Velema, Wyger & Weststeijn, Arthur - Ancient Models in The Early Modern Republican Imagination-Brill (2017)

Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination
Metaforms
Studies in the Reception of
Classical Antiquity
Editors-in-Chief
Almut-Barbara Renger (Freie Universität Berlin)

Jon Solomon (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
John T. Hamilton (Harvard University)
Editorial Board
Kyriakos Demetriou (University of Cyprus)

Constanze Güthenke (Oxford University)
Miriam Leonard (University College London)
Mira Seo (Yale-nus College)
volume 12
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/srca

Ancient Models in the Early
Modern Republican Imagination
Edited by
Wyger Velema
Arthur Weststeijn
leiden | boston
Cover illustration: Caesar van Everdingen, Lycurgus Showing the Importance of Education (1660–61),
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Contents
List of Illustrations VII
List of Contributors VIII
Introduction: Classical Republicanism and Ancient

Republican Models 1
Wyger Velema and Arthur Weststeijn
1 Renaissance Historicism and the Model of Rome in Florentine

Historiography 20
Jacques Bos
2 The Roman Republic as a Constitutional Order in the Italian

Renaissance 40
Benjamin Straumann
3 Commonwealths for Preservation and Increase: Ancient Rome in Venice

and the Dutch Republic 62
Arthur Weststeijn
4 Early Modern Greek Histories and Republican Political Thought 86

William Stenhouse
5 A Classical Confederacy: The Example of the Achaean League in the

Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic 109
Jaap Nieuwstraten
6 From Failed Republic to Polite Polis: Ancient Athens in Seventeenth-

and Eighteenth-Century England 131
Christine Zabel
7 Painting Plutarch: Images of Sparta in the Dutch Republic and

Enlightenment France 157
Wessel Krul
vi Contents
8 Against Democracy: Dutch Eighteenth-Century Critics of Ancient and

Modern Popular Government 189
Wyger Velema
9 The Hebrew Republic in Sixteenth-Century Political Debate: The

Struggle for Jurisdiction 214
Guido Bartolucci
10 The Hebrew Republic in Dutch Political Thought, c. 1650–1675 234

René Koekkoek
11 The Helvetians as Ancestors and Brutus as a Model: The Classical Past

in the Early Modern Swiss Confederation 259
Thomas Maissen
12 Classical Models in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania 285

Tomasz Gromelski
13 America’s Antiquities: The Ancient Past in the Creation of the

American Republic 306
Eran Shalev
Index 329
List of Illustrations
6.1 Frontispiece to Charles Gildon, The History of the Athenian Society

(London, 1692) 145
7.1 Caesar van Everdingen, Lycurgus Showing the Importance of Education
(1660–61) 162
7.2 Charles Cochin, Lycurgus Showing Himself to the People of Sparta After Being
Wounded in a Sedition (1761) 169
7.3 Louis Lagrenée, A Spartan Mother Admonishing her Son (1771) 177
7.4 Jean Pierre Saint Ours, The Selection of Children in Sparta (1784–86) 181
7.5 Jean Pierre Saint Ours, The Selection of Children in Sparta, preliminary
drawing 183
7.6 Jacques-Louis David, Leonidas at Thermopylae, Drawing (1813) 186
11.1 Johann Carl Balthasar, Roma teaching Hollandia, Venetia and Helvetia,
c. 1690, Lucerne 261
11.2 Excerpts of Johannes Stumpf, Landtaflen, Zurich, 1548 273
11.3 Excerpts of Johannes Stumpf, Landtaflen, Zurich, 1548 274
11.4 Bust of Lucius Iunius Brutus, Zurich town hall, 1698 279
List of Contributors
Guido Bartolucci
is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at the Department of Politi-
cal and Social Sciences, University of Calabria. He is the author of a book on
the Hebrew Republic in sixteenth-century European thought, and he has also
worked on the origin of the Christian Kabbalah in the fifteenth century and
on the life and political thought of the Jewish physician David de’ Pomis. His
recent research interests focus on the influence of the Jewish political tradi-
tion on Christian thought, particularly in the debate between Calvinist and
Lutheran scholars in the seventeenth century.
Jacques Bos
studied history, philosophy and political science at the University of Leiden.
In 2003 he obtained his Ph.D. at the same university with a study of the early
modern concept of character. At the moment, he is university lecturer in phi-
losophy at the University of Amsterdam. His main field of research is early
modern intellectual history, with an emphasis on the history of the self, the
history of the human sciences, and the development of historical thought.
Tomasz Gromelski
is Research Fellow in the Humanities at Wolfson College, Oxford, and a Re-
search Associate at the History Faculty in Cambridge. His research interests
are in the intellectual, social and political history of Britain and Europe in the
late-medieval and early-modern periods (c. 1400–1650), and in everyday life
and material culture in pre-industrial Europe. His chief interest is in the com-
parative study of political and constitutional thought and political culture in
sixteenth-century Europe. He has published a number of articles and chapters
on the subject and is currently completing a study of political thought and
political practices in Poland-Lithuania.
René Koekkoek
is lecturer in Modern European History in the European Studies program at the
University of Amsterdam. He holds a Research Master in History from Utrecht
University (cum laude) and an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual His-
tory from the University of Cambridge (distinction). In 2016, he obtained his
PhD from Utrecht University. He published on Carl Schmitt and the challenge of
Spinozism in Modern Intellectual History and on Dutch late eighteenth-century
List of Contributors ix
political thought. His book manuscript The Citizenship E xperiment. Contesting

the Limits of Civic Equality and Participation in the Age of Revolutions is cur-
rently under review.
Wessel Krul
is Professor Emeritus of Modern Art and Cultural History at the University of
Groningen. He has published widely on art, art theory and historiography from
the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and has translated and edited several
philosophical classics (Hobbes, Lessing, Burke, J.S. Mill). Recent publications:
“A Slight Correction. Petrus Camper on the Visual Arts,” in: Petrus Camper in
Context. Science, the Arts, and Society in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Repub-
lic, ed. Klaas van Berkel and Bart Ramakers (Hilversum, 2015), 215–242; “An
Ambivalent Conservatism. Edmund Burke in the Netherlands, 1770–1870,” in:
The Reception of Edmund Burke, ed. Martin Hugh Fitzpatrick and Peter Jones
(London, 2016), 149–170.
Thomas Maissen
has been Associate Professor at the University of Lucerne from 2002 to 2004 and
Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Heidelberg. Since 2006
he has been a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Science and H umanities.
He was Professeur invité at the ehess Paris, visiting Fellow at the Institute
for Advanced Studies, Princeton, and co-director of the Heidelberg Cluster of
Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context.” Since 2013, Maissen has been
the director of the German Historical Institute in Paris. Central areas of his re-
search are the history of political thought, history of religion and mentalities,
historical iconography and Swiss history.
Jaap Nieuwstraten
studied at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he received a Ph.D. in
History for a dissertation on the historical and political thought of the Dutch
scholar Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612–1653) in 2012. He currently works as a
freelance researcher and writer, focussing primarily on the history of the Low
Countries, the long nineteenth century and the ‘age of extremes.’
Eran Shalev
is Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Haifa
University. He is the author of Rome Reborn on Western Shores: Historical Imag-
ination and the Creation of the American Republic (2009) and American Zion:
The Bible as a Political Text from the Revolution to the Civil War (2013).
x List of Contributors
William Stenhouse
teaches history at Yeshiva University, New York. He works on the history of
classical scholarship in the sixteenth century, and especially the reception of
ancient material remains. His books include Reading Inscriptions and Writing
Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance (2005).
Benjamin Straumann
is Alberico Gentili Senior Fellow at New York University School of Law. A his-
torian of ideas, he works on classical political and legal thought, the history of
natural and international law, constitutionalism, and the reception of ancient
political thought and Roman law. Benjamin is the author of Roman Law in the
State of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and of Crisis and Constitu-
tionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of
Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2016). He is a co-editor of the new oup
series The History and Theory of International Law.
Wyger Velema
is Jan Romein Professor in the Department of History of the University of
Amsterdam. He is specialized in early modern history, with an emphasis on
the eighteenth century, the history of political thought - in particular that
of republicanism - and conceptual history. He has published widely in these
fields, including Enlightenment and Conservatism in the Dutch Republic. The
Political Thought of Elie Luzac (1993) and Republicans. Essays on Eighteenth-
Century Dutch Political Thought (2007). He is currently working on a study of
the role of the classics in Dutch Enlightenment culture.
Arthur Weststeijn
teaches Italian history at Utrecht University and was between 2011 and 2017
Director of Historical Studies at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. He
specialises in Dutch and Italian intellectual and cultural history, with a specific
focus on early modern political thought, colonialism and imperialism, and the
manifold uses of the classical past. He is the author of Commercial Republican-
ism in the Dutch Golden Age (Brill, 2012) and, together with Frederick Whitling,
Termini. Cornerstone of Modern Rome (Quasar, 2017).
Christine Zabel
is a Postdoctoral Faculty Member at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Ger-
many, where she teaches courses on cultural and intellectual history. She re-
ceived her Ph.D. from Heidelberg University, Germany, and a Master of Arts
from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (ehess), France. She is
List of Contributors xi
the author of Polis und Politesse: Der Diskurs über das antike Athen in England
and Frankreich, 1630–1760 (Berlin and Boston, 2016). She is currently a Visiting
Scholar at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, where she is
working on her second book, an intellectual history of “speculation” in early
modern Europe tentatively entitled Augmenting Realities: Speculation in Early
Modern Europe.
Introduction: Classical Republicanism and Ancient
Republican Models
Wyger Velema and Arthur Weststeijn
Since the middle of the last century, and particularly since the 1970s, the early
modern republics have come to occupy a central place in modern historical
scholarship. Whereas previously historiography had almost exclusively fo-
cused on the early modern rise of the great territorial monarchies and on the
growth of the centralised state and of political absolutism, after the second
world war historians slowly started to realise that throughout the early modern
period an alternative tradition of republican political thought and political
institutions had not only survived, but had been of enormous importance.
The experiences of Renaissance Florence and the Venetian Republic paved the
way for the United Provinces of the Netherlands and the Swiss Eidgenossen-
schaft, confederate republican powerhouses in an allegedly absolutist age; the
short-lived experiment of the English Commonwealth in the 1650s cast a long
shadow over the Atlantic that eventually brought about the Unites States of
America; and at the end of the eighteenth century, Revolutionary France and
its “Sister Republics” remodelled the republican tradition for a modern world.
Within this longstanding tradition, the ancient past always was of paramount
importance: classical idioms and examples offered republicans from Niccolò
Machiavelli to George Washington an endless source of inspiration. Early mod-
ern republicanism was thus in large part identical with what has come to be
known in scholarship as “classical republicanism.”
The Making of Classical Republicanism: Syntheses

and Controversies
The discovery of the crucial role played by early modern republicanism was a
slow and complex process. In its initial phases, it was greatly indebted to the
work of Hans Baron on the political thought of the Florentine Renaissance.
In his The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, first published in 1955, Baron
attempted to demonstrate that the early fifteenth-century Florentines, find-
ing themselves under threat from increasingly tyrannical n eighbouring states,
developed new ways of defending their republican freedom. With Leonardo
Bruni as their most important theorist, they started deploying a political
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi 10.1163/9789004351387_002

2 Velema and Weststeijn
v ocabulary that Baron termed “civic humanism.” This was, briefly put, a mode
of thought inspired by ancient Roman republican liberty. It held that the
participation of the virtuous citizen in the political process was essential to
the existence and continued survival of political liberty.1 Although Baron’s
thesis was regarded as highly controversial from the very moment it was first
formulated, his pioneering work nonetheless greatly stimulated research into
Renaissance republicanism and was instrumental in bringing about, among
other things, a renewed interpretation of Machiavelli’s political thought.2
While the importance of “civic humanism” (soon also called “classical repub-
licanism”) for the Italian Renaissance was thus being explored, the presence
of similar forms of classically inspired early modern republican discourse
was being discovered for England. Already in 1945, Zera Fink had drawn at-
tention to the importance of ancient republicanism to the political thought
of seventeenth-century England.3 It soon became clear that such patterns of
thought survived far into the eighteenth century as well.4 The next phase in
the remarkable development of scholarship on early modern republicanism
came when historians such as Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood started point-
ing out that the American revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century, until
then usually regarded as unambiguously modern, were in fact deeply indebted
to the early modern—and ultimately classical—republican tradition.5 Around
the same time, the Italian historian Franco Venturi emphatically pointed to the
importance of the European republican tradition for the genesis and develop-
ment of the Enlightenment.6
1 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Civic Humanism and Republican
Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1955).
2 For subsequent scholarly discussions of the “Baron Thesis” see e.g. Ronald Witt, “The Rebirth
of the Concept of Republican Liberty in Italy,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Bar-
on, ed. A. Mohlo and J.A. Tedeschi (Dekalb, 1971), 173–199; James Hankins, ed., Renaissance
Civic Humanism. Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge, 2000); David Wootton, “The True
Origins of Republicanism: the Disciples of Baron and the Counter-example of Venturi,” in Il
repubblicanesimo moderno: L’idea di repubblica nella riflessione storica di Franco Venturi, ed.
Manuela Albertone (Naples, 2006), 225–257.
3 Zera S. Fink, The Classical Republicans. An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in
Seventeenth-Century England (Evanston, 1945).
4 Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman. Studies in the Transmission,
Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles ii
until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (Cambridge, ma., 1959).
5 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, ma., 1967);
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969).
6 Franco Venturi, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1971).
Introduction 3
Scholarship on early modern republicanism had now clearly reached

a point where a synthetic survey became a distinct possibility. It was J.G.A.
Pocock who, in 1975, took up this intellectual challenge with his brilliant Ma-
chiavellian Moment.7 This extraordinarily penetrating and strikingly original
study, which has been—and continues to be—of immense historiographical
importance, definitively established republicanism as one of the central topics
in early modern scholarship. Yet at the same time it offered a highly specific
and far from uncontroversial interpretation of the nature of early modern
republicanism. Pocock analysed the early modern republican tradition, with
Machiavelli as its central figure, as a mode of discourse that was ultimately
rooted in classical conceptions of politics, more specifically in the Aristotelian
notion of man as a zōon politikon or homo politicus. He traced the rediscovery
and revival of this language in the Florentine Renaissance and its subsequent
transmission to quite different contexts, those of seventeenth-century Eng-
land and of eighteenth-century America. In Pocock’s interpretation, the most
important characteristic of this ultimately classical republican language was
that it was not primarily concerned with rights, but with active citizenship—
the vita activa civilis—and with virtue. It was a language that was more about
positive than about negative liberty, to use Isaiah Berlin’s justly famous dis-
tinction.8 If virtue, as best expressed in citizen participation, was indeed the
highest human goal, it was of course evident that a classically inspired repub-
lic composed of self-ruling citizens was to be regarded as the most desirable
form of government—as it indeed was by many “civic humanists” or “classical
republicans” throughout the early modern period.9
Pocock’s account of the early modern republican tradition immediately
gave rise to heated debate and even now, more than forty years after its initial
publication, continues to loom over all discussions of early modern republican-
ism. It was only a few years after the appearance of The Machiavellian Moment
7 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Repub-
lican Tradition (Princeton, 1975).
8 Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford, 1958).
9 For Pocock’s views on the relationship between republicanism and other early modern
political languages see J.G.A. Pocock, “Virtues, Rights and Manners: A Model for Historians
of Political Thought,” in J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth
Century (Cambridge, etc., 1985), 37–50. The most important early review of The Machiavel-
lian Moment was published in 1977 by J.H. Hexter in History and Theory and later reprinted
as “Republic, Virtue, Liberty, and the Political Universe of J.G.A. Pocock,” in J.H. Hexter, On
Historians. Reappraisals of Some of the Makers of Modern History (Cambridge, Mass., 1979),
255–303. Thoughtful discussions of Pocock’s work may also be found in D.N. DeLuna et al.,
eds., The Political Imagination in History. Essays Concerning J.G.A. Pocock (Baltimore, 2006).
that Quentin Skinner published his Foundations of Modern Political Thought.10

Skinner’s intention in writing these volumes was quite different from Pocock’s:
he was not tracing the early modern recovery of a classical republican political
language and following its subsequent dissemination and development, but
was—as the title of his volumes indicated—attempting a comprehensive
reconstruction of “the process by which the modern concept of the State came
to be formed.”11 Yet Skinner and Pocock obviously shared a lot of common
ground. Both were trying to develop what Skinner termed a “genuinely histori-
cal” way of studying early modern political thought and thereby became the
founding figures of what is now known as the Cambridge School.12 Both men,
moreover, agreed that such a genuinely historical approach to early modern
political thought involved a recognition of the crucial importance of forms of
republican discourse of classical derivation.13 It was only after this point had
been reached that they seriously began to disagree. For Skinner, early mod-
ern republicanism had not suddenly surfaced in the deep political crisis early
quattrocentro Florence had experienced, as both Baron and Pocock had main-
tained, but had emerged much earlier in the late medieval urban world of the
Italian communes. Perhaps even more important, however, was his contention
that late medieval, Renaissance, and early modern republicanism should not
be understood as a revival of a classical Greek conception of political virtue,
but as heavily dependent on a quite different Roman and Ciceronian distinc-
tion between liberty and slavery. This latter view, embryonically present in the
Foundations, has taken centre stage in Skinner’s more recent work as the “neo-
Roman” theory of liberty.14
Skinner, however, was far from the only historian of political thought to
question aspects of Pocock’s interpretation of early modern republicanism
as presented in The Machiavellian Moment. Indeed, it may be observed with-
out exaggeration that almost no aspect of this seminal work has remained
without criticism. In the process, our understanding of early modern repub-
licanism has become both deeper and more complex. It has, in the first place,
been observed by many historians that applying the concept of “classical
10 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1978).
11 Skinner, Foundations, 1:ix.
12 Ibidem, xi.
13 Pocock and Skinner themselves have written about their similarities and differences in
Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, ed. Annabel Brett, James Tully,
and Holly Hamilton-Bleakley (Cambridge, 2006), 37–49 and 236–261.
14 E.g. Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998) and Quentin Skinner,
Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge, 2008).
Introduction 5
republicanism” to the world of the early modern republics suggests a consider-

able degree of continuity with the ancient world. Such a view, these historians
have maintained, is deeply misleading, since the world of the early modern
republics was, as many of its inhabitants well knew, fundamentally different
from the world of the ancient republics. Quite apart from the rather obvious
fact that it was Christian, it was also separated from antiquity by, among other
things, the invention of the printing press, the growth and consolidation of a
system of large territorial states, the advent of global exploration, the rise of
commercial society, and the genesis of the modern scientific world view. These
and other fundamental differences between the ancient and the early mod-
ern world were in turn mirrored by significant differences between ancient
and early modern political thought in general, and between classical and early
modern republicanism in particular. As a result of all of this, some historians
have argued, the classical orientation to be found in so many early modern
republics was usually little more than ornamental. Others, such as Jonathan
Israel, have gone even further and have claimed that the “democratic repub-
licanism” they see surfacing from the seventeenth century on had absolutely
nothing to do with the heritage of antiquity.15
While the controversy over the extent of the indebtedness of early mod-
ern republicanism to the classics has so far remained very much open and
undecided, a second line of criticism of Pocock’s “Atlantic republican tradi-
tion” has found more widespread acceptance. Soon after The Machiavellian
Moment was published, critics of the work started drawing attention to the fact
that Pocock’s analysis evinced a curious and indeed somewhat bizarre flaw: it
was strangely limited in its geographical scope, taking the story of early mod-
ern republicanism from Renaissance Italy to seventeenth-century England and
thence to eighteenth-century America. In doing so, it left out the republican-
ism to be found in what perhaps were the two most important early modern
republican states, the Dutch and the Swiss Republics. Historians have since
hastened to fill in this gap, and as a result we are now much better informed
about both Dutch and Swiss early modern republicanism.16 It has equally
15 Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern. Classical Republicanism and the American
Revolution (Chapel Hill and London, 1992); David Wootton, ed., Republicanism, Liberty, and
Commercial Society, 1649–1776 (Stanford, 1994); Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment.
Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001); Idem, Enlightenment
Contested. Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (Oxford, 2006);
Idem, Democratic Enlightenment. Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790
(Oxford, 2011).
16 On Dutch republicanism see e.g. E.H. Kossmann, “Dutch Republicanism,” in L’età dei
Lumi. Studi storici sul settecento Europeo in onore di Franco Venturi, 2 vols (Naples, 1985),
b ecome clear that not even this significant expansion of the field sufficed in
order to arrive at a balanced view of early modern republicanism, and that
attention also needed to be paid to, for instance, the German free cities and
early modern Poland-Lithuania.17 To complicate matters even further, it was
increasingly recognised that elements of republican discourse could also be
found in early modern monarchical contexts, even absolutist ones.18
Both the doubts voiced about the classical derivation of early modern re-
publicanism and the considerable expansion of the geographical scope in
the study of this phenomenon have had the effect of blurring its previously
fairly sharp and clear contours. This process was further reinforced by a third
development in the scholarship about early modern republicanism. Whereas
Pocock, although he was much less dogmatic about it than has often been
suggested, attempted to identify relatively separate languages of politics, and
claimed that early modern republicans were speaking a language of virtue that
was, if not entirely incompatible with, at least fundamentally different from the
language of rights, it gradually became increasingly clear that these languag-
es were often used by the same people at the same time.19 It was this insight
that led Daniel T. Rogers to remark, as early as 1992, that the o ntological status
1:453–486; Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555–1590
(Cambridge, 1992); Arthur Weststeijn, Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden Age.
The Political Thought of Johan and Pieter de la Court (Leiden and Boston, 2012); Wyger R.E.
Velema, Republicans. Essays on Eighteenth-Century Dutch Political Thought (Leiden and
Boston, 2007). On Swiss republicanism see e.g. Thomas Maissen, Die Geburt der Republik.
Staatsverständnis und Repräsentation in der früneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft, second
edition (Göttingen, 2008); Marc H. Lerner, A Laboratory of Liberty. The Transformation of
Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750–1848 (Leiden and Boston, 2011). For a com-
parison between these two early modern republics see André Holstein, Thomas Maissen
and Maarten Prak, eds., The Republican Alternative. The Netherlands and Switzerland Com-
pared (Amsterdam, 2008).
17 Helmut Koenigsberger, ed., Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit
(Munich, 1988); Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism. A Shared
European Heritage, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2002).
18 For France see, for instance, Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution. Essays
on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1990). The opposition
between republicanism and seignorialism in the Italian Renaissance is deconstructed in
Fabrizio Ricciardelli, The Myth of Republicanism in Renaissance Italy (Turnhout, 2015).
19 Daniel T. Rodgers, “Republicanism: the Career of a Concept,” The Journal of American His-
tory 79 (1992): 11–38. For an ambitious attempt to dissolve the rigid distinction between
“republicanism” and “liberalism” in the late eighteenth century see Andreas Kalyvas and
Ira Katznelson, Liberal Beginnings. Making a Republic for the Moderns (Cambridge, etc.,
2008).
Introduction 7
of early modern republicanism was growing “fainter and more confused.”20

Such warnings about the increasing vagueness of the concept of early modern
republicanism have not deterred most historians, and they have continued to
find it a helpful and indeed indispensable tool in their quest to understand the
nature of the early modern political world. Yet they do point to the necessity
to bring the scholarly discussions about early modern republicanism, and
especially about “classical republicanism,” back down to earth from the ab-
stract and often somewhat dizzying heights they have reached over the past
few decades. The concern about republicanism’s loss of meaning undoubtedly
has much to do with the fact that, despite the methodological injunctions of
the founders of the Cambridge school to study political thought in a “genuinely
historical” and contextualized way, concepts such as “classical republicanism”
and the “neo-Roman” theory of liberty seem to have become almost disembod-
ied and have increasingly been divorced from specific historical circumstanc-
es and debates. To counter this regrettable trend, the present volume—the
outcome of a conference held at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome in
November of 2013—approaches the problem of early modern republicanism
and its relations to the ancient world from a somewhat different perspective. It
does not take abstract political languages as its starting point, but investigates
the concrete role of specific ancient republican models in the political thought
of early modern republics.
Early Modern Uses of the Ancient Republican Past
There can hardly be any doubt that, despite the considerable diversity to be
found in both their political institutions and their political thought, most liter-
ate inhabitants of the early modern republics were highly aware of a certain
family resemblance between their republican states and of the deep political
divide separating these states from the surrounding and much larger monar-
chies.21 In order to clarify and legitimate the republican form of government,
early modern republican writers could turn to general theories of politics and
20 Rogers, “Republicanism,” 37.

21 Yves Durand, Les Républiques au temps des Monarchies (Paris, 1973); H.G. Koenigsberger,
“Republicanism, Monarchism and Liberty,” in Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early
Modern Europe. Essays in Memory of Ragnhild Hatton, ed. Robert Oresko, G.C. Gibbs and
H.M. Scott (Cambridge, 1997), 43–74; Venturi, Enlightenment and Reform; Koen Stapel-
broek, “Republics and Monarchies,” in A Companion to Intellectual History, ed. Richard
Whatmore and Brian Young (Malden, ma and Oxford, 2016), 276–287.
argue, for instance, that liberty could only be found in political communities
where the citizens ruled themselves. They also could, and frequently did, com-
pare the political arrangements of their own republican state to those of the
other contemporary republics.22 Yet perhaps their most common strategy was
the appeal to history. Using the past in order to better understand the nature
of republican government and to defend and underpin its legitimacy could be
done in many different ways. It could, first of all, consist in the attempt—to
be found in, for instance, Renaissance Florence, the Swiss Confederation, and
the Dutch Republic—to keep the memory of relatively recent struggles to es-
tablish or maintain republican liberty alive.23 Sometimes it entailed reverting
to the medieval roots of republican liberty.24 Since generally “early modern
people believed things to be true or legitimate only if they could be proven to
be old,” however, most often it meant appealing to the real or imagined repub-
lics of the ancient world.25 It is this widespread early modern republican use of
the ancient republican past that the present volume aims to explore.
The manifold early modern republican uses of the ancient past not only
reflected the widely held early modern conviction that old equated good, but
also and perhaps more importantly depended on the general nature of the
early modern sense of the past. Early modern historical thought no longer
conceived of the past as entirely similar to and continuous with the present.26
But neither did it view the past as in all respects fundamentally different from
the present, since such an historicist perspective, according to many histo-
rians, did not emerge until the momentous changes occurring in the period
22 See, for instance, E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought
in the Seventeenth Century (Assen, 1980) and Salvo Mastellone, “Holland as a Political
Model in Italy in the Seventeenth Century,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de
Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 98 (1983): 568–582.
23 Erika Kuijpers, Judith Pollmann, Johannes Müller and Jasper van der Steen, eds. Mem-
ory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston,
2013).
24 R.J.W. Evans and Guy P. Marchal, eds., The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European
States. History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins (Basingstoke, 2010).
25 The quotation is from Judith Pollmann and Erika Kuijpers, “Introduction. On the Early
Modernity of Modern Memory,” in Memory before Modernity, ed. Kuijpers et al., 6.
26 On the early modern sense of the past see, e.g., Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of
the Past (London, 1969); Anthony Grafton, What was History? The Art of History in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, etc., 2007); Zachary Sayre Schiffman, The Birth of the Past
(Baltimore, 2011); Kuijpers et al., eds., Memory before Moderrnity; Jacques Bos, “Histori-
cal Thought from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment,” De Achttiende Eeuw 46 (2014):
27–49.
Introduction 9
which Reinhart Koselleck has named the Sattelzeit.27 The early modern sense
of the past was thus characterized by a considerable degree of ambivalence.
On the one hand, it remained firmly wedded to the conviction that past and
present were sufficiently similar for history to remain magister vitae. On the
other hand, it permitted and stimulated critical and creative reflection on the
differences between the past and the present, as was particularly evident in
the extensive early modern debates on the respective merits of the ancients
and the moderns.28 This same fruitful tension between historical similarity
and historical distance was present in early modern republican writings about
the republics of the ancient world. Although evidently falling short of the stan-
dards of modern historical scholarship, these writings should nonetheless not
be regarded as little more than an exercise in political mythology.29 They were
serious attempts to come to grips with the oldest available examples of repub-
lican government. Among these, the Greek poleis and the Roman Republic
held pride of place.30 In recent years, however, scholars have discovered that
early modern republican writers also attached considerable importance to the
example of the biblical Jewish Commonwealth or Hebrew Republic.31 Thirdly
and finally, there was the ancient republican past of the early modern republics
27 On the fundamental changes the Sattelzeit is widely held to have brought about in
istorical thought see Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtli-
h
cher Zeiten (Frankfurt, 1979); François Hartog, Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et experi-
ences du temps (Paris, 2004); Peter Fritzsche, Stranded in the Present. Modern Time and the
Melancholy of History (Cambridge, ma and London, 2004).
28 Hans Baron, “The Querelle of the Ancients and the Moderns as a Problem for Renaissance
Scholarship,” Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959): 3–22; Larry F. Norman, The Shock of
the Ancient. Literature and History in Early Modern France (Chicago and London, 2011).
29 For the application of the notion of “myth” to the early modern period see C.A. Tamse,
“The Political Myth,” in Britain and the Netherlands, volume v: Some Political Mythologies.
Papers delivered to the Fifth Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference, ed. J.S. Bromley and E.H.
Kossmann (The Hague, 1975), 1–18; Peter G. Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula. Myths and
Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age (Leiden, etc., 1994); Laura
Cruz and Willem Frijhoff, eds., Myth in History, History in Myth (Leiden and Boston, 2009).
30 For general discussions of the role of the Greek and Roman republics in early modern
thought see Elizabeth Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford, 1969);
Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Athens on Trial. The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought
(Princeton, 1994); Fergus Millar, The Roman Republic in Political Thought (Hanover and
London, 2002).
31 Lea Campos Boralevi, “Classical Foundational Myths of European Republicanism: The
Jewish Commonwealth,” in Republicanism, ed. Van Gelderen and Skinner, 1:247–261;
Gordon Schochet, Fania Oz-Salzberger and Meirav Jones, eds., Political Hebraism. Judaic
Sources in Early Modern Political Thought (Jerusalem and New York, 2008); Eric Nelson,
themselves that was to be considered, usually with the writings of the Roman
historians in an intermediary role.32 Often, one and the same author was active
in all three of these areas. Thus the famous seventeenth-century Dutch legal
scholar and humanist Hugo Grotius adduced the Hebrew Republic as a model
in his De republica emendanda (1601), wrote a lengthy comparison between the
Dutch Republic and ancient Greece and Rome in his Parallelon rerumpubli-
carum (1602), and provided the young Dutch Republic with an ancient native
republican past in his De antiquitate Reipublicae Batavicae (1610).33
This comparative approach to republican politics arose in a culture of
humanist scholarship that attached great importance to the use of exempla.
Rhetorical teaching and practice in schools, universities, courtrooms and
congregations throughout Europe emphasised the usefulness and potency of
making a case by referring to an illustrative example from a distant world.34
The notion of resemblances and analogies dominated the intellectual and po-
litical mind-set: while the medieval tradition of the mirror for princes genre
never truly waned, new modes of thinking about politics came to flourish
from the early sixteenth century onwards by playing upon the same tension
between reality and representation. Thomas More’s Utopia and Andrea Alci-
ato’s Emblematum liber set the tone for a pan-European fashion of enticing
the reader’s imagination through contrasting images of exemplary realms
elsewhere.35 Antiquarian scholars unearthed, collected and analysed inscrip-
tions, coins and fragments to confront the present with the material culture of
ancient pasts.36 The early modern age was in many ways an emblematic age:
The Hebrew Republic. Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought
(Cambridge, ma and London, 2010).
32 Orest Ranum, ed. National Consciousness, History, and Political Culture in Early-Modern
Europe (Baltimore and London, 1975).
33 Henk Nellen, Hugo de Groot. Een leven in strijd om de vrede 1583–1645 (Amsterdam, 2007).
34 Peter Mack, A History of Renaissance Rhetoric, 1380–1620 (Oxford, 2011); Anthony Grafton
and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities. Education and the Liberal Arts in
Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (London, 1986); Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-
Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford, 1996).
35 See e.g. Hans-Otto Mühleisen and Theo Stammen, eds., Politische Tugendlehre und Regier-
ungskunst. Studien zum Fürstenspiegel der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 1990); Terence Cave,
ed., Thomas More’s Utopia in Early Modern Europe. Paratexts and Contexts (Manchester,
2012) and Karl A.E. Enenkel and Arnoud S.Q. Visser, eds., Mundus Emblematicus. Studies
in Neo-Latin Emblem Books (Turnhout, 2003).
36 William Stenhouse, Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History: Historical Schol-
arship in the Late Renaissance (London, 2005); Peter N. Miller, “The Antiquary’s Art of
Comparison: Peiresc and Abraxas,” Philologie und Erkenntnis. Beiträge zu Begriff und Prob-
lem frühneuzeitlicher “Philologie,” ed. Ralph Häfner (Tübingen, 2001), 57–94.
Introduction 11
k nowledge was shaped and organized by establishing parallels, which could

be easily illustrated through resonant commonplaces, adages, and maxims—
mainly taken from the most obvious and inexhaustible source available: the
classical corpus of Greek and Latin literature.
Some of the most widely read authors within this corpus can be charac-
terised as republican commentators, who offered their early modern audi-
ence insiders’ insight into the development and demise of classical republics.
Aristotle and Cicero held pride of place as timeless interpreters of the manifold
workings of political society, while historians such as Livy and Sallust provided
widely popular narratives of the origins, ascendancy and eventual collapse of
the Roman Republic.37 It is no coincidence that Machiavelli’s Discorsi, since
Pocock’s groundbreaking analysis commonly regarded as the foundational
text of early modern republicanism, was framed as a commentary on Livy’s
history of early Rome. Moreover, Machiavelli expressly juxtaposed the Roman
model to that of other ancient republics, mirroring Romulus with his fellow
lawmakers Solon and Lycurgus in Athens and Sparta, as well as with Moses in
the Hebrew Republic.38
Such comparisons were further elaborated throughout the sixteenth cen-
tury, for example in the work of the late Renaissance scholar Carlo Sigonio.
Apart from his wide-ranging treatises on the history of ancient Rome, in
which he made a clear caesura between Republic and Principate by deliber-
ately finishing his narrative with Caesar and Augustus, Sigonio also published
a work on Athens, De republica Atheniensum in 1564, followed by De republica
Hebraeorum in 1582.39 The increasing use of Hebraic sources and the gradu-
al rediscovery of Greek authors, such as Polybius and Plutarch, enriched the
scholarly confrontation with the ancient past, as did the rising popularity of
Tacitus, especially after the seminal editions of his writings by Justus Lipsius.
By 1600, the comparative approach to ancient states had become an outright
fashion, as exemplified by Lipsius’ own project of writing a series of treatises on
the polities of the ancient world (of which only his work on Rome was f inished
before his death), or by Jean Bodin’s analysis of contemporary politics through
37 Cf. Peter Burke, “A Survey of the Popularity of Ancient Historians, 1450–1700,” History and
Theory 5.2 (1966): 135–152.
38 See e.g. Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders. A Study of the Discours-
es on Livy (Chicago and London, 1979) and John H. Geerken, “Machiavelli’s Moses and
Renaissance Politics,” Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999): 579–595.
39 William McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio. The Changing World of the Late Renaissance (Princeton,
1989); Guido Bartolucci, La repubblica ebraica di Carlo Sigonio. Modelli politici dell’età
moderna (Florence, 2007).
the lens of classical examples.40 The cases of Lipsius, defender of the Habsburg
monarchy, and Bodin, advocate of absolutist rule, serve as a clear warning not
to equate the early modern interest in ancient forms of government with re-
publican ideology. But it is also important to acknowledge that even overtly
non-republican classical authors, such as Caesar and Tacitus, could be used as
republican source material to reveal the debauchery of single rule or to prove
the existence of a venerable native republican past, as was the case in, for ex-
ample, Venice, the Swiss Confederation, and the Dutch Republic.
In the seventeenth century, the comparative approach to republican models
arguably reached a climax in the series of “Republics,” small and cheap politi-
cal treatises published by the famous publishing house of Elzevier in Leiden
in the course of the 1620s–1640s. This series contained descriptive surveys of
various countries and states from antiquity onwards, including a compilation
of works entitled Respublica romana, Ubbo Emmius’ Graecorum respublicae,
Petrus Cunaeus’ De republica Hebraeorum, as well as authoritative republican
interpretations of the history of Venice by Gasparo Contarini and Donato Gian-
noti, and descriptions of the Helvetiorum respublica and of the Dutch Repub-
lic. The “Elzevier Republics” proved to be immensely popular and were widely
read throughout Europe, offering generations of readers a handily comprehen-
sive overview of ancient and modern politics.41 Even when their impact waned
later in the century, the tradition of comparing the ancients and the moderns
continued, perhaps even increased. Rekindled by the Querelle des anciens et
des modernes, the classical framing of cultural and political developments ob-
tained new intensity during the Enlightenment, a quintessentially classicis-
ing age.42 Eighteenth-century critics of autocracy from François Fénelon to
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the abbé de Mably based their analyses of modern
40 Gerhard Oestreich, Antiker Geist und moderner Staat bei Justus Lipsius (1547–1606). Der
Neustoizismus als politische Bewegung, ed. Nicolette Mout (Göttingen, 1989); Marc Lau-
reys, “‘The Grandeur That Was Rome’: Scholarly Analysis and Pious Awe in Lipsius’s
Admiranda,” in Recreating Ancient History. Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in
the Arts and Literature of the Early Modern Period, ed. Karl Enenkel et al. (Leiden, 2001),
123–146; Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory (Cambridge, 1973);
A.M. Lazzarino del Grosso, “La Respublica Hebraeorum come modello politico ‘scientifico’
nella Methodus di Jean Bodin,” Il pensiero politico 35 (2002): 382–398.
41 Vittorio Conti, Consociatio Civitatum. Le Repubbliche nei testi elzeviriani (1625–1649)
(Florence, 1997); J.A. Gruys, “De reeks ‘republieken’ van de Elzeviers en Johannes de Laet,”
in Boekverkopers van Europa. Het 17de-eeuwse Nederlandse uitgevershuis Elzevier, ed.
B.P.M. Dongelmans et al. (Zutphen, 2000), 77–114.
42 Dan Edelstein, “The Classical Turn in Enlightenment Studies,” Modern Intellectual History
9 (2012): 61–71.
Introduction 13
politics and morals on a continuous confrontation with the classics.43 Athens,

Sparta, Rome and also Carthage still provided the principal measuring rods
against which the contemporary world could be evaluated and criticised,44
even when calls for revolution set the European ancien régime ablaze towards
the end of the eighteenth century.45 Eventually, the classics also crossed the
Atlantic, when Rome was reborn on Western shores with the creation of the
United States of America.46 Ancient models thus proved to be a lasting inspira-
tion for the early modern republican imagination.
Approach and Content
This volume surveys these processes of inspiration and imagination from a

broad and inclusive perspective. In the existing scholarship on the role of an-
cient models in early modern political thought, two general approaches can
be discerned. The first approach considers models mainly in institutional
terms, as concrete examples from the past that could be copied directly or that
could serve as means of identification. This institutional focus highlights the
role and impact of constitutional structures and legislative models, such as
the ancient template of the mixed regime, specific forms and elements of gov-
ernment such as ephors, tribunes and assemblies, or the models offered by
43 Chantal Grell, Le Dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France 1680–1789, 2 vols. (Oxford,

1995).
44 Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England
(Cambridge, 1997); Doohwan Ahn, “From ‘Jealous Emulation’ to ‘Cautious Politics’: British
Foreign Policy and Public Discourse in the Mirror of Ancient Athens (ca.1730–ca.1750),”
in Ideology and Foreign Policy in Early Modern Europe (1650–1750), ed. David Onnekink
and Gijs Rommelse (Farnham, 2011), 93–130; Stephen Hodkinson and Ian Macgregor Mor-
ris, eds., Sparta in Modern Thought. Politics, History and Culture (Swansea, 2012); Christo-
pher Brooke, “Eighteenth-Century Carthage,” in Commerce and Perpetual Peace, ed. Béla
Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge, forthcoming).
45 Claude Mossé, L’Antiquité dans la Révolution française (Paris, 1989); see also Catrien
Santing, ed., Atti del convegno internazionale “Repubbliche sorelle,” Mededelingen van
het Nederlands Instituut te Rome, vol. 57 (Assen, 2002) and Joris Oddens, Mart Rutjes
and Eric Jacobs, eds., The Political Culture of the Sister Republics, 1794–1806. France, The
Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy (Amsterdam, 2015).
46 Eran Shalev, Rome Reborn on Western Shores. Historical Imagination and the Creation of
the American Republic (Charlottesville and London, 2009); Carl J. Richard, The Founders
and the Classics. Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass. and
London, 1994); M.N.S. Sellers, American Republicanism. Roman Ideology in the United
States Constitution (Houndmills and London, 1994).
individual ancient lawgivers such as Solon and Lycurgus. Particularly strong in

