Theory 49, no. 4 (Dec. 2020): 686–99, https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591720976115.
6 See, for example, Gilbert, Felix, “On Machiavelli's Idea of Virtù,” Renaissance News 4, no. 4 (Winter 1951): 53–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Price, Russell, “The Theme of Gloria in Machiavelli,” Renaissance Quarterly 30, no. 4 (Winter 1977): 588–631CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. M. Shumer, “Machiavelli: Republican Politics and Its Corruption,” Political Theory 7, no. 1 (Feb. 1979): 5–34; and Harvey C. Mansfield, “On the Impersonality of the Modern State: A Comment on Machiavelli's Use of Stato,” American Political Science Review 77, no. 4 (Dec. 1983): 849–57.
7 I will make clear what I consider to be qualified or unmitigated attributions of insolence to the nobles or the people.
8 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 235, emphasis added.
9 See Dio Cassius, Roman History, vol. 9, Books 71–80, trans. Earnest Cary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927); and Herodian, History of the Empire, vol. 1, Books 1–4, trans. C. R. Whittaker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).
10 See Livy 2.21. Machiavelli's consistent affiliation of insolence with avarice, cruelty, and ambition suggests an affinity with Aristotle's notion of pleonexia. See Gordon Arlen, “Aristotle and the Problem of Oligarchic Harm: Insights for Democracy,” European Journal of Political Theory 18, no. 3 (July 2019): 393–414. Zuckert, on the contrary, argues that it is incorrect to attribute a “moralistic” condemnation of vices, such as avarice, to Machiavelli: see Zuckert, “Machiavelli: Radical Democratic Political Theorist?,” 502. Even if this were correct, Machiavelli certainly levels rather frequent political condemnations of such vices. See Arum, Eero, “Return to First Principles: Political Renewal and Innovation in Machiavelli's Discourses,” Review of Politics 82, no. 4 (2020): 525–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Of the transgressors named in D 3.1—the sons of Brutus, the decemvirs, Spurius Maelius, and Manlius Capitolinus—only Maelius is not a noble, although he is an exceedingly wealthy plebeian. On D 3.1 more generally, see Arum, “Return to First Principles.”
12 On Machiavelli's full-scale critique of aristocratic republics such as Sparta, Carthage, and Venice, see Tejas Parasher, “Inequality and Tumulti in Machiavelli's Aristocratic Republics,” Polity 49, no. 1 (Jan. 2017): 42–68.
13 For a Machiavellian formulation of the corruption-inequality-domination nexus, see Camila Vergara, “Populism as Plebeian Politics: Inequality, Domination, and Popular Empowerment,” Journal of Political Philosophy 28, no. 2 (June 2020): 222–46.
14 See the monographs cited in note 5 above, as well as Jeremie Barthas, “La composizione del Principe di Machiavelli e la restaurazione dei Medici a Firenze. Per un nuovo paradigma interpretativo,” Rivista storica italiana 131, no. 3 (Dec. 2019): 761–811.
15 Machiavelli discusses how good armies that lose excellent commanders often become “insolent” (D 3.13). Whether this serves as an indirect application of insolence to peoples enrolled in armies is doubtful: after all, Machiavelli's examples here are Alexander the Great's army after his death and Roman legions during the Civil Wars. Machiavelli explicitly argues that militaries which begin as popular armies are no longer in fact civic entities once they have served under one commander far away from their patria for many years (i.e., in this case, Alexander's army in Asia, and Rome's in Gaul or in Greece) (D 3.24). Machiavelli also mentions that conquered “subjects” tend to become insolent if commanded with excessive leniency by occupying forces (D 3.19); but this example does not distinguish between local nobles and peoples among the sudditi. This same indeterminacy applies to Machiavelli's invocation of “insolence” among Rome's foreign enemies, the Latins (D 2.1, 2.14) and the Veientes (D 2.25).
16 See Livy 9.33–34.
17 See Livy 2.41–43; and Plutarch, “The Life of Tiberius Gracchus,” 10.1–3.
18 See, for instance, James Hankins, Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 484; Ascoli, Albert Russell, “‘Vox Populi’: Machiavelli, Opinione, and the Popolo, from the Principe to the Istorie Fiorentine,” California Italian Studies 4, no. 2 (2013): 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Francesco Bausi, Machiavelli (Rome: Salerno, 2005); Robert Black, Machiavelli (London: Routledge, 2013); Humfrey Butters, “Machiavelli and the Medici,” in The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli, ed. John M. Najemy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 64–79; Mark Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 75–78, 86; Mark Jurdjevic, A Great and Wretched City: Promise and Failure in Machiavelli's Florentine Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Mario Martelli, “Machiavelli e Firenze dalla repubblica al principate,” in Niccolò Machiavelli: Politico Storico Letterato, ed. J.-J. Marchand (Rome: Salerno, 1996), 15–31. See Mario Martelli's introduction to his edition of Machiavelli's Il Principe (Rome: Salerno, 2006), 15–31; Quint, David, “Narrative Design and Historical Irony in Machiavelli's Istorie Fiorentine,” Rinascimento 43 (2003): 31–48Google Scholar; and Giovanni Silvano, “Florentine Republicanism in the Sixteenth Century,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. G. Bock, Q. Skinner, and M. Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41–70.
