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Revisiting Agathocles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2013

Victoria Kahn
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Abstract

This article traces Machiavelli's indebtedness to Sallust in his discussion of Agathocles the Sicilian in chapter 9 of The Prince. In distinguishing between virtù and glory, Machiavelli was influenced by Sallust's discussion of Catiline and Caesar, and of true and false glory, in the Bellum Catilinae. Writing to Caesar at the height of his power, Sallust needed to negotiate a delicate political situation that was in some ways analogous to Machiavelli's own difficult position vis-à-vis the Medici. Just as, in addressing Caesar, Sallust points up the difference between Caesar as he was and as he might have been, so in the example of Agathocles Machiavelli presents the Medici with a choice between mere virtù and the glory achieved by the really excellent men. It was the prospect of this glory that Machiavelli held out to the Medici in the concluding chapter of The Prince.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 75 , Special Issue 4: Machiavelli's Prince , Fall 2013 , pp. 557 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2013 

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References

1 Livy also briefly mentions Agathocles in book 28 of his history of Rome. See Livy, The War with Hannibal, Books 21–30 of The History of Rome from Its Foundation, trans. Sélincourt, Aubrey de, ed. Radice, Betty (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985)Google Scholar, 558. In the following pages, I cite The Prince from the bilingual edition of Musa, Mark (New York: St. Martin's, 1964)Google Scholar, and the Discourses from the edition of Crick, Bernard, trans. Walker, Leslie J., SJ, with revisions by Brian Richardson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979)Google Scholar. References to The Prince and Discourses in Italian are to Il Principe e Discorsi, ed. Bertelli, Sergio (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1977).Google Scholar

2 Polybius, The Histories, trans. Paton, W. R. (London: William Heinemann, 1975)Google Scholar, 4:347 (12.15).

3 Ibid., 553.

4 Siculus, Diodorus, The Library of History, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1947)Google Scholar, 19.64. Further references to this work are given in the text.

5 Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, trans. Yardley, J. C. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 181.

6 Ibid., 179.

7 Kahn, Victoria, “Virtù and the Example of Agathocles in Machiavelli's The Prince,” Representations 13 (1986): 63–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 In other words, this reading would vitiate any claim for republics being qualitatively superior. It would turn the glory of the republic into something merely quantitative: in contrast to the virtù of a single ruler, the numerically greater virtù of the people would explain the greater glory of the republic.

9 Russell Price discusses Machiavelli's use of the term “gloria” in “The Theme of ‘Gloria’ in Machiavelli,” Renaissance Quarterly 30 (1977): 588–631CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)Google Scholar, Leo Strauss argues that Machiavelli sees the Roman Empire as preparing the way for the deleterious effects of Christianity (118). Strauss thus implicitly suggests that the praise of Roman military glory is ironic. See Discourses 2.2.279–81, where Machiavelli describes how the Roman Empire wiped out other republics. But see Mark Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) for the contrary argument that this violent grandezza and “ideal of glory which by its very nature was aggrandizing” (16) were precisely what Machiavelli admired; and that he devoted less attention to the destructiveness of imperialism, than to the ultimate degeneration of Roman republican virtù (147–48).

10 Introduction to Machiavelli, Discourses, ed. Crick, 33.

11 See The Prince, chap. 9, on how a prince should rely on the people, rather than nobility who will rival him.

12 Machiavelli, Discourses 1.37; Machiavelli, The Art of War, in The Chief Works and Others, trans. Gilbert, Allan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 2:576–77. I have consulted the Italian of Dell'Arte della Guerra in Machiavelli, Niccolò, Tutte le opere, ed. Martelli, Mario (Florence: Sansoni, 1971)Google Scholar. This passage is cited in Fontana, Benedetto, “Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli,” History of Political Thought 24 (2003): 104.Google Scholar