Italian and German historiography, this approach generally seeks to link the
history of ideas with the social history of doctrinal structures.47 The second
approach takes a more abstract view on models, identifying conceptual sys-
tems that engender discursive traditions and specific political categories such
as virtue, justice and liberty. This, indeed, is the approach that can be associ-
ated with Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment, as well as with his recent series on
narratives of barbarism and Roman decline and fall, or for example with Eric
Nelson’s The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought.48 The aim of the present
volume is to bridge the gap between these two approaches, flexibly combining
a focus on concrete institutional models from antiquity with a discussion of
genealogical models in conceptual terms. This means that the chapters in this
volume ecumenically switch between different forms of ancient models, from
Roman constitutionalism to Brutus as exemplary freedom fighter, from the
confederate and jurisdictional models of the Achaean League and the Hebrew
Republic to the notion of Athens as a paradigm of politeness, and of Sparta as
a utopian society. Moreover, the volume also underlines the negative role that
these models could play as anti-models, taking seriously various early modern
condemnations of ancient republican practices, such as Rome’s imperialism,
Athens’ popular government, and the theocracy of the Hebrew Republic.
The inclusivity of this approach is further strengthened by a broad use of
sources. Apart from the scholarly treatises and the canonical works from Ma-
chiavelli to James Madison that are commonly central in the study of early
modern intellectual history, the volume also, if not especially, discusses less
familiar sources: minor, secondary authors, anonymous reports, pamphlets
and newspaper articles, academic disputations and theatre plays, as well as
images and paintings. Likewise, the volume has a wide geographical range,
moving decisively beyond the still dominant focus on Renaissance Italy and
the Anglophone Atlantic. It connects various local republican traditions and
developments, from Florence and Venice to Switzerland, the Dutch Republic
and the United States of America, establishing parallels with the monarchi-
cal contexts of papal Rome, Habsburg Spain, France, England, Denmark and
47 See esp. Vittor Ivo Comparato, Modelli nella storia del pensiero politico (Florence, 1987)
and Magistrature repubblicane, modelli nella storia del pensiero politico, Il Pensiero Politi-
co, vol. 40 (Florence, 2008). Cf. as well Wilfried Nippel, Mischverfassungstheorie und Ver-
fassungsrealität in Antike und früher Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 1980); Idem, Antike oder moderne
Freiheit? Die Begründung der Demokratie in Athen und in der Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 2008).
48 John G. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 6 vols. (Cambridge, 1999–2015); Eric Nelson, The
Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge, 2004).
Introduction 15
Poland-Lithuania. Thus, the volume continues and deepens the transnational

approach that in recent years has enriched the study of early modern repub-
licanism, especially in English historiography.49 The Dutch Republic, arguably
the most powerful republican polity in early modern Europe, stands at the
centre of the volume, as a crossroads of republican beliefs and illusions trig-
gered by the lure of antiquity. The considerable variety within that republican
imagination is underscored by the manifold ways in which ancient republican
models were used to create, justify and criticise various political and moral
constellations throughout the early modern age, for example in defence of
constitutional mixed government and confederate collaboration, of political
freedom and social (in)equality, of commercial expansion, urban civility and
religious toleration.
The volume kicks off with a historiographical and conceptual reflection
on the early modern sense of the past. Critically reviewing the notion of his-
toricism and the peculiarities of Renaissance historical thought, Jacques Bos
examines the role of ancient Rome in the work of the three most prominent
historians of the Florentine Renaissance: Bruni, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini.
His discussion shows how a historicist understanding of the past as different
from the present gradually developed over the fifteenth and early sixteenth
century, but also that this understanding remained contested and cannot be
easily categorised. The Renaissance sense of the past was ambiguous in em-
bracing both historical sameness and diversity, an ambiguity that remained in
vogue throughout the early modern period. In the second chapter, Benjamin
Straumann more directly takes issue with the dominant views on the model
of ancient Rome in Renaissance republicanism. While Bruni, Machiavelli and
Guicciardini also figure prominently in the work of Baron, Pocock and Skinner
as key transmitters of the republican languages of virtue and “neo-Roman” lib-
erty, Straumann shifts the attention to a different Renaissance understanding
of Rome as primarily a constitutional order. This understanding, originating
in Cicero and still present in Pomponius’ interpretation of the lex regia, re-
surfaced prominently in the early fourteenth century with Ptolemy of Lucca,
and was further elaborated in early sixteenth century Rome by Mario Salamo-
nio. A contemporary of Machiavelli, Salamonio assessed ancient Roman his-
tory for its constitutional and contractual significance, developing a repub-
lican interpretation wholly different from Machiavelli’s. The dominance of
the “Machiavellian tradition” is further challenged in Chapter 3, which moves
49 See Rachel Hammersley, The English Republican Tradition and Eighteenth-Century France:
Between the Ancients and the Moderns (Manchester, 2010); Gaby Mahlberg and Dirk
Wiemann, eds., European Contexts for English Republicanism (Farnham, 2013).
the focus from Florence and Rome to Venice and the Dutch Republic. Arthur
Weststeijn shows how these two most successful and longstanding early mod-
ern republics discarded the example of ancient Rome because of its failure
to combine liberty with empire. Focusing especially on Paolo Paruta and
Trajano Boccalini in Venice and on Grotius’ Parallelon rerumpublicarum in the
Dutch Republic, Weststeijn argues that around 1600, an anti-Roman republi-
can t radition came into being that significantly prioritised social concord and
commerce over military virtue and expansion.
Ancient Rome generally dominates the scholarship on the early modern
classical tradition, although even in the case of the Roman Republic, most at-
tention is commonly paid to its cultural and political uses from 1800 onwards.50
The Greek poleis of antiquity, however, have fared far worse, remaining largely
absent within the existing historiography on early modern republicanism.51
It is one of the principle purposes of this volume to redress this deficit and
to highlight the importance of ancient Greek models in the early modern
republican imagination. William Stenhouse, in the fourth chapter, breaks
new ground with an extensive survey of the rising scholarly interest in the
classical Greek past during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. His
analysis unearths a widespread tradition of Greek history writing throughout
Europe, from Guillaume Postel in France to Carlo Sigonio in Bologna, Johannes
Meursius and Ubbo Emmius in the Dutch Republic, Nicolaus Cragius in Den-
mark and the pupils of Bartholomaeus Keckermann in Gdansk. The variety
of their work, with specific attention for Athens and Sparta, opened up many
possibilities of comparing past and present, often with highly specific political
motivations. This becomes clear from the next chapter by Jaap Nieuwstraten,
which zooms in on a very concrete example of such politicised uses of Greek
antiquity: the Achaean League as a confederate model in seventeenth-century
Dutch political debate. Surveying the work of two Dutch academics, Marcus
Zuerius Boxhorn and Martinus Schoock, Nieuwstraten shows how early mod-
ern commentators creatively mined the arsenal of classical republican history
to make sense of their times and to forward highly topical arguments. When the
city-states of Rome, Athens or Sparta did not handily fit that purpose, another
model such as the Achaean League could be effectively mobilised instead.
50 See e.g. the special issue The Legacy of the Republican Roman Senate, Classical Receptions
Journal 7.1 (2015), which jumps from late antiquity directly to the late eighteenth century.
A good discussion of the seventeenth century is Freya Cox Jensen, Reading the Roman
Republic in Early Modern England (Leiden, 2012).
51 For a recent exception, see the special issue The Legacy of Greek Political Thought, C
lassical
Receptions Journal 8.1 (2016), especially Rachel Foxley, “Sparta and the English Republic,”
54–70.
Introduction 17
Athens nonetheless remained the most celebrated ancient Greek state, and
its history was equally open to many and diverse readings and interpretations.
In Chapter 6, Christine Zabel analyses the appropriations of Athens in England,
where the idea that Athens was a failed republic because of its constitutional
defects, a widespread view among English republicans in the mid seventeenth
century, gradually made place for a much more positive depiction of Athens as
a cultural and educational model of politeness, civility, and learning. Originat-
ing in France with the moralist Jean de la Bruyère, this interpretation of Athens
was particularly brought forward in the early eighteenth century by the Whig
theorist Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. For Shaftesbury,
liberty and politeness were mutually reinforcing, for refined conversation can
only flourish in a free political debate. Athens was the timeless model of such
urban refinement and freedom. The other most celebrated Greek polis, Sparta,
enjoyed an altogether different reputation. Wessel Krul explores in Chapter 7
how the idea of Sparta as a highly disciplined but also brutal republic was
developed and transformed in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic and
eighteenth-century France, especially in painting. Following Dutch politicised
depictions of Lycurgus, imagery of Spartan examples during the French En-
lightenment attested how Sparta was increasingly considered as a model for
contemporary society from the 1760s onwards. The ambiguities of that model
were best captured in the work of Jean Pierre Saint-Ours, on show in the first
revolutionary Salon in Paris in 1791, where Saint-Ours followed Rousseau in
idealising ancient morality while also embracing a sentimentalist notion of
brotherhood and sympathy. In the same revolutionary years, the classical past
continued to be of paramount importance in the political debate in the Dutch
Republic as well, as is shown by Wyger Velema in Chapter 8. Not only reform-
ers and revolutionaries but also conservative critics of popular participation in
politics used the ancients for making their case, especially by referring to the
disastrous example of democratic Athens. The newspaper editor Johan Luzac,
his cousin Elie Luzac and the patrician Johan Meerman concurred in discern-
ing the dangerous features of revolutionary modernity in the fateful mirror of
ancient Athens. Meerman did so in his comments on the edition of Grotius’
Parallelon rerumpublicarum that he published between 1801 and 1803; this par-
ticular text thus connects various republican readings of Rome and Athens
between the very start and the ultimate demise of the Dutch Republic in the
early modern age.
While the Roman Republic and Greek poleis such as Athens and Sparta
proved to be of primarily political and moral significance throughout the
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the example of the Hebrew
Republic was specifically pertinent to the pressing issue of the relationship
between church and state. In Chapter 9, Guido Bartolucci argues that this
particular use of the Hebrew model already originated in antiquarian stud-

ies from the second half of the sixteenth century, especially in the work of
Corneille Bertram, Carlo Sigonio and Benedict Arias Montano. They employed
Mosaic Law and the example of Joshua to reveal the source of political power
and to assess the jurisdiction over ecclesiastical affairs, indirectly interven-
ing in the political debates concerning the status of the Reformed Church in
Geneva, the limits of papal authority in Italy, and the conflict with the papacy
in Habsburg Spain. This did not necessarily imply a distinctively republican
position, but the on-going significance of this kind of argumentation for a spe-
cific republican context is shown in the next chapter by René Koekkoek. In the
third quarter of the seventeenth century, the Hebrew Republic continued to
inform the heated debate on the relationship between state and church in the
Dutch Republic. As Koekkoek shows, while orthodox Calvinists championed
the notion of a Dutch Israel, republican radicals such as Johan and Pieter de
la Court, Lambertus van Velthuysen and Adriaen Koerbagh used the Hebrew
model for claiming civil sovereignty over the church. Especially in the political
philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, moreover, this stance merged with an outright
rejection of Hebrew theocracy as an anti-model of intolerance. Both the analy-
sis of Bartolucci and that of Koekkoek significantly challenge recent scholar-
ship on the role of the Hebrew Republic in early modern political thought.
The last three chapters of the volume are devoted to the use of ancient
models in three specific national contexts. In Chapter 11, Thomas Mais-
sen analyses how the classical past awakened a republican consciousness in
the Swiss Confederation from the late fifteenth century onwards. Humanist
scholarship engendered the invention of an ethnic Helvetian identity, based
on classical sources, and ensuing claims for the territorial integrity of the
Confederation, for example in the work of the sixteenth-century historian
Aegidius Tschudi. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ro-
man models, especially Lucius Iunius Brutus, continued to be appropriated
as a parallel to the republican character of the Swiss. In the theatre plays of
Johann Jacob Bodmer, this cult of Brutus culminated in Enlightened notions
of natural equality and popular sovereignty, paving the way for the creation
of a democratic Swiss n ation-state. Chapter 12 shifts the focus to the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tomasz Gromelski reviews a range of sources to
show the lasting impact of classical antiquity on noble culture and human-
ist education throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth century, resulting in
classical notions of liberty and virtue, but also of serfdom and civic inequal-
ity. I nstitutionally, the Commonwealth was often considered a perfect mixed
government, to be compared to the ancient models of Sparta, Athens and
Rome, but also to modern Venice. The extent to which such diverse historical
Introduction 19
examples could be used together in the creation of an entirely new state, is

shown effectively in the last chapter of the volume by Eran Shalev. Challenging
the view that America was a nation born modern, Shalev shows the extensive
employment of ancient history in the making of the United States. An ide-
alised notion of Anglo-Saxon liberty, cherished by American colonists, turned
after Independence into an intense identification with the Roman Republic,
especially during the constitutional debates of the 1780s, when Roman char-
acters dominated the New York newspapers. The most enduring model, how-
ever, was the Hebrew Republic, which not only provided biblical parallels of a
chosen people and a promised land, but also a federal blueprint for the United
States. Taking the example of Enoch Wines’ 1853 study on the Mosaic constitu-
tion, Shalev concludes the volume with revealing the lasting impact exercised
by ancient models on the republican imagination deep into the nineteenth
century.
Collectively, the chapters in this volume revive and concretise the debate on
“classical republicanism” in a transnational perspective, revealing the extent to
which ancient models were not only perceived to be of moral significance, in
terms of virtue and liberty, but were also considered to teach important con-
stitutional lessons. While the moral aspects and arguments of early modern
republicanism have taken centre stage in the recent historiography, the focus
can now be adjusted to include also the constitutional dimension, and to reach
a more balanced and more comprehensive analysis of the continuous repub-
lican use of ancient models throughout the early modern period. From the
early Renaissance to the Age of Revolution, appropriations of the ancient past
loomed large over political debates and processes of republican identifica-
tion, in terms of imitation and emulation as well as condemnation. Certainly,
not everyone was happy with this on-going obsession with the classics. As the
Dutch publicist Elie Luzac complained in his commentary on Montesquieu
from 1763, “people keep referring to the classical republics as examples without
realising that they have nothing whatsoever in common, except their name.”52
This volume shows that in this aspect at least, Luzac was wrong: the republican
models of antiquity, no matter how much they differed from each other and
no matter in how many different ways they were appropriated, proved to be of
enduring significance precisely because they shared a venerated history and a
classical status as ancient republics.
52 Montesquieu, De L’Esprit des Loix. Nouvelle Edition. Avec des Remarques Philosophiques et
Politiques d’un Anonyme [Elie Luzac], etc., 4 vols. (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1763), 4:187. See
Chapter 8 by Wyger Velema.
chapter 1
Renaissance Historicism and the Model of Rome in

Florentine Historiography
Jacques Bos
Ancient Rome was a central point of reference for historians in Renaissance

Italy. They commonly traced the origins of their cities to Roman times, and
used comparisons with Roman history to make sense of events in later peri-
ods. In Renaissance historical writing Rome was, in other words, both a tem-
poral point of departure and a mirror or model. The use of the Roman past as
a model had both a conceptual and a practical dimension: it provided histori-
cal parallels to describe and understand what happened in other periods than
Roman antiquity, and it provided exemplary cases of morality and prudence
(or immorality and imprudence). In our modern eyes, these two dimensions
seem to be clearly distinct, but it should be noted that to Renaissance histori-
ans the difference was probably not that clear-cut.
The use of the Roman model in Renaissance historiography is inextricably
linked with the broader issue of the nature of the Renaissance perspective on
the past. Some authors have argued that the Renaissance was the first era that
knew a form of historicism, a sense that the past was different from the pres-
ent and that past events should be interpreted in terms of the context in which
they occurred. The emergence of a marked sense of anachronism in humanist
philology is often regarded as an important indication of the development of
a historicist view of the past in the Renaissance, as is the deep contrast that
Renaissance authors tended to see between their own time and the Middle
Ages. Other authors, however, point out that the Renaissance sense of his-
tory was essentially cyclical, based on the assumption that the ancient past
could somehow return in the present. At first sight, the ubiquitous use of the
Roman past as a model in historiography seems to be at odds with the the-
sis of an emerging Renaissance historicism. If Roman history is to function
as an interpretative scheme for the description of later historical periods or a
moral paradigm for the present, a basic similarity between these periods and
the Roman past must be presumed. Any substantial form of historicism, how-
ever, would call into question the possibility of this kind of correspondence
between different historical eras.

Renaissance Historicism and the Model of Rome 21
This, in a nutshell, is the problem to be discussed in this first chapter.

The Roman past is an omnipresent model in Renaissance historiography, but
what does that tell us about the Renaissance perspective on the past? Can
we still speak of the emergence of a form of historicism in the Renaissance,
or is that precluded by the intertemporal similarities presupposed in the ap-
plication of the Roman model to other periods? As a first step in dealing with
these questions I shall give an overview of the debate on Renaissance histori-
cism. The second half of this chapter turns to the work of three well-known
Florentine historians, Leonardo Bruni, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco
Guicciardini. Each of them has strong views on the use of the Roman model
in historical writing, and each of them has been connected with the rise of
Renaissance historicism, although definitely not unequivocally. Needless to
say, many more authors could be analysed in connection with the problem
discussed in this chapter. It is not my intention, however, to construct a de-
tailed genealogy of the relation to the Roman past in Florentine historiog-
raphy. The aim of this opening chapter is to explore what is conceptually
involved in the use of the Roman model in the Renaissance by probing into
the work of three authors who are almost universally regarded as important
innovators of historical writing. It is often assumed that the historiographical
innovations of Bruni, Machiavelli and Guicciardini entail a fundamentally
new, historicist perspective on the past, but this presupposition warrants a
critical analysis.
The Concept of Historicism
The term “historicism” is primarily used to denote a form of historical con-

sciousness and a practice of historical writing that surfaced around 1800,
especially in Germany, and that still dominates our present-day thinking about
history. Yet, it is not unusual to apply this term to other periods as well, and the
Renaissance is one of the most notable of these periods—or perhaps even the
single era most commonly associated with the rise of historicism apart from
the early nineteenth century. Of course, it might be argued that it is i nherently
problematic to apply the essentially nineteenth-century concept of historicism
to the Renaissance. Yet, using the term “historicism” as an analytical tool could
also deepen our understanding of the Renaissance approach to the past, pro-
vided we do not anachronistically interpret the Renaissance sense of the past
as some kind of prefiguration of modes of historical consciousness originating
in the nineteenth century.
22 Bos
Before turning to the scholarly discussion on the problem of Renaissance

historicism I shall give a brief overview of the way the term “historicism” is
used in connection with more modern forms of historical writing and histori-
cal consciousness. This excursion into the more recent past will be helpful
in order to avoid anachronistic interpretations of the Renaissance sense of
history and to make implicit comparisons more explicit. That a modern form
of historicism came into being around 1800 is an almost universally accepted
claim. What that kind of historicism exactly involves, however, is a matter of
dispute. A diverse range of meanings is attributed to the term “historicism,”1
and there exist significant differences of opinion about which of these mean-
ings are more or less central. Some authors, for instance, regard the form of his-
toricism that arose in the nineteenth century primarily as a scientific paradigm
in academic historiography, and focus on epistemological ideals and research
methods.2 Others, however, do not see modern historicism as a phenomenon
limited to the realm of professional historical writing, but as a worldview that
has had a profound influence on modern culture as a whole.3 Despite the vari-
ety of perspectives from which modern historicism has been studied, it is not
impossible to point out a common ground in its different manifestations. That
common ground—which I would like to call the ontological core of histori-
cism—is the idea that the world is quintessentially historical. This means in
the first place that various periods in history are supposed to be fundamentally
different, and that past events, actions and thoughts are regarded as products
of specific historical circumstances. It also means that entities in the socio-
historical world, such as nations or states, do not have unchanging, timeless
essences, but develop over time.4
This development over time can be conceptualised in various ways. One
possible perspective on the fluctuating nature of the socio-historical world is
a form of nominalism. According to this nominalist view, there are no lasting
1 Georg G. Iggers, “Historicism: The History and Meaning of the Term,” Journal of the History of
Ideas 56 (1995): 129–152.
2 Jörn Rüsen, Konfigurationen des Historismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1993); Horst Walter Blanke,
Historiographiegeschichte als Historik (Stuttgart, 1991); Friedrich Jaeger and Jörn Rüsen,
Geschichte des Historismus: Eine Einführung (Munich, 1992).
3 Karl Mannheim, “Historismus,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 52 (1924): 1–60;
Daniel Fulda, “Historicism as a Cultural Pattern: Practising a Mode of Thought,” Journal of the
Philosophy of History 4 (2010): 138–153.
4 Frederick C. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford, 2011), 2. This view on the
philosophical underpinning of historicism can already be found in the foundational text of
the present-day academic analysis of historicism, Friedrich Meinecke, Die Entstehung des
H istorismus (Munich, 1936).
beings in the socio-historical world apart from individual people and physi-
cal objects; when we speak of, for instance, the role of nations or states in the
historical process, we simply use a name or a label to organise certain arrays of
events, without assuming that there exist historical entities that remain essen-
tially identical over a wider span of time.5 An alternative historicist ontology
is the view that the historical process is shaped by various kinds of individuali-
ties. Human beings belong to this category of historical individualities, but in
this perspective there also exist higher-order individualities such as nations
and states. In nineteenth-century German historicism, this is unmistakably
the prevailing ontology. The development of higher-order individualities in
the socio-historical world is usually regarded as an organic process, compa-
rable to the growth and decay of plants and animals. This makes it possible to
conceive of historical change while maintaining a strong sense of unity and
coherence in history. It also enables nineteenth-century historians and philos-
ophers to address the relation between lower-order and higher-order individu-
alities. This relation is described in organic terms as well: individual people are
regarded as distinct entities that are nevertheless inseparably connected with
larger socio-cultural groups, in a similar way as leaves are connected to trees.
Very characteristic of the nineteenth century is the conflation of an organic
conception of socio-historical individualities with an idealistic philosophical
stance: many authors regard the historical development of entities such as
nations and states as expressions of underlying ideas, which are supposed to
be the most fundamental elements of socio-historical reality.6
Besides an ontological core modern historicism also has an epistemologi-
cal core. Perhaps not surprisingly, this epistemological core is closely related
to—if not entailed by—the basic assumptions of the historicist ontology.
Since past actions and thoughts are products of their historical context, they
should also be understood in terms of that context. At the epistemological
heart of historicism is the demand for contextualisation and the avoidance of
anachronistic descriptions and explanations. In the nineteenth century these
fundamental epistemological beliefs were elaborated into two potentially con-
flicting views on the nature of historiography. The first view assumes that sci-
entific objectivity can function as a guarantee against anachronistic distortions
of the past. This is what Ranke expresses in his famous dictum that historians
should describe the past wie es eigentlich gewesen. Historians claim a scientific
5 Beiser, German Historicist Tradition, 5–6.

6 Jacques Bos, “Individuality and Interpretation in Nineteenth-Century German Historicism,”
in Historical Perspectives on Erklären and Verstehen, ed. Uljana Feest (Dordrecht, 2010),
207–220.
24 Bos
status for their discipline by characterising it as strictly empirical and objec-

tive; in this respect there is supposed to be no difference between history and
the natural sciences.7 The second strand in historicist epistemology regards
history not as an empirical but as an interpretative discipline. Its proponents
conclude from the distinctness of the past that acquiring historical knowledge
is not just a matter of accumulating empirical data, but involves a more com-
plex bridging of the gap between past and present. Likewise, the ontology of
individuality can lead to the epistemological conclusion that unique historical
individualities cannot be fully understood by empirical research. Thus, writing
history necessarily comes to involve interpretation (the programmatic Ger-
man term for this form of historical understanding is Verstehen). On this view,
history and other disciplines in the humanities may claim a status as scientific
fields, but their interpretative method of producing knowledge is regarded as
fundamentally different from the empirical method of the natural sciences.8
The Debate on Renaissance Historicism
The question whether the Renaissance knew some form of historicism has
been answered in radically diverging ways. The difference of scholarly opin-
ion on this subject fits into a broader lack of consensus about the nature and
the significance of Renaissance historiography.9 Furthermore, the assessment
of Renaissance historical thought often involves more wide-ranging claims
about the modernity—or lack of modernity—of the Renaissance. Supporters
of the thesis that the Renaissance discovered historicism usually regard this as
an important sign of the breakthrough of a more modern mode of thinking,
while those opposing this thesis tend to have reservations about the moder-
nity of the Renaissance. The great variety of perspectives on the problem of
Renaissance historicism is not only a matter of divergent interpretations of
Renaissance thought, but also reveals conflicting notions of what historicism
exactly involves. As a starting point for my analysis of Renaissance historical
consciousness I shall give a concise overview of the most important scholarly
positions regarding this subject, and try to point out how these positions relate
to the conceptual model of historicism sketched above.
7 Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical
P rofession (Cambridge, 1988).
8 Viktor Lau, Erzählen und Verstehen: Historische Perspektiven der Hermeneutik (Würzburg,
1999).
9 Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1981),
xi-xiii.
According to a rather widespread interpretation, Renaissance h istorical

thought should be seen as a direct precursor of nineteenth-century histori-
cism, or even as a perspective on the past that is historicist to all intents and
purposes. Peter Burke regards the Renaissance approach to the past and
nineteenth-century historicism as essentially similar, describing the latter
as “curiously like” the first, and as “a continuation and intensification” of the
Renaissance discovery of the past.10 In Burke’s analysis of the Renaissance
sense of history we find all the key features of nineteenth-century histori-
cism, conjoined in a seemingly self-evident way. According to Burke, Renais-
sance historians treated the past as fundamentally different from the present,
avoided anachronistic interpretations, used critical research methods, and
were interested in contextualist explanations, relating events to, for instance,
the spirit of the age. Comparable conclusions are drawn by Donald Kelley
and George Huppert in their studies of sixteenth-century French humanism.
Kelley argues that the use of philological methods in the historical study of
Roman and feudal law brought about a sense of historical relativity compa-
rable to that of the nineteenth century. In his opinion, “historicism must be
traced to the humanists of the Renaissance.”11 Huppert’s thesis is very similar.
In sixteenth-century French historiography he observes the emergence of a
“historical-mindedness” that he explicitly equates with historicism. The root
of this early modern form of historicism was the application of critical re-
search methods to the study of h istory. As a consequence of this epistemo-
logical reorientation, the o ntological assumption that past and present were
fundamentally different took hold, a sense of historical relativism appeared,
and Huppert even observes the rise of an individualising and developmental
perspective on the past.12
The view that modern historicism emerged in the Renaissance is certainly
not universally shared. Most students of nineteenth-century historicism tend
to regard the period around 1800 as a crucial shift in thinking about the past,
rooted in certain strands of eighteenth-century thought, but fundamentally
different from older approaches to the past.13 Reinhart Koselleck argues that
early modern Europeans still believed that they could draw lessons from the
10 Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London, 1969), 144.
11 Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and
History in the French Renaissance (New York and London, 1970), 302.
12 George Huppert, The Idea of Perfect History: Historical Erudition and Historical Philosophy
in Renaissance France (Urbana, Ill. and Chicago, 1970), 3–11, 151–169.
13 This view plays a central role in Meinecke’s foundational study of the rise of histori-
cism, and has generally been accepted by later scholars. See Meinecke, Entstehung des
Historismus.
26 Bos
past, an attitude summarised in the Ciceronian dictum historia magistra vitae.

The assumption underlying this belief is that nothing substantially new will
happen in the future. In the late eighteenth century, however, a new concep-
tion of historical time started to emerge: according to Koselleck, people came
to see the future as open and unpredictable, and began to regard the histori-
cal process as a succession of incomparable episodes.14 Janet Coleman also
argues that there was no substantial form of historicism in the Renaissance,
though from a different perspective. In her opinion, the limited historicist
tendencies that can be observed in the Renaissance were already present in
medieval philosophy, more specifically in the debate between the realist via
antiqua and the nominalist via moderna. According to Coleman, the philoso-
phy of the via moderna discovered that the use of language is context-bound
and that truths can be expressed in various ways. This opened the way for an
awareness of linguistic anachronism, in Coleman’s opinion an invention of the
Middle Ages, not of the Renaissance. She stresses that Renaissance debates
about history should be understood in terms of the opposition between the via
antiqua and the via moderna, the first school regarding the past as present and
universal, the second as past and particular. What is innovative in Renaissance
historiography, is not a groundbreakingly new kind of historical conscious-
ness, but merely the use of new literary forms.15
Some authors try to find a middle ground in this discussion. Zachary Schiff-
man rejects the view of Renaissance historicism brought forward by Kelley
and Huppert, claiming that “it correctly attributes a growing awareness of
historical and cultural relativity in the sixteenth century to developments in
historical scholarship, but it incorrectly identifies this sense of relativity with
historicism.”16 Schiffman argues that the sixteenth-century perspective on the
past cannot be called historicist, because it did not explain historical change in
terms of the development of organic entities in relation to their circumstanc-
es. In a recent comprehensive study of Westerm historical thought S chiffman
analyses the Renaissance approach to the past as a somewhat ambivalent phe-
nomenon. On the one hand, Renaissance historical thought started to d iscover
the difference between past and present, although without extending its sense
14 Reinhart Koselleck, “Historia Magistra Vitae: Über die Auflösung des Topos im Horizont
neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte,” in Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher
Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 38–66. A similar point of view can be found in François
Hartog, Régimes d’historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps (Paris, 2003).
15 Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past
(Cambridge, 1992).
16 Zachary Sayre Schiffman, “Renaissance Historicism Reconsidered,” History and Theory
24 (1985): 170–182, 170.
of anachronism into a general theory of historical relativity. At the same time,

the Renaissance regarded the past as a “living past” that could be used as a
supply of examples for the present.17 A similar position is defended by Ron-
ald Witt, who argues that the Renaissance effort to imitate ancient authors
amounted to the cultivation of “a complex, almost oxymoronic sense of acces-
sibility and historical distance.” Renaissance scholars were increasingly aware
of the temporal distance between the classical past and the present. Yet, de-
spite this growing sense of anachronism, the Renaissance continued to assimi-
late the ancient past as a source of examples for imitation.18
A perspective that is especially important in the context of this volume is
the analysis that connects Renaissance historical thought with the rise of clas-
sical republicanism. Hans Baron prepared the ground for this approach with
his thesis about the emergence of what he called “civic humanism” in Florence
in the years around 1400. In this period Florence was involved in a war with
Milan that imperilled its existence as an independent city-state. A ccording
to Baron, this situation resulted in a major intellectual reorientation, in
which humanist classicism—in itself a fairly novel phenomenon around
1400—acquired an important political dimension. Florentine humanists be-
gan to read classical texts in search of examples of civic virtue deemed to be
essential for the s urvival of their own free republic. The history of republican
Rome became the main source for these examples. Baron points out that this
shift towards civic humanism in the years around 1400 involved significant re-
assessments of the political meaning of the past. The growing emphasis on the
Roman Republic as a model for present-day political action was mirrored by
a decreasing appreciation of the Roman Empire. This had been the principal
template for medieval political thought, which mainly theorised about a uni-
versal Christian empire. In line with this general reconsideration of the classi-
cal past the evaluation of specific historical persons and events also changed.
Whereas many medieval authors had a high regard for Caesar as the founder
of the Roman empire, the civic humanists of the early fifteenth century came
to see him as a tyrant. On the other hand, they praised Caesar’s killer, Brutus,
for his republican virtue, while their predecessors tended to condemn him as
a murderer. The foundation of the city of Florence was rethought as well: the
medieval view was that Caesar had founded Florence, but after 1400 the city
was generally assumed to be a colony of the Roman Republic.19
17 Zachary Sayre Schiffman, The Birth of the Past (Baltimore, 2011), 138–152, 254–265.
18 Ronald G. Witt, “In the Footsteps of the Ancients:” The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to
Bruni (Leiden, 2000), 500–501.
19 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican
Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (revised edition; Princeton, 1966 [1955]),
28 Bos
Leonardo Bruni is the central figure in Baron’s narrative. On the basis of

a detailed examination of the chronology of Bruni’s works Baron argues for
his thesis that the emergence of a new view on history and politics was close-
ly intertwined with the Florentine-Milanese struggle. Bruni was one of the
leading philologists of his time, but his work shows, according to Baron, that
humanism cannot be correctly understood by merely focusing on its philo-
logical pursuits, without taking into account the centrality of its civic dimen-
sion. This civic dimension was not just a way of dealing with the threats to the
independent existence of Florence in the years around 1400, but remained a
crucial aspect of humanism in the later Renaissance. In Baron’s perspective,
civic humanism is in the first place a theory of history. It involves a reinterpre-
tation of specific elements of the classical past, but also a change of attitude
towards history as such. As Baron writes, humanism after 1400 “sought to learn
from antiquity not as a golden age never again to be realised, but as an exem-
plary parallel to the present.” This did not mean that Renaissance humanists
believed that past and present were exactly similar, and that classical models
could be copied indiscriminately. What mattered was trying to rival antiquity
in the modern world: “in dealing with one’s own state, language, and literature,
one should act as the ancients acted in dealing with their states, languages, and
literatures.”20
The Machiavellian Moment by J.G.A. Pocock equally has the role of classi-
cal models in Florentine political thought as its starting point, but Pocock’s
analysis is not primarily centred on Bruni, as Baron’s, but on later authors such
as Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Furthermore, Pocock strongly emphasises
the influence of ancient theories on the nature of political communities, such
as Aristotelian philosophy, on Renaissance thought, whereas Baron is mainly
concerned with the way Renaissance authors related to historical examples.
Nevertheless, Pocock’s thesis about republicanism in political theory is also a
thesis about historical thought; the rise of classical republicanism is inextri-
cably intertwined with the emergence of a new kind of historical conscious-
ness. According to Pocock, medieval thought was focused on the eternal and
the universal, and did not really allow for the particularity of historical events;
it “lacked means of explicating the succession of particulars in social and
47–78. For an overview of the debates on Baron’s thesis, see James Hankins, “The ‘Baron
Thesis’ after Fourty Years and Some Recent Studies on Leonardo Bruni,” Journal of the
History of Ideas 56 (1995): 309–338 and James Hankins, ed. Renaissance Civic Humanism:
Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge, 2000).
20 Baron, Crisis, 460–461.
political time.”21 In comparison with their medieval predecessors, Renaissance

authors had a much stronger interest in history. Pocock connects this historical
awareness with the rediscovery of the classical notion of the civic vita activa—
as opposed to the philosophical vita contemplativa. Social and political life was
much more than before regarded as the product of intentional human action,
which could be a more or less virtuous reaction to circumstances (here the
crucial conceptual pair of virtus and fortuna comes into play). The continued
existence of a republic depends on the virtue of its citizens, but since this kind
of civic virtue is not a given, decline is a real possibility, or even something
that almost necessarily occurs at some moment in time. Thus, a preoccupation
with processes of rise and decline became a distinctive aspect of the historical
consciousness of the Renaissance.22
Baron and Pocock regard the rise of a new kind of historical awareness as
a central element of the Renaissance departure from medieval patterns of
thought. We could see this as a vindication of the thesis that the Renaissance
was the birthground of historicism. Yet, the historicism described by Baron
and Pocock has a rather limited and paradoxical character. What matters to
them, is the ontological dimension of the relation between past and present;
they barely write about the epistemological problems humanists might have
encountered in seeking to get to know the past. According to Baron and
Pocock, Renaissance authors started to understand the historical process as a
contingent product of human action, an idea that was very problematic in the
eyes of medieval authors. This emphasis on the contingency of the historical
process implies some minimal awareness of the difference between past and
present: if history is made in a contingent interplay of fortuna and virtus, past
and present will never be the same. Yet, at the same time republican human-
ism presupposes that past and present are sufficiently similar for past exam-
ples to be applicable in the modern world, and the conceptualisation of history
in terms of exemplary cycles of rise and decline also seems to suggest that past
and present might not be radically different.
Bruni, Machiavelli, Guicciardini
Leonardo Bruni (c.1370–1444) has frequently been described as the first modern
historian, or at least as a central figure in the development of historiography.
21 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Republican Thought and the Atlantic
Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975), 48.
22 Ibidem, 49–80.
30 Bos
Authors who hold this view point out that he wrote historical narratives in-
stead of chronicles, analysed the historical process in terms of causes and mo-
tives, displayed a critical attitude towards his sources, and was one of the first
historians to make a distinction between ancient, medieval and modern histo-
ry.23 When we take this view of Bruni at face value, there would not be much of
a difference between his approach to the past and that of nineteenth-century
historicism. As we have seen above, Bruni is also the crucial i ntellectual pioneer
in Baron’s thesis about the emergence of civic humanism in the early fifteenth
century. In more recent studies, however, Bruni’s role tends to be presented
as somewhat less pivotal, though nevertheless important. Gary Ianziti’s com-
prehensive book about Bruni’s work is a case in point. Ianziti’s central claim is
that Bruni’s historical work should be read as an answer to the political needs
of the oligarchy ruling Florence in the early fifteenth century. In discussions
among Florence’s rulers about the right course of political action, historical
arguments played an important role—with examples taken from both Roman
and Florentine history. According to Ianziti, this is the principal background to
Bruni’s critical revision of the received ideas about Florence’s past as they were
formulated in the traditional chronicles of the city’s history. His approach to
the past was in several respects a significant breach with earlier traditions, but
it was, in Ianziti’s opinion, not primarily motivated by philosophical notions
from the republican tradition, nor by an autonomous quest for methodological
innovation.24
Other interpretations of Bruni’s work emphasise its rhetorical charac-
ter. This reading of Bruni stresses his use of stylistic instruments from the
rhetorical tradition, and argues that Bruni did not regard the past as a realm
distinct from the present, but as a part of a continuous rhetorical space filled
with examples for moral and political action. The oft-repeated Ciceronian
commonplace historia magistra vitae quite clearly expresses what is at stake in
this rhetorical perspective on history. According to Nancy Struever, in the Re-
naissance rhetoric and history are closely related fields, because both are ways
of dealing with the flux of human life, without trying to efface contingency by
23 Berthold L. Ullman, “Leonardo Bruni and Humanistic Historiography,” Medievalia et

H
umanistica 4 (1946): 45–61; E.B. Fryde, Humanism and Renaissance Historiography
(London, 1983), 3–53. For an overview and an evaluation of the arguments brought for-
ward in the assessment of Bruni’s position in the development of historical writing, see
Gary Ianziti, “Leonardo Bruni: First Modern Historian?,” Parergon 14 (1997): 85–99.
24 Gary Ianziti, Writing History in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past
(Cambridge, Mass., 2012).
the use of abstract philosophical principles.25 An element that the rhetorical

perspective on Bruni’s work has in common with Baron’s and Ianziti’s interpre-
tations is the idea that Bruni primarily regarded the past as a source of exam-
ples. Opinions differ, however, on the precise function that examples from the
past would have had in Bruni’s eyes. Proponents of the rhetorical interpreta-
tion of his work tend to emphasise the moral nature of historical examples, as
does Baron, although in his view morality tends to amount to political virtue.
In Ianziti’s opinion, however, Bruni’s examples from the past primarily serve
practical political goals.
When history is primarily seen as a source of examples, this presupposes
that past and present are not fundamentally discontinuous. An unproblematic
application of past examples to the present is only possible if past and pres-
ent are sufficiently similar. This suggests that we probably will not find many
significant traces of historicism in the work of Bruni, who turns to the past in
search of immediately relevant examples for action in the present. In order to
get a clearer view of Bruni’s perspective on the past, I shall now turn to the way
he deals with Roman history in his writings. This analysis does not pretend to
completeness. Tracing all of Bruni’s references to Rome would not be feasible
in the framework of this chapter, yet it is not impossible to draw meaningful
conclusions on the basis of a more limited consideration of Bruni’s writings.
I shall focus on two texts, the renowned Historiae florentini populi, generally
regarded as Bruni’s main work, and a less well-known treatise, the Laudatio
florentinae Urbis.
The Laudatio is one of Bruni’s earliest works, written around 1400; it is a
rhetorical text praising the greatness of the city of Florence, but it also involves
a significant amount of historical analysis. Therefore, scholars tend to read this
text as a precursor to the Historiae florentini populi; Ianziti characterises it as
“a sort of trial run” for the latter work.26 This connection was already extensive-
ly discussed by Baron, who regarded the Laudatio as one of the key texts in the
development of Bruni’s civic humanism, and tried to support this interpreta-
tion with a detailed examination of the position of this treatise in the chronol-
ogy of Bruni’s works.27 The central historical thesis in Bruni’s Laudatio is that
25 Nancy S. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Con-
sciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton, 1970).
26 Ianziti, Writing History, 96.
27 Baron, Crisis, 191–224; idem, “Chronology and Historical Certainty: The Dates of Bruni’s
Laudatio and Dialogi,” and “Imitation, Rhetoric, and Quattrocento Thought in Bruni’s
Laudatio,” in From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni: Studies in Humanistic and Poltical Litera-
ture (Chicago, 1968), 102–137 and 151–171.
32 Bos
Florence was founded by the ancient Romans, and that this ancestry justifies
the city’s aspiration to play a dominant political and cultural role in Italy. Bruni
discusses the ancient Romans as the paradigmatic case of a virtuous people:
For the fact that the Florentine race arose from the Roman people is of the
utmost importance. What nation in the entire world was ever more dis-
tinguished, more powerful, more outstanding in every sort of excellence
than the Roman people? Their deeds are so illustrious that the greatest
feats done by other men seem like child’s play when compared to the
deeds of the Romans. Their dominion was equal to the entire world, and
they governed with the greatest competence for many centuries, so that
from a single city come more examples of virtue than all other nations
have been able to produce until now. In Rome there have been innumer-
able men so outstanding in every kind of virtue that no other nation on
earth has ever been equal to it.28
This passage is a very straightforward rhetorical praise of Roman moral and

political virtue, a textbook case of classical republicanism. There is not much
historicism here: the virtues of the Romans are not connected with the specific
historical circumstances in which they lived, and their exemplary value for the
present is taken for granted. History provides a direct connection between the
Romans and the Florentines of Bruni’s days: he claims that the Florentines have
inherited the virtuous character of the Roman founders of their city. Bruni’s
historical argument emphasises the continuity between past and present, and
not the possible differences between the two. Furthermore, Bruni’s discussion
of the origins of Florence has a strong political dimension. He claims that Flor-
ence was founded during the heyday of the Roman Republic, around 100 bc,
when “the Caesars, the Antonines, the Tiberiuses, the Neros—those plagues
and destroyers of the Roman Republic—had not yet deprived the people of
their liberty.”29 As a result, the Florentines are more attached to republican
liberty than the inhabitants of other cities.
Although the Historiae florentini populi is a different genre of text than the
Laudatio—an extended historical narrative instead of a rhetorical laudatio
of a limited length—the kind of arguments and analyses brought forward by
28 Leonardo Bruni, “Panegyric to the City of Florence,” trans. Benjamin G. Kohl, in The
Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and
Ronald G. Witt (Philadelphia, 1978), 135–175, 149–150. A modern edition of the Latin text
of the Panegyric can be found in Baron, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, 232–263.
29 Bruni, “Panegyric,” 151.
runi are very similar, especially in the first book, which deals with the origin
B
of Florence and its history in Roman times. The main difference is that in the
Historiae florentini populi Bruni gives more specific details and expands the
scope of his historical investigation. He reiterates his earlier thesis that Flor-
ence was founded as a colony of the Roman Republic, but now adds that the
founders of Florence were veterans sent to Tuscany by Sulla. Furthermore,
Bruni extensively discusses the Etruscan past of Tuscany, describing the Etrus-
cans as strongly attached to their liberty and comparable to the Romans in
political virtue and cultural development. By connecting Florence not only
with its foundation in the time of the Roman Republic, but also with its Etrus-
can prehistory, Bruni strengthens the claim that love of liberty is a historical
characteristic of the Florentine people. He presents Roman history both as a
positive model and as a warning to the Florentines. In the nearly five centuries
that they had a republican form of government, the Romans, “the free people
of a single city,” managed to conquer large parts of the world known to them.
Decline commenced, however, “almost from the moment that Rome gave up
her liberty to serve a series of emperors.”30
In the preface to the Historiae florentini populi Bruni explicitly asserts that
the aim of the study of the past is to provide examples for actions in the pres-
ent: from history “we may learn with ease what behaviour we should imitate
and avoid, while the glory won by great men, as therein recorded, inspires us
to perform acts of virtue.” Bruni does not let this didactic function of historical
writing be undermined by historicist contextualisation, not even in a limited
form. As a consequence, comparisons of episodes from different histori-
cal periods do not seem problematic to Bruni; they are undertaken in a very
straightforward way, without accounting for the fact that the episodes under
discussion took place in different historical contexts. About Pisa, which was
conquered by the Florentines, Bruni writes in his preface that it is “fair to call
that city another Carthage.”31 Thus, for Bruni history is a continuous space of
examples and comparisons, not to be examined in its own terms, but in the
light of its usefulness for present action.
To a large extent, the same can be said of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527),
who lived and worked a century after Bruni. A massive amount of academic
literature has been produced about Machiavelli, most of it dealing with his po-
litical theory. Machiavelli’s historical work has received much less attention, al-
though it occupies a central place in his oeuvre. At the end of his life, he wrote
30 Leonardo Bruni, History of the Florentine People, ed. and trans. James Hankins, 3
vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 2001–2007), 1:49, 87.
31 Ibidem, 3.
34 Bos
a comprehensive history of Florence (Istorie fiorentine), and his Discorsi sopra

la prima Deca di Tito Livio are, needless to say, just as much a historical treatise
as a work of political theory. In modern academic appraisals of M achiavelli’s
historical writing we can observe similar tendencies as in the debate about
Bruni. Some authors emphasise the rhetorical nature of Machiavelli’s work
and its huge debt to classical models of writing.32 Others, most notably Felix
Gilbert, point out that Machiavelli was primarily interested in the practical po-
litical use of historical knowledge, and that this is a significant departure from
the historiographical orientation of humanist historians such as Bruni.33 As
we have seen above, however, it can be argued that Bruni’s approach as well is
much more practical than rhetorical.
The use of Roman history as a model for political action in the present is the
central theme in Machiavelli’s Discorsi. In this work Machiavelli comments on
the first ten books of Livy’s History of Rome (Ab urbe condita). It is not, how-
ever, a traditional commentary, merely consisting of interpretative glosses on
a text. Instead, Machiavelli distinguishes a range of topics discussed by Livy,
compares the history of Rome with that of other peoples and cities, both in
antiquity and in later periods, identifies general tendencies in the historical
process, and draws practical and normative conclusions. His orientation is
clearly republican: according to Machiavelli, free republics are the most suc-
cessful and desirable political communities. He explicitly describes Roman
virtue as exemplary, and often contrasts it with a lack of virtue in later periods.
In the history of his own city, Florence, Machiavelli observes a great deal of
internal strife—something the Romans generally managed to avoid.34
In several passages in the Discorsi Machiavelli explicitly discusses the value
of the study of ancient history. In the preface to the first book, he states that his
contemporaries have a great respect for antiquity and try to imitate it in many
fields. The political realm is the exception to this rule: “the most worthy activi-
ties which histories show us, which have been carried on in ancient kingdoms
and republics […] are sooner admired than imitated.”35 Apparently, the D iscorsi
32 Maurizio Viroli, Machiavelli (Oxford, 1998), 97–107.

33 Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Flor-
ence (New York, 1984 [1965]), 233–236. See also Jacques Bos, “Renaissance Historiogra-
phy: Framing a New Mode of Historical Experience,” in The Making of the Humanities I:
The Humanities in Early Modern Europe, ed. Rens Bod, Jaap Maat and Thijs Weststeijn
(Amsterdam, 2010), 351–365, 360.
34 For an overview of the debates about the Discorsi, see J. Patrick Coby, Machiavelli’s
Romans: Liberty and Greatness in the Discourses on Livy (Lanham, Md., 1999).
35 Niccolò Machiavelli, “Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius,” in The Chief Works
and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert (Durham, n.c., 1989 [1958]), 1:175–529, 190.
are intended to redress this situation, by providing examples from Roman his-
tory than can be applied in the present. In the preface to the second book Ma-
chiavelli continues his reflections on the relation between past and present.
Here, he admits that the present may sometimes be better than the past; it may
occur that people praising ancient times deceive themselves. Nevertheless,
Machiavelli states that he intends to uphold the thesis that a ncient Rome is
to be preferred to his own time: “if the excellence that then prevailed and the
corruption that now prevails were not clearer than the sun, I would keep my
speech more cautious, fearing to bring upon myself the deception of which
I accuse others.”36 Despite the fact that Machiavelli o bserves a significant de-
cline in virtue when he compares the Romans with his contemporaries, he also
states that the world as a whole remains in some way always the same:
When I meditate on how these things move, I judge that the world has
always gone on in the same way and that there has been as much good
as bad, but that this bad and this good have varied from land to land as
anyone understands who knows about those ancient kingdoms which
differed from one another because of the difference in their customs, but
the world remained the same.37
At the end of the third book of the Discorsi Machiavelli reiterates his claim
about the essential constancy of human affairs:
Prudent men are in the habit of saying—and not by chance or without

basis—that he who wishes to see what is to come should observe what
has already happened, because all the affairs of the world, in every age,
have their individual counterparts in ancient times. The reason for this is
that since they are carried on by men, who have and always have had the
same passions, of necessity the same results appear.38
When we read passages like these, it is hard to maintain that Machiavelli’s

has a historicist view on the past. Instead, he emphatically denies the central
ontological belief of historicism—the idea that past and present are funda-
mentally distinct. In order to use the Romans as an example Machiavelli has
to assume that their world is sufficiently similar to the present. On the other
36 Ibidem, 324.
37 Ibidem, 322.
38 Ibidem, 521.
36 Bos
hand, Machiavelli does allow for historical change, but this seems secondary to
the underlying constancy of the world.39
Machiavelli is regularly compared with his slightly younger friend Frances-
co Guicciardini (1483–1540). As one modern scholar puts it: this comparison
seems “almost obligatory in any discussion of the Italian Renaissance.”40 Just
as Machiavelli, Guicciardini wrote about politics and history, although he is
usually regarded as primarily a historian, whereas Machiavelli is most often
considered to be primarily a political theorist. It should be noted, however,
that he distinction between these two fields is rather fluid in the Renaissance.
Guicciardini’s main work is his Storia d’Italia, which deals with the disastrous
political events in Italy between 1490 and 1534.
Guicciardini does not start his historical narrative in Roman times. The
direct temporal connection between Rome and the present that was so im-
portant to Bruni and continued to preoccupy Machiavelli, is absent in the
Storia d’Italia. Guicciardini’s account of the recent history of Italy is essentially
tragic: it starts with a sketch of a flourishing world of Italian city-states, and
then shows how this world was destroyed beyond repair. The key events in
the rapid decline of Italy are the invasion of the French in 1494 and the Sack
of Rome in 1527. Guicciardini does not explain these events as the results of
purely external devastating forces. In the end, the calamities that befell Italy
were first and foremost caused by the greed, ambition and shortsightedness of
Italian princes and politicians.
In the prologue to the Storia d’Italia, Guicciardini writes that he wants to
convey two major lessons:
From a knowledge of such occurrences, so varied and so grave, everyone

may derive many precedents salutary both for himself and for the public
weal. Thus numerous examples will make it plainly evident how mutable
are human affairs, not unlike a sea whipped by winds; and how perni-
cious, almost always to themselves but always to the people, are those
39 Janet Coleman regards this somewhat paradoxical position as very similar to the philoso-
phy of the via moderna in the Middle Ages, which regarded the world as fundamentally
constant, but allowed for differences in human experience and its linguistic expression.
Janet Coleman, “Machiavelli’s Via Moderna: Medieval and Renaissance Attitudes to
History,” in Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Martin Coyle
(Manchester, 1995), 40–64.
40 Peter E. Bondanella, Francesco Guicciardini (Boston, 1976), 61. For extensive comparisons
of the two authors, see Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini and Pocock, Machiavellian
Moment.
ill-advised measures of rulers who act solely in terms of what is in front

of their eyes: either foolish errors or shortsighted greed.41
Guicciardini’s emphasis on change and mutability suggests that he might

hold a different view on the historical process and the relation between past
and present than Machiavelli. Of course, Machiavelli would not deny that
human affairs are changeable, but, as we have seen above, he also assumes
that through all periods in history the essence of the world remains the same.
Whereas Machiavelli is mainly interested in recurring processes, “Guicciardi-
ni’s bias is toward the uniqueness of each historical act and of each historical
judgement.”42 As Gilbert puts it, Guicciardini is fascinated by the idiosyncra-
sies of historical events and historical actors, and regards self-interest—“the
satisfaction of the particulare”—as the only constant factor in the historical
process, amidst all mutability. This makes it difficult to draw positive lessons
from regularities or similarities in history, but it does not mean that history
cannot have a didactic aim. By focusing on change, corruption, and the nega-
tive effects of the human pursuit of self-interest Guicciardini explores “the
great themes of the fight of man against fate and of the misery of the human
condition.”43 Guicciardini’s emphasis on the particular instead of the general
aspects of history is mirrored in his methodical and comprehensive examina-
tion of his sources. He systematically and critically compares reports of his-
torical events by earlier historians, and he uses documentary evidence to a
much larger extent than his contemporaries, all in order to establish a factually
accurate account of the particularities of the past.44
The difference of orientation between Machiavelli and Guicciardini is clear-
ly visible in Guicciardini’s Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi di Niccolò Machia-
velli, a short, unfinished and unpublished critique of Machiavelli. Guicciardini
repeatedly reproaches his friend that he is too casual in his dealing with histori-
cal material, and bends the facts to his theoretical observations. Commenting
on Machiavelli’s reflections on the relation between past and present discussed
above, Guicciardini consents to the view “that ancient times are often praised
more than is due,” but he strongly disagrees with Machiavelli’s idea that the
world remains essentially the same in the course of history. He observes that
41 Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, ed. and trans. Sidney Alexander (Princeton,
1969), 3.
42 Mark Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian’s Craft (Toronto, 1977), 87.
43 Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, 292, 300.
44 Ibidem, 296–297; Volker Reinhardt, Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540): Die Entdeckung des
Widerspruchs (Göttingen, 2004), 158–164.
38 Bos
there are significant differences in artistic achievement and in moral and

political virtue, and not just superficially, as Machiavelli seems to claim. In
Guicciardini’s view of the historical process, cultural diversity is quite essential:
“it is no wonder that men’s customs, too, have varied.”45 This makes it problem-
atic to praise the ancients in an unqualified way, or to directly apply ancient
models to the present. As Guicciardini writes in his Ricordi politici e civili:
How wrong it is to cite the Romans at every turn. For any comparison to
be valid, it would be necessary to have a city with conditions like theirs,
and then to govern it according to their example. In the case of a city with
different qualities, the comparison is as much out of order as it would be
to expect a jackass to race like a horse.46
Conclusion
Guicciardini’s remark about constantly referring to the Romans could be read

as a Renaissance defence of historicism: he claims that the past is different
from the present, which makes the use of Roman examples quite problem-
atic. It could be argued that the ontological core of historicism becomes vis-
ible in Guicciardini’s work, while we cannot meaningfully say of Bruni and
Machiavelli that their outlook is historicist. Furthermore, Guicciardini’s me-
thodical approach to historical research could be seen as an indication that he
embraces the epistemological core of historicism as well. Of course, this does
not mean that he holds typically nineteenth-century ideas about the organic
development of historical entities or the importance of interpretation—these
views are not necessarily implied in the ontological and epistemological core
of historicism. And it also does not mean that we do not see any traces at all
of the traditional humanist approach to history in his work. In the end, Guic-
ciardini would rather subscribe to the classical maxim historia magistra vitae
than claim that the historian’s only task is to describe the past wie es eigentlich
gewesen. Yet, the appearance of certain central historicist beliefs in his work
seems to suggest that he should be regarded as a crucial figure in the develop-
ment of a new approach to the past, much more than Bruni or Machiavelli.
45 Francesco Guicciardini, “Considerations of the Discourses of Niccolò Machiavelli,” in The

Sweetness of Power: Machiavelli’s Discourses & Guicciardini’s Considerations, ed. and trans.
James B. Atkinson and David Sices (DeKalb, Ill., 2002), 381–438, 425.
46 Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi), trans. Mario Domandi
(Philadelphia, 1965), 69.
uicciardini’s importance in the history of historical writing has been widely

G
recognised: Gilbert, for instance, characterises Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia
as both “the last great work of history in the classical pattern” and “the first
great work of modern historiography.”47 In Gilbert’s analysis, the modernity
of Guicciardini’s work is primarily connected with his search for rational ex-
planations and his methodical research. This echoes the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century drive to turn history into a scientific discipline. I would,
however, regard the emergence of an ontological commitment to the distinct-
ness of the past and the historicity of the world as more fundamental.
Possibly, the disastrous course of events that occurred in Italy in the first
decades of the sixteenth century brought about a fundamental dissociation
between past and present, in which the past came to be regarded—at least by
Guicciardini—as a different world that was irretrievably lost.48 In any case, it
is hard to say unequivocally that there did or did not exist a form of historicism
in the Renaissance. In this respect, the view defended in this chapter is more
nuanced than existing interpretations of Renaissance historicism, which tend
to regard the historical thought of the Renaissance as a unified body of work,
without significant differentiations. When we consider the trajectory from
Bruni and Machiavelli to Guicciardini, it seems clear that a historicist perspec-
tive on the past was not a viable point of view to Bruni in the early fifteenth
century, but had become part of the field of intellectual possibilities a cen-
tury later, although not as an uncontested presupposition. Machiavelli seems
to acknowledge that the past may be regarded as fundamentally distinct from
the present, but he categorically rejects this possibility, because it does not fit
the objectives of his way of dealing with the past. Guicciardini, however, holds
a different view on the distinctness of the past.49 This divergence between
the two great historians of early-sixteenth century Florence would resurface
throughout the early modern period and materialise in the many diverse uses
of historical examples in republican political thought.
47 Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, 301.