19 See John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 84–85.
20 See ibid., 89–95.
21 See ibid., 137–38.
22 Admirably unusual in this respect is Jurdjevic, A Great and Wretched City, 163.
23 For a more favorable assessment of Machiavelli's view of Salvestro, see ibid., 163–64.
24 See Najemy, A History of Florence, 167–72.
25 See ibid., 289.
26 See John P. McCormick, “Faulty Foundings and Failed Reformers in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories,” American Political Science Review 111, no. 1 (Feb. 2017): 212.
27 Christopher Lynch argues that the gradual disarming of Florence is one of the central themes, perhaps the central theme, of the Histories. See Lynch, “War and Foreign Affairs in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories,” Review of Politics 74, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 1–26.
28 For demonstrations of Machiavelli's rhetorical strategy of leveling political critiques subtextually in the Histories, see Charette, Danielle, “Catilinarian Cadences in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories: Ciceronian Humanism, Corrupting Consensus and the Demise of Contentious Liberty,” History of Political Thought 39 (2018): 439–64Google Scholar; and Danielle Charette and Michael Darmiento, “A Tribune Named Niccolò: Petrarchan Revolutionaries and Humanist Failures in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories,” History of European Ideas, 44, no. 8 (2018): 1046–62.
29 See Skinner, Machiavelli, 76–81; and Maurizio Viroli, Founders: Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 117, 127, 146.
30 Machiavelli's criticisms of, in particular, Athens for failing to provide an institutional place for its nobles early in the Discorsi (D 1.2) are significantly scaled back later in the book when he praises the Athenian “republic” (D 1.29, 1.58, and 2.2).
31 See Plutarch, “The Life of Cleomenes,” 10.3–5.
32 Machiavelli's source, Justin (22.2), reports that Agathocles convokes the senate in Syracuse's Gymnasium to discuss policy before massacring them.
33 See Thucydides 4.46–48.
34 According to Livy (23.2), Pacuvius declares the following to the Capuan people—words which perhaps were not lost on Machiavelli: “You may now impose justice on this despicable and disreputable senate . . . without risking your lives in vain attempts to storm the houses of individual senators, fiercely guarded by their clients and slaves. Punish them such as they are here and now: unarmed, unaided and confined in the senate chamber.”
35 See John P. McCormick, “Subdue the Senate: Machiavelli's ‘Way of Freedom’ or Path to Tyranny?,” Political Theory 40, no. 6 (Dec. 2012): 717–38; and John P. McCormick, “Machiavelli's Greek Tyrant as Republican Reformer,” in The Radical Machiavelli: Politics, Philosophy, and Language, ed. F. Lucchese, F. Frosini, and V. Morfino (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 337–49.
36 See, again, Lynch, “War and Foreign Affairs in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories,” 1–26.
37 Recent scholarship on the Florentine Histories suggests that Machiavelli communicates intense disappointment that, in vanquishing the ciompi, Florence missed the opportunity to incorporate permanently the plebe, civically and militarily, into the republic's politics. See Winter, Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence, 167–91; McCormick, “Faulty Foundings and Failed Reformers,” 213–14; Amanda Maher, “The Power of ‘Wealth, Nobility and Men’: Inequality and Corruption in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories,” European Journal of Political Theory 19, no. 4 (Oct. 2020): 512–31; and Christopher Holman, “‘Gli Umori Delle Parti’: Humoral Dynamics and Democratic Potential in the Florentine Histories,” Political Theory 48, no. 6 (Dec. 2020): 723–50.
38 See McCormick, Reading Machiavelli, 69–108.
39 See Machiavelli, “Discursus Florentinarum Rerum Post Mortem Iunioris Laurentii Medices,” in Opere, vol. 1, I Primi Scritti Politici, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997), 733–45, henceforth DF. On the historical context of the composition of the “Discursus,” see Najemy, A History of Florence, 434–41.
40 Maurizio Viroli, “Machiavelli and the Republican Idea,” in Bock, Skinner, and Viroli, Machiavelli and Republicanism, 155. Rather than address Machiavelli's several disparaging descriptions of the Florentine ottimati, Viroli seizes upon his invocation of the city's “grave and reputed men” (uomini gravi e di reputazione) (DF 739), which Viroli equates with the Ciceronian category of a republic's “best men.”
41 See McCormick, John P., “‘Greater, More Honorable and More Useful to the Republic’: Plebeian Offices in Machiavelli's ‘Perfect’ Constitution,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 8, no. 2 (2010): 237–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jérémie Barthas, “Il Pensiero Costituzionale di Machiavelli e la Funzione Tribunizia nella Firenze del Rinascimento,” in Il Laboratorio del Rinascimento: Studi di Storia e Cultura per Riccardo Fubini, ed. Lorenzo Tanzini (Florence: Le Lettere, 2016), 239–55.
42 See Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 271, 130; and Viroli, Founders: Machiavelli, 5–10, 125–26.