13 In book 3 of the Discourses Machiavelli also suggests that glory is an intrinsic quality of the end pursued. At the same time, he makes it clear that glory does not preclude violence and betrayal: glory can be achieved either by humane conduct or by cruelty and violence. Scipio exemplifies the first way, Hannibal the second. “Scipio, we find, entered Spain and by his humane and kindly conduct at once made that country his friend, and won the respect and admiration of its people. We find, on the other hand, that Hannibal entered Italy and by totally different methods, i.e. by cruelty, violence, rapine and every sort of perfidy, produced there the same effect as Scipio had produced in Spain; for all the Italian cities revolted to him, and all its peoples became his followers” (3.21.403). At the end of the chapter, Machiavelli tells us that Scipio and Hannibal produced the same effect, “the one by praiseworthy and the other by reprehensible methods.” For this reason, he tells us, the next chapter will take up “two Roman citizens who acquired the same glory by different methods, both of which were praiseworthy” (3.21.465). The first is Manlius Torquatus, who maintained military discipline by his harsh commands; the second was Valerius Corvinus, who did not need to punish delinquents in the army, because there weren't any under his gentle rule (3.22.467). The first method, Machiavelli argues, is appropriate to a republic, the second to a principality. These distinctions suggest that glory attaches to ends rather than means. Scipio and Hannibal, Manlius and Valerius all achieved worldly renown or glory, though by different means.

14 Osmond, Patricia, “Sallust and Machiavelli: From Civic Humanism to Political Prudence,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23 (1993): 407–38Google Scholar. On Sallust's influence on Machiavelli, see also Sasso, Gennaro, Machiavelli e gli antichi e altri saggi (Milan: Ricciardi, 1986), 1: 441–60Google Scholar; Sasso, Niccolò Machiavelli: Storia del suo pensiero politico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980), 485–94Google Scholar; Hulliung, Mark, Citizen Machiavelli, 40, 86–87Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, “Machiavelli's Discorsi and the Pre-Humanist Origins of Republican Ideas,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Bock, Gisela, Skinner, Quentin, and Viroli, Maurizio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 121–41Google Scholar; and Fontana, Benedetto, “Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli,” History of Political Thought 24 (2003): 86–108.Google Scholar

15 Quoted in Osmond, “Sallust and Machiavelli,” 412. Further references are to Sallust, trans. Rolfe, J. C. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

16 Osmond, “Sallust and Machiavelli,” 414–15; cf. Bellum Catilinae 7–9.

17 Bellum Catilinae 11.1, in Sallust, 19. Osmond, “Sallust and Machiavelli,” notes the connection between Machiavelli's view of Caesar and his view of Agathocles, and notes that Machiavelli adopts the republican view that Caesar was like Catiline, but doesn't see the connection between Sallust's view of Caesar and Machiavelli's of the Medici; see 428n50.

18 Discourses 3.6.

19 Bellum Catilinae 5.1. Fontana, “Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli,” also thinks Sallust was criticizing Caesar in this way (101).

20 Bellum Catilinae 54.1–6.

21 Fontana, “Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli,” 106n71.

22 “Ad Caesarem Senem de re publica epistula,” in Sallust, 479. The authorship of the letter is contested, but it is included in the Loeb edition of Sallust, and was thought to be by Sallust in the Renaissance.

23 Ibid., 489.

24 Ibid., 489–91.

25 As Osmond has written in “Sallust and Machiavelli,” “Contemplating the moral degeneracy of the people and the breakdown of law, [Machiavelli] also turned far more decisively than Sallust to the individual leader, whether reforming statesman or prince” (429–30).

26 Lefort, Claude, Le travail de l'oeuvre: Machiavel (Paris: Galllimard, 1972)Google Scholar, 380, notes of this passage that virtù is not incompatible with crime but one also can't cover over crime with virtù.

27 Ibid.

28 Price, “Theme of ‘Gloria,’” 628.

29 Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 47 (play on virtue), 269.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 269.

31 Strauss claims that “in the Prince, [Machiavelli] omits, within the limits of the possible, everything which it would not be proper to mention in the present of a prince. He dedicated the Prince to a prince because he desired to find honorable employment; the book therefore exhibits and is meant to exhibit its author as a perfect courtier, a man of the most delicate sense of propriety” (ibid., 26).