48 F.R. Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford, 2005), 355–363. For an elabora-
tion of this point, see Bos, “Renaissance Historiography,” 355–357, 360.
49 Cf. Mark Salber Phillips, On Historical Distance (New Haven, 2013), 58. Phillips some-
what unsatisfactorily explains the differences between Machiavelli and Guicciardini as a
matter of diverging temperaments.
chapter 2
The Roman Republic as a Constitutional Order in

the Italian Renaissance
Benjamin Straumann*
The dominant interpretations of classical republicanism primarily emphasise

the significance of Ancient Rome as the source of early modern discourses
of virtue and liberty. Nonetheless, the Roman Republic importantly also set
the frame of later discussions of republican politics by being interpreted as
a constitutional order. As this second chapter shows, this constitutional un-
derstanding of Rome largely derived from Marcus Tullius Cicero, who for-
mulated a specifically constitutional solution to what he perceived to be the
constitutional crises that had caused the decline of the Roman Republic. The
absence of constitutional safeguards and the usurpation of despotic powers
were still taken as destructive of the Republican social order by the classical
Roman jurist Pomponius, writing under the Empire. For Pomponius, it was
still axiomatic that the people had sovereignty, and that popular sovereignty,
and the right of appeal, had higher normative value than mere legislation.
These considerations had a large impact on various interpretations of Roman
history in the Italian Renaissance. In the early fourteenth century, Ptolemy of
Lucca (c.1236–c.1327), an admirer of the Roman Republic, happily sided with
the Roman concept of constitutional rule and the civilizing influence on the
world of the Roman law and justice, as these ideas emerged in Cicero’s reading
of the so-called Carneadean debate. Ptolemy had an implicit understanding
of the higher-order norms that set limits on the magisterial arm of govern-
ment. It was these constitutional norms that set the Republic apart, not the
Augustinian virtues of a desire for glory and honour. Two centuries later, in
early sixteenth-century Rome, Mario Salamonio (c.1450–c.1533) also advanced
a constitutionally oriented theory. Following Pomponius, he pondered the
transference of sovereignty from people to emperor as implied in the lex regia,
and took apart Cicero’s definition of res publica, insisting on the constitutional
* I would like to thank Arthur Weststeijn for inviting me to contribute to the present volume
and for his advice. Material that appears in this chapter also appears in my Crisis and
Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolu-
tion (Oxford, 2016), reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.

The Roman Republic as a Constitutional Order 41
constraint of ius, and underlining, as did Cicero, the contractual nature of the
relationship between legislator and subjects. This intellectual trajectory from
Cicero and Pomponius to Ptolemy and Salamonio suggests that the Roman
Republic served as a model of a constitutional republicanism distinct from
virtue-oriented “civic” or even “neo-Roman” republicanisms.
A Screen and a Sham: Tacitean Views and Cicero’s

Constitutional Theory
The idea that the Roman Republic constituted a constitutional order has
e ncountered opposition for a very long time. The opposing view—that repub-
lican Rome did not have anything resembling a constitutional order with dis-
cernible, effective constitutional norms—is expressed with the utmost clarity
by the ancient historian Ronald Syme: “The Roman constitution was a screen
and a sham.” Real causal importance could, on Syme’s view, be ascribed only to
the “forces that lay behind or beyond it,”1 which leads effortlessly to a concep-
tion of Roman politics as representing mere “struggles for power within the
ruling élite.”2 This view can be traced back at least to Tacitus. In the Annals,
Tacitus seems to be denying not only the possibility of an enduring mixed con-
stitution but, even more radically, the very possibility of any constitutional or-
der with real normative pull. The model of a commonwealth joining together
by selection the elements of popular rule, the rule of a nobility, or of one man is
easier praised than achieved, according to Tacitus, and even if achieved cannot
be lasting.3 Tacitus does not deem a system of normative constitutional rules
viable; what he thus has in mind instead is a description of actually pertaining
power relations.
Nonetheless, an earlier passage in the third book of the Annals also leaves
room for the view that a proper constitutional order can exist for a certain
time, and subsequently undergo corruption. In his brief outline of the history
of the Republic rendering the period from the expulsion of the kings to the
Republic’s downfall in the last century bc, Tacitus assigns to the legislative ac-
tivities of the people directed by the tribunes of the plebs an important role
1 Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution. 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1952), 15.
2 These words are P.A. Brunt’s, who identifies as the mistaken basis of this conception the
modern tendency to give too much importance to clientship and patronage; “The Fall of the
Roman Republic,” in Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford, 1988),
1–92, 32.
3 Tacitus, Annales 4.33.
42 Straumann
in the fall of the Republic. While explicitly stating merely a strong correlation
between the enactment of laws and the corruption of the Republic, Tacitus in
fact invites the much stronger conclusion that legislation was the single most
important cause of the Republic’s fall.4 Far from simply representing the his-
tory of the Republic as a series of power struggles within the elite, Tacitus here
gives an account of the Republic that is very much an account of function-
ing constitutional “arrangements” established to protect liberty (libertas) and
stability; the gradual demise of this functioning constitutional order is on this
view brought about much later, through bad, namely unconstitutional legisla-
tion. The crises brought about by legislative overreach are presented as consti-
tutional crises: the legislation in question is not simply presented as morally
bad, or as a mere instrument in a struggle for power within the elite à la Syme,
but it is described as violating the constitutional arrangements established in
the early Republic in several respects.
The most prominent example of such a constitutional understanding of
Rome is the theory of Cicero, as developed especially in his Republic and the
Laws. In the Republic, written between 56 and 51 bc and made public when
Cicero departed for his governorship in Cilicia in the spring of 51, Cicero ad-
vanced a constitutional theory that was clearly intended to be understood as
an answer to the deterioration of public institutions of the late 50s. The dia-
logue is set in early 129 bc and is meant to represent a moment in Roman
history when the decline of the Republic could still have been halted. Pub-
lius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the main character of the conversation and
a leading anti-Gracchan politician who was to die shortly after the date of
Cicero’s fictitious dialogue, puts forward a constitutional theory of the just
commonwealth that must be interpreted as Cicero’s solution to the problems
engulfing the Republic. Cicero’s dialogue is modelled in certain regards on
Plato’s Republic, and is also followed by a sequel called the Laws; unlike Plato’s
Laws, however, Cicero’s sequel supplies the ideal constitutional order as elabo-
rated in the Republic with a theory of constitutionalism and with a substantive
set of constitutional norms.
In the Republic, Scipio puts forward a definition of the commonwealth
which is at first mostly aiming pragmatically at stability, but then comes to
be re-defined in light of a Stoic theory of natural law put forward by another
participant in the dialogue, Gaius Laelius. Scipio’s re-definition makes it clear
that a commonwealth or res publica that lacks an entrenched constitution can-
not properly be called a commonwealth or republic at all. It is this re-defined
constitutional republic that provides the model for which Cicero’s Laws then
4 Ibidem 3.27.
formulated a set of constitutional norms.5 In the third book of the Republic,

Cicero, after discussing constitutional theory merely in terms of prudential
criteria such as stability, effective rule and longevity, moves towards a moral
consideration of the Roman Republic. This is framed as an exchange of argu-
ments modelled on a pair of famous speeches given by the Academic skeptic
Carneades in Rome in 155 bc, speeches in which Carneades had argued, first
for and then, in the second speech, against the indispensability of justice in a
polity. Cicero in the Republic turned the sequence of the speeches on its head,
thus beginning with the skeptical challenge to justice and assigning the de-
fence of justice the last word. When adapting what he knew about Carneades’
arguments, Cicero applied the controversial discussion of the importance of
justice for politics to the international realm, thus extending political theory
beyond the polis and rendering Rome’s acquisition of empire a subject fit for
normative, moral consideration.6 Cicero’s Republic had thus brought moral
philosophy in the form of natural law to bear on Rome’s rule, beyond the bor-
ders of any given polity. Most importantly, the norms applicable in this realm
could not possibly be the particular norms of just any state—they had to an-
swer either to the criteria of utility and self-interest, as Philus (alias Carneades)
is made to argue in the Republic, or to the criteria of justice, largely conceived in
Stoic natural law terms, as Philus’ adversary Laelius, delivering the pro-justice
speech in the Republic, maintains. Natural law in Cicero provides the yardstick
for gauging the justice both of constitutional orders and imperial rule, and its
provisions are of a moral kind, not, as Carneades would have it, merely pre-
scribing self-preservation.
Pomponius and the lex regia
Cicero tried to formulate a specifically constitutional solution to what he

erceived to be the constitutional crises that had caused Rome’s republican
p
5 Cicero, De re publica 3.43–45. A polity that lacks consensus iuris or unum vinculum iuris, the
bond of ius or agreement about a body of constitutional rules, is no polity at all. Only agree-
ment about these norms, that is to say about ius as we encounter it copiously in the context
of late republican constitutional argument in the sources, where it meant a body of (often
non-statutory) law more firmly entrenched and of a higher order than mere legislation,
only agreement about that body of law would transform a multitude into a people and the
commonwealth into a constitutional order properly speaking.
6 For the relation between Cicero and the original Carneadean debate, see J.E.G. Zetzel,
“Natural Law and Poetic Justice: A Carneadean Debate in Cicero and Virgil,” Classical Philol-
ogy 91, 1 (1996): 297–319.
44 Straumann
decline, while Tacitus continued to draw attention to the constitutional aspect

of the crises of the late Roman Republic. This line of thought was developed
further by the jurist Pomponius, writing in the second century ad. In his hand-
book, the Enchiridion, Pomponius pointed to the crucial tension that existed
in the history of the Republic between constitutional safeguards for individual
rights on the one hand and the necessity imposed by emergencies on the other.
Pomponius’ focus is on provocatio ad populum, the specifically Roman institu-
tional safeguard of the right of appeal. When describing the Ten Men (decem-
viri) and their authority to give laws to the Roman Republic after the fall of
the Kings, this authority is described as sovereign—that is to say, without the
possibility of appeal against it:
[I]t was decided that there be appointed, on the authority of the people
[publica auctoritate], a commission of ten men by whom were to be stud-
ied the laws of the Greek city states and by whom their own city was to
be endowed with laws. They wrote out the laws in full on ivory tablets
and put the tablets together in front of the rostra, to make the laws all
the more open to inspection. They were given during that year sovereign
right in the civitas [ius in civitate summum], to enable them to correct
the laws, if there should be a need for that, and to interpret them with-
out liability to any appeal [provocatio] such as lay from the rest of the
magistracy.7
Pomponius’ account of the commission of the Ten Men goes on to show how,
in the period of classical jurisprudence during the Principate, the lack of con-
stitutional safeguards and the assumption of tyrannical, extra-constitutional
powers were still taken to be causal forces in the conflicts undermining the Re-
publican order.8 The question at the heart of Pomponius’ account is the ques-
tion of sovereignty. “Sovereign right” (summum ius), uncurbed by any right of
appeal or, we might say in this context, veto power, is given to the College of
Ten “on the authority of the people.” Sovereignty here seems almost defined
7 Pomp. Dig. 1.2.2.4: “placuit publica auctoritate decem constitui viros, per quos peterentur
leges a Graecis civitatibus et civitas fundaretur legibus: quas in tabulas eboreas perscriptas
pro rostris composuerunt, ut possint leges apertius percipi: datumque est eis ius eo anno in
civitate summum, uti leges et corrigerent, si opus esset, et interpretarentur neque provocatio
ab eis sicut a reliquis magistratibus fieret.” Trans. A. Watson.
8 For the role of popular sovereignty in Pomponius’ text, see Fergus Millar’s interesting discus-
sion in The Roman Republic in Political Thought (Hanover and London, 2002), 52f. Millar’s
discussion does not pay sufficient attention however to the constitutionalism inherent in
Pomponius’ account.
by the absence of appeal (provocatio), it is however granted by the people on

certain conditions—namely only for the duration of one year—and thus not
absolute.
We may take away the impression that Pomponius, albeit writing under
the absolute monarchy of the Principate, has an understanding of the pivotal
place that was accorded to the right of appeal under the constitution of the
Republic, and that he is describing the relationship between sovereignty and
provocatio as inversely proportional. The lawgiving commission of the Ten Men
(decemviri) is on the one hand described as a constituent power, unfettered by
the right of appeal; on the other hand, the Ten are still subject to a term limit,
presumably on account of a limitation of their time in office. What was the
source of this constitutional limitation? Pomponius says that the Ten had been
appointed “on the authority of the people” (publica auctoritate), for once not
referring to obscure statute.9 When discussing the dictatorship and the way it
was established, there is no mention of statute either.10 Other constitutional
institutions however are based on and, presumably, justified by, statute in the
Enchiridion. It seems fair to say that the constitutional rule consistently evoked
here, albeit implicitly, is again that of popular sovereignty and of the potential
applicability of provocatio to any magistracy. Both popular sovereignty and the
right of appeal predate in Pomponius’ account the Twelve Tables, and are thus
felt to be of higher, namely constitutional status compared to mere legislation.
Not unlike the protagonists of the constitutional crises of the late Repub-
lic, and a fortiori like the protagonists of Cicero’s dialogues, then, Pomponius
shows a however dim awareness of a hierarchy between sources of constitu-
tional and statutory legal norms, a hierarchy he never makes explicit though.
The philosophical natural law basis for such a hierarchy, it is true, is missing
entirely from Pomponius’ legal historical handbook. But the crucial impor-
tance of the right of appeal is reflected in the important role of provocatio even
for the period of the Decemvirate, and the awareness that in the context of
emergencies this right could stand in tension with an emergency power such
9 Pomp. Dig. 1.2.2.4: “placuit publica auctoritate decem constitui viros, per quos peterentur
leges a Graecis civitatibus et civitas fundaretur legibus: quas in tabulas eboreas perscrip-
tas pro rostris composuerunt, ut possint leges apertius percipi: datumque est eis ius eo
anno in civitate summum, uti leges et corrigerent, si opus esset, et interpretarentur neque
provocatio ab eis sicut a reliquis magistratibus fieret.” Trans. A. Watson.
10 Ibidem 1.2.2.18: “Populo deinde aucto cum crebra orerentur bella et quaedam acriora a
finitimis inferrentur, interdum re exigente placuit maioris potestatis magistratum consti-
tui: itaque dictatores proditi sunt, a quibus nec provocandi ius fuit et quibus etiam capitis
animadversio data est. Hunc magistratum, quoniam summam potestatem habebat, non
erat fas ultra sextum mensem retineri.” Trans. Watson.
46 Straumann
as the dictatorship is prominent in the Enchiridion. Emergency powers here

appear as constitutionally hedged, and in the case of overreaching—when the
Ten overstep the constitutional term limit—the response is swift and drastic.
Ultimately, however, Pomponius needed to explain the transition from Repub-
lic to the imperial Monarchy, and this he accomplishes by giving the follow-
ing deflating, rather laconic pragmatic report. After decisions by the plebs had
been given the force of statute by the lex Hortensia (287 bc), and laws and
plebiscites had thus equal legal force,
it grew hard for the plebs to assemble, and to be sure much harder for
the entire citizenry to assemble, being now such a vast crowd of men
[…]. And thus did the senate come to exercise authority, and whatever it
resolved was respected, and such a law was called a senatus consultum.
[…] Most recently, just as there was seen to have been a transition toward
fewer ways of establishing law, a transition effected by stages under dicta-
tion of circumstances [rebus dictantibus], it has come about that affairs
of state have had to be entrusted to one man (for the senate had been
unable latterly to govern all the provinces honestly). An emperor, there-
fore, having been established [constituto principe], to him was given the
right [ius datum est] that what he had decided be deemed law [ut quod
constituisset, ratum esset].11
Put briefly, in Pomponius’ view the Principate had come about mainly due
to the pragmatic difficulty of the growing Roman people to assemble!12 The
11 Ibidem 1.2.2.9–11: “Deinde quia difficile plebs convenire coepit, populus certe multo dif-
ficilius in tanta turba hominum, necessitas ipsa curam rei publicae ad senatum deduxit:
ita coepit senatus se interponere et quidquid constituisset observabatur, idque ius
appellabatur senatus consultum. […] Novissime sicut ad pauciores iuris constituendi vias
transisse ipsis rebus dictantibus videbatur per partes, evenit, ut necesse esset rei publi-
cae per unum consuli (nam senatus non perinde omnes provincias probe gerere poter-
ant): igitur constituto principe datum est ei ius, ut quod constituisset, ratum esset.” Trans.
A. Watson, with slight modifications.
12 This is reminiscent, ironically, of the scholarly debate concerning the democratic nature
(or lack thereof) of the Roman Republic—while proponents of the view that the Repub-
lic had democratic characteristics, such as most prominently Fergus Millar, have argued
from a constitutional point of view that sovereignty lay with the Roman people (“De-
mocracy […] is first of all a strictly constitutional concept.”), critics such as Ramsay Mac-
Mullen have replied—not really on the same plane—that the various localities where
the people’s assemblies gathered could not have possibly contained a sufficient amount
of people for the Republic to qualify as democratic (even for the Comitia Centuriata he
o rigin of the right of the Emperor to legislate seems to lie in a delegation of

that right—via the Senate—to the Emperor, who is of course not constrained
by either the right of appeal or any set term limit. But the constitutional fla-
vour of Pomponius’ account is clear. The Emperor is granted a “right” to legis-
late, absent this grant his authority would not be legitimate; and his position
had been established, presumably lawfully. Most importantly, it seems that for
Pomponius the Senate and ultimately the Emperor came to have a representa-
tive function in view of the fact that the people, had it not been for the fact
that the Assemblies had become impossible for practical reasons, would still
be legislating. Also, the Emperor’s sovereignty is not God-given or theocratic
on this account, unlike elsewhere in the Corpus iuris.13
Is this an absolute conception of the sovereignty of the Emperor, or does it
base the Emperor’s authority in the last resort on the sovereignty of the peo-
ple? It is clear that, genealogically, the Emperor’s sovereignty is derived from
that of the people; but do the people retain some of their authority? And if not,
is the Emperor bound by previous and by his own legislation? There is a dis-
tinct ambiguity in the Corpus iuris, the Roman law codification within which
Pomponius’ handbook appeared, with regard to these questions. The classic
statements in the Digest which have been taken to underwrite an absolute con-
ception of the Emperor’s sovereignty (that “what has pleased the Emperor has
the force of law” and that he is “not bound by the laws [legibus solutus]”14)
are counterbalanced by what follows immediately after the former statement:
“This is because the people commits to him and into him its own entire author-
ity and power, doing this by the royal law [lex regia] which is passed anent his
authority.”15 The Emperor’s sovereignty may thus not be bound by any statute,
calculates a proportion of 2 percent or less of eligible voters). Cf. Millar, “The Political
Character of the Classical Roman Republic, 200–151 b.c.,” jrs 74 (1984): 18; MacMullen,
“How Many Romans Voted,” Athenaeum 58 (1980): 454–457.
13 See, e.g., Justinian’s way of characterizing his imperium in his constitution Deo auctore,
which is put at the beginning of his codification of Roman law, the Digest: “Deo auc-
tore nostrum gubernantes imperium, quod nobis a caelesti maiestate traditum est.” This
theocratic coloring is perspicuous throughout the Corpus iuris.
14 Ulp. Dig. 1.3.31: “Princeps legibus solutus est.”
15 Ibidem 1.4.1.pr.: “Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem: utpote cum lege regia, quae
de imperio eius lata est, populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem con-
ferat.” See also Inst. 1.2.6. But cf. also Const. 1.14.2: “Digna vox maiestate regnantis legibus
alligatum se principem profiteri: adeo de auctoritate iuris nostra pendet auctoritas. Et re
vera maius imperio est submittere legibus principatum. Et oraculo praesentis edicti quod
nobis licere non patimur indicamus.”
48 Straumann
but his authority is seen ultimately to rest on the people’s authority (which on
this view must have also been freed from the laws, legibus solutus).
The republican potential inherent in the idea of a transfer of sovereignty
from the Roman people to the Emperors by way of a lex regia had also, on some
interpretations, a constitutional dimension.16 If the transfer had been revoca-
ble, or if it had been tied to certain conditions, this was apt to shed some doubt
on the claim of the Emperor’s absolute sovereignty. The problem with the idea
of a transfer by lex regia was that no such statute is independently attested.17
In 1344 however, a great bronze tablet was found on which something very
much resembling a lex regia was inscribed: the so-called lex de imperio Vespa-
siani, a law detailing the powers conferred on Emperor Vespasian by s tatute in
69 ad.18 This inscription was discovered and then put on display in the Church
of St. John Lateran in Rome by Cola di Rienzo, a champion of republican gov-
ernment, who subsequently used and interpreted it to reintroduce a republi-
can constitution at Rome in 1347. Whether or not the law on the bronze tablet
was actually a lex regia as described in the Digest, it certainly seemed to lend
support to the idea that in the last resort the Emperor’s authority was derived
from, and depended on, the Roman people and was thus not absolute.
An Early Exclusive Republican: Ptolemy of Lucca and His Portion

of the De regimine principum
Cola di Rienzo was not the first of course to take a friendlier attitude toward
the Roman Republic as opposed to the Principate or Empire; Charles Till Davis
has shown, against Hans Baron’s thesis of a decisive republican break occur-
ring at the beginning of the quattrocento, that such a republican orientation
could be traced back at least to the early fourteenth century with the spread
of Aristotelianism and the works of Brunetto Latini, Marsilius of Padua, Dante,
the commentator Bartolus of Sassoferrato and the Dominicans Remigius of
16 For an excellent brief account of the implications of the lex regia for the Middle Ages
and for medieval ideas on the source of imperial authority, see J. Canning, A History of
Medieval Political Thought, 300–1450 (London/New York, 1996), 7–9. For the history of
ideas of absolute sovereignty in the late Middle Ages, see K. Pennington, The Prince and
the Law, 1200–1600 (Berkeley, 1993).
17 On the lex regia, see Theodor Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, vol. 2, 3rd ed. (Leipzig,
1887–88), 876ff.
18 See on this the classic article by P.A. Brunt, “Lex de Imperio Vespasiani,” The Journal of
Roman Studies 67 (1977): 95–116.
Florence and Ptolemy of Lucca.19 Especially Ptolemy showed a very sustained

interest in the history of the Republic and expressed an unmitigated prefer-
ence for it as against the Empire in his De regimine principum. This work, long
attributed to Thomas Aquinas (who probably wrote the first part of it), exhibits
in the second part a very pointed “republican exclusivism.”20 Far from endors-
ing monarchy as the best form of government, as previous medieval thought
routinely did, Ptolemy shows hostility to monarchy to the point of equating
regal rule with despotism. He puts forward an equally stark preference for
what the author takes to be the balanced constitution of the Roman Republic,
which he describes in almost Polybian terms (without of course knowing Poly-
bius’ Histories) as an Aristotelian polity, a tempered government of the many
and the few.21
Ptolemy has a certain amount of knowledge about the institutions of the
Roman Republic from the fourth century historian Flavius Eutropius. His
predilection for republican government to the exclusion of any other form
comes to the fore when he reasons that
[w]hen it comes to the parts of a polity having to do with government,

I must especially use the Romans as exemplars, because the Roman
Republic was very distinguished in its order, and because historians have
described the hierarchy of officials after the expulsion of Tarquin from
the kingdom.22
19 Charles Till Davis, “Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic,” Proceedings of the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society 118 (1974): 30–50; see also Nicolai Rubinstein, “Political Theories
in the Renaissance,” in The Renaissance: Essays in Interpretation, ed. A. Chastel (London,
1982), 153–200.
20 The term is Eric Nelson’s. What he asserts concerning seventeenth century political think-
ers—that they made the “new and revolutionary argument” that “monarchy per se is an
illicit constitutional form and that all legitimate constitutions are republican”—holds
already of Ptolemy of Lucca. See Nelson, The Hebrew Republic Jewish Sources and the
Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, ma, 2010), 3. See also James
Hankins, “Exclusivist Republicanism and the Non-Monarchical Republic,” Political Theory
38, 4 (2010): 452–482, for an argument that Ptolemy’s exclusivism was (p. 473) “limited to
the city-states of Northern Italy.”
21 See J.M. Blythe, “Introduction,” in Ptolemy of Lucca, On the Government of Rulers: De
R
egimine Principum (Philadelphia, 1997), 33–39. See also Millar, Roman Republic, 59–61,
who is however too focused on spotting democratic elements and does not pay much at-
tention to the constitutionalism of Ptolemy.
22 Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 4.26.1. For Ptolemy’s view of the development of the
constitution of the Republic, and its gradually more “democratic” character, see also 4.19.5
and Millar, Roman Republic, 60.
50 Straumann
Ptolemy is impressed with the fact that after the expulsion of the kings, the
Romans had two consuls,23 equal in power, and with a limited term in office.
They were called consuls, he maintains based on Isidore of Seville’s etymol-
ogy of the word, either from “their ‘consulting the interests of’ (consulere) the
citizens, or from their governing everything by consultation.”24 The term limit
the Romans instituted, according to Ptolemy, “so that no one could remain in-
solent for long.”25 He is also aware of the fact, based on Isidore and Eutropius,
that the Romans in a time of military threat established the office of the dicta-
tor, “to greatly strengthen the nation, and it had a more extensive power and
command than the consulate.”26 However, Ptolemy mistakenly believes with
Isidore (who is by far the most important source for him on the subject of Ro-
man republican magistracies)27 that the dictator’s term of office was longer
than the consuls’, “expiring after five years, whereas the consulate lasted only
for one year.”28 He does correctly point out that Caesar had held the office.29
Interestingly, he does not follow Eutropius in the mistaken belief that Emperor
Augustus too had held the dictatorship, thus correctly confining the office to
the domain of the republican constitution.30 Finally, he relates how, “because
the consuls excessively oppressed the plebs, tribunes were instituted by the
people.” The tribunes were called such “because they handed down rights to
the people.”31 In all of this there is an obvious sense that, without making it
23 Not the contradictory information on there being but one consul gleaned from the Bible
(1 Maccabees 8.16) which Ptolemy also repeatedly relates, without noting the contradic-
tion: see e.g. Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 2.8.1.
24 Isid. Etym. 9.3.6: “Hinc igitur consules appellati, vel a consulendo civibus, vel a regendo
cuncta consilio.” Trans. S.A. Barney/W.J. Lewis/J.A. Beach/ O. Berghof.
25 Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 4.26.1. This is a very close rendering of Isidore’s de-
scription of the office, from where he also takes the odd distinction of a “military” and a
“civil” consul.
26 Ibidem 4.26.2.
27 Blythe’s notes in general do not pay sufficient attention to Isidore as a source of Ptolemy.
28 Ibidem 4.26.2. Cf. Isid. Etym. 9.3.11.
29 Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 4.26.2, where he also points out—something he
might have gleaned from Cic. Leg. 3.9—that hi dictatores magistri a populo vocabantur.
30 Eutropius thinks that both Caesar and Augustus had been dictators, adding that the
dictatorship was the power closest in character to the imperial office of Emperor Valens
(to whom the Breviarium ab urbe condita is dedicated), thus creating an interesting gene-
alogy and continuing the illusion of the Principate as a continuation of the constitutional
government of the Republic; see Eutr. 1.12.
31 Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 4.26.3, quoting Isid. Etym. 9.3.29; 9.4.18 (where it is
said that the tribunes were created six years after the expulsion of the kings); cf. Ptolemy,
On the Government of Rulers, 279, n. 315.
explicit, Ptolemy has an implicit understanding of the higher-order norms that

limit, e.g., the consuls’ term in office and of the fact that these norms are of a
constitutional character. It is this that distinguishes the Republic, not a zeal for
grandeur and glory, as Augustine had maintained.
Claiming the church father’s support, Ptolemy turns Augustine’s ambiguity
about Roman civic virtue into plain affirmation of their virtues, which he chief-
ly finds represented in the Romans’ “love of their fatherland,” their “zeal for
justice” and their “virtue of benevolence.” To illustrate the first of these virtues,
Ptolemy cites Sallust, who recalls nostalgically what had made the Republic
great—“industry at home, just command abroad, a free spirit in counseling.”
Ptolemy also cites Sallust’s rendering of a speech of Marcus Porcius Cato on
the reasons for the decline of republican government at Rome: “But instead of
these things we now have luxury and avarice, poverty in public but opulence
in private; we praise wealth, we seek idleness, we make no distinction between
the good and the evil, and ambition reaps all the rewards of virtue.”32 Another
crucial Roman virtue, according to Ptolemy and his tendentious version of
Augustine, is “their zeal for justice [zelus iustitiae],” which constitutes “another
reason why the Romans were worthy of lordship”—and by “the Romans,” the
Roman Republic is meant. This zeal for justice made the Romans acquire their
rule “by natural right [iure naturae], from which all just lordship [iustum domi-
nium] originates.” Because of “their exceptionally just laws [iustissimae leges],
others spontaneously subjected themselves to their lordship.”33 Ptolemy then
goes on to cite from the Acts of the Apostles:
When Festus [the Roman procurator of Judea] was in Jerusalem, the rul-
ing priests visited him and demanded that Paul be condemned to death.
Festus answered that according to the way that individuals are subject to
the Romans’ laws, “it is not the custom of the Romans to condemn them,”
or to pardon them, “unless their accusers are present and they have the
chance to defend themselves and clear themselves of the accusation.” For
this reason Augustine says: “It pleased God that the Romans should con-
quer the world, so that it might be pacified by being brought far and wide
into the single society of the Republic and its laws [in unam societatem
reipublicae legumque].”34
32 Ibidem 3.4, 155, citing Sall. Cat. 52.21. Ptolemy very likely quoted Sallust from August.
De civ. D. 5.12.
33 Ibidem 3.5, 157.
34 Ibidem 3.5, 157f., citing Acts 25.16 and August. De civ. D. 18.22.
52 Straumann
From the last remark it becomes clear that, notwithstanding the episode from
the Acts of the Apostles, it is the Roman Republic, not the Principate, which
displays the legalistic and constitutional traits Ptolemy values. His whole dis-
cussion of the justification of Roman rule is dense with quotations, above all,
of Augustine’s City of God, which, in turn, relies heavily on Cicero’s Republic in
its argument about the justice of the Roman empire and Roman virtues. The
debate about imperial justice in book three of the Republic—i.e., the so-called
Carneadean debate—looms thus large, albeit by way of Augustine, in the back-
ground of Ptolemy’s evaluation of the Roman Republic and its constitution.
The Carneadean debate shines through in Ptolemy’s account, and has argu-
ably a bigger impact on Ptolemy than on Augustine. Unlike Augustine, who is
of course highly ambiguous about the secular virtue of the Romans and what
he takes in the last analysis to be their vain emphasis of glory and honor,35 Ptol-
emy adopts a view perfectly akin to Cicero’s (or Laelius’) natural-law defense
of the Republic and its imperialism. He then co-opts Augustine effectively into
this view of the Republic having inherited imperial rule from Alexander the
Great because of their “exercising lordship justly and exercising governance
legitimately.” Ptolemy here seems to imply that part of the problem with
Alexander had been that he was a monarch, and thus not capable of the kind
of rule by “most holy laws” and of directing “the people under the laws,” thus
preserving “the multitude of persons in civil society” for the “purpose of pre-
serving the peace and justice.” The monarch Alexander is not capable of that
kind of constitutional justice, which Ptolemy calls “legal justice [legalis iusti-
tia]” and which in his view is in the last resort based on natural law.
This defense of the Roman Republic’s imperial rule by reference to the Re-
public’s constitutional rule and the civilizing influence of the Roman law and
the Romans’ legalis iustitia was to become a topos in European political thought
after the discovery of the Americas.36 What is most interesting about its use in
35 On Ptolemy’s transformation of Augustine’s ambiguity about the Romans into straight-

forward praise, see Charles Till Davis, “Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic”; on
his use (and abuse) of Augustine and his efforts to reconcile him with Aristotle, see also
Blythe, “Introduction,” 24–30; and Blythe’s note on the text, 153, n. 38.
36 The most prominent use of the arguments of the Carneadean debate applied to Roman
imperialism (also with a favorable view of the Republic as opposed to the Empire) can
be found in Gentili’s The Wars of the Romans (De armis Romanis). See on this and on the
influence of the Carneadean debate B. Kingsbury and B. Straumann, “Introduction,” in
Alberico Gentili, The Wars of the Romans. A Critical Edition and Translation of De armis
Romanis, ed. Kingsbury and Straumann, trans. D. Lupher (Oxford, 2011), x-xxv; L. Benton
and B. Straumann, “Acquiring Empire by Law. From Roman Doctrine to Early Modern
European Practice,” Law and History Review 28, 1 (2010): 1–38; D. Lupher, “The De armis
Ptolemy’s work is not only its revolutionary, unabashed p ro-republican (and

effectively “exclusivist” republican) stance—which is interesting and revolu-
tionary enough.37 But there is an additional aspect, which is to do with the
precise reasons for Ptolemy’s interest in the Republic. Notwithstanding Ptol-
emy’s frequent mentioning of Augustine and his attempts to masquerade
his own views as those of the church father, his take on the Republic really
is congenial to that of Cicero as presented in the Republic (which he knows
through Augustine), the Laws and On Duties (both of which he knows directly).
It entirely lacks any susceptibility to Augustine’s differentiation between vera
iustitia and mere earthly justice; and although there is at times a broadly
Aristotelian terminology at work in De regimine principum,38 the outlook re-
ally is that of the constitutional tradition of the Roman Republic. The constitu-
tional rule spread by Roman republican imperialism simply is vera iustitia for
Ptolemy, and the chief justification of their empire. The whole world should,
by natural right, be governed by the Republic and pacified by being brought
under the “single society of the Republic and its laws.”
Ptolemy brings out very clearly the constitutional dimension of the Roman
Republic and its mode of government in the following passage, where he con-
trasts the republican constitutional government (“political rule”) with rule by
one. He routinely conflates the Aristotelian distinction between regal and des-
potic rule, so that monarchy assumes an overall despotic character. Now the
most interesting aspect of “political rule” is that, although Ptolemy is heavily
inclined to praise it, and initially points out its stability, he also diagnoses a
certain inferiority to monarchy, the government by one, or regal rule, by virtue
of the fact that the “political” ruler is bound by law and thus not free to react
Romanis and the Exemplum of Roman Imperialism,” in The Roman Foundations of

the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire, ed. Kingsbury and Strau-
mann (Oxford, 2010), 85–100. See also, for an example of the use of Augustine by an
anti-imperialist humanist jurist, Vázquez de Menchaca’s Controversiae illustres (1564).
Vázquez explained Augustine’s account by saying that the Romans were granted their
empire by God not on grounds of their showing virtue in conquering it, but rather be-
cause, quite apart from their warfare, the Romans were excelling other peoples in terms
of other virtues. See F. Vázquez de Menchaca, Controversiarum illustrium aliarumque usu
frequentium libri tres, ed. F. Rodriguez Alcalde, 2 vols. (Valladolid, 1931), 2.20: 31.
37 See on this Ronald Witt, “The Rebirth of the Concept of Republican Liberty in Italy,” in
Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. A. Mohlo and J.A. Tedeschi (Dekalb, 1971),
173–199.
38 See e.g. Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 3.5.3, 158, alluding to Arist. Pol. 1.2, 1253a2–3:
The “multitude of persons in civil society” is, “according to Aristotle,” “a necessity for them
as naturally social animals.”
54 Straumann
as he wishes, e.g. in emergencies. “Political government,” as exercised in the

Roman Republic, is of necessity of a pleasant and mild character, and it is also
a sure mode of governing because it is according to the form of the laws

[secundum formam legum] of the commune or the municipality, to
which the rector is bound. But for this reason the ruler’s prudence is not
free, and, therefore it is more remote from the divine and imitates it less.
Although laws originate in natural law [ius naturae], as Cicero proves in
his treatise On Laws, and natural law derives from divine law […]; never-
theless they fail in particular acts [in particularibus actibus], for which
legislators cannot provide, since they are ignorant of future events. Thus,
political government results in a certain weakness, since political rectors
judge the people by the laws alone. This weakness is eliminated in re-
gal lordship since the rulers, not being obligated by the laws, may judge
by what is in their hearts, and they therefore more closely follow divine
providence […].39
Ptolemy shows awareness, in a text very much given to his preference for re-
publican government “according to the form of the laws,” of the problem that
this kind of government might actually end up being weaker than monarchy,
or regal rule, where rulers are not bound by law and can thus answer particular
contingencies not provided for in legal form according to their discretion.
Whether this amounts to an awareness of what Carl Friedrich has called “con-
stitutional reason of state,” that is to say reason of state in its application to
a constitutional order,40 is less clear. The legal limits and constraints to the
capacity to act which plague the republican order are not here looked at from
a moral point of view. However, given that Ptolemy is prone to thinking of all
monarchy or regal rule as despotic, he does seem here to point to a tension
between despotic government, lacking in justice but with a discretionary ca-
pacity to act in emergencies on the one hand, and republican constitutional
government on the other. Yet interestingly, this perceived weakness of Repub-
lics does not lead Ptolemy to give up on republican rule in favour of monarchy.
Ptolemy’s originality consists in this straightforward preference for the
Roman Republic and his general preference for republican government. He ex-
hibits many of the traits characteristic of the Roman constitutional tradition
portrayed here. The expansion of the Republic is justified, according to him,
39 Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 2.8.6. Cf. also 4.16.3.

40 C.J. Friedrich, Constitutional Reason of State: The Survival of the Constitutional Order
(Providence, 1957).
not because striving for glory is a value, but rather due to the constitutional
nature of Roman republican rule. This is an early example of what was to be-
come a prominent strand in early modern natural law theories:41 spreading the
content of the natural law underlying their “most just laws,” the Romans have
acquired their empire due to their “zeal for justice.” Ptolemy does not put his
faith in the virtuous disposition of the ruler. For better or worse, he prefers a
system where the ruler is constrained by law and puts the emphasis on legal
constraints, not on virtue. He does not seem to think that these constraining
lower-order laws could be violated, or set aside, by reference to the higher-
order natural law and in order to save the republican constitution; indeed, he
does not seem to have given much thought to such an idea.
To sum up, Ptolemy has a normative preference for republican rule due to
their natural justice and legal constraints, and he is thus not a Machiavellian
republican in the sense of giving ultimate value to the virtues of grandezza and
glory.42 The liberty which is encouraged under republican rule recommends
it as pleasant, or mild: because they exercise rule themselves when it is their
turn, subjects (subditi, a strange term given the context) are “bold in pursuing
liberty, so as not to be forced to submit and bow down to kings.”43 It is a lib-
erty very much of the kind Benjamin Constant had in mind when describing
“ancient liberty” and its distinguishing features, namely political participation
and political rights.44 This Aristotelian flavor can be detected throughout the
work, and it is at odds with the kind of Ciceronian property-centered politi-
cal and constitutional theory based on a state of nature,45 as is his Sallustian
romantic glorification of public opulence and private poverty.46 It is equally at
odds, however, with Augustine’s view of the Roman Republic as exhibiting but
second-rate, pagan qualities (which are really vices). As opposed to Augustine
41 See, for the most elaborate take on this, Alberico Gentili, The Wars of the Romans, and the
“Introduction” thereto. For Gentili, spreading Roman law, which for him consists for the
most part of natural law, adds an additional justification to Roman imperialism.
42 Machiavelli, with his dichotomy between pagan and Christian virtue, if not with his pref-
erence for the former, follows Augustine, while Ptolemy does not.
43 Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 2.8.5: “confidentia subditorum, sive de exoneratione
dominii regentium sive dominandi in suo tempore congruo, reddit ipsos ad libertatem
audaces, ne colla submittant regentibus: unde oportet politicum regimen esse suave.”
44 Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns,” in
Constant Political Writings, ed. B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988), 308–328.
45 Ptolemy, On the Government of Rulers 2.9.4. Ptolemy here makes the argument that repub-
lican government could already be found in the state of innocence, as opposed to monar-
chy; to render the state of innocence as “state of nature” as Blythe does is misleading.
46 Ibidem 3.4.3.
56 Straumann
Ptolemy thinks the justice demonstrated and spread by the Republic and its
empire is the real (and only) thing, and thus accords with Cicero (or Laelius)
in the Republic. In this last regard, then, his views are indeed Ciceronian, as are
his invocations of natural justice as contained in the Carneadean debate.
Mario Salamonio’s Roman Constitutionalism
Ptolemy of Lucca with his predilection for the Roman Republic as opposed
to the Empire did not pay attention to the problem of how the legal author-
ity of the Emperor could be justified. In his view, the Republic ruled “through
consuls, dictators, and tribunes” from Tarquin the Proud until it degenerated
with the civil wars and ended with Julius Caesar’s rule.47 He did thus not pay
attention to the lex regia or to Pomponius’ account of how sovereignty had
been transferred from the people to the Emperors. One of the earliest and in
their relevance to the constitutional tradition most salient and sustained dis-
cussions of the lex regia and Pomponius’ text can be found in the work of the
humanist Roman lawyer Mario Salamonio. Salamonio, born of a Roman patri-
cian family at Rome in the mid-fifteenth century, wrote his main work Patritii
Romani de principatu libri vi (1544) between 1512 and 1514 in the context of the
conflict between the papal curia and the Commune of the city of Rome. The
book takes the form of a dialogue between a philosopher, a lawyer, a theolo-
gian and a historian. The question at issue is whether or not the Roman Emper-
or can be said to be legibus solutus, that is to say whether he can be said to rule
absolutely. The lawyer’s rather knee-jerk claim is that there really isn’t a ques-
tion; the Emperor as a matter of course is absolute. The philosopher contests
this claim and adduces Aristotle, arguing that the lawyer’s stance would make
it difficult to differentiate between tyrannical and imperial rule.48 The lawyer
responds by laying out a positivist theory of law, and by arguing that given that
law (lex) is essentially a command, a prohibition, or a punishment, something
in short which has force exclusively vis-à-vis subjects, not equals. The emperor
can thus not command or prescribe anything to himself.49
47 Ibidem 2.9.6.
48 Mario Salamonio, Patritii Romani de principatu libri vi (Paris, 1578), 3: “phi. Audi ergo
Aristotelem 4. Politices pro omnibus loquentem; Necesse est, inquit, Tyrannidem esse
illam, quae nullis legibus subiacet, & dominatur ad propriam utilitatem.” The Paris 1578
edition, which is a republication of the editio princeps published at Rome in 1544, must
have been published in the context of monarchomachic thought.
49 Ibidem, 5: “ivr. Ratio ea in primis proditur; quòd nemo sibimet praesribere legem po-
test: similiter nec precipere.ridiculosa enim res esset lex:veluti stipulatio, quando vim
This stance arouses the philosopher’s decided resistance, and as the dia-
logue unfolds the philosopher manages to convince the lawyer that far from
being freed or absolute from his own legislation, the Emperor is bound by it as
the Roman people were bound by their own lawmaking before delegating this
authority to the Emperor by means of the lex regia. The common assumption
of all the participants in the dialogue is that natural (and divine) law constrain
the legislative power of whoever holds that power; and it is conceded by the
lawyer to the philosopher that the lex regia itself is outside the scope of the
Emperor’s lawmaking authority and thus immune to his sovereignty.
Since the lawyer concedes that he is not sure as to the content of the histori-
cal lex regia, the debate proceeds, interestingly, by way of a priori argument,
leading the philosopher to conclude that the people could not possibly have
contracted into delegating permanently and irrevocably its authority. The way
power was delegated—a revocable delegation, as the philosopher insists—to
the Emperor is taken from Pomponius’ Enchiridion in the Digest, which is cited
word by word. The lex de imperio Vespasiani, too, is cited by way of support, and
the historian betrays a quite detailed knowledge of the working of the Roman
Assemblies and their role in legislation as well as elections. Interestingly, when
discussing the constraints upon the Emperor’s legislative powers, contract law
is—as is the lex regia—taken to lie outside the scope of the sovereign’s author-
ity; the rules of contracts cannot be changed and are thus a constraint on the
Emperor’s lawmaking, a further (and as it turns out, crucial) element in the
philosopher’s argument that the princeps and his imperium are by no means
legibus solutus. The philosopher’s motive in arguing for contract law enjoying
this status is that he explicitly models the delegation of power from the people
to the Emperor on the Roman legal institution of mandate (mandatum),50
which is part of the Roman law of contract and was conceptualised in the
Roman legal sources as a consensual contract, requiring for its conclusion but
the tacit or explicit consent of the parties.51 The mandator, in Salamonio’s case
the people, would mandate the mandatary, here the Emperor, with discharging
of legislation on his behalf. This kind of contract was entirely gratuitous and
could be revoked at any time by the parties.
This contractual bent in Salamonio’s thought is further supported by his
use of Cicero’s Republic and the widely known (via Augustine) definition of
ecessitatis non affert. Nihil tam proprium legis est, quam imperare, vetare, & punier:
n
quae non nisi in subditos vim habent.”
50 Gai. Inst. 3.162.
51 See, for the Roman law of mandate, A. Watson, Contract of Mandate in Roman Law
(Oxford, 1961).
58 Straumann
res publica stated therein.52 Excluding societies that are formed with a view
towards committing injustice, the philosopher uses Cicero’s definition of the
required kind of populus and renders it as the correct definition of a “civil peo-
ple” (civilis populus). Cicero had said it well in the Republic, the philosopher
says, when defining it as a “collection of men which forms a society by virtue
of agreement with respect to justice and sharing in advantage.”53 Seizing on
the term sociatus, Salamonio goes on—in keeping with the essentially Roman
and Ciceronian spirit—to ask the lawyer: “If the state [Civitas] is nothing but
a sort of civil partnership [civilis quaedam societas], can such a partnership be
established without any contract [sine pactionibus]?”54 He brings the lawyer
to concede that the contracts of such a partnership are correctly called “laws.”
On this account the whole people acts as the legislator, in a fashion very much
akin to Marsilius of Padua, with the Emperor only being one partner (socius)
among many acting on behalf of the people. As before with the Roman law of
mandate, this builds on the Roman contract of partnership (societas), which,
based on faith (fides), was not limited to Roman citizens, a characteristic use-
ful for Salamonio’s purpose of having a societas agreed upon in an essentially
pre-political condition.55 The partners (socii) in the partnership all had to
consent to the partnership and the consent had to be ongoing—one partner’s
lack of consent would effectively abolish the societas as a whole. Again, given
the framing of the argument in terms of Roman contract law, and given that
the philosopher had already established the essentially constitutional status
of the rules of contract law and its immunity to the sovereignty of the legisla-
tor, this amounts to an implicit formulation of a set of immutable, entrenched
higher-order rules, rules that turn out to be the rules of Roman contract law on
the one hand and natural law norms on the other. As in Cicero’s own political
thought, there are certain substantive constraints on what can be agreed upon
by means of contract; if it was not for the constitutional constraint of justice
(ius), brigands too could qualify as a constitutional societas.
52 Cic. Rep. 1.39. Cf. August. De civ. D. 2.21.

53 Salamonio, De principatu, 38: “phi. Praedonum multitudo, ista ratione sociata, civilem
populum constitueret. melius ergo Cicero in Rep. definivit, Coetum hominum, iuris con-
sensu & utilitatis communione sociatum. Iuris consensu ait, ad excudendos praedones &
reliquos, qui ad aliorum iniuriam sociantur.”
54 Ibidem: “phi. Si nihil aliud est Civitas, quam civilis quaedam societas, contrahiturne
societas ulla sine pactionibus? ivr. Non utique, nisi tacitis aut expressis. phi. Pactiones
huiusmodi nonne rectae societatis leges dicuntur? ivr. Non dubium.”
55 See M. Kaser, Das römische Privatrecht, 2. Abschnitt, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1971/75), § 43.
Conclusion: Constitutional Republicanism and the Limits of Virtue
Neither Salamonio’s stated preference for republican government nor his ideas
of popular sovereignty are new. Legal and political thinkers of an Aristotelian
bent such as Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Baldus de Ubaldis and Marsilius of Padua
had already put forward arguments favoring popular sovereignty, and of these
scholastic writers at least Ptolemy of Lucca had expressed views strongly fa-
voring the Roman Republic over the rule of the Emperors, a judgment of the
relative value of these periods of Roman history followed of course most prom-
inently by the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni.56 Quentin Skinner and
before him Paul Oskar Kristeller have already shown that Hans Baron’s view
of a decisive change in outlook early in the quattrocento, the so-called “Baron
thesis,” according to which a civic minded republican form of humanism first
developed in the context of the conflict between republican Florence and au-
tocratic Milan, could not be upheld given that such views could be shown to
have already developed much earlier, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.57
What distinguishes Salamonio is that, unlike Bartolus or Baldus, he uses the
lex regia extensively in his argument about popular sovereignty and imperium,
and unlike the scholastics, he imports into his eclectic mixture of elements of
Aristotelian philosophy and legal humanism an important dose of Ciceronian
thinking about the pre-political realm. His main concern is constitutionalist,
the idea that not only did the lex regia as a matter of historical fact not irrevo-
cably bestow absolute sovereignty on the Emperor, as Bartolus and Baldus had
maintained,58 but, crucially, that no such bestowal could ever possibly convey
sovereignty that is legibus solutus and that the sovereignty of any princeps is
always bound by the lex regia under which it was originally bestowed. There
is thus a constraint on any sovereign, universally, to remain under the dictates
of natural law. In case of conflict with natural law or with popular sovereignty,
56 See, e.g. Bruni’s Laudatio Florentinae urbis of 1403/4, and his History of the Florentine
P eople, ed. and trans. James Hankins, 3 vols. (Cambridge, ma, 2001–2007), 1.38, 48–50:
“Declinationem autem romani imperii ab eo fere tempore ponendam reor quo, amissa
libertate, imperatoribus servire Roma incepit. […] negare non poterit tunc romanum
imperium ruere coepisse, cum primo caesareum nomen, tamquam clades aliqua civitati
incubuit. Cessit enim libertas imperatorio nomini, et post libertatem virtus abivit.”
57 See Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1978),
101–109; see also J. Hankins, “The ‘Baron Thesis’ after Forty Years and Some Recent Studies
of Leonardo Bruni,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56, 2 (1995): 309–338.
58 See on this Canning, History of Medieval Political Thought, 170; on Baldus, see Canning,
The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge, 2003), 61–64.
60 Straumann
legislation by the sovereign can even be abrogated. This has led several histo-
rians of political thought to add Salamonio prominently to the tradition of the
social contract thinkers,59 a characterization that is certainly not implausible
in light of the passages quoted above.60
More importantly, however, Salamonio recognises, with Cicero, certain
substantive constraints on what can be contracted into, and it is this view of a
constitutionally relevant natural law which makes him a Ciceronian. The de-
scription of Salamonio as a social contract theorist thus seems to almost miss
the most important point which lies in Salamonio’s use of a Ciceronian con-
cept of natural law and in the way this concept serves to constrain even certain
contractual options. For Salamonio, then, no less than for Pomponius and Ptol-
emy, the Roman Republic served as a model of a constitutional republicanism,
the distinct features of which lie, not in civic virtue, but rather in higher-order
rules which constrain ordinary legislation and politics. This suggests that there
is no one “classical republicanism” that was essentially concerned with incul-
cating virtue to prevent the polity from corruption and to allow for a citizenry
ready to participate in the communal decisions and warfare without giving
priority to their narrowly conceived self-interest.61 While this Pocockian ac-
count always was, even as an interpretation of Aristotle, rather tendentious
and seems to have it backward—instrumentalising virtue, all the while Aristo-
tle made virtue of the select few the main normative goal of the polis—it most
certainly fails to do justice to the emphasis on constitutional solutions and
the corresponding neglect of virtue we have encountered in the writers dis-
cussed above. Indeed, the constitutional republicanism this chapter has been
concerned with can be demonstrated to have remained highly virulent long
after Salamonio. Not only Bodin, Gentili, Grotius and Locke, but even suppos-
edly “classical republicans” in England such as Marchamont Nedham, James
Harrington as well as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon drew extensively on
59 See Mario d’Addio, L’idea del contratto sociale dai sofisti alla Riforma (Milan, 1954), 111ff.,
119ff.; J.W. Gough, The Social Contract: A Critical Study of its Development, 2nd ed. (Oxford,
1957), 45–47.
60 See however Skinner, Foundations, 132, esp. n. 1, whose argument is that far from being
a theorist of social contract, Salamonio simply argues “that all Imperium should have ‘a
basis in covenants.’” It is not clear how this ventures against the assumption of Salamonio
as a theorist of social contract.
61 For the most influential rendering of this view, see, of course, J.G.A. Pocock, The Machia-
vellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princ-
eton, 1975).
what could be called Ciceronian constitutionalism.62 It is a strand of thought

putting less trust and interest in civic virtue, more in constitutional safeguards,
and in the eighteenth century this strand keeps running by way of Montesquieu
up to the American founding and Federalist political thought. The w riters that
have been discussed in this chapter, then, seem to have provided the founda-
tion for the Federalist constitutionalists who acknowledged the limits of virtue
and put their trust, instead, in the kind of constitutional framework espoused
by Cicero, Pomponius, Ptolemy and Salamonio.
62 See Benjamin Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism. Roman Political Thought from
the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2016), esp. 303–319. For a good
corrective of the republican-liberal distinction, see Vickie Sullivan, Machiavelli, Hobbes,
and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England (Cambridge, 2004), where the
ancient-modern distinction is however reinforced uncritically.
chapter 3
Commonwealths for Preservation and Increase:

Ancient Rome in Venice and the Dutch Republic
Arthur Weststeijn
James Harrington, ranking high among the usual suspects of “classical repub-
licanism”, made adamantly clear what an ideal polity should be like. In the
introduction to his The Commonwealth of Oceana from 1656, he argued that
commonwealths come in two sorts: either they are only “for preservation”, or
they are also “for increase.” A year later, in The Prerogative of Popular Govern-
ment, he specified his stance by heading Sparta, Carthage and Venice under
the former category; the latter, “a government of citizens, where the com-
monwealth is both for increase and preservation”, included just one shining
example: Rome.1
Harrington thus famously argued for an expansionist republic modelled
on ancient Rome, a position that reveals the intimate connections between
republicanism, as an ideology of active civic participation in politics, and im-
perialism, as an ideology of expansionist rule. Republican empires, or imperial
republics for that matter, might seem to be almost oxymoronic, as becomes
clear from the common usage to subdivide the history of ancient Rome into
two distinct parts: the history of the Roman Republic, and the subsequent
history of the Roman Empire. Clearly, the Romans themselves are the ones
to blame for this confusing terminology. In Latin, both res publica (“common-
wealth”, or simply, in modern terms, “state”) and imperium (originally the “right
of command” or “authority” of individuals or states over others) are highly
generic terms, which were used in ancient Rome and have been used ever
since for a wide range of political entities.2 In early-modern Europe, the term
“republic” generally referred to any kind of legitimate government, following
the use of the term in Cicero, though at the same time, following Machiavelli,
“republic” increasingly denoted a free state without a single ruler.3 “Empire”,
1 James Harrington, Political Works, ed. John Pocock (Cambridge, 1977), 159–160, 446.
2 Cf. J.S. Richardson, “Imperium Romanum: Empire and the Language of Power,” The Journal
of Roman Studies 81 (1991): 1–9.
3 See James Hankins, “Exclusivist Republicanism and the Non-Monarchical Republic,” Political
Theory 38 (2010): 452–482.

Commonwealths for Preservation and Increase 63
meanwhile, generally stood for effective sovereignty, and only in the case of the
Holy Roman Empire it was used to represent a concrete form of government.4
It might therefore be difficult to speak in any meaningful sense about
early-modern “republican empires”, yet if we stick to the nowadays common
terminology of non-monarchical states seeking to acquire large territories, one
conclusion must be drawn: many republics in history were clearly imperial-
ist, from ancient Rome to Harrington’s England under Cromwell, and from the
French Revolutionary Republic to the contemporary Unites States of America.
Modern scholarship on the history of political thought has accordingly paid
the phenomenon of republican imperialism its due share. Following the tra-
jectory set out by John Pocock, most of the attention in this context as well
has gone to Renaissance Florence and seventeenth-century England, with
Machiavelli and Harrington being the prototypical protagonists.5 It is striking,
however, that very little attention has been drawn thus far to the two cases of
early-modern commonwealths that actually proved to be (pace Harrington)
both for preservation and for increase: Venice and the Dutch Republic. Indeed,
whilst Machiavelli’s Florence and Harrington’s England soon failed in their re-
publican and/or imperialist experiments, Venice and the Dutch Republic can
serve as perhaps the best examples of the intricate relationship between non-
monarchical and expansionist rule. Both republics originated as small territo-
rial entities that for centuries maintained their independence amidst princely
and monarchical competitors, and both acquired extensive colonial empires
that resulted in prolonged periods of mercantile primacy.6 Yet until now we
know very little about the ways in which early-modern Venetian and Dutch
4 James Muldoon, Empire and Order. The Concept of Empire, 800–1800 (Basingstoke, 1999).
5 See esp. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000);
Armitage, “Empire and Liberty: A Republican Dilemma,” in Republicanism: a Shared Euro-
pean Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2002),
2:29–46; J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Vol. 3: The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge,
2003); and Mikael Hörnqvist, Machiavelli and Empire (Cambridge, 2004). Cf. also Edward
G. Andrew, Imperial Republics. Revolution, War, and Territorial Expansion from the English
Civil War to the French Revolution (Toronto, 2011), which does not live up to its title since it
mainly focuses on monarchies. On imperial tendencies in early-modern political thought
in general, see Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain
and France, c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven and London, 1995), and Sankar Muthu, ed., Empire and
Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 2012).
6 On the connected histories of Venice and the Dutch Republic, see the classic studies of Peter
Burke, Venice and Amsterdam: a Study of Seventeenth-Century Élites (London, 1974), and Eco
Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in the Seventeenth Century
(Assen, 1980).
64 Weststeijn
authors thought about this seemingly happy marriage between republicanism

and imperialism.
The aim of this chapter is therefore to uncover and explore discussions in
Venice and the Dutch Republic on what it means to be non-monarchical and
expansionist at the same time, and I will do so by taking the perspective of
Rome, the timeless repository of republican and imperial practices and ideas.
How did authors in Venice and the Dutch Republic characterise ancient Rome?
Did they use it, like Harrington, as a model for their own commonwealths? If
so, how, and if not, why? Zooming in on a pivotal moment in the connected
histories of Venice and the Dutch Republic, the turn of the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries when Venetian primacy in the Mediterranean ended and
Dutch ascendancy on a global scale began, the chapter shows that the legacy
of ancient Rome was highly inspiring but troublesome for a generation of au-
thors that sought to come to terms with the politics of their day. They include
Venice’s official historiographer Paola Paruta (1540–1598), the chameleonic
humanist scholar Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), and the sarcastic satirist Tra-
jano Boccalini (1556–1613), with the main protagonist being the young Hugo
Grotius (1583–1645). All were part of a debate that transcended the borders
of their own polities and that centred on the meanings and possible uses of
ancient Rome in a modern world. In the course of that debate, the example
of Rome was discarded as a republican paragon, not only because it was im-
perial, but especially because it had failed to combine its republican nature
with its imperial pursuits, its liberty with its expansion. Rome, in the eyes of its
Venetian and Dutch critics, might have been a commonwealth for increase; it
failed to be also a commonwealth for preservation.
Robbers of the World: Liberty and Empire from Sallust

to Machiavelli
Roman imperialism had always had its critics. In Sallust’s Histories, Mithridates
vi of Pontus powerfully blamed the Romans for their “inveterate motive for
making war upon all nations, peoples and kings; namely, a deep-seated desire
for empire [imperium] and riches.” “Do you not know”, he asked his addressee,
the Parthian king Phraates iii, “[t]hat they have possessed nothing since the
beginning of their existence except what they have stolen: their home, their
wives, their lands, their empire?”7 Criticizing Rome through such an outsider’s
7 Sallust, Epistula Mithridates 5, 17, in Sallust, trans. J.C. Rolfe (Cambridge, ma, 1935), 435, 439
(translation slightly modified). For analysis, see Eric Adler, “Who’s Anti-Roman? Sallust and
Pompeius Trogus on Mithridates,” The Classical Journal 101.4 (2006): 383–407.
verdict was a preferred strategy of other Roman historians as well. In a famous

passage in his Agricola, Tacitus staged a speech of the Caledonian chieftain
Calgacus, who condemned Rome’s expansion in terms that would echo ever
since:
Robbers of the world, now that the earth fails their all-devastating hands,
they probe even the sea: if their enemy have wealth, they have greed; if
he be poor, they are ambitious; East nor west has glutted them; alone
of mankind they covet with the same passion want as much as wealth.
To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make
a desolation and they call it peace.8
This rejection of Roman expansion was integrated within the wide-ranging

Christian critique of pagan Rome in Augustine’s The City of God. For Augustine,
Rome’s empire could only be attained through “the disasters of war and the
shedding of blood”; the feeble joy it provoked “may be compared to the fragile
splendour of glass.”9 Empire, in other words, is the opposite of civil happiness;
true blessedness does not follow from the desire of worldly freedom and lust
for glory. Significantly, Augustine based this renunciation of Roman expansion
on his reading of Sallust, who had argued that Rome’s republican liberty had
been the catalyst of its imperial successes, but those successes, engendering
luxury and idleness, eventually paved the way for the demise of that same
liberty. Sallust’s view on Rome was one of a tragic cycle: liberty leads to empire,
which then leads to decadence; the Roman Republic became an empire be-
cause it nourished republican virtues and competition, but those virtues could
not subsist once the empire was in full sway. Augustine adapted this Sallustian
theme into a full-blown attack on Rome’s pagan pursuits. The false spectre of
liberty and glory, he argued, made the Romans gain their independence, but
then it necessarily turned into an insatiable desire for worldwide dominion
through war and bloodshed. The rise of Rome thus contained the seeds of its
eventual decline and fall.10
The Sallustian-Augustinian interpretation of liberty and empire profoundly
shaped humanist accounts of Rome and its expansion.11 An important (yet
8 Tacitus, Agricola 30, trans. M. Hutton, rev. R.M. Ogilvie (Cambridge, ma, 1970), 81.
9 Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge, 1998) iv.3, 146.
10 Ibidem v.12. For analysis, see Pocock, First Decline and Fall, 90–95.
11 On the readings of Sallust and Augustine in humanist Europe, see Patricia J. Osmond,
“‘Princeps Historiae Romanae’: Sallust in Renaissance Political Thought,” Memoirs of
the American Academy in Rome 40 (1995): 101–143, and Arnoud S.Q. Visser, Reading
66 Weststeijn
critical) adherent who made a large impact throughout sixteenth-century

Europe was Erasmus. In his 1514 letter to abbot Antoon van Bergen, subse-
quently extended into the famous adage Dulce bellum inexpertis, Erasmus
echoed Augustine in his complaint: “What expenditure of blood it cost to
build the Roman empire, and how soon its collapse began!”12 This criticism
of Rome was further developed in a next letter to dukes Frederik and Georg of
Saxony (included as introduction to Suetonius in the 1518 edition of the Scrip-
tores Historiae Augustae). Here, Erasmus targeted the establishment of the
Roman Principate, a history of “impiety, murder, parricide, incest and tyranny.”
“A glorious monarchy indeed, such as all men might covet!”, Erasmus remarked
sarcastically, debunking recent attempts to recreate the Roman Empire—a
barely disguised denunciation of Habsburg geopolitics.13 In a following letter
from 1523 addressed to Francis i, Erasmus continued in this vein and strongly
disavowed the new-born ambition to extend plus ultra. What counts is not ter-
ritorial expansion, he tried to convince his addressee, but rather strengthening
the evangelical empire of Christianity against internal discord and the external
menace of the Ottomans.14
In the same years that Erasmus voiced his Augustinian criticism of Rome
and the desire for worldwide dominion, another exceptionally influential
humanist, Machiavelli, highlighted the other side of the Sallustian coin of
Roman liberty breeding empire. Ancient Rome, for Machiavelli, served as a
model for his native Florence precisely as a paragon of territorial expansion.
Republics, he argued, must expand by necessity, for even if a republic “does
not m
olest others, others will molest her, and from being thus molested will
spring the desire and necessity of expansion, and even if she has no external
Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620

(Oxford, 2011).
12 Erasmus, “Letter 288, to Antoon van Bergen” (1514), in The Correspondence of Eras-
mus: Letters 142 to 297, 1501 to 1514 [Collected Works of Erasmus vol. 2], trans. R.A.B.
Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson (Toronto, 1975): 281. On Erasmus’ critical reading and influ-
ential edition of Augustine, see Visser, Reading Augustine, esp. 29–46. Cf. also Charles
Béné, Érasme et Saint Augustin ou influence de Saint Augustin sur l’humanisme d’Érasme
(Geneva, 1969).
13 Erasmus, “Letter 586, to Dukes Frederick and George of Saxony” (1517), in The Correspon-
dence of Erasmus: Letters 446 to 593, 1516 to 1517 [Collected Works of Erasmus vol. 4], trans.
R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson (Toronto, 1977): 378–379.
14 Erasmus, “Letter 1400, to Francis i” (1523), in The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1356 to
1534, 1523 to 1524 [Collected Works of Erasmus vol. 10], trans. R.A.B. Mynors and Alexander
Dalzell (Toronto, 1992): 113–126.
enemies, she will find enemies at home.”15 Expansion is therefore unavoid-

able, and the Roman Republic practiced the only feasible strategy to expand
successfully: arming its citizens, Rome channelled human ambition outward
and overruled its competitors throughout Italy and the Mediterranean by a
fatal combination of deceiving treaties, open citizenship, and sheer destruc-
tion. Modern republics, Machiavelli insisted, should follow this example—
the only alternative was decay. And one illustrious republic was likely to be
struck by that fate, he claimed: Venice. He depicted Venice as a frail, decadent
republic that did not arm its citizens and, being thus dependent on mercenar-
ies for its defence, was bound to linger in inglorious insignificance. In Machia-
velli’s political framework, lethargic Venice counted as the direct opposite of
dynamic Rome.16
Rome Renounced: Happiness and Empire in Sixteenth-Century

Venice
Unsurprisingly, Venetian authors were quick to take up the challenge and

refute Machiavelli’s accusation of their most serene republic. Their critical
adaptation of Machiavelli developed into a vision of Venetian republicanism
as being wholly different from Rome, thus turning upside down the Renais-
sance tradition of situating contemporary republics, such as Siena and Flor-
ence, in a historical trajectory that originated with ancient Rome. Venice, by
contrast, was now increasingly presented as Rome’s fundamental other.17 The
first traces of this stance can be found in the 1520s in the work of Gasparo
15 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin,
2000) ii.19, 186: “se lei non molesterà altrui, sarà molestata ella, e dallo essere molestata
le nascerà la voglia e la necessità dello acquistare, e quando non avessi il nimico fuora, lo
troverebbe in casa.” For analysis, cf. Hörnqvist, Machiavelli and Empire, 131–147; and John
Pocock, “Machiavelli and Rome: The Republic as Ideal and as History,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Machiavelli, ed. John M. Najemy (Cambridge, 2010), 144–156.
16 Machiavelli, Discorsi i.6, iii.31.
17 On Venetian self-presentation and historical consciousness in the Renaissance, see
Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity. The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven,
1996). The most complete account of sixteenth-century Venetian republicanism remains
William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Renaissance Values in
the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968). See also Barbara
Marx, “Venezia—altera Roma? Ipotesi sull’Umanesimo veneziano,” Centro tedesco di studi
veneziani, Quaderni 10 (Venice, 1978), and Giovanni Silvano, La “Republica de’ Viniziani.”
Ricerche sul repubblicanesimo veneziano in età moderna (Florence, 1993).
68 Weststeijn
Contarini, and especially in Donato Giannotti’s Libro della republica de’ Viniz-
iani.18 Clearly taking issue with Machiavelli’s depiction of Rome and Venice,
Giannotti staged a dialogue in the villa of Pietro Bembo in which one of the
speakers, the humanist Trifone Gabriello, changed Machiavelli’s equation and
exalted Venice over Rome in a distinctive Augustinian idiom:
It is known to everyone how much more empire the Romans possessed,

but I do not judge our Republic to be less blessed and happy. For the hap-
piness of a republic does not consist of the greatness of its empire, but
rather of living in tranquillity and universal peace; so if I would say that
our Republic was superior to Rome, I surely belief that nobody could
rightly reproach me.19
This opposition between empire and happiness would take centre stage
towards the end of the century in the work of the most significant critic of
Machiavelli and ancient Rome in this context, the venezianissmo scholar and
politician Paolo Paruta.20 Having been appointed the Republic’s official histo-
riographer in 1579, Paruta made a successful career with a series of public of-
fices and the publication of numerous treatises, most significantly the Discorsi
politici from 1598. The main objective of this work was clear from its opening
lines, in which Paruta scorned all who uncritically acclaimed the greatness of
the Roman Republic. They had no clue of what political “perfection” entails,
he declared: perfection does not simply mean “the greatness of empire”, but
rather “the right form of government, by which the citizens, living in peace
18 Bouwsma, Venice, 151–152, 157; Silvano, Republica, 30–32, 45–48.

19 Donato Giannotti, Libro della republica de’ Viniziani, in Opere politiche, ed. F. Diaz, 2
vols. (Milan, 1974), 1:36: “Quantunque i Romani possedesseno tanto maggiore imperio
quanto è noto a ciascuno, non però giudico la Repubblica nostra meno beata e felice.
Perciocché la felicità d’una repubblica non consiste nella grandezza dello imperio, ma
sí bene nel vivere con tranquillità e pace universale: nella qual cosa se io dicessi che la
nostra Repubblica fusse alla romana superiore, credo certo che niuno mi potrebbe giusta-
mente riprendere.”
20 Giuseppe Toffanin, Machiavelli e il tacitismo. La politica storica al tempo della controri-
forma (Padua, 1921), 12. On Paruta, see Bouwsma, Venice, 199–291; Angelo Baiocchi, “Paolo
Paruta: ideologia e politica nel cinquecento veneziano,” Studi veneziani 17–18 (1975–76):
157–233; and Silvano, Republica, 138–163. Cf. as well Dorit Raines, “La storiografia pubblica
allo specchio. La ‘ragion di stato’ della Repubblica da Paolo Paruta ad Andrea Morosini,”
in Celebrazione e autocritica. La Serenissima e la ricerca dell’identità veneziana nel tardo
Cinquecento, ed. Benjamin Paul (Rome, 2014), 157–176.
and union, can behave virtuously and obtain civil happiness.”21 Rome, Paruta
continued, did not come close to this ideal. Against Polybius, he argued that
Rome’s supposedly mixed nature was badly ordained, for it did not possess
the “equality and order” a mixed republic needs “for making it excellent and
long-lived.”22 Instead, Rome was characterised by social discord and division,
with the nobles being too imperious and the people having “that much author-
ity” that they became overly “insolent.” The result, for Paruta, was “a govern-
ment full of confusion and disorder.” He admitted that military virtues were
successfully promoted in Rome, but no measures were taken to encourage
“justice, temperance and other civil virtues, by which the City could have lived
in peace, concord and tranquillity.”23
Rome, only aiming for conquests, thus forsook the true goal of politics.
Indeed, it sowed the seeds of its own downfall, for “such governments that
aim at empire are usually short-lived.” Territorial expansion, Paruta explained,
necessitates stretching the borders both geographically and psychologically,
“nourishing in the citizens ambitious thoughts and desires for domination, so
that they easily rebel at the prejudice of the republic itself.”24 Rome could not
preserve its republican government because its insatiable imperial pursuits
necessarily turned inwards, provoking civil wars and the eventual establish-
ment of the Principate. The continuous focus on war “fomented ambition in
the souls of the citizens”, it increased their power and “brought the city through
discord to its ultimate ruin.” Empires follow a natural cycle of rise, decline and
fall; when Rome was a republic, its empire grew and reached the outer con-
fines of the world, “but finally, when they almost did not know where else to
make war on foreigners, the citizens took up their victorious weapons against
21 Paolo Paruta, Discorsi politici, in Opere politiche, ed. C. Monzani, 2 vols. (Florence, 1852),
2:1: “la perfezione degli stati […] non è questa semplicemente la grandezza dell’imperio
[…] ma ben la dritta forma del governo, per cui vivendo i cittadini in pace ed unione,
ponno virtuosamente operare, e conseguire la civile felicità.”
22 Ibidem, 9: “nè ugualità nè ordine tale, quale in una repubblica mista si desidera per farla
riuscir eccellente e di lunga vita.” Cf. Polybius, Histories vi.5.
23 Paruta, Discorsi, 13, 17, 21: “il popolo avendo in ogni cosa tanta autorità […] era talmente
insolente”; “un governo pieno di confusione e di disordine”; “alla giustizia, alla temper-
anza ed ad altre virtù civili, per le quali potesse la Città nella pace vivere in concordia e
tranquillità.”
24 Ibidem, 22: “Sogliono ancora tali governi indirizzati all’imperio riuscire di breve vita […]
perchè ad allargare molto i confini è necessario nodrire ne’ cittadini pensieri ambiziosi
e troppo desiderosi di dominare, i quali facilmente si rivoltano in danno della propria
repubblica.”
70 Weststeijn
each other in a long and mortal struggle.”25 For Paruta, the rise and fall of the
Roman Republic showed the fatal consequences of prioritizing conquest over
concord, of empire over happiness.
Paruta’s verdict on Rome, clearly following the Sallustian-Augustinian
theme, meant not only to disclaim Polybius’ praise of Rome as a model of a
mixed regime; it especially meant to disclaim Machiavelli’s criticism of Venice.
Paruta even preferred not to mention Machiavelli openly: he rather referred
to him as “some other modern writer”, whose Discorsi were by now “buried
in perpetual oblivion.”26 This downplaying of Machiavelli’s significance served
the obvious rhetorical purpose of rebutting his unsettling assertion that Rome
had become great because of its internal discord, and that Venice would never
achieve such greatness because of a fundamental lack of virtue. Facing this
argument, Paruta reasoned that Venetian virtue was not less than Rome’s, but
different; the origins, geography and political circumstances of Venice could
hardly be compared to the rise of Rome, which had enjoyed much better occa-
sions for attaining an empire. Venice, he argued, had originally been reluctant
to acquire lands in the Terraferma and only focused on obtaining a “dominion
of the sea”—the terminology is telling for he reserved the term “empire” (impe-
rio) for Rome. Significantly, Paruta thus showed not to be against expansionist
rule per se, but rather against the Roman style of territorial expansion at the
expense of internal concord. Venetian expansion, he claimed, was of a differ-
ent, non-territorial kind: not being ordained “for the acquirement of a large
empire”, its military organization aimed at “the affairs of the sea, not with
the aim of subjecting other cities and nations, but rather […] to accommo-
date traffic and commerce, for which it turned out to be very expedient to
conserve peace and maintain open and free trade with all.”27 With this claim
Paruta opened the way for a novel form of expansionist ideology, consciously
anti-Roman and allegedly non-imperial, based on maritime control and the
25 Ibidem, 88, 134: “Questa cosa fomentò l’ambizione nell’animo de’ cittadini […] la ridusse
con la discordia all’ultima ruina”; “finalmente, non sapendo quasi ove più guerreggiare
contra gli esterni, tra sè stessi con lunga e mortale contesa si posero i suoi cittadini ad
adoperare l’armi vincitrici.”
26 Ibidem, 209: “alcun altro scrittore moderno […] i suoi Discorsi ora sepolti in perpetua
oblivione.” In a later passage (Ibidem, 246), Machiavelli is mentioned by name. On Paruta’s
rebuttal of Machiavelli, cf. Bouwsma, Venice, 273–276; and Silvano, Republica, 157–163.
27 Paruta, Discorsi, 215, 228: “dominio del mare”; “per l’acquisto di un grande imperio […] alle
cose di mare, non a fine soggiogarsi altre città e nazioni, ma più tosto, come portava la
condizione di quelle cose e di quei tempi, per occasione e commodità di traffichi e di utili
mercantili, a’ quali tornava molto comodo il conservare la pace, e tenere il commercio
aperto e libero con tutti.”
expansion of trade. Such a commercial empire did not need to conquer ex-
tensive territories through the continuous exercise of arms and martial ambi-
tion; hence it could maintain social concord and preserve republican order
and liberty over time. This was, for Paruta, the essential difference between
Rome and Venice:
Rome was mistress of the world, but not for a long time, nor with the
quiet of its citizens, could it enjoy its greatness and prosperity. But Ven-
ice, albeit with a much smaller state, has uniquely preserved itself for so
many ages in its liberty, secure of any domestic problems and with the
marvellous union and concord of its citizens.28
Rome Revived: Lipsius on Ancients and Moderns
In 1598, the same year of Paruta’s Discorsi, Justus Lipsius published his Admi-
randa sive de magnitudine romana: a work that offered an extensive survey of
all laudable facets of ancient Rome, conspicuously praising the Roman Em-
pire as a model of a universal monarchy that brought the world peace and
prosperity. Like Paruta, Lipsius believed the goal of politics to be tranquillity,
happiness, and unhindered commercial exchange; yet whilst Paruta saw those
ideals embodied by his native Venice, Lipsius presented ancient Rome, Paruta’s
anti-model, as the timeless paragon of modern politics.
Until the early 1590s, Lipsius had been one of the first professors at the
newly established University of Leiden, and as such he counted as a leading
intellectual light in the nascent Dutch Republic. His career made a radical
turnaround, however, when Lipsius openly reconciled with Catholicism and
opted for a new professorship at the University of Louvain.29 In this bulwark of
the Northern Counterreformation, he continued his influential studies on and
editions of ancient literature, now turning his attention to Polybius. Polybius’
favourable interpretation of ancient Rome was being rediscovered throughout
28 Ibidem, 232: “Roma fu signora del mondo; ma nè per molto lungo tempo, nè con quiete
de’ suoi cittadini potè ben godere di questa sua tanta grandezza e prosperità. Ma Venezia,
benchè con stato assai minore, si è però per tante età e con unico esempio conservata
nella sua libertà, sicura da ogni travaglio domestico, e con meravigliosa unione e concor-
dia de’ suoi cittadini.”
29 For recent commentary, see Jan Machielsen, “Friendship and Religion in the Republic
of Letters: The Return of Justus Lipsius to Catholicism (1591),” Renaissance Studies 27.2
(2013): 161–182.
72 Weststeijn
late sixteenth-century Europe, especially as regards his detailed exposition of

Rome’s constitutional framework and military prowess.30 Lipsius joined the
debate, which firstly resulted in his De militia romana from 1595, a learned
commentary on Polybius’ Histories vi.31 Discussing all the different aspects
of ancient warfare, Lipsius praised the Romans particularly for their military
virtues and discipline—a quality that, if combined with modern arms, offered
the key to imperial success. “He that will attain to glory or empire, let him turn
to the ancient discipline”, Lipsius exclaimed.32 This assertion clearly attested
to the widely felt obsession of comparing ancient and modern military tech-
niques and accomplishments—an obsession also present in Paruta. For some,
the lessons of antiquity were to no avail in an age defined by gunpowder, but
Lipsius staunchly disagreed:
They say that those times are gone; that this age requires other manners.
O good and sweet conceits. As though men were other now, then they
were wont, or another reason governed, and that which is just not just in
all ages, and so that which is unjust.33
Times might have changed, Lipsius argued, but men and morals had remained
the same. The Roman example of military discipline therefore continued to
serve as a model for modern armies.
This stance favouring the ancients over the moderns strongly resurfaced in
Lipsius’ next work on Rome, the Admiranda, another exercise in antiquarian
knowledge in the service of late sixteenth-century politics.34 The Admiranda,
as its subtitle suggests, surveys the “greatness of Rome” in all its facets, from
30 Arnaldo Momigliano, “Polybius’ Reappearance in Western Europe,” in Idem, Sesto con-

tributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, 2 vols. (Rome, 1980), 1: 125–141.
31 For a short analysis, see Jeanine de Landtsheer, “Justus Lipsius’s De militia romana; Polybi-
us Revived or How an Ancient Historian was Turned into a Manual of Early Modern War-
fare,” in Recreating Ancient History. Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and
Literature of the Early Modern Period, ed. Karl Enenkel et al. (Leiden, 2001), 101–122.
32 Justus Lipsius, De militia romana (Antwerp, 1630), 361. The translation follows “A Com-
parison of the Romane Manner of Warre, with this of Our Time”, an unpaged addition to
The Historie of Xenophon, trans. Joh. Bingham (London, 1623).
33 Lipsius, Militia, 363–364; Idem, “Comparison.”
34 See Marc Laureys, “‘The Grandeur That Was Rome’: Scholarly Analysis and Pious Awe in
Lipsius’s Admiranda,” in Recreating Ancient History, ed. Enenkel et al., 123–146; and Karl
Enenkel, “Ein Plädoyer für den Imperialismus: Justus Lipsius’ kulturhistorische Monog-
raphie Admiranda sive de magnitudine Romana (1598),” Daphnis. Zeitschrift für mittlere
deutsche Literatur 22 (2004): 583–621. Cf. also Pocock, First Decline and Fall, 279–295.
the city’s building practices to its expansionist strategies. Staging a dialogue

between himself and one of his disciples, Lipsius concluded the work with
a powerful defence of the benefices of a universal monarchy in Roman vein.
His interlocutor was sceptical, but Lipsius remained resolute, stressing “the
peace and quiet that peoples everywhere enjoyed under such a large empire.”
In ancient Rome, he claimed, people lived happily and industriously, reaping
the seeds of their labour and forming fertile families; “all was secure and no
rumour of war wounded their ears.” And if there was talk of a war, it was of
one that happened far away, “just like a trifle or a fable.”35 Lipsius’ disciple was
not easily convinced. Roman imperialism had been characterised by insatia-
ble ambition and avarice, he argued, referring to Sallust and Tacitus and the
critical testimonies of Mithridates and Calgacus. “Do you hear these outstand-
ing statements, Lipsius?”, he asked his master. Suaviter rideo, Lipsius replied,
“I laugh cheerfully.” For these were the voices of Rome’s enemies, he said, so
they should not be taken seriously as unbiased verdicts. Only after the civil
wars at the start of the first century bc, he continued, the “pure and just” mores
of the Romans were corrupted by greed and ambition.36 Also for Lipsius, then,
the Sallustian-Augustinian spectre of degenerating virtue and ultimate decline
remained an essential element of the paragon of Rome.
Nonetheless, the universal monarchy of Rome meant the apex of human de-
velopment. For with imperial peace, it brought another benefice to the world:
“the mutual communication of men and goods”, enabled by unhindered com-
merce and travel over long distances. People could travel safely to places far
away for learning or pleasure, merchants navigated seas and lands, and the
only “predators and pirates” they had to fear were “taxmen.” Exotic produce was
imported, the arts, culture and literature expanded overseas, and “through this
communion the whole world turned into almost a single civilization.”37 Here,
Lipsius revealed his adherence to the stoic ideal of a cosmopolitan society,
facilitated by the cultural and political imperialism of Rome.38 Yet that ideal
35 Justus Lipsius, Admiranda, sive de magnitudine romana (Antwerp, 1598), 251: “sub magno
tali imperio pacem ac quietem gentium ubique fuisse? […] omnia secure, et nec auribus
quidem laesis rumore belli […] velut ludicrum aut fabellam.”
36 Ibidem, 208, 210: “Audis, Lipsi, praeclara haec elogia? […] Suaviter rideo […] pura et iusta.”
37 Ibidem, 252–253: “Communicatio inter se hominum et rerum, viis undique liberis com-
merciisque […] unicos praedones aut piratas placantes, sive metuentes, Publicanos […]
et totus orbis ea communione, quasi una civitas, fiebat.” Cf. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
iv.4.
38 Cf. Jan Papy, “Lipsius’ (Neo-)Stoicism: Constancy Between Christian Faith and Stoic
Virtue,” Grotiana (New Series) 22/23 (2001–2002): 47–72; and Christopher Brooke,
74 Weststeijn
lay hidden in the depths of ancient history: the reality of the late sixteenth-
century was unforgivingly different. “Our poor Europe, for how many centuries
has it been deprived of all this?”, Lipsius lamented by way of conclusion to his
treatise. Political fragmentation, mutual fear and the lust for vengeance now
reigned supreme. It was necessary to establish a “powerful and strong single
head” to restore religious unity, to foster general welfare, and to protect Europe
against the Ottomans.39
With his portrayal of ancient Rome as a model of virtue and empire, and
his parallel plea for securing Christianity from internal discord and external
threat, Lipsius arguably tried to bridge the legacies of Erasmus and Machia-
velli.40 Like Machiavelli, he heralded Roman military virtue to be a model for
modern times; like Erasmus, his aim was to reach peace and unity. In a Eu-
rope in turmoil, he was confronted with the same intellectual challenge that
Paruta was facing in that very same year 1598: how to make sense of the les-
sons of ancient Rome in a fragmented and highly unstable geopolitical con-
stellation. For Paruta, the Roman Empire served as an anti-model, eclipsed
by the stability, prosperity and independence of republican Venice. Lipsius
defended the other extreme, pleading to revive the supranational order em-
bodied by Rome. They found each other in their comparable emphasis on
the benefices of trade, a significant departure from Erasmus and Machia-
velli that reveals the increasing importance of commercial reasoning in late
sixteenth-century political thought. Whilst Paruta saw maritime control and
free trade as the essence of Venetian superiority, Lipsius, writing as a subject
of the Habsburgs (one of Venice’s main antagonists), clearly set his hopes
on a Habsburg universal monarchy that would secure peaceful commercial
exchange worldwide. Perhaps it is the irony of history that his military recom-
mendations, based on his reading of Polybius, were especially adopted in the
polity that did most to undermine Habsburg domination, with a self-image
directly opposed to ancient Rome and with an extraordinary expansion of
overseas trade, the polity that Lipsius had just left a few years before: the
Dutch Republic.41
P hilosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau (Princeton,
2012), 12–36.
39 Lipsius, Admiranda, 254–255: “At nostra Europa misera, quam iam a multis saeculis ex-
pers eorum est? […] potens et validum caput unum.”
40 On Lipsius’ Machiavellianism, see Justus Lipsius, Politica, ed. Jan Waszink (Assen, 2004),
98–102.
41 De Landtsheer, “Justus Lipsius’s De Militia Romana,” 116–119.
Rome Surpassed: Grotius on Batavian Freedom, Concord

and Audacity
In the years following Lipsius’ departure, a new generation of students was

trained at Leiden under the guidance of the versatile scholar Joseph Scaliger to
rise to dominance in Dutch intellectual life. The most important of this genera-
tion was doubtless Hugo Grotius. At the start of the seventeenth century, when
still in his teens, Grotius wrote his first political treatise, an exercise in compar-
ison between the ancients and the moderns with a clear ideological agenda.
The work, titled Parallelon rerumpublicarum, was never published during Gro-
tius’ lifetime; only a part of it is still extant, rediscovered two centuries later. Yet
though incomplete and apparently not meant for the press, Grotius’ treatise is
a significant example of how the model of ancient Rome was appropriated—
and discredited—in the late humanism of the nascent Dutch Republic.42
The Parallelon rerumpublicarum basically entails a juxtaposition of the
republics of Athens, Rome, and the Batavians, the Germanic tribe known
from Tacitus that was considered to be the ancient ancestor to the Dutch
people. From the late fifteenth century onwards, a “Batavian myth” had been
constructed that characterised the Dutch as the direct descendants of this
tribe, cherishing a long tradition of independence, valour and simplicity. Gro-
tius adopted this myth and developed it into the foundational narrative of the
Dutch Republic, first in the Parallelon and then in his subsequent De antiqui-
tate Reipublicae Batavicae.43 Whilst the latter treatise focused on political or-
ganization, the surviving part of the Parallelon discussed the virtues and mores
of the Batavians in comparison to Rome and Athens. Grotius’ overall message
was clear: the Batavians not only rivalled but truly outshone the Romans and
the Athenians in all thinkable fields, from science and literature to language,
religion, habits and practices. Throughout, the work breathes the playful hu-
bris of a young, somewhat overconfident mind, as in the passage that claims
42 In the vast scholarly literature on Grotius, the Parallelon remains remarkably understud-
ied. For two exceptions, see Arthur Eyffinger, “Hugo Grotius’ Parallelon rerumpublicarum,”
in De Hollandse jaren van Hugo de Groot (1583–1621), ed. H.J.M. Nellen and J. Trapman
(Hilversum, 1996), 87–95; and Marijke Meijer Drees, Andere landen, andere mensen. De
beeldvorming van Holland versus Spanje en Engeland omstreeks 1650 (The Hague, 1997),
25–56. On the rediscovery and use of Grotius’ manuscript by Johan Meerman in 1800, see
Chapter 8 in this volume by Wyger Velema.
43 See Hugo Grotius, The Antiquity of the Batavian Republic, ed. and trans. Jan Waszink
(Assen, 2000), and the general discussion in Ivo Schöffer, “The Batavian Myth During
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Geschiedschrijving in Nederland, ed. P.A.M.
Geurts and A.E.M. Janssen, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1981), 2: 84–109.
76 Weststeijn
the Batavians to be superior because of their competence in ice-skating (an art

the ancients strangely never mastered in the Mediterranean: “who marvels suf-
ficiently at our cleverness?” Grotius asked his perplexed readers).44 Yet despite
(or perhaps also because) such anecdotic trifles, the Parallelon aptly reveals
the self-image of a newly founded state with a booming economy and an em-
bryonic colonial empire.
Forwarding the claim that the Dutch, as the descendants of the Batavians,
neatly surpassed Athens and Rome, Grotius clearly deviated from the vision on
ancients and moderns dominant in Lipsius. He also took a very different stance
in praising Rome not for its empire, peace and tranquillity, but for its original
liberty. Liberty, for Grotius (as for Machiavelli), was the single most important
asset of the Romans—even though it did not prove to be durable. Adopting
the common Sallustian-Augustinian theme, Grotius described Roman liberty
as the laudable yet ultimately fatal catalyst of empire.45 The quest of liberty, he
argued, elicited republican independence, but then it turned into “too much
desire of domination”, which engendered luxury and avarice, civil wars and
populist demagogy, and the ultimate establishment of caesarean tyranny. The
cyclical idea of liberty digging its own grave thus reappeared strongly in Gro-
tius: the desire to be free made the Romans desirous of domination; their fight
for independence evolved into external expansion and internal discord that
made them dependent on a single ruler. “This was the start of Roman liberty,
this its pursuit, this its end”, Grotius concluded.46
The ancient Batavians, he continued, were saved from the contagious dis-
ease of Roman expansion. Living at the edges of the Roman Empire, their terri-
tory was not “a Roman province or subjected to alien laws, as almost the entire
world by then, but it was an independent Republic [sui juris Respublica].”47
This special status involved, according to Grotius, that the relationship be-
tween Rome and the Batavians was not based on hierarchy and domination,
but on reciprocity and equal treaties. In this relationship, the Batavians in
fact remained morally superior, for they had kept the natural freedom that
44 Hugo Grotius, Parallelon rerumpublicarum. Liber tertius: de moribus ingenioque popu-

lorum Atheniensium, Romanorum, Batavorum, ed. Johan Meerman, 4 vols. (Haarlem,
1801–1803), 3:18: “Quis satis miretur sollertiam?”
45 Throughout the Parallelon, Grotius frequently referred to Sallust and Augustine, e.g.
1:104–105.
46 Ibidem, 1:27: “dominandi cupido nimia […] Haec Libertatis Romanae initia, hoc studium,
hic finis fuit.”
47 Ibidem, 1:27–28: “Non fuit itaque Batavia haec nostra Romanorum Provincia, aut externis,
ut totus tunc Orbos fere, subjecta Legibus: sed sui juris Respublica.”
the Romans had lost over time. Whilst Roman liberty eventually decayed into
slavery, for the Batavians liberty and slavery had always remained opposites,
as shown by their “bold confidence in speaking, which the Greeks call par-
rhesia.” This practice of free speech, “equally contrary to adulation as liberty is
contrary to slavery”, proved the lasting independent nature of the Batavians.48
They had always staunchly defended their freedom without falling prey to “the
lust for domination that was connected with the pursuit of liberty” in the case
of Rome.49 Batavian freedom thus remained pure and unspoilt, since it did not
lead to imperial pursuits. For Grotius, the Batavians were therefore essentially
different from Rome: the parallel with Paruta’s similar judgement on Venice
is clear.50
Grotius went on with mobilizing the authority of the ancients to criticise
Roman imperialism. He used Polybius, the main source of Lipsius’ praise of
Rome, to testify the “savageness and ferocity of soul” as well as the barbarity,
perfidy, avarice and luxury that entered Rome after the Second Punic War.51
Further references to Sallust and Cicero served him to argue that ambition and
avarice, together with “the lust for empires, honours and glories”, are to be con-
sidered the archenemies of justice. In Rome, this opposition between ambition
and justice materialised in the gradual manipulation of laws on behalf of im-
perious magistrates who aspired external as well as internal domination. “It is
utterly necessary”, Grotius commented, “that the lust for honours began at the
same time as the lust for wars: for it is in the same spirit to desire to rule over
citizens as over peoples.” Territorial expansion therefore leads necessarily to
the creation of imperial offices—and hence, to the demise of justice and free-
dom. In the case of Rome, this imperial ambition had even worse effects for
being accompanied by “haughtiness and contempt” of inferiors. “How far are
we Batavians removed from this!”, Grotius exclaimed self-assuredly. “If there is
48 Ibidem, 1:37–38: “Affinis Libertatis est audax dicendi fiducia, quam Graeci Parrhesiam vo-
cant; utque illa servituti, sic haec adulationi est contraria.” On the cult of parrhesia in the
Dutch Republic, see Arthur Weststeijn, “The Power of ‘Plaint Stuff.’ Fables and Frankness
in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republicanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 72, 1 (2011):
1–27.
49 Grotius, Parallelon, 1:31: “conjunctam fuisse cum Libertatis studio imperitandi cupidinem.”
50 It is unclear whether Grotius ever read Paruta: no direct mention of his work is made in
Grotius’ treatises and extensive correspondence.
51 Grotius, Parallelon, 1:65: “Nam saevitiae Romanorum plerunque perfidia se miscuit;
et duo ista vitia, cum avaritia simil et luxu, statim post Punicum bellum secundum in
Urbem pedes intulere. Violentiam ferociamque animi idem ille, quem modo laudabam,
Polybius satis indicat.”
78 Weststeijn
one people on the whole world that is not captured by this idle titillation of
glory, I affirm it is us.”52
In a following move, Grotius aimed his criticism not only at Rome, but
also, albeit indirectly, at Lipsius. In a clear yet implicit reference to Lipsius’
Admiranda, he repeated the very same passages from Sallust and Tacitus that
had been raised by Lipsius’ disciple and interlocutor, voicing the accusations
of Rome by Mithridates and Calgacus. Whilst Lipsius had responded with a
cheerful laugh, claiming their opinion was not trustworthy since they were en-
emies of Rome, Grotius argued that although being “hostile”, this did not mean
they were “false.” Indeed, for Grotius, Rome’s degeneration after the campaigns
in Asia and the ensuing rise in ambition and greed showed that Lipsius was
wrong in his verdict on the benefices of Roman imperialism. The universal
monarchy of Rome was no token of peaceful commercial exchange, but rather
of an insatiable lust for money, which hastened Rome’s eventual decline and
fall. “Nothing is surely more pernicious to a republic, nothing more destructive,
than an immoderate lust for money. This brought the Spartans down”, Grotius
stated, “this brought down Rome.”53 This denunciation of luxury and greed was
an ancient topos leading back to Sallust, and Lipsius strongly agreed with Gro-
tius on the corrupting effects of the lust for money. Grotius parted ways with
Lipsius, however, in his reverse appraisal of the exemplarity of ancient Rome
versus modern times.
Indeed, Grotius presented his generation of Dutchmen, being the succes-
sors to the Batavians, as a shining example of how honourable lust for money
could have very positive effects for the welfare and integrity of society. He
realised there was no way denying that the Dutch were “attentive and dedicat-
ed to profit”: the raison d’être of the Dutch Republic was its booming economy
based on international commerce. Aware of this indubitable reality, Grotius
invoked Aristotle and the example of ancient Athens to claim that commerce
should not be impeded. Yet unlike the Athenians, he continued, the Dutch
did not consider all sorts of profit to be honourable: they disregarded usury
and focused all their diligence instead on risky trade. “The most honourable
52 Ibidem, 2:1–3: “Plerosque vero Justitiae oblivionem capere, cum in imperiorum, honorum,
gloriaeve cupiditatem inciderint. […] Omnino necesse est, coepisse aequaliter Honorum
bellorumque cupidinem: cum ejusdem sit ingenii, civibus velle imperare et gentibus […].
Accedebat Ambitioni Romanae adversus minores fastus et fastidium. […] Quam procul
hinc absumus Batavi! Si qua gens in omni Terrarum Orbe, quae inani ista gloriae titilla-
tione non capitur, affirmo esse hanc nostram.”
53 Ibidem, 2:7: “Hostiliter Mithridates, nec tamen falso. […] Nihil certe perniciosus Reipu-
blicae, nihil exitiosus, quam pecuniae immoderata cupiditas. Haec Lacedaemonios, haec
Romam perdidit.”
profit”, Grotius argued, “is the one that goes together with labour, care and also
risk.” The uncertainty intrinsic to commercial exchange made all Dutchmen
work industriously for their self-interest without forsaking the interest of the
community at large. Their “pursuit of profit” was never to the detriment of
others, with the effect that “society remains pure” and “justice uncorrupted.”54
Grotius thus tried to solve the paradox he had created by reproaching the lust
for money in ancient Rome while praising the commercial activities of the
Dutch. His underlying assumption postulated that human ambition, which
in Rome provoked the desire for domination, was channelled in the Dutch
Republic towards risky business overseas. Risky, but trustworthy, Grotius in-
sisted: everywhere the Dutch were famed for their “faithfulness in commerce”,
he claimed. “Whilst the common good is elsewhere corrupted by private inter-
est, here concord is maintained by perpetual faithfulness.”55
Throughout the treatise, Grotius thus employed classical terminology and
themes in line with the Sallustian-Augustinian tradition, yet he tentatively en-
tered a new direction by advocating a different, commercial form of ambition
as a modern antidote against ancient decline. The main significance of the
Parallelon is that its stands at this crossroads between ancient and modern,
being the fruit of a youthful spirit that, thoroughly schooled in the classics,
tried to break new ground. The vestiges of the ancients are still dominant, as
becomes clear from Grotius’ obsession with the maintenance of concord—
again, a Sallustian motive that also haunted Paruta and Lipsius.56 Ever since
the onset of the Revolt against Spain, Dutch society had to preserve a precari-
ous balance between various conflicting interests, and Grotius learned from
the history of Rome that such a balance of concord could easily be shattered by
excessive ambition and the luxury that followed from expansion overseas. At
the same time, however, he professed his confidence that the Dutch would be
able to avoid Rome’s fate. When he was writing his treatise, Dutch colonial ex-
pansion was burgeoning, and an ever-increasing number of Dutch ships were
54 Ibidem, 2:9–10: “Batavos attentos esse et quaestui deditos, ne ipsi quidem negaverint […]
Hinc honestissimus quaestus est, cui, praeter laborem et curam, plerunque adest pericu-
lum. […] Ita nobis, apud quos certe tantum est pecuniae studium, quantum esse potest
sine alterius injuria, manet tamen sancta societas, testamenta libera, honores gratuiti,
judicia incorrupta.” For the reference to Aristotle, see 1:62.
55 Ibidem, 1:101: “Jam vero de commerciorum Fide quid attinet dicere? […] quippe alibi com-
mune corrumpi privatis commodis; hic perpetua fide contineri concordiam.”
56 The centrality of this theme in early-modern Dutch political thought is analyzed in
Martin van Gelderen, “The Low Countries,” in European Political Thought, 1450–1700: Reli-
gion, Law and Philosophy, ed. Howell Lloyd, Glen Burgess and Simon Hodson (New Haven,
2007), 376–415.
80 Weststeijn
r eturning from Southeast Asia laden with precious spices. Grotius realised the
risk: such exotic imports might very well debauch the sober Batavian temper
(as happened in fact with the import of wine, “the greatest benefit of nature”,
but also the source of “insults, brawls and injuries”). Yet the course of history
gave reason for optimism, for unlike the ancient Athenians, who were “per-
sistent in their vices”, and the Romans, “not firm enough in maintaining their
virtues”, the Batavians had always been “very steadfast in good deeds.”57
This recurrent interplay between classically inspired anxiety and confidence
in the future defined Grotius’ intellectual attempt to come to terms with the
political realities of his day. There was the risk of decline and fall, for like Rome,
the Dutch Republic was expanding its power worldwide, even beyond the con-
fines known in antiquity and “beyond the course of the sun itself”—a poetical
reference to the recent Dutch voyage into the frozen seas around Nova Zembla.
Driven by their “audacity”, the Dutch went everywhere, Grotius boasted; to list
all the peoples and regions with which they traded required a “description of
the entire world.” The drive behind such global expansion, however, was un-
like Rome’s: it was “not out of the lust for gain, but so that it would not remain
untried.”58 The virtues of curiosity and audacity, not the vice of imperial ambi-
tion, were the vehicles of Dutch expansion overseas. This was the essence of
Dutch superiority over Rome, this the essence of their republican success and
survival: an achievement not due to a single ruler, but to “the works and riches
of private persons […]. Luxury does not claim any part of that miracle, but la-
bour for the common good increases the Fatherland and its progress.”59
The Dutch Republic thus surpassed Rome in the global extent and audac-
ity of its undertakings and in the concord and virtue with which its citizens
expanded the common good. There was no reason to feel any nostalgia for an-
tiquity, as Lipsius did: without lack of poise, Grotius concluded that “a careful
comparison of many ages” had shown that “the Athenians and Romans, even
when their Republic flourished most, did not have more ingenuity or more
57 Grotius, Parallelon, 2:36, 65: “maximum Naturae beneficium […] Hinc convicia, hinc rixae
et vulnera”; “Atheniensis in vitia fuisse pertinaces; Romanos in retinendis virtutibus non
satis firmos; Batavos vero, quod sine invidia dictum volo, rerum bonarum tenacissimos.”
58 Ibidem, 2:87, 93, 97: “Batavicorum vero itinerum stant monimenta, non modo extra
aliarum gentium notitiam, sed extra solis ipsius vias; et quo non pervenit magnus ignis
ille Naturae, huc nostra pervenit audacia”; “Si quis hic postulate numerari Regiones et
Gentes, quibuscum nobis intercedunt commercia, is rem iniquam desiderat, describi hoc
Libro Terrarum Orbem”; “nec lucri cupiditate, sed ne quid intentatum esset.”
59 Ibidem, 3:7: “privatorum opibus operaque res tanta persicitur, nullamque miraculi partem
luxus sibi vindicat: sed labor in commune utilis Patriam auget Patriaeque proventus.”
virtues than the Batavians.”60 Indeed, the Dutch Republic proved the perfect
anti-model to the universal monarchy that was embodied by Rome and cher-
ished by Lipsius, the worldwide territorial empire that the Habsburgs sought
to restore. The King of Spain, Grotius insisted, had no right to claim posses-
sion of all the world, and he “should not believe that any part of the world is
entirely his as long as the sea is ours.”61 This theme would be further developed
in Grotius’ next work, De jure praedae, in which he famously legitimised Dutch
commercial and colonial expansion vis-à-vis Habsburg competition on the ba-
sis of the intrinsic freedom of the high seas.62 The Dutch, for Grotius, were
establishing an empire different from that of Rome or Spain, an empire that
was not territorial in nature but essentially commercial. In perhaps the most
telling side note in the Parallelon, he employed a curious but typical linguistic
argument to substantiate this kind of commercial empire: the Dutch term for
imperium, “rijk”, he stated, is the same as the Dutch word for riches.63
Rome Ridiculed: Boccalini on Rome, Venice and

the Dutch Republic
The opposition sketched by Paruta and Grotius between the imperial decline
of Rome and the seaborne survival of Venice and the Dutch Republic was elab-
orated further in the satirical work of Trajano Boccalini. After having worked in
Rome in the service of the Papal States, Boccalini spent the last years of his life
in Venice, where he published in 1612–13 the two volumes of his Ragguagli di
Parnasso. Arguably, this series of highly sardonic stories from Mount Parnassus
entailed the most penetrant criticism of ancient Rome thus far, enticing many
readers throughout Europe—not least in the Dutch Republic.64 Boccalini was
60 Ibidem, 3:97: “Ostensumque diligenti plurimarum aetatum collatione, Athenienses et

Romanos ne tum quidem, cum maxie floruit Respublica, aut majus ingenium Batavis, aut
plures habuisse virtutes.”
61 Ibidem 2 :91: “ne quam Terrarum partem satis suam credat Hispanus, quam diu Mare est
nostrum.” Cf. also 1, 114. On Spanish claims for worldwide dominion, see Pagden, Lords of
All the World, and Geoffrey Parker, The World is Not Enough: The Imperial Vision of Philip ii
of Spain [The Twenty-Second Charles Edmondson Historical Lectures] (Waco, 2001).
62 See Martine van Ittersum, Profit and Principle: Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories and
the Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies (1595–1615) (Leiden and Boston, 2006).
63 Grotius, Parallelon, 3:59.
64 On the European reception of Boccalini, see Harald Hendrix, Traiano Boccalini fra
erudizione e polemica. Ricerche sulla fortuna e bibliografia critica (Florence, 1995). On
Boccalini more generally, cf. Maurizio Viroli, From Politics to Reason of State. The Acquisi-
tion and Transformation of the Language of Politics 1250–1600 (Cambridge, 1992), 257–266.
82 Weststeijn
himself an enthusiastic reader of Paruta (who is the protagonist in one of his

short stories, teaching “the ordinary morning classes in politics in the public
schools on Parnassus”);65 he was also, like Grotius in this context, a staunch
critic of Lipsius. Indeed, Lipsius appears in another of Boccalini’s stories, yet
in a role that is rather unflattering. The story tells how Lipsius (who had died a
few years earlier in 1606) entered the Parnassus, where he, to the surprise of all
those present, promptly entered into debate with Tacitus, accusing his ancient
mentor of impiety. Tacitus responded sharply:
Do you not think it to be very true, Lipsius, that the Roman people, which
never knew how to put an end to its insatiable ambition to dominate
the universe, did so provoke the anger of the omnipotent God for having
desolated an infinite number of very noble monarchies and very pres-
tigious republics, robbing the world and filling it with fire and blood to
satiate its unquenchable thirst for gold, that God, after having the Roman
people delivered as prey to the most cruel tyrants […] finally permitted
that it was trampled upon with exemplary disgrace by the most barba-
rous nations of Europe? Certainly a most unhappy end, but much de-
served by the Roman ambition, cruelty and avarice, precipices into which
His D
ivine Majesty lets those empires fall that do not know how to put an
end to their insatiable avidity for ruling.
Echoing Calgacus’ speech in Tacitus’ Agricola, Boccalini thus expressively

voiced the by then commonplace characterization of ancient Rome as a re-
public so much driven by imperial ambition and greed that it eventually fell
into tyranny and decline. Lipsius was wrong in his praise for Rome, and at
the end of Boccalini’s story, he admitted he should not even have joined the
debate, being just “a simple grammarian” who could not understand Tacitus’
writings.66
65 Traiano Boccalini, Ragguagli di Parnasso e scritti minori, ed. Luigi Firpo, 3 vols. (Bari,
1948), 1.lxvii: “che di presente nelle pubbliche scuole di Parnaso legge l’ordinario politico
della mattina.”
66 Ibidem, 1.xxiii: “E non pare a te, Lipsio, verissimo che il popolo romano, che giammai
seppe por fine all’ambizione che insaziabilissima ebbe di dominar l’universo, per aver
desolato numero infinito di nobilissime monarchie e prestantissime republiche, rubato il
mondo, e per saziar l’inestinguibil sete ch’egli ebbe dell’oro, empiutolo di fuoco e di sangue,
talmente si concitasse contro l’ira dell’onnipotente Dio, che dopo, avendolo dato in preda
di crudelissimi tiranni, da’ quali provò tutte le più deplorande miserie, permise alla fine
che con esemplar vilipendio fosse calpestato dalle più barbare nazioni dell’Europa? Fine
per certo infelicissimo, ma però molto degno dell’ambizione, della crudeltà e dell’avarizia
The negative portrayal of Rome is mirrored in another of Boccalini’s sto-

ries, which stages a vivid discussion between the personifications of Roman
and Venetian liberty. Roman liberty praises her Venetian counterpart for her
good laws, but she expresses her surprise that the “public and private riches” of
Venice never materialised in territorial expansion—whilst Rome “acquired the
universe in a few years” because of its “military valour, that excellent civic vir-
tue.” This verdict clearly represented the Machiavellian perspective, but Venice
(i.e. Boccalini) reacted promptly, saying that the decline and fall of Rome had
shown that “disproportionately large acquisitions that republics made of states
disconcerted all the political laws of any well-regulated liberty.” Rome had cho-
sen expansion above liberty, but Venice was satisfied with “so much empire as
would secure Venetian liberty from the arms of foreign enemies; she did not
love the greatness of state for the ambition to command, but for the glory not
to serve.” Rome was enslaved by the imperial ambition of its own rulers who
put “the unhappy and shameful chain of servitude”; Venice gloriously retained
its independence and happiness.67
Boccalini thus adopted the theme of empire vs. happiness developed by
Paruta, which in a subsequent story is connected with the example of the Dutch
Republic. This story tells how all the world’s monarchies meet on Parnassus to
discuss the rising threat of their republican competitors. For a long time, the
fate of Rome had showed that republics necessarily turn into monarchies, but
now, in the north of Europe, a for the monarchies rather disturbing alternative
had suddenly entered the scene: peaceful, democratic republics that proved
able to resist internal turmoil and external aggression. The Roman Republic
“proposed with unmatched ambition as its ultimate goal the absolute domin-
ion of the universe”, and thus fell. But this could not be expected to happen to
“the Hollanders and Zealanders”, for whom the ambition to rule had given in
to “a glorious resolution and a firm purpose of not obeying to anyone.” They
successfully combined internal concord with external peace, “which renders
romana: precipizi ne’quali Sua divina Maestà fa capitar quell’imperi che non sanno por
fine all’insaziabil ingordigia di regnare. […] da semplice gramatico come son io.”
67 Ibidem, 1.lxxix: “ricchezze pubbliche e private […] in pochi anni fatto acquisto
dell’universo […] quel valor militare, quella eccellente virtù civile. […] gli acquisti spro-
porzionatamente grandi che le republiche facevano degli stati, sconcertavano le leggi
tutte politiche di qualsivoglia ben regolata libertà […] E che a lei solo bastava di posseder
tanto imperio, che dalle armi degl’inimici stranieri assicurasse la libertà veneziana, e che
ella non amava la grandezza dello stato per ambizion di comandare, ma per gloria di non
servire. […] quell’ambizion di regnare, che vi pose l’infelice e vergognosa catena della
servitù che ora portate al piede.”
84 Weststeijn
their liberty formidable abroad and secure at home.” Their attitude to their
neighbours was not based on the maxims of conquest and subjection, but on
confederal agreement between equals. This is how the Dutch had gained their
independence from Spain, and for Boccalini, their example, discrediting the
monarchical cause, heralded a new republican era. Rome was no longer to be
a model in this changing context; the new model was the confederal Dutch
Republic.68
Conclusion
Boccalini’s satirical verdict on ancient Rome, merging the tendencies in Pa-

ruta and Grotius and discrediting the reputation of Lipsius, struck a chord
with its republican readers north and south. In Venice, criticism of Rome was
well received in the aftermath of the confrontation with the papacy during the
interdict of 1606–1607; in the Dutch Republic, Boccalini’s readers easily con-
nected his anti-Roman rhetoric with his condemnation of Habsburg Spain,
the Republic’s archenemy.69 Debunking Rome remained a common theme in
Dutch republican thought throughout the seventeenth century, which, as Eco
Haitsma Mulier has shown, was heavily influenced by the Venetian example.70
The trope of using Rome as an anti-model culminated in the 1660s in the work
of the brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court, avid readers of Paruta, Lipsius,
Grotius and Boccalini, who embraced the commercial example of Athens and
described Rome with noticeable gusto as “this murderers’ den, this wolf’s nest,
this most detestable and horrible Republic that has ever been on this earth.”71
Venetian and Dutch thinking about what it means to be a successful repub-
lic thus formed a tradition that, in its critical reuse of the legacy of ancient
Rome, might be characterised as the opposite of the republican tradition
sketched by Pocock and his followers, leading from Machiavelli to Harrington.
68 Ibidem, 2.vi: “con una ambizione senza esempio, per suo ultimo fine si propose l’assoluto
dominio dell’universo […] solo si vede regnar in esse una gloriosa deliberazione, un fermo
proposito di non ubbidir ad alcuno […] che formidabile rende la Libertà loro fuori, sicura
nella casa.”
69 Bouwsma, Venice, 293; Hendrix, Boccalini, 57.
70 Haitsma Mulier, Myth of Venice.
71 [Johan and Pieter de la Court], Consideratien van Staat, ofte Politike Weeg-schaal, 4th
rev. ed. (Amsterdam, 1662), 513: “deeze moort-kuil, dit Wolve-nest, deeze verfoeyelikste en
grouwelikste Republik, die ooit op den aardbodem is geweest.” For analysis, see Arthur
Weststeijn, Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden Age: The Political Thought of
Johan and Pieter de la Court (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 214–219.
“Classical republicanism” as a political language in Renaissance Florence and

seventeenth-century England was counterbalanced by the self-legitimizing
narratives of the only two European republics that experienced prolonged
liberty and expansion throughout the early-modern era, using Rome as an
anti-model. Pocock has remarked in this context that “major interpretations
of Roman history founded on the Dutch experience […] are not to be found.”72
The material discussed in this chapter suggests by contrast that the Dutch uses
of Rome and their Venetian parallels entailed a vision of republican politics
where military virtue was subordinated to social concord and territorial expan-
sion to commercial and maritime power. This vision was certainly not revolu-
tionary, and to a large extent it was based on the authoritative interpretations
of ancient authors like Sallust and Tacitus. Nonetheless, it paved the way for a
new, anti-Roman emphasis on overseas commerce as the vehicle of empire in
a modern world. In this development, the trajectories of Venetian and Dutch
thinking would diverge significantly: in the Dutch Republic, colonial expan-
sion was justified following Grotius’ account of the intrinsic freedom of the
high seas, whilst in Venice, authors like Paolo Sarpi and Giulio Pace defended
Venetian commercial and maritime supremacy against the idea of Mare libe-
rum by claiming the republic’s age-old dominion of the Adriatic.73 The intel-
lectual roads of Venice and the Dutch Republic, then, deviated in the course
of the seventeenth century, but their starting point was one and the same: the
acknowledgment that a commonwealth for preservation and increase should
discard the example of ancient Rome.
72 Pocock, First Decline and Fall, 282.

73 See Guido Acquavica and Tullio Scovazzi, eds., Il dominio di Venezia sul Mare Adriatico
nelle opere di Paolo Sarpi e Giulio Pace (Milan, 2007). Cf. also Filippo de Vivo, “Historical
Justifications of Venetian Power in the Adriatic,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, 2 (2003):
159–176.
chapter 4
Early Modern Greek Histories and Republican

Political Thought
William Stenhouse
Conventional accounts of the birth of modern Greek history-writing see it as

the offspring of the Enlightenment. It was in the late eighteenth century that
historians in France, England, and Scotland wrote extensive narrative histories
of ancient Greece, trumpeting both their novelty and the political utility of
their undertaking. As William Mitford claimed in the preface to his 1784 History
of Greece, “The assertion is little hazardous that a History of Greece remains yet
among the desiderata of literature,” and in volume three of his work, reflecting
on the French revolution, he argued that “a Grecian history perfectly written,
should be a political institute for all nations.”1 Following Mitford’s lead, some
eighteenth-century writers drew republican messages from Greek historical
texts, praising Sparta’s virtue, for example, as rooted in its republicanism, a
message especially relevant to the American and French revolutions.2 British
liberal and utilitarian thinkers rehabilitated Athenian democracy in the early
nineteenth century, culminating with George Grote’s History of Ancient Greece,
which appeared from 1846.3 These histories were by no means all written
from an anti-monarchical point of view: John Gillies, for example, argued in
the dedication, to King George iii, of his 1786 History of Ancient Greece that
“By describing the incurable evils inherent in every form of Republican policy,
[the History of Greece] evinces the inestimable benefits, resulting to Liberty
itself, from the lawful dominion of hereditary Kings, and the steady operation
1 William Mitford, The History of Greece, 8 vols. (London, 1835), 1:[v] and 3:464.
2 James Moore and Ian Macgregor Morris, “History in Revolution? Approaches to the Ancient
World in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in Reinventing History: The Enlightenment Origins
of Ancient History, ed. James Moore, Ian Macgregor Morris, and Andrew J. Bayliss (London,
2008), 3–29. See further Chapter 7 in this volume by Wessel Krul.
3 Kyriacos N. Demetriou, George Grote on Plato and Athenian Democracy (Frankfurt am Main,
1999), 33–59; Oswyn Murray, “Introduction,” in Edward Bulwer Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall:
With views of the literature, philosophy, and social life of the Athenian people, ed. Oswyn Mur-
ray (London, 2004), 1–34; Peter Liddel (ed), Bishop Thirlwall’s History of Greece: A selection
(Exeter, 2007).

Early Modern Greek Histories & Republican Political Thought 87
of well-regulated Monarchy.”4 But while the messages that readers were sup-
posed to draw from these works varied, all made clear the value of the study of
Greek history, and of the writing of Greek histories, for contemporary political
developments.
This picture of the eighteenth-century emergence of classical Greek histo-
riography has been shaped by two papers of Arnaldo Momigliano. He deliv-
ered one, explicitly focusing on Greek history and the contribution of George
Grote, as his inaugural lecture at University College, London, where Grote had
taught. Momigliano told his post-war British audience that “We continentals
never knew of such a thing as Greek History with capital letters until the end
of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth century,” and he
reminded them that “it is uncertain whether Greek history was invented in
England or in Scotland.” He canvassed two possible inventors, Mitford and Gil-
lies.5 Greek history was therefore a creation of the late Enlightenment British
Isles, where “what was really new was […] political discussion embodied in a
Greek history.”6 While subsequent scholars have found earlier pioneers in a
rather reductive search for the first modern Greek historian, his general picture
continues to win acceptance.7
4 John Gillies, The History of Ancient Greece, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1786), 1:iii; Greek histories could
also provide guidance for British imperialism, for example: see C. Akça Ataç, “Imperial
Lessons from Athens and Sparta: Eighteenth-Century British Histories of Ancient Greece,”
History of Political Thought 27 (2006): 642–660.
5 Arnaldo Momigliano, Studies on Modern Scholarship, ed. G.W. Bowersock and T.J. Cornell
(Berkeley, 1994), 16, from “George Grote and the Study of Greek History,” a lecture delivered
in 1950 and published in 1952. See the important analysis in Giovanna Ceserani, “Modern
histories of Ancient Greece: genealogies, contexts and eighteenth-century narrative histori-
ography,” in The Western Time of Ancient History: Historiographical Encounters with the Greek
and Roman Pasts, ed. Alexandra Lianeri (Cambridge, 2011), 138–155.
6 Momigliano, Studies on Modern Scholarship, 16.
7 See Ceserani, “Modern histories of Ancient Greece” on Temple Stanyan and Charles Rollin;
Ian Macgregor Morris, “Navigating the Grotesque,” in Reinventing History, ed. James Moore
et al., 247–290 on Jacques de Tourreil’s translation of Demosthenes; and various important
studies by Kostas Vlassopoulos, including, Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History
beyond Eurocentrism (Cambridge, 2007), 15–16, “The Construction of Antiquity and Moder-
nity in the Eighteenth Century: Alterity, Proximity, Distantiation, Immanency,” in Intentional
History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece, ed. Lin Foxhall, Hans-Joachim Gehrke, and Nino Lu-
raghi (Stuttgart, 2010), 343–360, and “Acquiring (a) Historicity: Greek History, Temporalities
and Eurocentrism in the Sattelzeit (1750–1850),” in The Western Time of Ancient History, ed.
Lianeri, 156–178. An important exception to this focus on the eighteenth century is Carmine
Ampolo, who in his survey of Greek historiography takes seriously the contribution of early
modern writers: Storie greche: La formazione della moderna storiografia sugli antichi Greci
88 Stenhouse
This might come as something of a surprise to historians of Renaissance

political thought, in which Greek historical examples are not uncommon. Ma-
chiavelli confidently refers to Greek figures, such as Solon; Jean Bodin engaged
with questions of the role of the archons at Athens, for example, or of the de-
velopment of laws.8 Machiavelli and Bodin went straight to Plutarch, Xeno-
phon, or Aristotle for their information, of course; but it would be reasonable
to assume that they, or their followers, would have welcomed historical works
that could put the anecdotes and comments of Plutarch and others in some
sort of context. Such works did, in fact, begin to appear in the second half of
the sixteenth century, often highlighting the political implications of the mate-
rial they contained. By the end of the seventeenth century, Jacobus Gronovius
could fill thirteen large folio volumes with them, in his Thesaurus Graecarum
antiquitatum. But they have been mostly ignored, and seen as antiquarian cu-
rios, rather than historically perceptive or politically engaged works of schol-
arship. One central reason for their neglect is Momigliano’s famous “Ancient
History and the Antiquarian,” published in the same year as he delivered the
lecture on Grote.9 In that essay, Momigliano pointed to the eighteenth century
as the point where erudite traditions of historical scholarship were married to
narrative historiography, with the work of Gibbon in particular. Before Gib-
bon, he argued, early modern historians were satisfied with the achievements
of ancient narrative historians, and had no wish to duplicate their work. His
characterisations of the erudite antiquarian tradition, whose practitioners
gathered facts without necessarily having an obvious purpose, and present-
ed synchronic rather than diachronic accounts of institutions and practices,
(Turin, 1997), 13–37; and Giuseppe Cambiano, Polis: Un modello per la cultura europea (Rome,
2000), 22–259.
8 E.g., Nicolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, i.2 on Solon; Jean Bodin, Six livres de la répub-
lique, ii.5 (Solon), vi.4 (Xenophon and democracy); James Hankins, “Europe’s First Democrat?
Cyriac of Ancona and Book 6 of Polybius,” in For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of
Anthony Grafton, ed. Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2016), 2:692–710. On
Machiavelli’s example in the Discourses, see, e.g., Harvey Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes
and Orders: A Study of the Discourses of Livy (Chicago, 1979), 39–40. On Bodin’s attitude to
Greek historians, see Federicomaria Muccioli, ”Il canone degli storici greci nella Methodus di
Jean Bodin,” in Storici antici e storici moderni nella Methodus di Jean Bodin, ed. Giuseppe Zec-
chini and Alessandro Galimberti (Milan, 2012), 27–48, with bibliography, and in particular
Saffo Testoni Binetti, “Immagini di Sparta nel dibattito politico francese durante le guerre di
religione,” in Ideologie della città europea dall’umanesimo al romanticismo, ed. Vittorio Conti
(Florence, 1993), 105–124, 114–122. Clearly Bodin and Machiavelli were not the only political
thinkers working with Greek models.
9 Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950): 285–315.
a llowed him to present that tradition as something less than proper history:
the antiquary was, in Momigliano’s terms, “not quite a historian.”10 Although
Momigliano was fascinated by it as a phenomenon, his picture of antiquarian-
ism contributed to its marginalization, and it is only in the last twenty years or
so that scholars have argued for its intellectual vitality, and for its important
political role in early modern Europe.11 Given Momigliano’s arguments in “An-
cient Historian and the Antiquarian,” it is not surprising that he would find the
first Greek historians working after Gibbon. And while modern historians of
Greek historiography have found pioneers writing earlier than Momigliano’s,
they have mostly shared Momigliano’s preference for a strong narrative as a
central requirement for their candidates.
In this chapter I want to examine this overlooked sixteenth- and early
seventeenth-century Greek historical scholarship, with particular attention to
the political motivations of the writers, and to the political lessons that they
presented to their readers. In particular, I will ask how far these works should
be considered as republican. Several authors presented their work as a contri-
bution to anti-monarchical thought and practice, with ancient Greek states as
their models. Carmine Ampolo, who has written the only modern survey of
this work, has argued that “republicanism is the key to understanding” the way
in which Greek history-writing emerged in this period.12 We should beware
of presenting a single explanation for the phenomenon, however; we can see
the history of Greece written from a variety of perspectives and used for a va-
riety of ends. In what follows, I will add nuance to our picture of early modern
scholars’ motivations for writing about ancient Greece, and of the conclusions
that they thought it offered.
Greek Histories
In the second half of the sixteenth century, there are clear signs of a wide-
spread interest in the classical Greek past. In the first place, scholars produced
a series of new editions and translations of historical texts. For example, Henri
10 Ibidem, 286.
11 Peter N. Miller, ed., Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural
Sciences (Toronto, 2007), especially the contributions of Anthony Grafton, “Momigliano’s
Method and the Warburg Institute: Studies in his Middle Period,” 97–126 and Ingo Herk-
lotz, “Arnaldo Momigliano’s ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’: A Critical Review,”
127–153.
12 Carmine Ampolo, “Modern States and Ancient Greek History,” in Nations and Nationali-
ties, ed. Guðmundur Hálfdanarson and Ann-Katherine Isaacs (Pisa, 2001), 101–117, 105.
90 Stenhouse
Estienne printed Xenophon, Thucydides, and Herodotus in the 1560s, the last
of these accompanied by his famous Apologie pour Hérodote, which was con-
demned and its author burned in effigy; in the 1560s and 1570s Wilhelm Xyl-
ander translated into Latin Plutarch, Strabo, and Pausanias; Isaac Casaubon
edited and commented on Strabo, and printed it with Xylander’s translation,
in 1589.13 We also see various translations into the vernacular: in England, for
example, Thomas Nichols’ translation of Thucydides was published in 1550 (al-
beit translated from Seyssel’s French translation, and not the Greek), William
Barker’s Xenophon in 1567, and Barnabe Rich’s Herodotus of 1584;14 in Italy,
translations of these three authors were printed in the 1540s, and subsequently
reprinted before the end of the century.15 The numbers of editions of Greek
works did not rival those of the Latin historians, but they filled a definite niche,
and appealed to a learned public across Europe. They also allowed political
thinkers easy access to useful sources; as Kinch Hoekstra has argued, as a result
we can identify early modern Thucydideans alongside the more familiar Taci-
teans, who used Thucydides to think about empire and found that he provided
“a clear-eyed view of the underlying realities of power.”16
13 The bibliography on the reception of Greek historical texts in the sixteenth century is
increasingly large. For editions of Xenophon, see David Marsh, “Xenophon,” Catalogus
translationum et commentariorum 7 (1992), 75–196, and of Thucydides, see Marianne
Pade, “Thucydides,” Catalogus translationum et commentariorum 8 (2003), 103–181. On
Pausanias, see George Tolias, “The Resonance of the Periegesis during the 16th and 17th
Centuries,” in Following Pausanias: The Quest for Greek Antiquity, ed. Maria Georgopoulou
et al. (New Castle, 2007), 96–104. See also, e.g., Noreen Humble, “The Renaissance Recep-
tion of Xenophon’s Spartan Constitution: Preliminary Observations,” in Xenophon: Ethi-
cal Principles and Historical Enquiry, ed. Christopher Tuplin and Fiona Hobden (Leiden,
2012), 63–88, Susanna Gambino Longo, ed., Hérodote à la Renaissance. Latinitates (latin),
7. (Turnhout, 2012), and Anthony Grafton, What was History? The Art of History in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007), 240–245, discussing Casaubon’s lectures on Herodo-
tus. Polybius was probably the most influential historian writing in Greek, but because
his subject was the Roman empire, I have omitted him here. For the wider philological
context, see Jean Christophe Saladin, La bataille du grec à la Renaissance (Paris, 2000),
with the review by Anna Pontani, Aevum 76 (2002): 852–867.
14 For Seyssel, see A.C. Dionisotti, “Claude de Seyssel,” in Ancient History and the Antiquar-
ian: Essays in Memory of Arnaldo Momigliano, Warburg Institute Colloquia 2, ed. M.H.
Crawford and C.R. Ligota (London, 1995), 73–104.
15 All three were published by the Giolito company in Venice: see Angela Nuovo and Chris-
tian Coppens, I Giolito e la stampa nell’Italia del xvi secolo (Geneva, 2005), 487.
16 Kinch Hoekstra, “Thucydides and the Bellicose Beginnings of Modern Political Theory,” in
Thucydides and the Modern World, ed. Katherine Harloe and Neville Morley (Cambridge,
This range of editions is not surprising; but scholars also began to produce
material to help readers understand them. With great industry, they gathered
and processed historical evidence, from ancient narrative historians and more
recondite sources. They compiled information about Greek institutions and
cultural practices—about Athenian and Spartan institutions, initially, but by
the early seventeenth century also about religious festivals or cultural phe-
nomena like the variety of Greek dances—publishing what they found. In
some cases, the books they wrote were little more than lists, with sources, and
this is especially true of the collections of Johannes Meursius, in the early sev-
enteenth century; in others, there was more analysis. They also produced maps
of the ancient Greek world to allow readers to identify places they read about.
These maps forced their users to consider the extent of the Greek world. In
1540 Nicolaus Sophianos, an exile from Corfu, first published a map of Greece
that included parts of Asia Minor as well as the Balkans and the tip of southern
Italy.17 When Nicolaus Gerbel wrote about this extensive map, in his gazetteer
of 1545, he noted that according to the ancient geographers, Greece was not
static.18 As he then went on to consider patterns of Greek colonization, his
picture was complicated further: the Greeks settled in Africa, Asia, and Europe,
so that the “nation of the Greeks spread across the whole world, and built vari-
ous cities which it educated first in letters and learning, and then in law and
justice.”19 Greekness was to be discussed, therefore; it was determined by his-
torical, cultural and political, as well as geographical criteria. George Tolias has
gone so far as to call this period a “critical and decisive phase in Greek studies”
on the basis of interest in Pausanias and Greek geography, and in the resulting
crystallization of ideas about how far ancient Greece extended.20
2012), 25–54, esp. 29; see also Anthony Grafton, What was History?, 77 and 105–106, on
David Chytraeus’ lectures on Thucydides in 1562.
17 George Tolias, “Nikolaos Sophianos’s Totius Graeciae Descriptio: The Resources, Diffu-
sion and Function of a Sixteenth-Century Antiquarian Map of Greece,” Imago Mundi
58 (2006): 150–182; for attempts to define the Greek world see also Francesco Tateo, “La
Magna Grecia nell’antiquaria del Rinascimento,” in Eredità della Magna Grecia: Atti del
Trentacinquesimo Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia (Taranto, 1996), 149–163.
18 Nicolaus Gerbel, Pro declaratione picturae sive descriptionis Graeciae Sophiani, libri sep-
tem (Basle [1549]), 24: “Confer haec cum pictura, & intelliges quantum adhuc Graeciae,
praeter ea quae diximus, Strabo adjecerit.” (Compare Strabo’s image with the picture of
Ptolemy, and you will understand how much more Strabo added to Greece.)
19 Ibidem, 26: “Longe igitur lateque per totum orbem Graecorum natio dispersa, varias urbes
aedificavit, quas primum optimis literis, & disciplinis, tum legibus, & justitia erudivit.”
20 George Tolias, “Introduction,” in Following Pausanias, ed. Georgopoulou et al., 57–73, 61.
92 Stenhouse
Scholars also pondered the chronological extent of Greek history; at what

point did the classical world come to an end?21 Was it with the conquest by the
Macedonians, or the Romans, or some time later? From the 1550s on, Johann
Jakob Fugger’s protegées in Augsburg were responsible for a series of editions
of Byzantine writers, and their work contributed to the development of Byz-
antine studies as a discrete field.22 In 1557 Hieronymus Wolf edited a Corpus
universae historiae Byzantinae, published by Johannes Oporinus, who was
probably the inventor of the term Byzantine.23 The designation, though, did
not win widespread acceptance immediately: other labels, including the em-
pire of Constantinople, the empire of the east, or the Greek empire, remained,
particularly in vernacular writings.24 From a different perspective, Asaph Ben-
Tov has convincingly argued that for Lutherans (and especially the pupils of
21 Compare Momigliano’s important observation in “The Rediscovery of Greek History in

the Eighteenth Century: the Case of Sicily,” in Momigliano, Settimo contributo alla sto-
ria degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1984), 133–153, 133–134: “There is a very
elementary difference between Roman and Greek history to which perhaps not enough
attention has been paid. Roman history, to the ordinary educated man, has definite lim-
its in space and time: it has a beginning, it has an end; and it is obvious, if you speak of
Roman history, that you mean the history of a well-defined territory […] With the Greeks
it was the opposite. There were no obvious limits of time and space, no proper beginning,
no agreed end, and no geographical boundaries.”
22 Hans-Georg Beck, “Die byzantinischen Studien in Deutschland vor Karl Krumbacher”
in Xαλικες: Festgabe für die Teilnehmer am xi. internationalen Byzantinistenkongreß,
München 15.–20. September 1958 (Freising, 1958), 66–119, 66–72; Diether Reinsch, “Edi-
tionen und Rezeption byzantinischer Historiker durch deutsche Humanisten” in Graeca
recentiora in Germania: Deutsch-griechische Kulturbeziehungen vom 15. bis 19. Jahrhun-
dert, ed. Hans Eideneier (Wiesbaden, 1994), 47–63; Markus Völkel, “Von Augsburg nach
Paris, von Oporin zu Cramoisy: Die reichsstädtische Byzantinistik und die europäische
Respublica litteraria in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Humanismus und Renaissance in Augs-
burg. Kulturgeschichte einer Stadt Zwischen Spätmittelalter und Dreissigjährigem Krieg, ed.
Gernot Michael Müller (Berlin, 2010), 293–308. For earlier developments on which these
German scholars built, see Han Lamers, Greece Reinvented: Transformations of Byzantine
Hellenism in Renaissance Italy (Leiden, 2015).
23 On the implications of the choice of a Roman title, see Claudia Rapp, “Hellenic Identity,
Romanitas and Christianity in Byzantium,” in Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity
from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. Katerina Zacharia (Burlington, 2008), 127–148, 129.
24 Asaph Ben-Tov, Lutheran Humanists and Greek Antiquity: Melanchthonian Scholarship
between Universal History and Pedagogy (Leiden, 2009), 106–109: the term is usually at-
tributed to Wolf, but Ben-Tov argues Oporinus was responsible. On French developments
on Byzantine scholarship, which used different terms, see Jean-Michel Spieser, “Du Cange
and Byzantium,” in Byzantium through British Eyes, ed. Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jef-
freys (Burlington, 2000), 199–210.
elanchthon) interested in the Greek church by 1600, “the Ottoman conquest

M
of Constantinople [was understood to be] the closing of Greek antiquity.”25 This
is certainly one impression the reader gets from Martin Crusius’ Turcograecia,
his 1584 collection of sources for Byzantine and ecclesiastical history.
Collectively, therefore, we can see that the sources for Greek historical writ-
ing were being published, and that questions about the nature of Greek history
were in the air. Greek historical accounts had been included in early sixteenth-
century universal histories, but in the second half of the sixteenth century,
some scholars then attempted to write separate chronological accounts of
individual states, or of the Greek world as a whole.26 For example, in 1558 the
Viennese physician Wolfgang Lazius published Commentariorum rerum Grae-
carum libri ii, which, as its subtitle announced, dealt with mainland northern
Greece, and the Peloponnese. It presented a fairly long city by city and province
by province account of Greek settlements; for each place, Lazius offered a sys-
tematic outline of important information. He included geographical features;
historical events, including the loss of independence to Macedonians and Ro-
mans, and often subjection to the Turks; then other things of note, including
famous inhabitants, and colonies. In the 1570s, Hubertus Goltzius planned a
four-book survey of Greek territories, to include Sicily and Greek cities on the
Italian peninsula; mainland Greece; the islands; and Greek cities in Asia Mi-
nor, the Levant, and Africa.27 Only the work on Sicily and Italy was printed in
Goltzius’ lifetime, in 1576, although a manuscript of the remaining text sur-
vives in the Plantin Museum, in Antwerp. Goltzius built on the work of Lazius,
and adopted his basic format of a city by city, or territory by territory account
of the Greek world, including geographical and historical information. Then
in 1626, the Elzevier company in Leiden published Ubbo Emmius’ Vetus Grae-
cia, illustrata, a wide-ranging three volume study of Greek history, divided into
a geographical description of Greece, a compendium of Greek history, taken
from ancient narratives, and an institutional overview of Greek states. Scholars
also wrote studies of particular states, and particularly their p
olitical histories,
25 Asaph Ben-Tov, “Turco-Graecia: German Humanists and the End of Greek Antiquity—
Cultural Exchange and Misunderstanding,” in The Renaissance and the Ottoman World,
ed. Anna Contadini and Claire Norton (Burlington, 2013), 181–196, 193.
26 For Greek histories in the universal history tradition, see Asaph Ben-Tov, “Eine späthu-
manistische Konfessionalisierung der Antike. Die Griechen in der protestantischen his-
toria universalis,” in Antikes erzählen: Narrative Transformationen von Antike in Mittelalter
und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Anna Heinze, Albert Schirrmeister, and Julia Weitbrecht (Berlin,
2013), 117–142.
27 Maria Luisa Napolitano, Hubertus Goltzius e la magna Graecia: Dalle Fiandre all’Italia del
Cinquecento (Naples, 2011), 227–259.
94 Stenhouse
including Guillaume Postel’s 1541 De magistratibus Atheniensium, Carlo Sigo-

nio’s work on Athens, the 1564 De republica Atheniensium—which he followed
with a chronological table of events in Athens and Sparta—Nicolaus Cragius’
study of Sparta, De republica Lacedaemoniorum, and attempts to classify the
structures of states of Athens, by Theodore Zwinger in his Methodus Apo-
demica (1577), and of Athens and Sparta by Clemens Colmerus and Nicolaus
Sienicius (the 1609 Politiae speciales duae augustissimae, nempe Atheniensis et
Spartana). What inspired the writers of these works to turn to Greece?
Greek Histories and Contemporary Politics
In most cases, these collections and accounts of Greek history were written
primarily to elucidate and explicate classical Greek texts. Lazius’ and Goltzius’
were designed to allow coin collectors to identify and explain the coins from
various Greek states.28 As a result, it would be easy to assume that the concerns
of their writers were removed from contemporary politics and religion. In fact,
though, it is clear that several wrote with at least half on eye on the present.
Lazius, for example, who was physician to Ferdinand i, responded strongly
to the Habsburg context in which he was working.29 He pronounced in the
preface that he had surveyed “an ancient, flourishing Greece, not the desolate
and barbaric Greece of today.”30 He was unremittingly hostile to the Turks who
now held the territories that he was discussing, and, as he wrote to Maximilian,
Ferdinand’s son, he looked forward to a time when Greece would be freed from
the yoke of savage tyranny, and be joined to the glory of Austria.31 Although
for the most part, his accounts of individual cities do not include explicit links
to the present (Lazius usually concluded his entries with the Roman con-
quest), his discussion of contemporary cities’ coats of arms, combined with his
inclusion of detailed maps, meant that the work certainly could have provided
28 Jonathan Kagan, “Notes on the Study of Greek Coins in the Renaissance,” in Translatio
nummorum: Römische Kaiser in der Renaissance. Akten des internationalen Symposiums
Berlin 16.–18. November 2011, ed. Ulrike Peter and Bernhard Weisser (Wiesbaden, 2013),
57–70.
29 John Cunnally, “The Portable Pantheon: Ancient Coins as Sources of Mythological Imag-
ery in the Renaissance,” in Wege zum Mythos, ed. Luba Freedman (Berlin, 2001), 123–140;
Nancy Siraisi, History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann Arbor,
2007), 214.
30 Wolfgang Lazius, Commen. Rerum Graecarum libri ii (Vienna, 1558), sig. [A2]v: “Graeciam
non quidam illam desolatam ac barbaram, sed antiquam ac florentissimam perlustravi.”
31 Ibidem, sig. [L5]v.
background strategic information. German Protestants, on the other hand,

were drawn to Greece and Greek history under the influence of Melanchthon’s
commitment to the Greek language, but also from a belief that Christians of
the Greek rite preserved a form of early Christianity that was like their own.32
More commonly, though, authors explicitly compared ancient institutions
with current ones. Two centuries before Mitford, politically-oriented scholars
found Greece useful to think with. Most of the authors of these books worked
in early modern republics: Postel and Sigonio in Venice, Emmius and Meursius
in the Dutch republic. Hence Ampolo’s argument that republicanism present-
ed a central motivation for this work.33 To his list we can add Zwinger in the
Swiss Federation, and Colmerus and Sienicius in the relatively independent
city of Gdansk in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Venice and Leiden,
though, were important centres for classical scholarship tout court, so we
should beware making too direct a causal connection. As we shall see, many
of these historians were indeed strongly interested in republicanism, but their
circumstances, religious orientations and responses varied.
A good example of the complexity of the question is the work of Guillaume
Postel (1510–1581). Postel had visited Venice in 1537 in the service of the French
king, and was a great admirer of the city and its constitution. But Postel’s 1541
work, initially entitled simply De magistratibus Atheniensium, was published
first in Paris, where Postel had been appointed lecteur royal at the Collége de
France by François i on his return in 1538. It was popular: it was subsequently
printed in Venice and Basel in 1543 (now with the subtitle “most useful for un-
derstanding not only the Greek, but also the Roman state, and for all ancient
history”), again in Basel in 1551, then in Strasbourg and Leiden in the early
seventeenth century, and in Leipzig in 1691.34 In his work on ancient Athens
he reflected explicitly on Venice. When discussing how Athenians chose their
magistrates, for example, Postel approvingly linked the Athenian use of the lot
and the way in which the doge and other magistrates were chosen at Venice.
He said the Athenian nomophylakoi (the guardians of the law, whom he ad-
mired) were not dissimilar to the Venetian members of the council of forty. In
his section on Athenian trierarchs, though, he went further: in this case, he ar-
gued, “the Athenians are easily trumped by the Venetians,” who had a range of
32 Ben-Tov, Lutheran Humanists and Greek Antiquity.

33 See n.12 above.
34 Guillaume Postel, De magistratibus Atheniensium liber, ad intelligendam non solum Grae-
corum, sed et Romanorum politiam, ac omnem veterum historiam, lectu utilissimus (Basel,
1551).
96 Stenhouse
specialised naval officers and bureaucrats.35 How far Postel promoted repub-
licanism, though, is less straightforward a question—hardly surprising, given
his connections to the French king. The Venetians were not his only point of
comparison: he made parallels between Athenians and Turks, Swiss, and espe-
cially his native French. He dedicated the work to his main patron, the chan-
cellor of France, Guillaume Poyet (Poyet’s downfall in 1542 meant that Postel
lost his position, too), and interrupted his discussion of the Athenian cleruchs
to praise François’ cultural patronage.36 In the introduction, he conceded that
a direct comparison between Athenian democracy and the French monarchy
was impossible, but he did tell Poyet that he hoped that the knowledge of the
Athenian republic might help with future problems in France; in particular, he
argued that the Romans (a safer target for imitation) had adapted Athenian
laws and learnt from Athens’ social structure and magistrates.37
The case of Carlo Sigonio (c. 1524–1584) presents slightly different problems.
He too was a non-Venetian who admired the city; he taught in Venice, then
Padua, between 1552 and 1563 before moving to Bologna.38 Guido Bartolucci
has argued convincingly that Sigonio’s historical output—the Greek works
are a small fragment of large corpus covering Roman and medieval Italian his-
tory, and ancient Hebrew institutions—demonstrates a clear interest in the
emergence of republican liberties and institutions.39 His treatise on Athens
was no exception (begun in 1559, first published in 1564, then reprinted in 1565,
1576, and 1593): it offered a quick historical survey of the emergence of coun-
cils, legal institutions, magistrates, before discussing each at greater length.40
35 Guillaume Postel, De magistratibus Atheniensium liber (Paris, 1541), 15r (nomophylakoi);

26r: “Facile vincuntur Athenienses a Venetis.”
36 Ibidem, 56r-v.
37 Ibidem, sig. Bv-Biir: “Ut igitur illa imitatione etiam ego aliqua in re prodesse rei pub. coner,
volui e priscorum monumentis erutam praestantissimam rerumpublicarum imaginem
Atheniensium politiam in manus hominum dare cuius & si exacta comparatio cum
nostra propter diversam monarchiae & democratiae administrationem fieri non poterit,
spero tamen futurum ut hinc aliquod remedium ad eius emendationem desumere pos-
sit. Atque non tantum leges Atheniensium a Romanis expetitas fuisse me ostensurum
spero, sed & divisionis populi, & magistratuum exempla inde sumpta clarissimis argu-
mentis me demonstraturum confido.”
38 William McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance (Princeton,
1989), 12–56.
39 Guido Bartolucci, “Historian Engagé: Republicanism and Oligarchy in Carlo Sigonio’s
Political Histories,” Storicamente 8 (2012), art. 22 (http://www.storicamente.org/01_fonti/
bartolucci_sigonio.htm, consulted 7 September 2016), and his contribution to this volume.
40 Giovanni Salmeri, “La Costituzione degli Ateniesi aristotelica, l’Atene di età imperiale e
l’Italia di Sigonio,” in L’Athenaion Politeia di Aristotele 1891–1991: Per un bilancio di cento
anni di studi (Perugia, 1994), 39–61, 56–61.
nlike Postel, though, Sigonio shied from analogies with contemporary states.
U
He did not use his discussions to praise republican government, or the govern-
ment of Venice, directly, even as he surveyed the emergence of Athenian insti-
tutions.41 We know from his commentaries on Aristotle of his admiration for a
mixed constitution, which he identified in Venice; but although he conceived
his work on Athens there, it was published first in Bologna, and he dedicated it
to Pier Donato Cesi, the governor of Bologna for the pope. Not coincidentally,
he had just moved from Padua to teach in that city. In his historical survey
of the city, he was happy to follow Aristotle in arguing that the heroic kings
should be given the credit for Athens’ early preeminence among Greek cities,
for guiding the populace to virtue, justice, and moderation. He also attributes
to the kings the origins of various institutions, magistracies, and religious as-
sociations.42 On the other hand, he agrees that Athens’ great period of success
occurred under a non-monarchical government: he argues clearly of the era
of democracy that “no other history is more magnificent in its dignity, fruitful
in its utility, or pleasurable through its reading.”43 He divided the period into
two stages, before and after Cleisthenes; not surprisingly, he preferred the for-
mer, whose successes he associates particularly with Solon. He admired Solon
for introducing a senate to Athens and for stabilising the state through good
laws.44 As in the case of the Spartan Lycurgus, praising an effective law-giver
was common in these histories; but the law-giver could inspire monarchs or
republican magistrates, or emissaries such as Sigonio’s dedicatee Cesi.
The work of Johannes Meursius (1579–1639) poses different problems
again.45 Meursius was a prodigious worker, and certainly the most prolific
writer on Greek antiquity in this period: indeed, he lost his post at Leiden Uni-
versity in 1625 for having written too much, at the expense of his teaching (and
because of his sympathy towards the moderate Remonstrants, his p osition had
41 This is not so say, however, that other contemporary theorists in Venice did not engage
with ancient Greece: see, for example, Marco Giani, “Athenian Ostracism in Venetian Dis-
guise: An Historical Diatribe in Late Renaissance Italy,” in Athenian Legacies: European
Debates on Citizenship, ed. Paschalis M. Kitromilides (Florence, 2014), 179–193, on Paolo
Paruta.
42 Carlo Sigonio, De Rep. Atheniensium libri iii (Bologna, 1564), 5–10.
43 Ibidem, 27, on the “democraitae [sic] tempora,” announced in the margin: “Qua historia
nihil esse iudico aut ad dignitatem magnificentius, aut ad utilitatem fructuosius, aut ad
lectionis voluptatem certe iucundius.”
44 Ibidem, 31–36. See Cambiano, Polis, 141–142.
45 Christopher L. Heesakkers, “Te weinig koren of alleen te veel kaf? Leidens eerste
Noordnederlandse filoloog Joannes Meursius (1579–1639),” in Miro Fervore. Een bundel
lezingen & artikelen over de beoefening van de klassieke wetenschappen in de zeventiende &
achttiende eeuw, ed. R.J. Langelaan and M.F. Fresco (Leiden, 1994), 13–26.
98 Stenhouse
become increasingly difficult after the synod of Dort).46 As a teenager he had

proved his philological ability by working on the texts of Lycophron and The-
ocritus; then, in the early seventeenth century, he wrote a glossary of Byzan-
tine Greek terms, which was first published in 1610, and won him the chair at
Leiden, and then the post of Historiographer to the States General the follow-
ing year.47 Meursius presented the glossary not simply as a lexicon, but as an
aid to historical understanding: as he wrote in the preface, “we have nothing
left of the eastern empire but the memory of it which histories maintain. But
histories represent to us nothing but the external appearance of the empire,
and an account of things done at various times; I sought, indeed, to inquire
more deeply, and to look into its interior workings.” According to John Con-
sidine, Meursius here asserts “that a dictionary actually preserves more of a
vanishing culture than a historical narrative can do, and comes closer to its
heart.”48 Meursius’ belief that a philologically-inspired antiquarianism could
offer a more penetrating historical account than classical and late antique nar-
rative histories then inspired his shift back in time to examine the institutions
of classical Athens. From 1616 he published a series of accounts of Athenian
phenomena, including, but not limited to, tribes, dances, festivals, authors, the
Panathenaia, the Areopagus, and the Eleusinian Mysteries. He also went on to
write biographies of Peisistratus and Solon. These works are effectively com-
pilations of material, drawn from a wide range of sources including Byzantine
reference works; Meursius resists any temptation to subject what he found to
extended analysis. As a result, to a modern eye, they appear rather dull.49
Meursius’ contemporaries, however, were more impressed. Hugo Grotius,
for example, wanted him to collect together records of Athenian laws from the
orators and their commentators, for the benefit of students of law and history.
The great Scaliger, he wrote, had begun a work of this sort, but to the best of his
knowledge had not completed it.50 And Meursius also attracted the attention of
contemporary political theorists. In 1621, in the aftermath of the Synod of Dort,
he was removed from his position as Historiographer to the States-General
46 Anthony Grafton, Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation (Cambridge, ma, 2001), 127
and 322.
47 John Considine, Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2008), 251. Meursius
published an expanded and revised edition in 1614.
48 Ibidem, 255–256 (from whom the translation of Meursius’s preface to his 1610 Glossarium
is taken).
49 According to Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (History of Classical Scholarship, tr. Alan Harris
[London, 1982], 74), “His quotations are countless and the literature well-thumbed, but
there is scarcely an idea to be found anywhere.”
50 Johannes Meursius, Opera omnia, 12 vols. (Florence, 1741–1763), 9:260.
(a prelude to his dismissal at Leiden): he proposed to shut himself away to

work on Athenian history, but he also began to look for a new job. In 1622 he
sent a copy of his On the Fortune of Athens to Domenico Molino, the Vene-
tian senator, cultural patron, and broker of contacts between Venice and the
Netherlands (as Eco Haitsma Mulier showed, Molino also corresponded with
Heinsius, Grotius, and Huygens).51 Meursius then dedicated his monograph on
the Acropolis to Molino. Molino responded by urging Meursius to work on an
edition of Thucydides:
If you worked so much and so admirably on the inanimate rock of Athens

why would you show yourself less ready or generous in reanimating and
giving a new spirit to so worthy a citizen of that great mother of civil lib-
erty? […] Why should you not show that you are grateful to Thucydides,
an author to whom all of us who enjoy a free country owe so much? And
if the others have in such grand style adorned the teachers of tyranny
[i.e. Tacitus], why should a free man show himself to be stinting toward
the teacher of the most sweet and cherished liberty?52
Later, Molino wrote again that so noble an undertaking would represent the
fulfilment of his talents, and benefit literature, his own patria, Athens, and
finally all free states, and he arranged for the translation of his work on the
Areopagus into Italian.53 Meursius also corresponded with Paolo Sarpi in 1622.
Gaetano Cozzi, who found the letter to Sarpi, understandably pointed to
Molino’s language of liberty and free states, and argued for Meursius’ repub-
lican commitment. Other scholars have followed his lead. But it seems that
Molino wrote to the wrong man. There is no doubt that Meursius had the lin-
guistic and historical knowledge to produce an edition of Thucydides to rival
Lipsius’ Tacitus. In addition, he clearly saw the possible connections between
the Dutch republic and ancient Athens. His most famous work, his history
of Leiden University, was entitled Athenae Batavae. But his collections of in-
formation on Athenian institutions hardly evinced a strong republicanism,
and he was estranged from the political leadership of the Dutch Republic. At
the same time as he was sounding out the possibility of working in Venice,
51 Eco Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in the Seventeenth
Century (Assen, 1980), esp. 89–93.
52 Hoekstra, “Thucydides and the Bellicose Beginnings,” 32, translating from Gaetano Cozzi,
“Paolo Sarpi e Jan van Meurs,” Bollettino dell’Istituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato
Veneziano, 1 (1959): 4.
53 Meursius, Opera omnia 9:372.
100 Stenhouse
he was also exploring possibilities in the kingdoms of Norway and Denmark,

and it was to the latter that he went, to work as historiographer for King
Christian iv.54
Therefore Postel, Sigonio, and Meursius all wrote historical accounts of clas-
sical Athens with a strong awareness of the potential similarities between the
ancient state and Venice or the Dutch Republic. Their works were popular, and
could provide political theorists with plenty of information on republican in-
stitutions and practices. For various reasons, though, none pursued the links
between ancient and modern republics too far, or drew explicit conclusions for
the present. Other contemporaries, however, were more forceful.
Greek Histories, Freedom and Equality
One unexpected example is the account of the Spartan republic by Nicolaus

Cragius (Niels Krag, 1550–1602), published in 1593.55 Cragius’ account of the
Spartan republic seems to have been designed to complement Sigonio’s: his
title, De republica Lacedaemoniorum, echoes the earlier book’s, although his
treatment of the state is slightly fuller than Sigonio’s. Cragius was Royal His-
torian at the Danish court (Meursius may have been attracted to Christian’s
Lutheran court because of Cragius’ success there and interests in Greek his-
tory). He wrote his study of Sparta when Christian iv was still in his minor-
ity: Christian succeeded to the throne in 1588, at age 11, but had regents until
1596, among whose number was the chancellor of Denmark, Niels Kaas, to
whom Cragius dedicated the work. We can see it as a contribution to the shap-
ing of the young king. Cragius discusses the importance of using laws to make
subjects good, rather than to threaten them with punishments; in general, he
stresses the educational value of history.56 Like the historians in republican
54 For the context, see Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, Historiography at the Court of Christian iv
(1588–1648): Studies in the Latin histories of Denmark by Johannes Pontanus and Johannes
Meursius (Copenhagen, 2002).
55 Elizabeth Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford, 1991), mentions
this work only in a footnote (167 n.22).
56 E.g. in the dedication to Kaas, focusing on Lycurgus: Nicolaus Cragius, De republica Lace-
daemoniorum libri iiii ([Heidelberg], 1593), sig. ¶3v-¶4r. Humble, “The Renaissance
Reception,” 81–82, suggests that Calvinists would be particularly attracted by the Spartan
way of life because of its stress on obedience; it is interesting to see Cragius focusing on
different areas for the young king. For Krag at court, see Skovgaard-Petersen, Historiogra-
phy at the Court of Christian iv, 110–112.
settings, he addressed the emergence of civic institutions.57 He was interest-

ed in ideas about freedom, in this case Spartan notions of citizens’ freedom,
which he interpreted in Stoic terms. He claimed that Spartan citizens were the
freest of the Greeks, based on their constancy of mind, contempt of death,
and abstinence from disgraceful behavior. More concretely, he noted that they
could not lose their status by being sold or condemned into slavery, unlike in-
habitants of other states, and he argued that the Spartans fought on occasion
to make other Greeks free.58 But given the context in which he is writing, more
striking are his comments on the Spartan kings as two among several magis-
trates (these include the prodicus, or tutor to the king, a figure Cragius is eager
to point out was held in great regard).59 He praises the Spartan two-king sys-
tem, as a moderating influence, and particularly the kings’ acceptance of the
law. “Would that the kings of all states would imitate these men,” he argued,
“because then their states would be better run. But now we’ve got to the stage
of madness where men who are not stupid or politically naïve argue that royal
power lies in absolute and untrammeled freedom in all matters, and that the
kings control the laws, rather than the laws kings.”60 (One role of the prodicus
was to educate the kings in following the law.)61 His approval of Sparta was
not limited to royal moderation; he also admired, for example, the practice of
burying those condemned to death, rather than hanging them up publicly to
ridicule, which he says he wishes all Christian states would abolish. For Cra-
gius, therefore, in a royal court, part of the attraction and exemplary value of
57 See Ibidem, especially book 2, on magistrates, 46–95.

58 Ibidem, 39: “Id vero hic addendum, adeo stabilem fuisse Lacedaemoniis hanc suam lib-
ertatem, ut nec esset quomodo excidere hoc suo iure potuerint. Non enim invenio ullam
damnationem ad servitutem, nec ex Lacedaemoniis aliquos poenae servos factos legimus,
quamvis aliae poenae satis graves delictis eorum severissimo magistratuum iudicio inflig-
erentur.” Though cf. Paolo Paruta’s suggestion that Sparta’s constitution was admirable
because the people were given a small role: see Kostas Vlassopoulos, “Sparta and Rome in
Early Modern Thought: A Comparative Approach,” in Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics,
History and Culture, ed. Stephen Hodkinson and Ian Macgregor Morris (Swansea, 2012),
50. For Spartans giving others freedom, see Cragius, De republica Lacedaemoniorum, 231.
59 Cragius, De republica Lacedaemoniorum, 89.
60 Ibidem, 57: “utinam omnium gentium Reges sibi imitandum proponerent, tum vero fe-
licius cum Repub. ageretur. Sed iam eo ventum est dementiae, ut etiam docti & rerum
politicarum non imperiti disputent, Regiam potentiam in absoluta & liberrima rerum
omnium licentia positam esse, magisque ut Reges dominentur legibus, quam leges ipsis.”
61 Ibidem, 89: “Quod exemplis superioribus apparet, in quo hoc vel maxime est admiran-
dum, quod quum Prodicus omnia in potestate haberet, nullus fere tamen eo munere fun-
gens inventus, qui pupillo suo insidias struxerit, vel ius suum ei intervertere conatus sit.”
102 Stenhouse
Sparta lay in the people’s freedom and monarchical restraint: his presentation
was not republican per se, but could easily be interpreted in republican terms.
Aristotelian political thinkers also tried to contextualise what they had
learned about ancient political structures in classical narratives. In his Metho-
dos apodemica, Theodore Zwinger (1533–1588) attempted to understand his-
tory and politics through a scientific observation and analysis of the city on
Ramist lines.62 His examples were contemporary Basel, Paris, and Padua, and
ancient Athens. Lucia Felici argues that the book has a firmly didactic aim:
Zwinger had personal experience of the three modern cities, and claimed to
have learnt his sense of public duty from the Athenians Plato and Aristotle,
and from his book readers would learn to join “literary and scientific knowl-
edge […] with civic virtue and political and intellectual engagement.”63 In the
section on Athens, Zwinger presented plenty of useful historical information
drawn from ancient authors, and from Sigonio, and focused on Athens’ po-
litical structure. His chosen format prevented him from really demonstrating
change in the Athenian constitution over time, however, or from deliberately
indicating to his readers how to learn from the Athenian model.
The Politiae speciales, the study of Athens and Sparta by Clemens Colmerus
(Klemens Koelmer, 1587–1665) and Nicolaus Sienicius (Mikołaj Sienicki, 1608–
1645) built on Zwinger’s example, demonstrating how the states developed,
and highlighting exemplary aspects for their reader. They used the work of
Sigonio and Cragius, alongside earlier political theorists like Machiavelli and
Bodin, to present historical and institutional details to a different audience.
Colmerus, who examined Athens, and Sienicius, who wrote about Sparta, seem
to have been pupils of the Ramist Bartolomaeus Keckermann (c. 1572–1608)
at the gymnasium in Gdansk, in Royal Prussia, part of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth.64 They applied Keckermann’s methods of categorization to
the two states, dividing their material into geographical and historical infor-
mation; details of political structures and institutions; and wars, along with
other reasons for those structures to change. The book can be seen as a sort
of undergraduate textbook. It was printed in Gdansk in 1609, and presumably
62 Lucia Felici, “Theodor Zwinger’s Methodus Apodemica: An Observatory of the City as Po-
litical Space in the late sixteenth century,” Cromohs 14 (2009): 1–18 (http://www.fupress
.net/index.php/cromohs/article/view/15474/14388, consulted 7 September 2016).
63 Ibidem, 11.
64 On Keckermann at Gdansk, see Karin Friedrich, The Other Prussia. Poland, Prussia and
Liberty, 1569–1772 (Cambridge, 2000), esp. 77–78 and Howard Hotson, Commonplace
Learning: Ramism and its German Ramifications, Oxford-Warburg Studies (Oxford, 2007),
136–165.
used at the Gymnasium there, though it does not seem to have been noticed
much or reprinted elsewhere, and as a consequence is now rare in modern
libraries.65 Keckermann himself wrote the preface, stressing the importance of
education, and the exemplary value of studying Athens and Sparta. His view of
Athens is revealing of his instincts. He reassured his readers that Athens’ de-
mocracy was not so much democracy as aristocracy, for, he claimed, there are
two types of political equality, “one that rewards everyone equally, the other
which either rewards or punishes each by his merits.”66 The Athenians enjoyed
the latter once they had cast aside the lot and wisely chose from the citizen
body the best and those most suited to public office. So Athens presented
some examples to follow, and some to avoid. Sparta had its downsides—Ke-
ckermann disliked the fact that the state was oriented primarily for war—but
overall he saw it as a better exemplum to the freer contemporary states; the
kingdom of Poland in particular, he wrote, had not a few similarities with the
ancient state.
In their presentations of the political structures and histories of Athens and
Sparta, Keckermann’s followers made clear that they shared his point of view.
In his survey of Athens, Colmerus approved of Solon’s laws, which he liked be-
cause they encouraged, rather than obstructed the people; he advocated equal-
ity before the law for all citizens.67 He also admired the representative system
that he thought that Solon had created, and followed Sigonio in claiming that
Solon had resisted Pisistratus’ tyranny and advocated freedom for the people.
He found Solon’s representative system similar to the Venetian version, where
the senate and magistrates had considerable latitude, and the people were
rarely asked directly about war or the creation of laws. He then cited Giovanni
Botero warmly when arguing that in the fifth century “the power of the people
was led not by sense and reason, but by force and mindless haste.”68 In his
65 An online edition is now available from the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbib-
liothek, Jena: http://archive.thulb.uni-jena.de/hisbest/receive/HisBest_cbu_00025749
(consulted 7 September 2016).
66 Clemens Colmerus and Nicolaus Sienicius, Politiae speciales duae augustissimae, nempe
Atheniensis et Spartana (Gdansk, 1609), sig.):(2v: “Cum enim duo sint Politicae aequali-
tatis genera: unum quod omnes promiscue, qualescunque tandem sint, omnibus exae-
quat; alterum quod pro suo quemque merito aut honoribus praemiis ornat, aut poenis
mulctat.”
67 Ibidem, 34 and 156–157.
68 Ibidem, 35: “populi vis nunquam consilio & ratione, sed impetu semper & dementissima
temeritate duceretur.” See also 88, where Colmerus follows Keckermann’s division of de-
mocracy into an eminentior form, where divisions within the people persist, and a hu-
milior version in which all people have some share in power.
104 Stenhouse
section on reasons for the change in the Athenian state, he was unambiguous:
“When Pericles tried to win the favour of the people, he took away authority
from the Areopagus, and handed over to the people those things which had
been dealt with before in the Areopagus, and not long after, the state began
to be rocked by foreign and civil wars.”69 Athens was here a model to modern
republics to restrict popular power.
For Sparta, Sienicius leaned heavily on Cragius’ account, but the explicit
conclusions that he drew differed in their emphasis, drawing attention to
the nature of the citizen body more than the kings. He admired the aristo-
cratic senate of Sparta, which he compared with the Venetian example, and
which, he said, had more power than its Polish equivalent.70 He also admired
the equality among Spartan citizens: he praised Spartan attempts to limit the
private wealth of their leaders and people, for example, seeing the causes for
Athenian decay in the excessive wealth of particular individuals. Sparta’s even-
tual decline was due to the failure of the magistrates to uphold the law, rather
than the restriction of private enterprise. As he wrote, “nothing benefited the
state more than this equality, for when possessions are equal, the power of all
is equal; and if the power of all citizens is made equal, no oppression can be
feared, and each individual is aware of his own power so that he does not try
anything against his fellow citizens or the state.”71 This equality, combined with
the injunction to live publicly and not privately, promoted a strong sense of
patriotism.72 He was doubtful whether such a regime could now be imitated,
though, and noted that attempts to restrict wealth failed in Rome.73 Unsur-
prisingly, this commitment to civic equality sat alongside a strong distinction
between citizen and non-citizen; only certain types of people were fit to be the
former. He generally approved of the Spartan treatment of helots. “In no repub-
lic, either ancient or modern,” he argued, “can we see any regime of peasants
69 Ibidem, 209.
70 Ibidem, 303–304.
71 Ibidem, 409: “nil tam maxime profuit Reipub. huic, quam aequalitas ipsa. Nam aequatis
possessionibus, potentia omnium aequata est: aequata autem omnium civium potentia,
oppressio nulla timeri potuit, dum quilibet suae potentiae conscius, nil conari, vel moliri,
tum adversus concives, tum statum Reipub. praesumpserit. Atque sic quieta Repub. &
libertate securi perfruebantur.”
72 Ibidem, 413: “Privatim enim vivere Spartae civem, contra leges erat Lycurgi: Omnes pub-
lice convivebant: Ex quo convictu amor patriae insignis: ut & regionem suam tutam con-
servarent & libertatem tuerentur.”
73 Ibidem, 410.
which has not affected the state with some calamity or other.”74 He recalled
the sixteenth-century peasants’ revolt in Germany. “Some say that this conflict
was about the freedom of a Christian,” he argued, “but it was otherwise. If we
look more carefully and closely, we will see that it was the petulance of the
peasants; they were treated quite laxly across Germany, and were not entirely
without freedom.”75 He went on to point to the rural life as a den of vices, to
be controlled with a firm hand by the domini; he took the firmly Aristotelian
view that freedom for those of a servile nature harms rather than helps the
state, and recommended this for Poland.76 And like Aristotle, he disapproved
of Spartan gender equality among citizens, which he thought was against the
law of god and nature.77 In general, though, Sienicius’ plea for equality among
those with the privilege of citizenship must have struck a strong chord with
the urban offspring of the citizens of Gdansk and sons of nearby landhold-
ers, eager to maintain their political independence and privileges within the
Commonwealth.78
The most sustained treatment of themes of freedom and the emergence of
political institutions was Ubbo Emmius’ three-volume Vetus Graecia. Emmius
(1547–1625) was an older contemporary of Meursius, who became Rector and
Professor of History and Greek in the newly-formed university of Groningen in
1614. Whereas Meursius’ output can be seen as a development of his early phil-
ological genius, Emmius’ histories are inspired by his Calvinism and political
commitment to the young Dutch Republic. His most famous work, the Rerum
Frisicarum historia, completed by 1616, stressed a tradition in the Netherlands
of government by consent and reminded his readers of the Frisians’ ancient
liberties. Emmius drew a similar message from his study of Greek history. As
his son noted in his introduction to the work (Emmius had died in 1625, shortly
before the book’s publication), wherever they were, and whatever system of
government they used, the Greeks were a free people, and usefully comparable
74 Ibidem, 430–431: “In nulla Repub. tam antiqua, quam recentiori observatum est regimen
rusticorum, quod non aliqua calamitate aliquam affecerit Remp.”
75 Ibidem, 431: “Causam nonnulli, inquiunt, praebuisse, concionem de libertate Christiana.
Est aliquid. Sed si profundius, altiusque rem scrutemur, petulantia rusticorum in causa
fuit. Indulgentius enim passim in Germania tractantur & non omnis, omnino libertatis
expertes sunt.”
76 Compare the contribution of Tomasz Gromelski in this volume.
77 Colmerus and Sienicius, Politiae speciales, 407.
78 Friedrich, The Other Prussia, 57–69.
106 Stenhouse
to modern Belgi.79 As Vittorio Conti has shown, Emmius senior made this case
particularly strongly in the third volume, devoted to the structures of Greek
states (while the first two parts were little read, the third was published in El-
zevier’s series devoted to republics, in 1632, and again in 1644).80 His account
of the development of Athens’ institutions is not very different in content from
Sigonio’s, though he basically ignores the Peistratid tyrants, implying that their
rule is irrelevant to Athens’ long-term political development. But unlike Sigo-
nio he stressed from the start the people’s desire for freedom, which even King
Theseus inspired.81 This innate desire for freedom propelled them to reject the
kings and create the nine archons, and then the balanced constitution that left
most power with a council and effectively involved the use of lots.82 Freedom
was maintained so long as the senate balanced the power of the people; when
Pericles changed that balance, “in order to increase freedom and power, and
restrain the position of the optimates,” he laid the foundations for the untram-
meled power of the people, whom Emmius likens to an unbroken horse.83 (He
made the same point in an appendix subtitled “the faults of Athenian democ-
racy, as noted by Xenophon”).84 But even after the Roman conquest, Athenians
adored freedom: they put up statues of Brutus and Cassius next to those of
Harmodius and Aristogeiton.85 Emmius also saw the history of Sparta in terms
of the development of libertas, but identified Sparta’s decline with its aban-
donment of the laws of Lycurgus and consequent greed and inequality.86 He
devoted less space to what he could find about other Greek states, but in gen-
eral he showed that they too developed political systems to preserve freedom;
79 Ubbo Emmius, Vetus Graeca illustrata, 3 vols. (Leiden, 1626), 1:sig.**v: “Quibus hoc quoque
accredit, quod gens Graeca, licet diversi in ea populi diversis reip. administrandae formis
atque institutis uterentur, vere tamen libera, suique plane juris fuerit… Nam cum eas olim
fuisse res veteris Graeciae non nesciret, ut iis si non simillimas, non multum t amen dis-
similes esse hodie res, instituta ac fortunam huiusce Belgii nostri; haud parum e repub-
lica, nostra praesertim, futurum existimavit, si in ea plurimi, & ante omnes, qui ad clavum
reip. sedent, antiquitates Graecorum probe cognitas haberent.”
80 Vittorio Conti, Consociatio civitatum: le repubbliche nei testi elzeviriani, 1625–1649
(Florence, 1997), 86–104 and Vittorio Conti, “Systema libertatis: le Graecorum Respublicae
di Ubbo Emmius,” in Dalle repubbliche elzeviriane alle ideologie del ‘900, ed. Vittor Com-
parato and Eluggero Pii (Florence, 1997), 1–16.
81 Emmius, Vetus Graeca illustrata, 3:5: “Theseus […] libertatem omnibus bonis caeteris
anteponendam esse pollicitus.”
82 Ibidem, 9–10.
83 Ibidem, 23.
84 Ibidem, 364.
85 Ibidem, 429.
86 Ibidem, 72 and 438–439.
he was particularly taken with the Achaean League, whose alliance allowed
the maintenance of liberty.87 Large parts of Emmius’ work are little more than
summaries of ancient sources, but the anti-monarchical lessons he drew from
them were clear.
Conclusion
Therefore we can identify a relatively vigorous tradition of historical scholar-

ship on ancient Greece in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
From a historiographical point of view, it is striking that these early modern
historians mostly underlined the similarities between Athens and Sparta as
republics, rather than their differences;88 unsurprisingly democracy in Athens
was seen as an unfortunate consequence of political struggle rather than a sig-
nal achievement, and scholars preferred to highlight Solon and Lycurgus as
wise law-givers, the importance of citizens’ equality, and the roles of councils
in determining policy.89 In addition, it is clear that these scholars, like Postel,
often saw Greek developments in Roman terms: Sigonio’s Athens is populated
by praetors and quaestors, and Emmius’ description of the well-born citizens
who opposed Pericles as optimates, for example, is characteristic of a viewpoint
which implicitly compared Athenian political developments with the struggle
of the orders between patricians and plebeians in archaic Rome.90 On these
lines, it is notable that scholars of this era do not use the term polis to describe
the Greek polities, but the Latin status or res publica.91 In terms of the develop-
ment of political thought, these scholars pointed to the political implications
of what they found. They did not produce the sweeping, critical narratives of
87 E.g. Ibidem, 198 and 200 (Thebes), 213 (Corinth). For the Achaean League, 275–276; see
Conti, “Systema libertatis,” 11, and the next chapter in this volume by Jaap Nieuwstraten.
88 Conti, “Systema libertatis,” 12–13.
89 Carmine Ampolo, “Democrazia greca e pensiero storico moderno,” in Alle radici della
democrazia: Dalla polis al dibattito costituzionale contemporaneo, ed. Antonio D’Atena
and Eugenio Lanzillotta (Rome, 1998), 69–81, 72–74.
90 Sigonio similarly sees sixth- and fifth-century Athenian history in these terms, in which
Solon takes the side of the rich, and Cleisthenes and Aristides the plebeian poor. See also
Colmerus and Sienicius, Politiae speciales, 225 and 228.
91 I owe this point to Christine Zabel. In Polisbild und Demokratieverständnis in Jacob Burck-
hardts Griechischer Kulturgeschichte (Basel, 2001), Stefan Bauer has shown that one of
the great achievements of Jacob Burckhardt’s study of Greek civilization was to make the
polis central in his political and historical analysis.
108 Stenhouse
their Enlightenment successors, but they laid much of the groundwork for
the later scholars’ achievements. And while it would be too sweeping simply
to identify these historical works republican, they did highlight elements of
ancient constitutions and historical developments that republican political
theorists could take up.
chapter 5
A Classical Confederacy: The Example of the

Achaean League in the Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Republic
Jaap Nieuwstraten*
Over the course of the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic developed into
one the most powerful and fearsome states in Europe. In the famous words of
Sir William Temple, “the State of the United Provinces” had in recent times
“arrived […] to such a height […] as made them the Envy of some, the Fear of
others, and the Wonder of all their Neighbours.”1 But did these provinces truly
form a “state,” a singular political entity that wielded supreme sovereign power
within its territory? Temple, who had spent several years in the Dutch Repub-
lic as an ambassador of the British King Charles ii, denied this to be the case.
Instead, he defined the Dutch state as a “Confederacy” or union of i ndependent
states, each of them subdivided into even smaller, s emi-independent states,
the towns.2
Temple was not alone in this view. Several of his Dutch contemporaries
agreed with him. The Leiden cloth merchant Pieter de la Court (1618–1685),
for one, openly confessed that Holland consisted of “many different republics,”
which, thanks to their “variety of rulers, subjects, lands and location,” had a
“variety of interests.” Thus, Holland was “not one country” and hence could not
have “one interest.”3 For the Dutch Republic as a whole, De la Court seemed
to have nothing but contempt. In his work Aanwysing (1669), he actually laid
out a plan for a defensive network of moats and fortifications that would effec-
tively separate Holland and great parts of the province of Utrecht—“two free
republics”—from the other five constituent parts of the United Provinces.4
While De la Court’s position was an extreme one, his work and that of Temple
* I want to thank Maggie Snow, the editors and all the participants of the conference in Rome
for their help and useful comments.
1 Sir William Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (Cambridge,
2011), xi.
2 Ibidem, 56.
3 V.D.H. [Pieter de la Court], Interest van Holland, ofte gronden van Hollands-Welvaren (Amster-
dam, 1662), i: 1–2.
4 V.D.H. [Pieter de la Court], Aanwysing der heilsame politike Gronden en Maximen van de
Republike van Holland en West-Vriesland (Leiden and Rotterdam, 1669), ii.14: 360–367.

110 Nieuwstraten
nicely demonstrate that many foreign observers and native thinkers did not
view the Dutch Republic as a unified state, ruled by a single sovereign author-
ity. Indeed, it was not a unified state and that simple observation had some
serious consequences for the applicability of ancient political models to the
Dutch situation. Take for example Johan de la Court (1622–1660), Pieter’s
younger brother, who based his democratic ideals on the model provided by
ancient Athens. However, as Johan realised, this model could only be applied
to a single Dutch town, e.g. Leiden, but never to a whole province—let alone
the entire Dutch Republic –, for a provincial government would always consist
of delegates, hence making it an aristocracy.5
Here we encounter a core problem with regard to the Dutch use of ancient
political models in the early modern period. In early modern Europe, the best-
known models from antiquity—Rome, Sparta, Athens—were all city-states.
Some of them, like Athens or Carthage, but especially Rome, had also acquired
large empires. Within these empires, ultimate power rested with the Athenians
or the Romans, who exercised it from their respective cities over patch works
of conquered lands, other subdued city-states and semi-independent client
kings, often through sheer military force.6 The political models these ancient,
centrally governed city-states-turned-into-empires had to offer seventeenth-
century Dutch observers contrasted sharply with the decentralised p olitical
structure of the Dutch Republic, in which political authority was divided
among many different players, among many different levels. As a consequence,
if the Dutch wanted to use ancient political models to clarify, defend or im-
prove their own political constellation, ancient Rome, Athens or Sparta had
only limited value.
Of course, this historical and political discrepancy did not stop Dutch in-
tellectuals from turning to antiquity and pillaging its rich treasure chest at
random. After all, as good humanists, they were trained in defending both
sides of an argument and to employ a wide range of rhetorical tactics, in-
cluding a rather free use of all kinds of historical exempla.7 Nonetheless,
5 V.H. [Johan and Pieter de la Court], Consideratien en Exempelen van Staat, omtrent de Funda-
menten van allerley Regeringe (Amsterdam, 1660), ix.5: 278–279.
6 It is true that Rome had also made use of alliances, but these alliances had either a forced
nature (with the Italian allies) or a hesitant one (with the Greek allies), and ended with the
submission of the allies to Roman rule or their incorporation into Roman citizenship. For
an early-modern confederative view of Rome, see Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans.
Anne M. Cohler et al. (Cambridge, 2011), i.9.1: 131. I want to thank Thomas Maissen for point-
ing this passage out to me.
7 For this typical aspect of humanism, see James Hankins, “Humanism and the Origins of
Modern Political Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. Jill
Kraye (Cambridge, 2011), 118–141.
A Classical Confederacy 111
it still r emained the case that in search for an appropriate model that more

closely resembled the Dutch Republic as a whole, Dutch political analysts
had to look further than the Capitoline hill or the Acropolis. They found what
they were looking for on the plains and slopes of the Peloponnese, in the form
of the Achaean League, a confederacy of Greek city-states, which had blos-
somed in the third and second century bc.8 This chapter discusses the use of
the Achaean example in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, f ocusing in
particular on two Dutch scholars, Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612–1653), pro-
fessor of e loquence at Leiden University, and Martin Schoock (1614–1669),
professor of physics and logic at the University of Groningen. Their use
of the Achaean model was greatly influenced by local circumstances and
authorial intent.9
The Achaean League in the Early Seventeenth Century
As a point of reference, the Achaean League made its first appearance in

seventeenth-century Dutch political thought in the De antiquitate reipublicae
8 At first a unified kingdom, the twelve cities which formed the core of the Achaean League
developed into a republican federal state in the course of the sixth and fifth century bc. After
a short, twenty year period of dissolution, the League was refounded in 281/80 bc. Some
25 years later, the Achaeans made some important changes, transferring overall command,
which had been in the hands of one secretary and two generals, to one general only (the
office of secretary remained in place, but its importance seems to have declined greatly af-
ter these administrative changes). The League grew in prominence, siding with the Romans
against Macedon in the Third Macedonian War (171–167 bc), but not wholeheartedly, placing
Achaean interests above loyalty to Rome. The secession of Sparta from the Achaean League
inaugurated its demise. Determined to bring Sparta back to the fold, the Achaeans scorned
Roman warnings not to take up arms. The Romans intervened and decisively defeated the
Achaean forces, after which they sacked Corinth (146 bc). The League would never regain its
former greatness, ending up as a local organizational unit of the Roman Empire. See J.A.O.
Larsen, Greek Federal States: Their Institutions and History (Oxford, 1968), esp. 80–89, 215–240,
447–504, and Erich S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, 2 vols. (Berkeley/
Los Angeles/London, 1984), 2:507–511, 514–527.
9 During the seventeenth century, several foreign observers, including the Italian satirist
Traiano Boccalini, the English scholar Henry Stubbe and the German philosopher Samuel
Pufendorf also drew comparisons between the Dutch Republic and the Achaean League. See
John Robertson, “Empire and Union: Two Concepts of the Early Modern European Political
Order,” in A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707, ed. John Robert-
son (Cambridge, 1995), 25–29 and footnotes there. These foreign observations, however, are
beyond the scope of this chapter.
112 Nieuwstraten
Batavicae (1610) of Hugo Grotius. In this work, Grotius drew a specific parallel
between the Dutch Republic and the Achaean League:
In so far as our state is administered by representatives of towns, it most

resembles the states of Achaia, Aetolia and Lycia, who governed states
in the same way consisting of several towns, by means of an assembly
and representatives of the towns. Of these states, Achaia is put before
us by Polybius, Strabo and Plutarch as an excellent example of a state
harmoniously cooperating. On the other hand, we share the situation
that a princely authority, circumscribed by laws, is added to a govern-
ment of the best, with the ancient Hebrew state in the period of the Judg-
es, with Sparta, with Achaia again, with Venice, the German empire, the
northern states mentioned above and many others.10
Grotius’s example was soon followed by Paul Buis (c.1570–1617), professor of

law at the University of Franeker. In the early 1610s, Buis made one of his stu-
dents defend the thesis that “it shall be permitted to, in one way or another,
compare our Swiss with the ancient Aetolians and the Dutch with the ancient
Achaeans.” The defense of this thesis rested on two grounds: first, on “the simi-
larity of their forms of government, partly popular, partly noble,” and second,
on “the fitting similarity of their universal alliances, which all these states or
commonwealths maintain or have maintained, among themselves.”11 Both
Grotius and Buis, then, lay particular emphasis on the constitutional parallels
between the Dutch Republic and the Achaean League, with Grotius showing
most interest in features such as representation and princely authority, while
Buis pointed out the federative nature of the two political entities.12
10 Hugo Grotius, The Antiquity of the Batavian Republic, trans. Jan Waszink et al. (Assen,
2000), vii.18: 112–113. See also Ibidem i.3: 52–53.
11 Paul Buis, Illustrium disquisitionum politicarum liber (Franeker, 1613), xvii.31, xi: “Helve-
tios nostros Aetolis antiquis, Belgas Achaeis, utcunque comparare licebit. Idque non tan-
tum ob statuum, partim popularium, partim optimatum similitudinem, verùm etiam ob
foederum universalium, quae civitates seu respublicae omnes eae inter se vel fovent, vel
foverunt similitudinem convenientem.”
12 This emphasis on the constitutional parallels between the Dutch Republic and the
Achaean League returns in the work of Ulrik Huber (1636–1694), professor of law at the
University of Franeker, who qualified both states as a foedus aequale—a union between
political entities which held on to their sovereignty (summa potestas), i.e. a confederacy.
Ulrik Huber, De iure civitatis libri tres (Franeker, 1694), iii, Sect. iii, 3.8–15, 66–67. See also
Robertson, “Empire and Union,” 28–29.
But the most interesting use of the Achaean example in the Dutch R epublic
prior to Boxhorn and Schoock was made by Petrus Cunaeus (1586–1638),
professor of politics, history, and law at Leiden University. Contrary to Grotius
and Buis, Cunaeus applied the model of the Achaean League not to the Dutch
Republic, but to the province of Holland. Nor did Cunaeus primarily focus on
apparent constitutional similarities. Rather, he emphasised the political equal-
ity and internal unity which Holland had in common with the ancient Greek
league:
At one time, everyone feared the Achaeans because the states of the
Peloponnese had entered their League, which was based on inviolable
laws, the principles of justice, and equality of rights among the mem-
ber states. And their state was really quite similar to your own, illustrious
Members of States [i.e. the States of Holland-jn], in that it was by far the
best: it was rock solid and undisturbed because it trusted in its unity and
was supported by its own strength.
But Cunaeus did not stop there. Interestingly, he also added a short analysis of
the downfall of the Achaean League:
How many times did the Roman People (who were the masters of the
world) try to break up that unity with skill and deceit, because they knew
that Greece would be impregnable as long as the Achaean League was
left standing? This was the task they gave to the proconsul Gallus; and
when it did not succeed, they used a cunning plan. They had the Spartans
join the League, but on unequal terms, so that they would always be a
source of conflict and argument with the other members. Certainly this
was the very thing that brought about the destruction of the Achaeans
many years later.13
Cunaeus wrote these words in the preface to his De republica Hebraeorum, which
was published in 1617, amid the so-called Truce controversies. These controver-
sies had split the Dutch political nation into two factions: the Arminians or
Remonstrants, on the one hand, and the Gomarists or Counter-Remonstrants,
and the other. Fueled by different views on predestination, church-state re-
lationship and foreign policy, the two parties brought the Dutch Republic to
the brink of civil war. Finally, in 1618, Prince Maurits of Orange, the stadholder
13 Petrus Cunaeus, The Hebrew Republic, trans. Peter Wyetzner (Jerusalem and New York,
2006), 5.
114 Nieuwstraten
of Holland who had sided with the Counter-Remonstrants, intervened with

force and defeated the Remonstrant faction. Johan van Oldenbarnevelt,
advocate of the States of Holland and a firm supporter of the Remonstrant
cause, was arrested and executed. Grotius, who had also backed the Remon-
strants, was sentenced to a lifelong imprisonment at Castle Loevenstein, but
in 1621 he managed to escape and fled to Paris.14
Of course, back in 1617, Cunaeus did not know how matters would turn out.
But his specific use of the Achaean example can be interpreted as a warning
from Cunaeus to his fellow countrymen that internal discord could lead to
their demise, just as it had done in the case of the ancient Achaeans. As we
shall see, uttering a stern warning was certainly one of the objectives Schoock
had in mind when he reached for the model of the Achaean League. But first
we shall turn to Boxhorn.
Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, the Dutch Revolt and

the Peace of Münster
Born in 1612 in Bergen op Zoom, at the southern frontier of the Dutch Repub-
lic, Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn moved to Leiden to study philology, philosophy
and theology at the town’s renowned university. Something of a boy genius,
he acquired the patronage of eminent scholars like Daniel Heinsius, professor
of history at Leiden, and Petrus Scriverius, a famous Dutch antiquarian, and
he also studied with the polyhistor Gerard Vossius and the neo-Aristotelian
philosopher Franco Burgersdijk.15 After his studies, Boxhorn decided to stay
at Leiden and to pursue an academic career at his alma mater. An extraordi-
nary professorship of eloquence in 1633 was followed by an ordinary professor-
ship seven years later.16 In 1648, Heinsius retired from his teaching duties and
14 For further details, see Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall,
1477–1806 (Oxford, 1998), 421–477.
15 Jacobus Baselius, “Historia vitae & obitus viri celeberrimi Marci Zuerii Boxhornii …,” in
Marci Zuerii Boxhornii Epistolae et poemata, ed. Jacobus Baselius (Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1679),
i-v. Lambertus Barlaeus, “Oratio funebris in excessum clarissimi viri, Marci Zuerii Boxhor-
nii …,” in Memoriae philosophorum, oratorum, poetarum, historicorum, et philologorum
nostri seculi clarissimorum renovatae, decas sexta, ed. Henning Witte (Frankfurt am Main,
1679), 152. Sandra Langereis, Geschiedenis als ambacht: oudheidkunde in de Gouden Eeuw:
Arnoldus Buchelius en Petrus Scriverius (Hilversum, 2001), 143, 185–187.
16 P.C. Molhuysen, Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der Leidsche Universiteit, 7 vols. (The Hague,
1916), 2:183–184, 247.
Boxhorn stepped in to take over from his former master.17 He died in 1653, only
41 years of age, and in his brief career he had shown his versatility as a scholar.
Boxhorn published editions of classical authors, delved in linguistic investiga-
tions, and studied Dutch history,18 while he also presided over many disputa-
tions, which often had a historical and political character.19
One of these disputations concerned the Achaean League. It was held on 26
June 1647 by Rutgersius à Breda, a law student from Kampen.20 In his dedica-
tion to the regenten of his native town, Rutgersius drew an explicit comparison
between the Achaean League and the Dutch Republic, claiming that “the es-
sence or soul of that ancient Achaean commonwealth was once nothing else
than that essence or soul of the Dutch state.”21 Unfortunately, Rutgersius did
not further elaborate what this “essence” or “soul” precisely entailed, but the
very fact that he compared the Dutch Republic to the Achaean League is in it-
self informative: as Rutgersius made clear, politics provides human society with
matters it cannot do without by means of precepts or examples.22 Thus, in a
typical humanist fashion, Rutgersius—or should we say Boxhorn—presented
17 For Boxhorn, see Ibidem, 3:20. For Heinsius, see P.R. Sellin, Daniel Heinsius and Stuart
England (London, 1968), 64–65.
18 For a short discussion of Boxhorn’s life and works, see Robert von Friedeburg, “Boxhorn,
Marcus Zuerius (1612–53),” in The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch
Philosophers, ed. Wiep van Bunge et al., 2 vols. (Bristol, 2003), 1:146–151.
19 Some of these disputations were collected and printed together. See Marcus Zuerius
Boxhorn, Emblemata politica: accedunt dissertationes politicae de Romanorum Imperio et
quaedamaliae (Amsterdam, 1651), and Idem, Varii Tractatus Politici (Amsterdam, 1663).
20 Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, Disputatio politica, De Veteri Achaeorum Republica, & diversa
ejus mutatione ac forma. Qvam, Favente Deo Opt. Max. Praeside Clarissimo, Amplissimoque
Viro, Marco Zuerio Boxhornio, Eloquentia in Academ. Lugdunensi. Batav. Professore Ordi-
nario, exercitii gratia Discutiendam proponit Rvtgersivs à Breda, Camp. Transis. Ad diem
26. Iunii, loco horisque solitis (Leiden, 1647). It was republished with other Boxhorniana
in Boxhorn, Varii Tractatus Politici, 569–577. For Rutgersius, see Album studiosorum
Academiae Lugduno Batavae mdlxxv–mdccclxxv (The Hague, 1875), 362.
21 Boxhorn, Disputatio politica, De Veteri Achaeorum Republica, A2i-ii: “De veteri Achaeorum
Republica, ejusque varia mutatione ac forma omnis nostra haec disputatio instituitur.
Neque alia, ut probarem adolescentem me vobis, institui debebat. Neque enim veteris
illius Achaeorum Reipub. vis alia aut anima olim fuit, quam ea Foederatorum Belgarum
Imperii, cujus vos quoque egregia pars estis […] Id autem maxime mihi in votis est, ut,
cum illae Achaeorum & Belgarum Foederatorum Respublicae in plerisque conveniant, in
hoc solo dissimiles inveniantur, quod cum illa brevi exstincta sit, haec aeternum duret.”
22 Ibidem, A2i: “Vt summa quaedam hominum in hac vita felicitas est, à nullis, quae nessaria
sunt, destitui, ita non alibi id quam in societate hominum facile consequaris. Hanc autem
civilis, quam Politicam vocant, disciplina, optimis sive praeceptis, sive exemplis absolvit.”
116 Nieuwstraten
in this disputation the Achaean League as an historical example from which

his Dutch contemporaries could learn a thing or two.23 This insight, combined
with the fact that the disputation was held some six months before the Dutch
officially signed the Peace of Münster, provide us with enough information to
allow for a further examination of what Boxhorn tried to tell his audience in
this particular piece of work.
Following common practice, Boxhorn’s disputation on the Achaean League
is built up of a number of theses—in this particular case 18. Together these 18
theses tell the story of the Achaean League from the time of its first legend-
ary king Tisamenus until the fall of the League in the second century bc.24
Completely in line with humanist pedagogical principles, this story is stuffed
with political maxims, covered in a sauce of quotes taken from ancient au-
thors. Within this dish, at least five themes can be discerned. The first is the
overthrow by the Achaeans of their kings, followed by the transformation of
the Achaean commonwealth from a monarchy into a democracy. This theme
allowed Boxhorn to justify the principle of resistance against princes-turned-
into-tyrants. Every prince who transgresses either divine law, the laws of nature
or the laws of nations can legitimately “be deprived of his power.”25 Coming
from the mouth of a refugee from the Southern Netherlands—Boxhorn had
been forced to leave Breda after the Spanish had captured the town in 1625—
such a stand should not surprise us.
23 The content of student disputations published under the name of the professor who pre-
sided over them can be attributed to the respective professor. Willem Otterspeer, Groeps-
portret met dame, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, 2000–2015), 1:236.
24 According to Polybius, the first King of the Achaean League was Tisamenus, the son of
Orestes, who, in turn, was the son of Agamemnon. Polybius, The Histories, ii.41.
25 Boxhorn, Disputatio politica, De Veteri Achaeorum Republica iii, A3i–A3ii: “Duravit
institutum ab iis regnum, teste Polybio, continua stirpis Tysameni, primi hujus Reip. prin-
cipis, serie propagatum, ad Gygem usque. Cujus postea filios aversati, cum insolentius se
gererent, & legitimum regnum in herilem dominatum convertissent, priorem Reipublicae
formam in popularem statum convertere. Et recte. Cum enim imperantium scelera tanta
sunt, ut, nisi in tempore obviam eatur, in exitium totius Reipub. haud dubie sint exitu-
ra, licere populo, vel proceribus populum referentibus, eos imperio exuere judicamus.
Utut enim Princeps absolutissimam in Republica obtineat potestatem, tamen se natu-
ralibus, Gentium ac Divinis legibus, obnoxium fateri debet: quas si contemnat, nil video
obstare, quo minus imperio privetur.” Boxhorn follows here in the footsteps of Grotius.
Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, in, 2005), 3.3.16, 300: “I
do not speak here of the Observations of the natural, and divine Law, or even of the Law
of Nations, to which all Kings stand obliged, tho’ they have promised nothing.” See also
Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae (Leiden, 1668), i.4: 38, ii.4.49–54: 305–306.
The second theme concerns the Sallustian thesis of luxury as a source of

discord, and hence of decline.26 Boxhorn interpreted the fate of the Achae-
an League through his reading of Sallust and other Roman authors. After the
death of Alexander the Great, the Achaean League had dissolved into oppos-
ing factions thanks to the cunning of the Macedonians kings.27 However, ac-
cording to Boxhorn, the Achaeans themselves were also to blame, because
they had “paved the way for luxury,” from which “soon arises want, and hence
ravenous money-lending, interest greedy for its appointed time, and credit shaken
and war advantageous to many.”28 Should we read in these lines—taken from
the Roman poet Lucan—a hidden critique of the Dutch Republic’s wealth, an
“embarrassment of riches”?29 Or should we perhaps see them as an analysis of
the Truce controversies, which many Dutchmen, including Boxhorn, believed
to have been the work of the trickery of the King of Spain?30
26 Boxhorn, Disputatio politica, De Veteri Achaeorum Republica v–vi, A3ii. The Roman histo-
rian Sallust believed that the fall of the Roman Republic was due to the moral decline that
occurred after the destruction of Carthage in 146 bc, when Rome, left without any serious
enemy, was overcome by leisure and the new won riches from the East. See Sallust, Cati-
line’s War, vi–xiii, and The Jugurthine War, xxxxi–xxxxii.
27 Ibidem v, A3ii: “Post mortem enim Alexandri Magni, astu Regum Macedoniae, concordia
inter eos fracta, urbium societas soluta, & in contraria studia scissa est; atque ita civilibus
factionibus agitati, vicinorum imperio subjecti sunt. Domesticae enim illae dissensiones
omnia oportuna insidiantibus faciunt & aperta.”
28 Ibidem vi, A3ii: “Quod autem in hac Republ. dissensiones civiles locum facile invenerint,
id mirum nobis minime videri debet. Cum enim Achaei se omnia jam evasisse pericula
arbitrarentur, & à consueto imperii conservandi studio desisterent, luxui viam apertuere.
Et sane plerumque ita fit, ut nimia felicitas civilium turbarum causa sit. Et luxu enim mox
est egestas, & hinc
Vsura vorax, avidumque in tempore foenus,
Et concussa fides, & multis utile bellum.”
The last lines are from Lucan, De bello civile sive Pharsalia, i.181–182. English translation
taken from Lucan, Civil War, trans. Susan H. Braund (Oxford, 1999), 7. The phrase “nimia
felicitas” comes from Florus, Epitome of Roman History, ii.13. Boxhorn had already before
identified luxury as a cause of demise. Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, “Oratio de Eversionibus
Rerumpub. et Earum caussis. Habita cum Troades Senecae interpretaretur,” in Poetae sa-
tyrici minores, De Corrupto Reipublicae statv, ed. Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (Leiden, 1633),
9. “Saepe luxuriae, et amori magna imperia succubuere.”
29 For this interpretation of Dutch anxiety about wealth, see Simon Schama, The Embarrass-
ment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London, 2004).
30 See Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, Oratie van de vrede tusschen de Hooghmachtighe Philippe
de iv, Coninck van Hispanien, ende de Staeten der Vrye Vereenichde Nederlanden, besloten
in den jaere 1648 (Leiden, 1648), 12, and Idem, Institutiones politicae, i.4: 35–36, and i.13:
214–215.
118 Nieuwstraten
Unsurprisingly, following this analysis of the relationship between luxury,

discord and decline, a third theme addressed by Boxhorn is the need for con-
cord. In this context he quoted, with many superlatives, the adage of Sallust
that “in harmony, small things grow; in disharmony, the greatest are dissipat-
ed,” which was also the official motto of the Dutch Republic. Boxhorn used
the adage in reference to the Achaean League, which from a situation of crisis
and discord had reached new heights after twelve of its members had “entered
into a certain new alliance.”31 In Boxhorn’s view, this proved that concord is so
important that it “must be preserved” by all means possible, including “crimes
against private citizens, their property and their activities.” The common good,
the purpose behind alliances or confederacies, triumphs over all other consid-
erations.32 Against the background of the peace negotiations taking place in
Münster, these statements can be interpreted as a call to all the Dutch parties
involved in the peace process to lay aside their internal differences and act
together in the interest of the Dutch Republic.33
31 De Veteri Achaeorum Republica vii, A4i: “Dein vero, cum animadverterent, hac ratione
in occasum ire Rempubl. & ad meliorem tandem mentem redirent, privatis postpositis
inimicitiis, quaedam ex duodecim illis Civitatibus novam quandam societatem iniere;
in quam non tantum Achaicae regionis urbes, sed & aliae Graeciae ditiones, convenere:
adeo ut ex rebus mediocribus ad insignem & formidatam aliis potentiam res Achaica sic
brevi eluctata sit. Ut enim per discordiam maximae etiam res decrescunt, ita per concor-
diam minimae quoque maxima faciunt incrementa.” Cf. Sallust, Ivgvrtha, x.6: “Nam con-
cordia paruae res crescunt, discordia maxumae dilabuntur.” English translation quoted
from Sallust, Catiline’s War, The Jugurthine War, Histories, trans. A.J. Woodman (London,
2007), 57.
32 Boxhorn, Disputatio politica vii, A4i:: “Atque rectissime Livius, per aequa, inquit, ac iniqua
retinenda est concordia […] Damna enim in singulos, ut loquitur Tacitus, utilitate publica
hic pensantur. […] Finis quoque ipse, qui homines ad ineundas has societates impellit, non
nisi bonum publicum & fuit & jam est. Quod bonum tanti est, tantumque videri debet, ut
ejus gratia, si quidem aliter fieri non possit, singuli quidem privatarum rerum jacturam
facere haud iniquum, neque iniquos Magistratus, si facere jubeantur, debeant existimare.”
References to Livy, The History of Rome, ii.32.7, and Tacitus, The Annals, xiv.44.3.
33 While a majority in the States of Holland and the States General were in favour of a peace
with Spain, there was also opposition. The province of Zeeland, for example, vigorously
opposed a peace settlement, because it feared that its trade position would severely de-
teriorate if the Dutch blockade of the Flemish coast would be lifted, as had happened
during the Twelve Years’ Truce. Simon Groenveld, “Unie, religie en militie: binnenlandse
verhoudingen in de Nederlandse Republiek voor en na de Munsterse Vrede,” in 1648: de
Vrede van Munster, ed. Hugo de Schepper et al. (Hilversum, 1997), 67–87, 71–72, and Mau-
rits Ebben, “Twee wegen naar Munster: de besluitvorming over de Vrede van Munster in
de Republiek en Spanje,” in Harmonie in Holland: het poldermodel van 1500 tot nu, ed. Den-
nis Bos, Maurits Ebben and Henk te Velde (Amsterdam, 2007), 61–69.
This brings us to the fourth theme, namely the precise political nature of the
Achaean League and—ipso facto—of the Dutch Republic. As Boxhorn made
clear, the Achaean League should not be considered as “a mixture of different
commonwealths,” but as “one commonwealth only.” Here, Boxhorn followed
in the footsteps of Jean Bodin, who in Les six livres de la république (1576), de-
scribed the Achaean League as “one aristocratic commonwealth.” However,
unlike Bodin, Boxhorn believed that within the Achaean League, sovereignty
was divided. Whereas the League possessed the highest sovereignty “to decide
and act in those matters, which fall under the laws of the common alliance,” sov-
ereignty over issues that were not covered by these laws remained in the hands
of the League’s members.34 This picture of the Achaean League shows some
compelling resemblances to the one Boxhorn draws of the Dutch R epublic in
the Commentariolus de statu confoederatarum provinciarum Belgii (1649), Box-
horn’s analysis of the nature, structure and workings of the Dutch Republic.35
For example, the Commentariolus states that the States General has the su-
preme power to command (supremum imperium) in all matters that tend to
the Union of Utrecht (1579), the founding document of the Dutch Republic. But
all matters that the Union does not stipulate remain under “the supreme right
of the States of each united province.”36 Boxhorn, then, through the e xample
34 Boxhorn, Disputatio politica, De Veteri Achaeorum Republica xiii, A4iv: “In amplissimo
hujus Reipub. concilio coibant omnium foederatarum Civitatum legati, qui universam
Achaeorum Remp. repraesentabant: ita tamen, ut singulae Civitates leges & jura sibi
propria servarent. Neque idcirco dicendum est, in hac Repub. fuisse mixturam diver-
sarum Rerumpublicarum. Foedus enim ejusmodi coëuntium Rerumpub. unam tantum
constituit Rempublicam, cui suprema majestas est in iis decernendis agendisque, quae
communis foederis legibus sunt comprehensa: sua interim majestate unicuique Reip.
domi manente in iis omnibus, de quibus communis foederis legibus nihil est definitum.”
Cf. Jean Bodin, De republica libri sex (Paris, 1586), i.7c, 74: “Quòd si foederatae ciuitates in
vnius principis aut plurium optimatum fidem veniant, vna & eadem respublica censetur:
quod non facilè iudicari potest. Nam Achaeorum societas tribus initio ciuitatibus con-
stabat, quae aequo foedere iungebantur, & cùm eosdem hostes, eosdem etiam amicos
haberent, salua tamen erat initio ciuitas cuiusque maiestas: cùm autem assiduis bellis
infestarentur, ac saepissimè conuentus habere cogerentur, legatorum conuentus tandem
perfecit vt in vnam optimatum Rempublicam coïrent.”
35 Although the Commentariolus first appeared in 1649, its intellectual conception can be
traced back to the early 1640s. See Jaap Nieuwstraten, “Historical and Political Thought
in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic: The Case of Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612–
1653)” (Ph.D. diss., Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2012), 133–135.
36 Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, Commentariolus de statu confoederatarum provinciarum Belgii
(The Hague, 1649), ii.9–15, 26–33, with quote on 29. See also Idem, Institutiones politicae
i.11, 174–175.
120 Nieuwstraten
of the Achaean League, presented the Dutch Republic as a unified political

entity possessing sovereignty—a respublica.37 As we have already noted at the
beginning, not everybody shared this view.
It is, however, the fifth and final theme that, in the context of the approach-
ing Peace of Münster, is the most interesting. It concerns the nature of allianc-
es. In Boxhorn’s analysis, the Achaean League came to an end because of the
League’s alliance with Rome against the King of Macedon in the second cen-
tury bc. Duped by their cunning and ambitious general Callicrates, the Achae-
ans saw their alliance with Rome transformed from one between equals, to one
between unequals, in which the Romans held the upper hand.38 The danger
of such an imbalance became apparent when the Romans, after the King of
Macedon had been defeated, turned their swords against their own allies and
subjected the Achaeans to Roman rule. From this sorry fate, Boxhorn learned
the lesson that when it comes to waging war against neighbouring countries,
alliances with states that are equal in strength or weaker than yourself, “are far
safer” for one’s own country than alliances with states that are stronger.39
If we connect this lesson to the Dutch situation in 1647, the following hy-
pothesis can be made. Since 1635 the Dutch had been allied to the King of
France against Spain. After the battle of Rocroi (1643), in which the French
won a resounding victory over the Spanish army in the Netherlands, “the bal-
ance of power in Europe began to tip from Habsburg to Bourbon.”40 The Dutch
sensed this shift and began to fear the presence of a powerful French army at
their borders if Spain would lose all its possessions in the Southern Nether-
lands. Partly prompted by this fear, the Dutch strived towards a peace with the
King of Spain. The French objected to this course of action, referring to the al-
liance of 1635, according to which neither France nor the Dutch Republic could
37 In Boxhorn’s view, the distinctive mark of a commonwealth, and what sets it apart from
other large associations, is majestas or sovereignty. Boxhorn describes majestas as the
commonwealth’s “soul,” without which a commonwealth cannot exist. Boxhorn, Institu-
tiones politicae i.2, 11: “Corpus enim Respublica est, hujus anima […] est Majestas. Ut ergò
corpus sine anima subsistere non potest, ita & Respublica sine Majestate.”
38 Boxhorn, Disputatio politica, De Veteri Achaeorum Republica xvii, A4v: “Interim Romani
Callicratem, ut patriae vere amantem, & prudentia signem, Achaico populo imprimis
commendarunt: & ut ejus consilia sequerentur, si bene rebus Achaicis vellent, monu-
erunt. Quapropter ad suos reversus Praetura statim ornatus est. Qua dignitate dum fun-
gitur, tam scite suam hanc fabulam egit, ut quod par foedus inter Romanos & Achaeos
fuerat, brevi tempore in foedus impar sit conversum. Eo quippe res devenit, ut, enatis
controversiis, quod aequum sibi videri Romani dicerent, defugere Achaei non auderent.”
39 Ibidem xv–xviii, A4iv–A4vi.
40 Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, 1598–1648 (Oxford, 2001), 192.
sign a separate peace with Spain without the permission of the other party.
The Dutch replied by pointing out that the French were deliberately obstruct-
ing the peace negotiations and were unwilling to come to terms with Spain.
Under such circumstances, the Dutch argued, they were not obligated to await
France’s approval.41
Boxhorn’s analysis of alliances in his disputation on the Achaean League
can be read as a comment on the Franco-Dutch alliance of 1635 and its im-
plications for the Dutch Republic. The French being stronger than the Dutch,
Boxhorn seems to have warned his fellow countrymen that this alliance may
turn out badly for them in the end. In his reading of the history of the Achae-
an League, Boxhorn was basically giving expression to the maxim that would
guide Dutch foreign policy from 1648 onwards: gallia amica, non vicina (“France
as friend, not as neighbour”).
The Crisis of 1650 and Martinus Schoock’s Reaction

to the Act of Exclusion
As it would turn out, the Dutch did not buckle under French pressure and
signed their peace with the King of Spain. Naturally, such a momentous occa-
sion called for celebration. Boxhorn joined the chorus of jubilee with an ora-
tion in which he extolled peace as “the greatest happiness in human affairs.”42
At the same time, in a true Sallustian fashion, he used his oration to warn
against the threat of discord that loomed, now that the fear of an external
enemy had ceased to exist.43
41 Simon Groenveld and Huib L. Ph. Leeuwenberg, De bruid in de schuit: de consolidatie van
de Republiek, 1609–1650 (Zutphen, 1985), 120–124.
42 Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, “Oratio panegyrica de Belgarum pace,” in Orationes, Varii Argu-
menti. Series singularum & argumentum statim in ipso aditu leguntur, ed. Marcus Zuerius
Boxhorn (Amsterdam, 1651) v, 104–133, 105: “Nunc potissimum magnis laetisque animis
nos esse necesse est, & expressa tandem potentissimo hosti, qua nulla major est gentium
gloria, libertatis nostrae confessione, &, quae in hominum rebus felicitas summa est, pace
simul data.”
43 Ibidem, 124: “Ut, cum plerumque amoto externo bello, aut externi metu, (tamquam vitia
facilius aut scelera pax ferat, quam bellum, cum tamen minus ferat) mala omnis libido,
avaritia, ambitio, potentiorum de imperio certamina, arbitrium potius hominum & ho-
mines quam leges, imperent (felicium fere mala, quae turbant inprimis domi pacem ac
convellunt) quovis bello nocentiorem, & quam ista post se vitia trahunt, civium discor-
diam arceat.” See Sallust, The Jugurthine War, xli.1–5. For the influence of the principle
122 Nieuwstraten
Soon events in the Dutch Republic would prove that Boxhorn’s warning was
right on the mark. Conflicts between the States of Holland and their stadhold-
er, Prince William ii, about the reduction of the States army led to an attempt
by William to gain by force what he could not obtain by mediation. However,
his attempt to occupy Amsterdam—William’s most stubborn o pponent—
failed, and soon afterwards William died. Suddenly freed from their former
foe, the States of Holland moved quickly to settle matters their way. On No-
vember 12, only six days after William’s unexpected death, they summoned
the other provinces to participate in a “Great Assembly” of the States General.
With Holland in ascendancy and internally cohesive, and many of the other
provinces plagued by internal dissensions, the outcome of the assembly gen-
erally complied with the wishes of the States of Holland. The provinces of
Holland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel decided that, for the time being,
they would refrain from electing a new stadholder, while the command of the
army was divided between the seven provinces.44 But the regenten of Holland
could not enjoy their victory for long.45 In July 1652, long-existing tensions be-
tween the Dutch Republic and England erupted into open war. Losses at sea
and economic disruption led to riots in Holland, Zeeland and States Brabant.
Finally, with both parties exhausted, peace negotiations began. In 1654, the
English and the Dutch agreed to the Treaty of Westminster. Connected to this
treaty was a secret clause, the so-called Act of Exclusion, in which the States
of Holland promised that they would no longer appoint any Prince of Orange
as stadholder of their province. When this clause became publicly known, it
greatly upset the other provinces, which had been left in the dark about this
particular agreement. Especially Friesland, which had retained its own lineage
of stadholders in the person of Willem Frederik, opposed to the Act of Exclu-
sion, holding that it violated the Union of Utrecht.46
of metus hostilis in early-modern Europe, see Ioannis D. Evrigenes, Fear of Enemies and
Collective Action (Cambridge, 2009), esp. 48–130.
44 See for these events Israel, The Dutch Republic, 700–713, and Willem Frijhoff and Marijke
Spies, eds., 1650: Hard-Won Unity (Basingstoke, 2004), 75–80.
45 For what follows, see Israel, The Dutch Republic, 713–726, and Prak, The Dutch Republic in
the Seventeenth Century, 47–48.
46 According to article nine of the Union, “no armistice or peace treaty shall be concluded
nor any war started nor any duties or contributions pertaining to the generality of the
united provinces demanded but by the unanimous advice and consent of the afore-
said provinces.” In addition, article ten stipulated that “none of these provinces or their
towns or members shall conclude any confederation or alliance with any neighbouring
lord or country without the consent of these united provinces and allies.” E.H. Kossmann
In response to the protests of the other provinces, Johan de Witt, the Grand
Pensionary of Holland, excused Holland’s late actions in a document known
as the Deductie (1654). De Witt forcefully stressed the principle of provincial
sovereignty, which in his view included the power to appoint a stadholder—or
not.47 At the same time, he attacked the custom of hereditary offices. Accord-
ing to De Witt, “all Republics” in which the highest offices of State had been
handed down from father to son, had always “been reduced to a monarchical
state.”48 Thus, by adopting the Act of Exclusion, Holland had actually saved
“the freedom of the Netherlands.”49 Although partly headless, the other prov-
inces should not fear the dissolution of the Union. Self-interest and the fear of
enemies would keep the provinces together, so De Witt argued.50 The outbreak
of the First Anglo-Dutch war led to a boom in political pamphleteering, but the
Deductie hardly stirred the printing presses.51 However, one person who did
react was Martinus Schoock, professor of physics and logic at the University of
Groningen, and he did so with a disputation on the Achaean League.
Martinus Schoock, born in 1614, studied mathematics, philosophy and theol-
ogy in Franeker and Leiden, among others with Burgersdijk. In 1635, he moved
to Utrecht to teach rhetoric at the town’s Illustrious School. There he became
a pupil of Gisbert Voetius, the Dutch champion of orthodox Calvinism. Three
years later, Schoock left Utrecht for a chair in history at the Illustrious School of
Deventer. He did not stay long. In 1640, Schoock packed his things and travelled
north, to the University of Groningen, where he had been appointed professor
and A.F. Mellink, eds., Texts Concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands (Cambridge, 1974),
168–169.
47 Johan de Witt, Deductie, ofte Declaratie Van de Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt
(The Hague, 1654), i.2.1–2: 13–14.
48 Ibidem ii.1.9–10: “dat alle de Republijcquen vande gantsche Werelt, egeene uytgesondert,
die oyt tot soodanige maximes, ofte gewoonten zijn vervallen […] daer door onder subjec-
tie gebracht, ende tot een Monarchicquen staet gereduceert zijn.”
49 Ibidem ii.2.14, 58: “Voorwaer als haer Ed: Groot Mo: alle dese saecken considereren, soo
houden sy haer niet genoech verwonderen dat de selve Provintien […] derven beschuldi-
gen die Provincie, die altijdts, ende specialijck mede door de jegenwoordige actie […] de
vryheyt vande Nederlanden notoirlijck heeft geconserveert.”
50 Ibidem ii.3.15–16, 64: “Hebben niet de jegenwoordighe seven Vereenichde Provintien een
ende het selve interest en haere eygen conservatie? een ende de selve vreese voor alle
Uytheemsche Machten? […] Dese sijn, naer ’t oordeel van hare Ed: Groot Mo: de rechte
banden, die de seven Pylen t’ samen knoopen, ende klauwe van een ende deselve Leeuw
moeten vast houden.”
51 Guido de Bruin, “Political Pamphleteering and Public Opinion in the Age of De Witt
(1653–1672),” in Pamphlets and Politics in the Dutch Republic, ed. Femke Deen, David
Onnekink and Michel Reinders (Leiden and Boston, 2011), 63–95.
124 Nieuwstraten
of physics and logic. He would remain in Groningen for more than 25 years, oc-
cupying himself not only with philosophical questions, but also with historical
and political issues, although strictly speaking these subjects were outside his
fields. Schoock found his final resting-place in Frankfurt-on-Oder as professor
of history at the local university, an office he combined with his duties as his-
toriographer of the Elector of Brandenburg.52 Schoock taught and published
on a wide range of subjects, including rather mundane topics such as herring,
cheese and cut peat.53 Today, he is mostly known for his criticism of Descartes,
whose method of doubt he dismissed as dangerous because it would lead to
scepticism and atheism.54 Schoock, however, also showed a particular interest
in the politics of the Dutch Republic. In 1652, he published Belgium Federatum,
which, much in the style of Boxhorn’s Commentariolus, contains an analysis of
the nature, structure and workings of the Dutch Republic, although in a much
more elaborated way than Boxhorn had ever done.55
For our present purpose, two themes in this book merit special attention.
First, in a typical Grotian style, Schoock held that the Dutch Republic was
ruled by a “government of the best,” which had, until the death of William ii,
“a shade of monarchy.”56 Closely following Grotius, Schoock compared this
52 P.C. Molhuysen et al. ed., Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, 10 vols. (The
Hague, 1911–1937), 10:889–891; H.A. Krop, “‘Meer dan van Plato en Aristoteles een vriend
van de waarheid’: Martinus Schook (1640–1666): een Groningse wijsgeer op het kruispunt
van tradities,” in Onderwijs en onderzoek: studie en wetenschap aan de academie van Gron-
ingen in de 17e en 18e eeuw, ed. A.H. Huussen jr. (Hilversum, 2003), 127–159; Idem, “Schoock,
Martinus (1614–69),” in The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch
P hilosophers, 2:890–895.
53 For an overview of the different areas covered by Schoock and a list of his publications,
see Krop, “‘Meer dan van Plato en Aristoteles een vriend van de waarheid,’” 131–133, and
Idem, “Schoock, Martinus (1614–69),” 891, 893–894.
54 Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy, 1637–1650
(Carbondale/Edwardsville, Il, 1992), 17–29, and Wiep van Bunge, From Stevin to Spinoza:
An Essay on Philosophy in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic (Leiden and Boston,
2001), 34–40.
55 Martinus Schoock, Belgium Federatum, Sive Distincta descriptio Reip. Federati Belgii
(Amsterdam, 1652). In 1654, Adriaen Vlacq, a printer from The Hague, published a version
of Boxhorn’s Commentariolus, which is basically a mixture of chapters drawn from the
Commentariolus and Schoock’s Belgium Federatum. This version finally ended up as a sup-
plement to a French edition of Petrus Scriverius’s Principes Hollandiae (1650): H
istoire des
contes d’Hollande et Estat et gouvernement des provinces unies Du Pays Bays (The Hague,
1664).
56 Schoock, Belgium Federatum i.3, 10: “Et primo quidem optimatum regimen, à quo tan-
quam potiori parte jure denominari potest, multis guadet praerogativis […] S ecundo,
aristocratic Dutch Republic to the Achaean League, revealing how the League
was already on Schoock’s radar some three years before his reply to De Witt’s
Deductie.57 Second, in a clear reaction to the post-1650 stadholderless situation
in Holland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel, Schoock refuted the opinion
that the Dutch provinces could not do without a stadholder. As the bearers of
sovereignty, the provincial States could carry out any task they previously en-
trusted to a stadholder. At the same time, however, Schoock defended the right
of each province to appoint a stadholder “if the circumstances of time seem to
demand it.”58 Thus, in Belgium Federatum, Schoock seemed to agree with the
principle of provincial sovereignty, which De Witt so emphatically defended in
the Deductie. Why, then, did he react to it, and how?
Somewhere between December 1654 and June 1655, Schoock had one of his
students hold a disputation on the Achaean League. The disputation is quite
large, numbering 31 theses and extending over more than a hundred pages.59
Like Boxhorn, Schoock gave a prominent role to ancient sources, but un-
like his Leiden colleague, he also made use of more modern authors such as
Philippe de Commines. True to his humanist education, Schoock contended
that “history is the repository of all civil and military prudence.” The Achaean
League could therefore serve as an example in which “the rulers of the Dutch
Republic—when they will decide to examine the Dutch Republic, when their
quandiu aliquis ex illustrissima domo Auraica agnitus fuit cum supremus belli ter-
ra marique Imperator, tum etiam plerarumque provinciarum gubernator, exhibuit
Monarchiae umbram, qua haud aliter Status hujus solem obvelavit, atque apud Venetos
dux liberis suffragiis lectus Aristocratiae integritatem temperat.” Cf. Grotius, Antiquity, i.4,
ii.14, vii.7: 54–55, 64–67, 106–107.
57 Cf. Schoock, Belgium Federatum i.3, 10–11, with Grotius, Antiquity, vii.17–19: 112–113.
58 Schoock, Belgium Federatum ii.9, 67–69: “enimvero illi, penes quos est Superioritas, per
se ipsi exercere possunt ea, quorum exercitium ex libera delegatione antehac ipsi Guber-
natori commiserunt […] Interim cuique provinciae jus suum sartum tectumque est, &,
si circumstantia temporis exigere videatur, Gubernatorem sibi constituere potest citra
aliarum quoque provinciarum praejudicium.” Here, Schoock is probably alluding to the
province of Groningen, which, shortly after the death of William ii in 1650, had appointed
Willem Frederik of Nassau-Dietz as its stadholder. See also Israel, The Dutch Republic, 705.
59 Martinus Schoock, “Disputatio historica Exhibens incrementum ac decrementum status
Achaeorum,” in Respublica Achaeorum & vejentium Duabus dissertationibus exhibita In
Academia Groningae & Ommelandiae, ed. Martinus Schoock (Groningen, 1655), 1–112. The
student in question was Balthasar Sigismondus à Stosch, a Silesian noble who matricu-
lated at the University of Groningen on 28 December 1654, when Martin Schoock was rec-
tor: Album studiosorum academiae Groninganae (Groningen, 1915), 72. Schoock dedicated
the book to his cousin Arnold Schoock, an alderman of Zaltbommel, who in 1655 acted as
deputy to the States General on behalf of the province of Gelderland.
126 Nieuwstraten
conscience will listen to judgement—will encounter many matters, which

can immediately either help their policies or check them.”60 The main lessons
Schoock drew from the League’s history are connected to the causes of the
fall of the League. One cause he discerned was the ambition that drove men
like Callicrates to undermine the virtuous leadership of Lycortas, a prominent
Greek politician who stood up for the sanctity of the Achaean laws, thereby
disturbing the League’s internal peace. According to Schoock, this episode il-
lustrated the danger that discord poses to a commonwealth made up of several
peoples, as well as the need for a strong leader to deal with troublemakers and
avert the negative effects of such discord.61
Applied to the Dutch situation of 1654/55, this call for a leader figure can
be interpreted in at least two different ways. First, as a plea for the elevation
of William iii, the young Prince of Orange, to stadholder of Holland and
captain-general of the Dutch army. Second, as an attempt to enhance the
position of the Groninger stadholder Willem Frederik, in Schoock’s opinion
“a hero of proven bravery, trust and prudence,” who could act as regent and
commander of the army until William iii would come of age. Perhaps Schoock
thought that such an enhancement would give Willem Frederik more author-
ity and scope to deal with the internal disturbances that plagued several Dutch
provinces, in particular Overijssel and Groningen.62 This danger of discord,
60 Schoock, Respublica Achaeorum & vejentium, iii-v: “Atque, ne per exempla longius oberret
oratio, omnis togatae atque sagatae prudentiae promptuarium est historia, qua duce non
minus feliciter imperant, quibus alias fato Metellorum honores deferri videntur; quam
boni civis numeros explent, qui, aut destinato animi proposito, silentio aetatem transi-
gunt, ne propius intueantur reip. vulnera, quae medicinam amplius non patiuntur, aut,
injuria temporum rep. arcentur, per eos, quibus aliena virtus formidilosa esse solet […]
Hosce, citra populi suffragium censores, si respicerem, subitaneas hasce chartae ad Obliv-
ionis insulas ablegarem: at, cum non invideam ijs regnum, quod ex Adversariis, Indicibus,
& Glossariis tam ambitiose sperant & jactant, ut Croesos & Darios, sceptro insignes, prae
se & suo obelo nullos putent: hoc perpetuo ago, ut saltem in ea digitum intendam, quae
si diligentius meditati fuerint illi, quibus nares magis sunt emunctae, sive Ecclesiae sive
Reip. opem & splendorem faenerari queant. Eum in finem aliquanto diligentius laboravi
excutere Achaeorum & Vejentum remp. ad quam si instituerint meam Belgicam exami-
nare ejusdem rectores, conscientia subserviente judicio, plura offendent, quae subinde
consilia sua aut juvent, aut sufflaminent.”
61 Schoock, “Disputatio historica Exhibens incrementum ac decrementum status Achaeo-
rum,” v: 9–10. Schoock backs this claim up with quotes from Tacitus, The Annals, i.9.4, and
The Histories, i.1, among others.
62 Schoock, Belgium Federatum ii.7, 62–64: “Dum vero aliae provinciae electionem Guber-
natoris differunt, Groninga & Ommelandia, exemplu mox sequente Drentia, pro Guber-
natore suo elegerunt probatae virtutis, fidei, & prudentia heroa Guilielmum Fredericum
“that fatal plague of commonwealths,” looms large in Schoock’s disputation on

the Achaean League.63 Factions can have disastrous effects, as shown by the
controversies that shook the Dutch nation during the Twelve Years’ Truce.64
Indeed, peace as such can be a dangerous thing. While leisure may be pleas-
ing—“especially for trade”—it also undermines a nation’s strength. Referring
to Sallust and Thucydides, Schoock called for action, although he did not ex-
plain what this action should entail.65
Schoock’s treatise Imperium maritimum, largely written in the summer of
1653 and published in the next year, provides some clues about his intentions.
In this work Schoock explained the importance of trade for the well-being of
the Dutch Republic from a historical and geographical perspective. Since in
the Dutch case trade was especially a maritime affair, Schoock understood that
naval power (maritima potentia) was essential if the Dutch wanted to continue
to prosper. The Dutch should therefore pursue an aggressive maritime policy,
aimed at preventing direct contact between the eastern and northern hemi-
spheres, on the one hand, and the western hemisphere, on the other, in order
Nassovium, Frisiae vicinae illud re ipsa praestando, quod promiserant anno 1632.” See
further Israel, The Dutch Republic, 705, 718, 728–735.
63 Schoock, “Disputatio historica Exhibens incrementum ac decrementum status
Achaeorum,” xxxi, 109: “Quoniam vero primo Discordia, illa fatalis rerumpublicarum pes-
tis, Achaeos perdidit, temperare mihi non possim (quod meos Belgas in Achaeis mihi
repraesentem) quin iterum monstro illi occurram.”
64 Ibidem xvii, 63: “Quae civitatibus Rebus publicis, & totis provincijs quantae sint pernicie
imo exitio, aurea extat Livij sententia li. 3. Hist. quam & veram, pro dolor, hoc saeculum
experitur. Fuere eruntque, factiones plurib. populis magis exitio, quam bella externa, quam
fames, morbive, quaeque alia in Deum iras veluti ultima publicorum malorum vertunt. Tes-
tantur & Marij & Syllae, Caesaris & Pompeij bella civilia ab ipso etiam Horatio deplo-
rata. Utinam Belgium federatum securum esse posset! Clementissimus Deus, antehac
Licestrensi factione cum Ordinibus, Mauritiana cum Hollandica commissa, bono publico
servire compulit caussam, quae religioni & libertati videbatur addictior: At quis sperare
ausit, toties irritatum Deum, è tenebis lucem producturum esse, in gratiam eorum, à qui-
bus publice ludibrio habetur?” Reference to Livy, The History of Rome, iv.9. Notice the
rhetorical question at the end and its threatening implication.
65 Ibidem xxxi, 112: “Do lubens, otium gratum, maxime mercantibus esse. Sede vere Sall. in
Catil. Otium, divitiae, optanda, alijs oneri miseriaeque fuere. atque iterum in Iugurth. Quod
in adversis rebus optaverant otium, postquam adepti sunt, asperius acerbiusque fuit. Sed
abrumpendum est. finio ergo cum Thucyd. lib. dicto: Existimate Remp. si ocio indulgeat,
ipsam suis opibus attritum iri, ut quaelibet alia, & futurum, ut omnis disciplina consenescat:
ac per certamina quotidie in experientia profecturam, & usum, quo non verbis, sed factis
potius, hostes propulsare possit, adepturam.” References to Sallust, Catiline’s War, x.2, The
Jugurthine War, xli.4, and Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, vi.18.
128 Nieuwstraten
to protect the middleman position the Dutch occupied in the world trade
system.66 Peace, then, was not only beneficial to trade, it could also be damag-
ing, as the deplorable state of the West India Company after the Peace of West-
phalia had demonstrated, a situation Schoock lamented and thought could have
been prevented if war had been waged against the Portuguese.67 In Schoock’s
analysis of the fall of the Achaean League, we can also find some implicit criti-
cism of the way the province of Holland treated its Dutch allies. According to
Schoock, “the principal spring-water of the disasters that befell the common-
wealth of the Achaeans,” should be sought in the fact that the Achaeans had
done nothing to prevent the destruction of their allies and had not punished
those among themselves who had violated the laws of the Achaean alliance.68
Schoock paid particular attention to the laws of the Achaean League that ex-
plicitly forbade individual members to negotiate independently with a for-
eign power. Unfortunately for the Achaeans, some of them did, and, what was
worse, they got away with it unpunished. In Schoock’s narrative, this course
of events “paved the way for the destruction of the Achaean cause.”69 The fate
of the Achaean League thus served as a warning. Like the ancient Achaeans,
Schoock believed that the Dutch had violated the law that forbade allies to
66 Martinus Schoock, Imperium maritimum, Ita explicatum Ut non solum ejus ostendan-
tur praerogativae, Verum Etiam cuique Genti, Maxime Belgis foederatis Suus vindice-
tur honos (Amsterdam, 1654), 64–168, esp. 153–160. For the date of compilation, see
Ibidem, 169.
67 Ibidem, 153–154: “Ne gens nautica diffluat, & aliis, sociis licet, inconsultis supremis po-
testatibus, operam suam locet. De hoc jam provisum ab Ordinibus Generalibus speciali
edicto d. 4. Maji anno 1632. Semel enim si alio migrare coeperit hic populus, ibi pedem
figet, posterosque suos relinquet. Ne vero alio abeat, quum reditus annuos de suo non
habeat, nec possit manus pedesque suos comedere, perpetuo exercitium aliquod ei su-
peresse debet, quod si domi non inveniat, foris quaerit. Atque utinam mox à pace serium
nobis fuisset aut restituere collapsas res societatis Indiae Occidentalis, aut bellum in Lu-
sitaniam transferre, flos sociorum nauticorum non fuisset dilapsus.”
68 Schoock, “Disputatio historica Exhibens incrementum ac decrementum status Achaeo-
rum,” xxxi, 111–112: “Sed postremo, quum prima scaturigo calamitatum reip. Archaicae
merito censeatur, quod compressis sedendo manibus, & somniculosis inertibusque oculis
connivendo, violata insuper (ut vidimus) federum religione, alienam calamitatem, nec
non vicinorum sociorumque suorum interitum, secura & quasi defaecata mente spec-
ulari potuerit. viderint cognatae respubl. ne hac in parte pariter delinquant non exau-
diendo aut preces, imo saepe obtestationes sociorum, aut falso sibi persuadendo, illos
dominationi suae terminos ad fines stertentium definituros esse, qui desertos vicinos
undiquaque impune depopulantur.”
69 Ibidem viii, 15–16.
treat with foreign powers independently.70 This, of course, entailed a direct

allusion to Johan de Witt’s secret dealings with Oliver Cromwell behind the
back of the other Dutch provinces. Clearly, such devious political tactics could
not count on Schoock’s approval. On the contrary, he believed them to be both
unethical and self-destructive.
All in all, then, it is clear that Schoock’s analysis of the Achaean League can
be interpreted as a critique of De Witt’s Deductie. Schoock not only criticised
the dubious ways by which Holland had adapted the Act of Exclusion, but
he was also in favour of a strong leader—a scion from the House of Orange-
Nassau—to restore peace and order in the Dutch Republic. These arguments
were directly opposed to the intentions of De Witt for writing the Deductie,
which were to legitimise Holland’s private dealings with Cromwell and to de-
fend the choice of De Witt cum suis to exclude a Prince of Orange from the
stadholderate.
Conclusion
Despite Schoock’s disapproval—and that of many others –, De Witt stuck to

his guns and did his best to prevent the ascendancy of William iii to the of-
fices his forefathers once held. In the debates between the defenders of this
policy and its opponents, the focus shifted towards Dutch history, supported
by references to famous classical examples such as Rome and Sparta.71 Indeed,
Schoock’s disputation on the Achaean League, as Boxhorn’s from 1647, did not
trigger any public reaction. Perhaps their indirect manner of speaking through
the mouth of one of their students and the form in which they cast their argu-
ments—i.e. a disputation in formal scholarly Latin, consisting of a number of
theses—only attracted a very small audience within the academic ivory tower.
Nonetheless, Boxhorn’s and Schoock’s choice to convey their messages by
means of the Achaean League, a classical model located rather on the fringes
of early-modern historical consciousness, remains significant. It shows how
in particular cases, oft-used classical references such as Athens and Rome
70 Ibidem viii, 16: “Aliqui, rep. nondum firmata, & parum quin nutante, si simile quid impune
tulerint, in consequentiam neutiquam trahi debet ab ijs, qui religiose jurarunt in leges
servientes stabilitae reip. Quae distinctio si attendatur, submovere licebit quasdam dif-
ficultates, occurentes non minus in Historia Achaeorum, quam faederatorum Belgarum,
qui utinam ratione hujus legis, à se temeratae, non experiantur fatum Achaeorum!”
71 See Pieter Geyl, “Het stadhouderschap in de partij-literatuur onder De Witt,” Mededeelin-
gen der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen 10 (1947): 17–84.
130 Nieuwstraten
could be substituted by a less renowned example to make a specific political

argument. Boxhorn wanted to warn his audience of the future threat a strong
French neighbour posed to the safety of the Dutch Republic. Ancient Rome
or Athens could not be of much help here, for both were neither perceived as
a confederate state, nor was their decay attributed to a powerful neighbour.72
Schoock campaigned against the unilateral and anti-stadholder policy of Johan
de Witt, fearing that it would lead to a piecemeal demise of the Dutch Republic.
As in the case of Boxhorn, neither Rome nor Athens could serve Schoock as an
example because of their state structure and the nature of the causes of their
fall. Nor could Schoock and Boxhorn turn to the Hebrew Republic, the most fa-
mous classical example of a state with a known confederative character, since
seventeenth-century Dutch scholars viewed its collapse as a consequence of
the transgressions of the ancient Jews and as a part of God’s divine plan.73 As a
result, the ancient model most appropriate to the designs of both Boxhorn and
Schoock turned out to be the Achaean League. Boxhorn’s and Schoock’s cases
illustrate that—humanist eclecticism not withstanding—the employment of
classical examples in early-modern Europe was not mere rhetorical exercise,
conducted in a rather haphazard way. Local circumstances, authorial intent
and targeted audiences also played a crucial role and effected which model
was chosen, when, and how it was subsequently put to use. This explains why
in early-modern Europe’s most powerful republic, the most famous republics
from antiquity did not always find themselves in the spotlight.
72 Seventeenth-century Dutch scholars did not consider ancient Rome as a confederate

state. Most of them followed the Sallustian thesis that the Roman Republic had suc-
cumbed to luxury, ambition and finally internal discord among its own citizens. See, e.g.,
Daniel Heinsius, “De secunda & postrema Romanorum aetate,” in Orationum editio nova,
Prioribus auctior, ed. Daniel Heinsius (Amsterdam, 1657), xv:166–178.
73 Cunaeus, The Hebrew Republic i.16–18: 65–75, and Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae ii.1: 262.
chapter 6
From Failed Republic to Polite Polis: Ancient

Athens in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century
England
Christine Zabel
In 1691, the bookseller and publisher John Dunton (1659–1732) came up with
an innovative idea that would prove to be the biggest success of his life. He
created a previously unknown type of periodical in which the readers could
actively participate. They could send in questions relating to all kinds of prac-
tical and theoretical matters such as, for example, cooking, sexuality, mor-
als, religion and physics. Dunton’s declared aim for this new periodical was
that it would enable men and women, regardless of their social status and
background, to acquire a better education. In order to be able to answer the
readers’ questions, Dunton brought together a group of specialists—a philos-
opher, a theologian, a mathematician and a writer—which regularly met in
Smith’s Coffeehouse to answer the incoming queries from readers. With this
innovative approach, Dunton hoped to be able to answer “all the most Nice
and Curious Questions proposed by the Ingenious of Either Sex” and thereby
to enlighten his contemporaries.1 For his enterprise he chose the name Athe-
nian Gazette or Athenian Mercury, as the periodical was later called, and the
group of self-declared experts referred to itself as the “Athenian Society.”2
Dunton’s periodical was very successful and appeared twice a week for almost
1 Helen Berry, Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England (Aldershot, etc., 2003), 6.
The members of this distinguished circle meeting in Smith’s Coffeehouse consisted of Dun-
ton’s brother in law, the poet and churchman Samuel Wesley (bap. 1662–1735), father of John
and Charles Wesley, the founding figures of the Methodist Church; another brother in law,
the mathematician and writer Richard Saul (d. 1702) and the theologian, philosopher and
writer John Norris (1657–1711). But Dunton liked to let his readers believe that the “Athenian
Society” was larger and that it had a specialist for every imaginable topic: Ibidem, 20.
2 The name Athenian Gazette [full title: Athenian Gazette, or Casuistical Mercury, Resolving all
the most Nice and Curious Questions proposed by the Ingenious of Either Sex] was soon re-
placed by Athenian Mercury, because the London Gazette complained that the name was too
similar to its own and could therefore confuse certain readers: Berry, Gender, Society and Print
Culture, 21.

132 Zabel
seven years, from March 1691 to June 1697.3 In 1697 when Dunton, devastated
by the death of his wife, could no longer continue his project, Andrew Bell
republished the Athenian Mercury in four volumes as the Athenian Oracle.4
When Dunton took up his enterprise again in 1704, he created several spin-offs
which all kept the name “Athenian” in their titles. He founded the Athenae Re-
divivae: or the A
thenian Oracle as well as the Athenian Sport: or, Two Thousand
Paradoxes Merrily Argued.5 In the years to come, he would also create the Athe-
nian Spy, a question-and-answer publication that focused on female readers.6
Furthermore, in 1692 Dunton engaged Charles Gildon (1665–1724) to write the
History of the Athenian Society.7
Dunton not only deliberately opted for the adjective “Athenian” and did so
repeatedly, he also came up, inspired from the biblical description of the curi-
ous Athenians in Acts 17, 21, with the concept of “Athenianism” which is laid
out further in his book with the same title:
But, Gentlemen, as I publish every distinct Treatise for Real Athenianism,

and give it the Name of a NEW PROJECT, ‘tis necessary I here tell you
3 Ibidem, 2 and Helen Berry, “Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England: Moll King’s Coffee
House and the Significance of the ‘Flash Talk.’ The Alexander Prize Lecture, read April 7th
2000,” Transactions of the Royal Society 6/11 (2001): 65–81, 66ff.
4 Member of the Athenian Society, The Athenian Oracle, being an entire collection of all the
valuable questions and answers in the old Athenian mercuries (London, 1703).
5 John Dunton, Athenæ redivivæ: Or the new Athenian Oracle, Under Three General Heads, etc.
(London, 1704). With this project, Dunton responded to Daniel Defoe’s attempt to copy his
concept of a question-and-answer newspaper, which apparently had made Dunton very an-
gry; see also Berry, Gender, Society and Print Culture, 25. John Dunton, Athenian sport: or, two
thousand paradoxes merrily argued, to amuse and divert the age: as a Paradox in praise of a
Paradox, etc. (London, 1707).
6 John Dunton, The Athenian spy: discovering the secret letters which were sent to the Athenian
society by the most ingenious ladies of the three kingdoms, etc. (London, 1704). Dunton was the
first bookseller who showed an awareness of the market potential of female readers and who
provided a periodical that was explicitly meant for both sexes. In 1694 he even published a
dictionary for ladies: Nathanael Carpenter and John Dunton, The Ladies Dictionary, being a
general entertainment of the fair-sex a work never attempted before in English (London, 1694).
Dunton also published female authors, for example Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Poems on Several
Occasions written by Philomela (London, 1696). The Athenian Gazette/Athenian Mercury was
the first seventeenth century periodical that addressed both sexes. See also Berry, Gender,
Society and Print Culture, 7f.
7 Charles Gildon, The History of the Athenian Society, for the resolving all nice and curious
questions. By a gentleman who got secret intelligence of their whole proceedings. To which are
prefix’d several poems, written by Mr. Tate, Mr. Motteux, Mr. Richardson, and others (London,
1692). See also Helen Berry, “Dunton, John (1659–1732),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biog-
raphy (Oxford, 2004).
From Failed Republic to Polite Polis 133
what I wou’d have understood by those Words, Athenianism—and New

Project. All Ages (as if Athens had been the Original) have been curious
in their Enquiries, (that is, Lovers of Novelty) […]; We all are seiz’d with
th’ Athenian Itch, News and new Thing do the whole World bewitch.8
Despite its titles, the topics Dunton’s periodicals addressed had little to do with
the history of ancient Athens. The question therefore arises why he chose the
Athenians as a model for the most important project in his life and how he
expected this to resonate with the contemporary readership: Were they “seiz’d
with th’ Athenian Itch”?
Although influential scholars such as Hans Baron, Zera Fink, John Po-
cock, and Quentin Skinner have paid considerable attention to classical ex-
amples and to what they style an “ancient republican,” “civic humanist,” or
“neo-Roman” tradition, the bulk of their work has focused to a larger degree
on Roman (as opposed to Greek) examples.9 This chapter, however, follows
Eric Nelson’s example in drawing attention to the enduring importance of
Greek models in European thought,10 however without limiting its study on
republican sources alone. It analyses the different uses of ancient Athens in
mid-seventeenth- to mid-eighteenth-century political discourses, unraveling
Athens’s gradual transformation from an example of a failed republic to a so-
cio-cultural model of politeness. The references to this newly emerging ideal
could be called an “ancient polisism.”
Political Beginnings: Athens as a Failed Republic
Dunton’s strong preference for Athens might come as a surprise, given the
English tradition of the reception of ancient Athens during the civil war and
its aftermath. For Thomas Hobbes, Athens and its political thinkers were
responsible for a harmful and wrongheaded Western tradition that defined
8 John Dunton, Athenianism: or, the new project of Mr. John Dunton, etc. (London, 1704),
Dedication, v.
9 See Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Civic Humanism and Repub-
lican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton, 1955); Zera Fink, The Clas-
sical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Patter of Thought in Seventeenth Century
England (Evanston, 1945); John G. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Thought
and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975); Quentin Skinner, Liberty before
Liberalism (Cambridge, 2004).
10 Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge, 2005) and idem, “Re-
publican Visions,” in Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, ed. John S. Dryseck (Oxford,
2006), 193–210.
134 Zabel
liberty as anti-monarchical and therefore interpreted every monarchical re-

gime as a tyranny. Hobbes by contrast largely followed Jean Bodin and defined
a political regime’s sovereignty as absolute, regardless of its specific form.
Consequently, a regime’s liberty did not depend on a particular form of gov-
ernment. Hobbes now used the example of the Athenian ostracism to show
that the power of the Athenian commonwealth was absolute and that indi-
vidual liberty was in no way connected to a state’s liberty.11 Hobbes founded
his assertions on a theory of contract, which stipulated that everyone gave up
their sovereignty in a first contract and then instituted a sovereign in a second
contract. In contrast to his own logical considerations, he claimed, the Athe-
nians had not derived their political notions from logic but from empirical ob-
servations, and therefore had only their own commonwealth in mind when
they spoke of liberty and tyranny. For Hobbes, this was a fatal mistake, which,
further transmitted by Roman political thinkers, had brought war and blood-
shed to the entire Western World. Since the English avidly read these ancient
authors, Hobbes concluded that the example of the Athenian commonwealth
could even be held responsible for the civil strife of his own time and even to
the legitimization of regicide.12
How did, in the meantime, pro-parliamentarian and republican authors
think about the ancient commonwealth of Athens? Were they inspired by
Athenian political notions? The Archeologiae Atticae libri tres by Francis
Rous the younger (1615–1643), published in 1637, was the first work that ex-
plicitly dealt with ancient Athens.13 In this antiquarian study, republished
several times during the civil war, Rous provided detailed knowledge about
ancient Athens and its religious, cultural and political life. Rous, son of an
Parliamentarian, compared the functions of the Athenian Senate and Areopa-
gus with those of the English parliament.14 According to Rous, issuing laws was
11 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, 1996), 148–149; cf. Jean Bodin,
Les Six Livres de la République, 6 vols., ed. Christine Frémont (Paris, 1986).
12 Hobbes, Leviathan, 225–226; Idem, Behemoth or the Long Parliament, ed. Paul Seaward
(Oxford, 2010), 108–110. See for a further analysis of Hobbes’s interpretation of the Athe-
nians’ impact on developments of his own time: Christine Zabel, Polis und Politesse. Der
Diskurs über das antike Athen in England und Frankreich, 1630–1760 (Berlin/Boston, 2016),
84–97.
13 Francis Rous, Archaelogiae Atticae libri tres. Three books of the Attick antiquities Containing
the description of the citties glory, government, division of the people, and townes within the
Athenian territories, their religion, superstition, sacrifices, account of their yeare, as also a
full relation of their iudicatories (Oxford, 1637).
14 The core competences of the Athenian Senate as described by Rous show a strong similar-
ity with the claims of the English Parliamentarians during their conflict with the English
the first and most important prerogative of this institution. He also attempted
to demonstrate that the political liberty of Athens had been the foundation for
its cultural efflorescence.15 Influenced by the publications of the Dutch house
Elzevier and the Dutch reading of Athens as a culturally, commercially and
politically successful commonwealth, Rous was the first author in England to
relate Athens’ cultural achievements to the nature of its civil government. He
claimed that Athens had achieved its cultural and scientific golden age only as
a free state, and had culturally declined from the moment it relinquished its
political liberty.16
In the following years, the connection between cultural accomplishments
and political liberty proved to be crucial to the English reception of ancient
Athens. During the period of the English Republic, the Athenian example was
used to demonstrate the relationship between the nature of civil government
on the one hand, and achievements in philosophy, politics, science, art and
architecture on the other. This was apparent in, for instance, Marchamont
Nedham’s The Excellencie of a Free-State, first published in 1656. In contrast to
Rous, however, Nedham mainly discussed this theme to illustrate, by means of
the Athenian example, what the consequences of the abandonment of politi-
cal liberty were. The Athenian case demonstrated what inevitably happened
if too much power became concentrated in the hands of one person or one
crown: decision over taxes, religion and foreign politics. Rous explicitly compared the
Athenian Senate to the English Parliament, Archaelogiae Atticae, 107: “Resembling our
Court of Parliament in England, by whose consent all Lawes are abrogated, new made,
right and possessions of private men changed, formes of religions established, Subsides,
Tailes, Taxes, and impositions appointed, waights and measures altered, & c. […] The
whole manner of the Common wealths government belongeth to the Senate. That which
the Senate determineth is held for ratified and inviolable. By their authoritie and rule is
peace confirmed & war denounced. The whole rents and receipts of the Commonwealth
at their appointment collected and gathered in, and likewise laid out againe and defrayed,
& c. […] that Court is most ample, and iustly and equally decided all sorts of controversies
whatsoever.”
15 Rous, Archaelogiae Atticae, 5. For the connection between Athens’ civil government and
its cultural blossoming see Christine Zabel, “The Polis in 17th century political discourse:
Athens mirrored by Francis Rous, Marchamont Nedham, George Guillet de Saint-Georges
and Jonathan Swift,” in The Liberal-Republican Quandery in Israel, Europe and the United
States: Early Modern Thoughts Meets Current Affairs, ed. Thomas Maissen and Fania Oz-
Salzberger (Brighton, Mass., 2012), 49–65.
16 Rous, Archaelogiae Atticae, 29; Zabel, “The Polis in 17th century political discourse,” 61.
See for further reading on the Dutch interpretation of ancient Athens: Arthur Weststeijn,
Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden Age: The Political Thought of Johan & Pieter
de la Court (Leiden, 2012), especially 214–218; Zabel, Polis und Politesse, 47–64.
136 Zabel
group of people.17 James Harrington also used the Athenian example in his
Oceana of the same year in order to show that Cromwell should, as Solon had
done, introduce a wise constitution, but then relinquish authority to the Eng-
lish people in the form of a popular assembly, with the power of proposal and
debate reserved for a natural aristocracy. According to Harrington, Athens had
been founded with all the right intentions, but had failed to survive because
the unequal distribution of property undermined the authority of a natural
aristocracy. Since the dispossessed estate, which constituted the majority of
the Athenian population, was excluded from political participation, the Athe-
nian aristocracy had not been selected on the basis of merit, but on the basis
of property. The discursive function of the Athenian senate had moreover been
insufficiently secured, with the rise of overly powerful individuals as a result.18
For English republican writers, in short, ancient Athens was a negative ex-
ample. It was a well-intended, but failed republic. If he did not want England
to end like Athens, Cromwell should allow a natural aristocracy to govern the
commonwealth. In contrast to the Dutch republican reception of ancient Ath-
ens, in which the ancient commonwealth was commonly viewed as a glorious
centre of trade, liberty and scientific achievement, English republican writers
concentrated—in a more Machiavellian vein—on the degeneration and de-
cline of the Athenian republic.19 They regarded ancient Athens as a free state
that had—because of its free constitution—known a period of philosophical,
cultural, artistic, architectural and military glory; but—and this objection was
important—they mainly concentrated, clearly out of dissatisfaction and frus-
tration with Cromwell’s regime, on Athens’ constitutional defects. For none of
these writers Athens’ downfall had been caused by military defeat. They at-
tributed it to the fact that the Athenians had abandoned true political liberty
and had allowed individuals to gain too much power. Athens was increasingly
discussed during the period of the English republic, but in contrast to Rome or
Sparta, which were considered as models for sustainable regimes, Athens was
17 Marchamont Nedham, The Excellencie of a Free-State: or, The Right Constitution of a

ommon-wealth wherein All Objections are answered, and the best way to secure the Peoples
C
Liberties, discovered: with Some Errors of Government, and Rules of Policie (London, 1656),
73, 89, 152 f, 221ff.
18 James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics, ed. J.G.A. Po-
cock (Cambridge, 1992), 37 ff, 146f.
19 Cf. e.g. Johannes Meursius, Athenae Batavae (Leiden, 1625). For the Machiavellian tradi-
tion see J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the
Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975).
viewed as a failed republic that could serve as a warning to England.20 Until

roughly 1660, the institutions of the Athenian republic were predominantly
analysed and surveyed by means of a political and institutional discourse.
The Cultural Turn: The Rise of Polite Athens
From the middle of the seventeenth century, however, this image of ancient
Athens underwent a fundamental change, first in France and subsequently in
England. In the France of Louis xiv, the almost exclusive focus on the politi-
cal institutions of Athens was replaced by greater attention for its cultural life
and significance. As early as 1635 Cardinal Richelieu had embraced the project
of an Académie française, intended to improve and professionalise the French
language. In order to achieve this goal, the Academics started looking for exem-
plary models of language, which they rather unsurprisingly found in Greek and
Roman antiquity. Gens lettrés mainly concerned themselves with the ancient
Greeks, whom they considered original, whereas the Romans were merely
viewed as their heirs.21 This intensive examination of antiquity was then given
a great impulse by the Querelle des anciens et des modernes, in which modern
cultural achievements, such as poetry, arts, music and theatre, were compared
to their ancient counterparts. The Querelle thereby contributed to an analysis
of antiquity of great refinement. For the anciens, antiquity was culturally su-
perior to modern times and Greece was the most distinguished nation within
antiquity.22 Since Athens was the centre of ancient Greece, Athens was the
most refined and polished place one could find. Even those who defended the
20 See for example Fergus Millar, The Roman Republic in Political Thought (Hanover and Lon-
don, 2002) and Patricia Springborg, Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince (Cam-
bridge, 1992).
21 For the Académie française see Marc Fumaroli, “Le cardinal de Richelieu fondateur de
l’Académie française,” in: Richelieu et le monde de l’esprit, ed. Chancellerie des universities
de Paris et Académie Française (Paris, 1985), 217–236.
22 Hilaire Bernard de Requeleyne, Baron de Longepierre (1659–1721) observed in his “Dis-
cours sur les Anciens”: “Par quelle autre voie s’adoucit la virtue brute et sauvage des
premiers Romains? Ne fut-ce par le commerce qu’ils eurent avec la Grèce? La politesse
commença dès lors à succèder parmi eux à la férocité, et les beaux-arts se perfection-
naient dans Rome à mesure que les ouvrages des Grecs y devenaient communs. Les plus
éclairés d’entre ses citoyens ne faisaient-ils pas gloire de s’instruire sous de tells maî-
tres?” See H ilaire Bernard de Requeleyne, Baron de Longepierre, Discours sur les Anciens
(Paris, 1687), 12f.
138 Zabel
merits of the moderns conceded that the ancient Greeks had been superior in
poetry and rhetoric.23
The Querelle did not remain a French phenomenon, but also had repercus-
sions in the British Isles, where it became more centred around science. In
both France and England, however, the Querelle contributed to an intensified
preoccupation with ancient Greece and especially with Athens. As a result,
travellers from both countries decided to set out and see the ancient Greek
places. In 1675 the Frenchman Jacob Spon (1647–1685) and the Englishman
George Wheler (1650–1723) were the first to travel to Athens with the explicit
aim to explore the ancient sites of this great commonwealth.24 They returned
to their home countries with a positive image of ancient Athens. Wheler told
his fellow countrymen and women:
ATHENS is the chief City of the Province of Greece, which was called, in
times past, Attica; a City now reduced to near the lowest Ebb of Fortune:
But of Fame so great, that few Cities in the World can dispute Precedence
with her, or few pretend to have been her Equals. For, whether you con-
sider her Antiquity, Valour, Power, Learning, or any other Quality, that
may make a Place illustrious, and renowned in the World, she still seems
triumphant. […] Her people owned no Original, but the Earth they in-
habited; and scarce allowed the Sun to be elder than they: Nor would
they acknowledge to have received their Name from any, but their chief
Goddes Minerva, whom they knew by the name AΘTHNA.25
These new forms of engagement with ancient Greece resulted in a changed

image of Athens that no longer presented the ancient city state primarily in
political and institutional terms, but as a cultural ideal worthy of imitation.
In this context, Athens was not discussed as a republic and its form of govern-
ment was considered of negligible significance. From a negative political and
institutional example, the Athenian polis had become a socio-cultural model
and an ideal of cultural, literary and architectural efflorescence.
The story of the reception of ancient Athens took yet a further new turn
in 1686, when the moralist Jean de la Bruyère (1645–1696) published his Dis-
cours sur Théophraste in which he used ancient Athens as model for a publicly
lived politesse (politeness).26 According to La Bruyère, the ancient Athenians
23 Zabel, Polis und Politesse, 117–159.

24 David Constantine, Early Greek Travelers and the Hellenic Ideal (Cambridge, etc., 1984), 7.
25 George Wheler, A Journey into Greece by George Wheler, Esq., in company of Dr. Spon of
Lyons. In Six Books (London, 1682), 337.
26 Jean de la Bruyère, “Discours sur Théophraste. Les Caractères de Théophrastes traduits du
Grec,” in: Œuvres complètes, ed. Julien Benda (Paris, 1978), 61–478.
g athered in public spaces, where they discussed philosophical and political

matters as equals. Because Athenian society was not organised around a court,
the art of conversation was refined in the agora, and consequently the city of
Athens became the centre of politesse, of simplicity and of wisdom. La Bru-
yère, himself of bourgeois origin, but ennobled in 1673, extolled these latter
virtues and contrasted them with the superfluous vice of courtoisie. It was the
new noblesse de robe that he saw as the contemporary supporter and medium
of this virtue of politesse. Just as Athens had once been the centre of politesse,
Paris—and not the court of Versailles—should now become the centre of po-
litesse in the modern world.27
At the end of the seventeenth century, the reception of ancient Athens did
not only fundamentally change in France, but also in England. As early as 1691,
Dunton, who was Whig-sympathizer, turned, as we have already seen, to ancient
Athens to name his new undertaking in publishing.28 The project of the Athenian
Mercury, and indeed the whole concept of “Athenianism,” was intended to imi-
tate what Dunton thought had been the regular practice of daily life in ancient
Athens. Scholars shared their knowledge and wisdom with their disciples, the
citizens of the polis, who in turn were allowed and encouraged to ask ques-
tions and to satisfy their curiosity. According to Helen Berry, this model for the
Athenian Mercury should be viewed as one of the most innovative journalistic
inventions of the seventeenth century and “offered those who were anxious or
inquisitive a means of articulating their problems and queries in confidence.”29
Dunton’s “Athenianism” did not aim to provide the readership with new
knowledge about ancient Athens, nor even to discuss the historical Athens
at all. It sought, by means of a question-and-answer method, to disseminate
existing knowledge about all possible subjects to a broad audience that was
wider than the traditional English elite. The bookseller explicitly enumerated
the wide range of topics that went into his concept of “Athenianism”:
under the General Title of Athenianism there is included HISTORY, both

Civil and Ecclesiastical, PHILOSOPHY in all its Parts, PHYSICK with its
Train of wonderful Cures, and Philology with all its known Criticisms,
and in a word all Dunton’s Athenenian, Serious, Historical, Amusing,
Comical, Letter, and Poetical Projects.30

28 For Dunton’s Whiggism see See John Dunton, The Compleate Statesman. Demonstrated in
the Life, Actions, and Politicks Of that great Minister of State, Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury
(London, 1683).
29 Berry, Gender, Society and Print Culture, 19.
30 Dunton, Athenianism, Dedication, ix.
140 Zabel
Dunton’s “Athenianism” used the cultural life of ancient Athens as an educa-

tional model worthy of imitation by English citizens. Since his project was a
huge success in late seventeenth- century England, one suspects that his image
of ancient Athens as a cultural and educational model, was already familiar to
seventeenth-century English readers, and that with his “Athenianism” the en-
trepreneur Dunton hoped to profit from the already existing positive cultural
reputation of ancient Athens. Yet Dunton’s “Athenianism” also further shaped
the English image and perception of ancient Athens and for that reason merits
our close attention. In the dedication of his Athenianism Dunton explained:
My chief Design in writing and publishing these […] Projects,31 is

to furnish the VIRTUOSI with Matters fit four pious and ingenious
Conversations […]. I speak every where my Mind with a Philosophical
Freedom, […] for to polish my own Notions, I consulted not only your
learned selves, but the best Authors I cou’d find on the Subjects I was
treating of, and made the best Improvement I cou’d of ‘em.32
Dunton, it is clear, wanted to provide his readers with topics for Christian and
witty conversations. He identified the candidness with which the “Athenian
Society” discussed every possible subject as philosophical freedom. In doing
so, Dunton took up an approach already familiar from the late seventeenth-
century French reception of ancient Athens. It is impossible to say with any
certainty precisely how well informed Dunton was about the French interpre-
tation of ancient Athens that surfaced in Richelieu’s cultural politics, in the
Querelle des anciens et des modernes, and in Jean de la Bruyère’s Discours sur
Théophraste. It is clear, however, that he adopted its keywords such as “con-
versation,” “polished notions,” and “philosophical freedom.”33 Like La Bruyère,
Dunton used ancient Athens as a means to demonstrate that education and
merit were not limited, and should not be limited, to the traditional elite only,
but should and could be opened up to all strata of society: “for my Part, I pre-
fer Piety before Birth, and Learning before Dignity, and consequently chose
rather to address these Six Hundred Projects to the Athenian Society, than to
any other Person whatsoever.”34 With the Athenian Mercury Dunton sought
31 Although Dunton claimed that he had published more than 600 titles, only 200 can be
confirmed. His publications included sermons, political works, practical guides and mis-
cellanies. See Berry, “Dunton, John (1659–1732).”
32 Dunton, Athenianism, Dedication, iv.
34 Dunton, Athenianism, Dedication, iv.
to contribute to the refinement of the literary and rhetorical tastes of all of

its readers, regardless of their social, economic or political background. It be-
came, as Brean Hammond has observed, a “vital organ of the polite movement”
and significantly contributed to the increasing association of ancient Athens
with notions of public life, education and politeness.35
In line with this trend, Charles Gildon, the author of the History of the Athe-
nian Society, pointed out that the society had been founded for
the promotion of Learning, and removing that Epidemic Ignorance;

which exercises so incredible a Tyranny over the more numerous part
of Mankind: From such a Pen the World might expect Satisfaction, and
the Athenian Society Justice; the Charms of his Stile would engage all
to read, and his Wit and variety of Learning give them proportionable
Ideas of those Excellencies, he would commend them. […] Their [the
Athenian Society’s] whole design is not only to improve KNOWLEDGE
in DIVINITY, and PHILOSOPHY in all their parts, as well as Philology in
all its Latitude, but also to commend this Improvement to the Publick, in
the best method, that can be found for our Instruction;36
With this project, the “Athenian Society” accepted the cultural inheritance of
ancient Athens. The author of the History furthermore explained that “polite-
ness and learning” had originally been brought from Greece to Rome, from
whence they had subsequently spread across the entire Western world:37
All that know any thing of History, or have read any of the old Authors,
must be sensible, that Athens was in that veneration with Antiquity, that
it was the only place of Study in those days, and from thence was all Eu-
rope civiliz’d, and taught Arts, and Sciences.38
Gildon observed that hitherto the English had mainly praised Rome for these
cultural achievements, but that it was in fact Greece that had been the cradle
35 Brean Hammond, Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670–1740: “Hackney for

Bread” (Oxford, 1997), 155–160. See also Berry, Gender, Society and Print Culture, 27 and
Berry, “Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England,” 66ff. Berry opposes Hammond’s view
and claims that the Athenian Mercury did not make polite, but impolite questions and
answers possible.
36 Gildon, History of the Athenian Society, i, 1.
37 Ibidem, 2.
38 Ibidem, 9.
142 Zabel
of politeness, philosophy and art. Even the Romans had realized as much,
and had therefore traveled to Greece to obtain the best possible education. In
the course of time, the author continued, the knowledge and wisdom of the
Greeks and Romans had been largely lost—a development that had brought
nothing but darkness to the Western world.39 Fortunately, however, help was
now at hand, since the “Athenian Society” was ready to accept the inheritance
of ancient Athens by bringing knowledge and wisdom to everyone who so de-
sired. According to Gildon, the educational method of questions and answers
was entirely new and could not have been devised by any other nation, and
was a testimony to the present grandeur of the English mind.40 Yet the cultural
achievement of ancient Athens remained of such fundamental importance
that it was fitting that Athens served as a model and point of reference for the
enlightening projects of the “Athenian Society.” Gildon explained:
I shall conclude this First part of my History with the Reasons, why they
assumed the Title Athenian […]. If they had taken the Name of Lacede-
monian, indeed it would have looked something odd, and as if it were
done in spite of Learning, to borrow a Titel from that place, which scarce
ever afforded a Philosopher, or any Man of Learning; but the Athenians
were the most curious, and inquisitive People of Antiquity, as that Verse I
have before quoted out of the Acts, demonstrates […].41
As Athens had once done, London should now bring light to the world and
civilise Europe again. The Society insisted that London was the new Athens. It
was not only Gildon who maintained this, but similar claims could be found in
various poems that stressed the analogy between ancient Athens and modern
London. Pierre-Antoine le Motteux (1663–1718), an English citizen of French
origin, elaborated on the theme in a poem printed in Gildon’s History:
Sons of the Muses, at whose welcome Birth

Auspicious Phœbius cheer’d the Trooping Earth,
By whom once more old Learned Athens lives,
39 Ibidem, 2.
40 Ibidem: “England has the Glory of giving Rise to two of the noblest Designs, that the Wit
of Man is capable of inventing, and they are, the Royal Society, for the experimental im-
provement of Natural Knowledge, and the Athenian Society for communicating not only
that, but all other Sciences to all men, as well as to both Sexes; and the last will, I question
not, be imitated, as well as the first, by other nations.”
41 Ibidem, 9.
Our great Metropolis new Fame receives,

And a more gentle Air our Northern Climes revives,
[…]
Through Learning’s boundless Sea your course pursue,
Vast undiscover’d Regions wait for you.
The mighty Work much Art, much Toyl demands,
And even Apollo wants assisting Hands.
In dismal shades the ancient World did stray,
Till Athens Wisdom did its Light display;
Athens once more must change our Darkness into Day.42
Gildon’s History of the Athenian Society signaled a transformation of the func-

tion of ancient Athens in English public discourse. The city was now not only
regarded as the cradle of learning and wisdom, but also became the ideal ex-
ample and model for politeness—a virtue that subsumed the art of conver-
sation, philosophical freedom, Christian manners and learning, wisdom, and
education for all citizens, not only for an aristocratic elite. The History’s anal-
ogy between Athens and London would moreover prove to be singularly fruit-
ful and would be further developed by Gildon’s successors.
Gildon was confident that the English project would be followed and emu-
lated all over the world, since it had the potential to improve education every-
where, also and particularly for those who possessed the requisite mental and
intellectual disposition, but lacked financial means. Such people could now
learn from the ancient masters through the mediation of the “Athenian So-
ciety.” The necessity of this project was all the more evident to Gildon since
the French already had taken similar initiatives and had moreover solved the
problem of the inaccessibility of the classical texts by translating them. The
French, it seemed to him, excelled in these matters because they had the fi-
nancial support of the crown. In England, however, everything depended on
booksellers, in other words on John Dunton, who worked without any support.
Since the English crown apparently hardly cared for the education of the citi-
zen, the “Athenian Society” had taken on this role and had now made already
existing knowledge accessible for all. Because England did not have figures
such as Richelieu, it was all the more necessary to embrace the Society’s work:
“that you who had no Richelieu to cherish your Essays, or guard your Rising
Merit, were ablest to Patronize that, which chiefly aim’d at giving the World a
Draught, in little, of what it ow’d to you Incomparable Performances.” Gildon
was certain that making the works of the most illustrious men available and
42 Ibidem, Epistle Dedicatory.

144 Zabel
accessible to all Englishmen and -women would have an extraordinarily ben-

eficial effect on the well-being of the country in general, and on the fine arts
and the sciences in particular.43
Gildon kept returning to his conviction that the best example to follow was
ancient Athens. Even in the context of discussing French achievements, he
listed all the famous and illustrious men that Athens had brought forth and
explained how ancient Athens had flourished and had civilised the world:
‘T would be endless to mention but the Names of all those that have
flourished in every Science, and Art in this famous City. From what I have
here produc’d, will sufficiently appear, that since all the Arts, and Learn-
ing of the old World owed their Beginning (nay, and perhaps perfection
too, thought afterward lost in the Inundation of Barbarity which from the
North over-run all Europe) to Athens, with just Reason did this Learned
Society make choice of that Appellation, whose Aim it is to advance all
Knowledge, and diffuse a general Learning through the many, and by that
civilize more now, in a few years, that Athens it self did of old during the
Ages it flourished.44
That the cultural flourishing of England could only be realised through emu-
lation of the model of ancient Athens and through the creation of a modern
“Athenianism” was a message also evident in the emblem of the “Athenian
Society,” which served as the frontispiece of the History (see figure 6.1). The
engraving by the Dutchman Frederick Hendrik van Hove shows a panorama
arranged in five rows. The lowest row displays the university cities of Oxford
and Cambridge, with people leaving on horses and in coaches. The second row
presents a scene in which those leaving the cities are attacked, perhaps even
thrown out of these famous institutions of learning, and then turn to the Athe-
nians for help (“help help help noble Athenians”). In the centre of the engrav-
ing one sees the (modern) Athenians, sitting at a table like Christ’s disciples
in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. Those driven from Oxford
and Cambridge are standing before them and are handing them sheets with
questions. In the left and right upper corners, Athens and Rome are depicted
as the places that have brought light and education to the world. Athens is seen
as the origin of education and politeness, Rome as its heir, and the “Athenian
Society” as the modern guardian of this precious cultural inheritance. The em-
blem makes it clear that, as Gildon also maintained, it was only through the
43 Ibidem.
44 Ibidem, 9.
Figure 6.1 Frontispiece to Charles Gildon, The History of the Athenian Society

(London, 1692).
146 Zabel
Society that the battle against the “tyranny of ignorance” could be successfully
waged, and that the universities of Cambridge and Oxford had singularly failed
to perform this crucial task.
Shaftesbury’s Athenian Politeness
That Athenian politeness was a theme predominantly of interest to Whig the-

orists was, among other things, apparent from the fact that a group of Real
or Old Whigs, or so-called Commonwealthmen (including Joseph Addison,
Walter Moyle, John Trenchard, and Henry Neville), met in London’s Grecian
Coffeehouse during the 1690s to discuss matters of philosophy and ancient
history.45 In The Tatler, Richard Steele described what went on there (“Grecian
Coffeehouse, April 22”): “While other parts of the town are amused with the
present actions, we generally spend the evening at this table in inquiries into
antiquity, and think any thing new which gives us knowledge.”46 In January
1710, Steele further explained:
The Athenians, at a Time, when they were the most polite, as well as the
most powerful Government in the World, made the Care of Stage one of
the chief Parts of the Administration: And I must confess, I am aston-
ished at the Spirit of Virtue which appeared in that People upon some
Expressions in Scene of a famous Tragedy.47
Previously, Steele had already observed: “The Athenians were at that Time the
Learned of the World.”48 It was, however, the Whig theorist Anthony Ashley
Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, who, as Lawrence Klein has shown, most
extensively dwelled on Athenian politeness, particularly in his Characteristics
of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, published in 1711.49 In this work Shaftesbury
45 For the notion of Commonwealthmen see, for example, Rachel Hammersley, The Eng-
lish Republican Tradition and Eighteenth-Century France. Between the Ancients and the
Moderns (Manchester, 2010); for the Grecian Coffeehouse see Jonathan Harris, “The
Grecian Coffee House and Political Debate in London 1688–1714,” The London Journal 25
(2000): 1–13.
46 The Tatler, 6 (London, 21–23 April 1709). See also: Harris, “The Grecian Coffee House,” 4f.
47 The Tatler, 122 (London, 17–19 January 1710).
48 The Tatler, 92 (London, 8–10 November 1709).
49 Anthony Ashly Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners,
Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge, etc., 1999); Lawrence E. Klein,
Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness. Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in early
e ighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1994); Lawrence E. Klein, “The Third Earl of
praised the ancients for having given philosophy a prominent role in public life
and for having allowed it a leading role in structuring conversation and social
interaction. He regarded philosophy as deeply embedded in Western culture
and history, and was convinced that the imperatives of self-knowledge and of
self-improvement were core elements in Western philosophy. As a result of
these strongly held convictions, he pleaded for Greek paideia and modern po-
liteness as the road to intellectual, aesthetic and ethic cultivation.50
In comparison to Greek antiquity, Shaftesbury pointed out, his own age at-
tached regrettably little importance to philosophy.51 He proceeded to explain
that philosophy, a discursive public life, and politeness were intimately related
and that ancient times had been more polite than modern times since they
had ascribed a central role to public life.
It is for that reason, I verily believe, that the ancients discover so little of
this spirit, and that there is hardly such a thing found as mere burlesque
in any authors of the politer ages. The manner indeed in which they
treated the very gravest subjects was somewhat different for that of our
days. […] They chose to give us the representation of real discourse and
converse by treating their subjects in the way of dialogue and free debate.
The scene was usually laid at table or in public walks or meeting places,
and the usual wit and humour of their real discourses appeared in those
of their own composing. And this was fair. For without wit and humour,
reason can hardly have its proof or be distinguished. The magisterial
voice and high strain of the pedagogue commands reverence and awe.52
Shaftesbury and the Progress of Politeness,” Eighteenth Century Studies 18 (1984–1985):

186–214.
50 Lawrence E. Klein, “Introduction,” in: Shaftesbury, Characteristics, ix. For Shaftesbury’s
aesthetics and its connection to his moral philosophy see John Andrew Bernstein, “Shaft-
esbury’s Identification of the Good within the Beautiful,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 10
(1977): 304–325. About the importance of ancient Greece Bernstein observes: “The idea
that aesthetic and moral values possess a profound affinity for one another has roots deep
in the Greek sources of Western philosophic ethics” (304). For a further reading of Shaft-
esbury’s aesthetics and of his critique of culture see Dabney Townsend, “Shaftesbury’s
Aesthetic Theory,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 41(1982): 205–213 and Preben
Mortensen, “Shaftesbury and the Morality of Art Appreciation,” Journal of the History of
Ideas 55 (1994): 631–650.
51 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, “The Moralist, a Philosophical Rhap-
sody,” in: Shaftesbury, Characteristics, 231–338: 232 f.
52 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, “Sensus Communis, an Essay on the
Freedom of wit and Humour in a Letter to a Friend,” in: Characteristics, 29–69: 35. See also
Shaftesbury, “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm,” in: Ibidem, 14.
148 Zabel
In antiquity—and Shaftesbury repeatedly made it clear that he was primar-

ily concerned with Greek, and particularly of Athenian antiquity—people ha-
bitually discussed serious and important political and philosophical topics in
dialogues and free debates. With this interpretation of antiquity, Shaftesbury
boldly and directly opposed the views of Hobbes, who had held antiquity, and
above all Athenian antiquity, responsible for the bloody tumults of his own
times.53 For Shaftesbury reading the ancient authors did not lead to civil strife
and violence, but contributed to a salutary awareness of the necessity of free
discussion, public life, and politeness in both commerce and language. As a
result, these ancient texts were capable of generating concord among the citi-
zens of every conceivable commonwealth.54
As a Whig theorist, Shaftesbury regarded liberty as the basis of peace and
harmony, yet his definition of it was quite different from that of seventeenth-
century English republicans.55 For Shaftesbury, the concept of liberty referred
not merely to the state, but primarily to the freedom of public speech. Liberty
was thus an essential part of politeness, which moreover was not to be found
in the royal court or among the traditional nobility, but—as in La Bruyère—in
the capital of the kingdom. Politeness, of Greek origin, thus entailed a deep
commitment to the well-being of a community and a deep sense of the equal-
ity and the shared rights of human beings.56
For Shaftesbury, it is clear, politeness was a concept that went far beyond
mere rules of good conversation or behavior. Conversation was at the heart of
this commitment and thus perhaps the most salient characteristic of polite-
ness. Since conversation depended on the existence of a public arena, where
citizens could equally participate in political conversation as well as in the
decision-making-process, politeness was directly linked to political liberty, de-
fined as political participation.57 This line of argument allowed Shaftesbury,
53 Shaftesbury regarded Hobbes as a wild character and suggested that he could have profit-
ed from the study of both Greek philosophy and the Greek art of life. Shaftesbury, “Sensus
Communis,” 42.
55 Hammersley, The English Republican Tradition and Eighteenth Century France, 14–32.
56 Shaftesbury, “Sensus Communis,” 48: “They make this common sense of the poet, by
Greek derivation, to signify sense of public weal and of the common interest, love of the
community or society, natural affection, humanity, obligingness, or that sort of civility
which rises from a just sense of the common rights of mankind, and the natural equality
there is among those of the same species.”
57 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, “Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author,” in:
Characteristics, 70–162: 107; see also Lawrence E. Klein, “Liberty, Manners and Politeness
in Early Eighteenth Century England,” Historical Journal 32 (1989): 583–605: 588f.
as Lawrence Klein has pointed out, to connect the language of the civic tra-
dition with the language of politeness and to redefine traditional republican
virtues such as freedom, non-dependence and modesty as sociability, urbanity,
decency, rhetorical skill and conversation.58 As La Bruyère had done before
him, Shaftesbury turned away from a courtly conception of politeness and
firmly located politeness in the city (London, in his case), which he regarded
as the proper centre of public life. Shaftesbury’s conception of politeness and
his redefinition of liberty in largely cultural terms evidently also had profound
implications for the way ancient models could be used. Sparta, for obvious
reasons, was of no use to him. Neither was Rome, for although he included it
among the politer nations, its politeness had been derived from that of Greece
in general and that of Athens in particular. Only ancient Greece could there-
fore legitimately be regarded as the source and cradle of politeness, and as a
suitable model for contemporary England:
The Greek nation, as it is the original to us in this respect to these po-

lite arts and sciences, so it was in reality original in itself. For whether
the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Thracians or barbarians of any kind may
have hit fortunately on this or that particular invention, either in agri-
culture, building, navigation or letters, whichever may have introduced
this rite of worship, this title of deity, this or that instrument of debates
among the learned, it is evident, beyond a doubt, that the arts and sci-
ences were formed in Greece itself. It was there that music, poetry and
the rest came to receive some kind of shape and be distinguished into
their several orders and degrees. Whatever flourished or was raised to
a degree of correctness or real perfection in the kind was by means of
Greece alone, and in the hands of that sole polite, most civilized and
accomplished nation.59
Shaftesbury now derived his entire cultural genealogy from ancient Greece. In
his Miscellaneous Reflections he made it clear that the ancient Greeks had been
the first to polish their language. Since politeness operated through language,
it thus entered into all aspects of Greek cultural life. In this way, the r efinement
of language became paradigmatic for all the expressive arts, including music,
poetry, rhetoric, architecture, painting and sculpture.60 Because they shared
58 Ibidem, 584.
59 Anthony Ashley Coopers, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, “Miscellany iii,” in: Characteristics,
395–418: 397.
60 See also Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, 202.
150 Zabel
the task of governing their commonwealth, the Greeks—and above all the
Athenians—learned to speak in public and to refine their rhetorical skills.
Thus the ancient Greek example once again served to demonstrate that politi-
cal liberty leads to the refinement of language and taste and thereby generates
politeness.61
For Shaftesbury, ancient Greece and its history served as the prime example
of politeness in language, daily commerce and the fine arts. Far from espous-
ing a vague and general philhellenism, however, he sharply focused on ancient
Athens. He insisted that ancient nations and ancient times had been politer
than the modern age was; that Greece had been the politest nation in antiq-
uity; and that within Greece Athens had been the unparalleled centre of po-
liteness and cultural excellence:
As the intelligence in life and manners grew greater in that experienced

people [the Greek nation], so the relish of wit and humour would natu-
rally in proportion be more refined. Thus Greece in general grew more
and more polite and, as it advanced in this respect, was more averse to
the obscene buffooning manner. The Athenians still went before the rest
and led the way in elegance of every kind.62
Ancient Athens was the only relevant historical example, the single available
model that successfully combined political liberty, public life, sociability and
cultural achievements. It was only through the Athenian example that the case
for redefining traditional virtues as polite virtues could be argued. In Shaftes-
bury’s cultural approach to liberty, the traditional republican models of Rome
and Sparta were entirely replaced by Athens.
It should be pointed out, however, that Shaftesbury was not original in turn-
ing to Athens as the great model for politeness. Even from the title of his Char-
acteristics it is clear that he was deeply influenced by the French moralist La
Bruyère, whose observations about ancient Athens had greatly impressed him
and whose concept of politesse as an urban form of civility he adopted.63 In-
spired by La Bruyère’s views, Shaftesbury described ancient Athens as a com-
munity shaped by public and free discussion, a phenomenon that had been at
the root of its politeness. Even the simplest Athenians had been educated in
61 Shaftesbury, “Miscellany iii,” 398f.

62 Shaftesbury, “Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author,” 112.
63 Shaftesbury’s personal notes contain a detailed excerpt of La Bruyère’s description of Ath-
ens: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Public Record Office 30/24/27/13:
14–16.
language and taste to such an extent that they thereafter polished and refined
everything they dealt with or produced. Shaftesbury regarded the absence of
significant public life and of the fruitful interaction between orators and audi-
ence as the main reason for the sorry state of the fine arts in contemporary
England. English authors undoubtedly attempted to please their audience, but
they failed to awaken its spirit in the manner of the Athenian philosophers,
poets and orators.64 Shaftesbury thus highlighted, as La Bruyère had done be-
fore him, the importance of public discussion. However, he differed from the
French moralist in his emphasis on the relationship between liberty and the
flourishing of the fine arts, a theme that had, as we have seen, also been promi-
nent in the seventeenth-century writings of Francis Rous. He also replaced La
Bruyère’s preoccupation with equality (between the new and the traditional
nobility) in public life with a preoccupation with liberty defined as political
participation. Shaftesbury thus adopted La Bruyère’s concept of politesse, but
at the same time shifted its meaning from equality to liberty in order to assimi-
late it to the English civic tradition.
When Shaftesbury, a former member of Parliament and the grandson of one
of the Whig founding figures, wrote his Characteristics between 1708 and 1711,
he had already withdrawn from active political life. Since the early 1690s he
had considered himself an Independent Whig, critical of both the court and
the governing (and in his eyes corrupt) Junto-Whigs. He had come to regard
the city of London as the best shield against undesirable courtly influence and
hoped it would become the centre of a public life similar to that of the ancient
Athenians. He idealised and propagated a form of urban life in which citizens
were free, equal and polite. The virtues of rusticity and rural life, formerly
espoused by the country interest and exemplified by the model of ancient Spar-
ta, were now increasingly abandoned as ideals for eighteenth-century England,
where, in the aftermath of the financial revolution, not only the gentry, but also
capital owners living in the city of London had gained considerable political
influence. Like La Bruyère, Shaftesbury extolled a polite and urban life above
the rustic and rural life of the gentry. For this new England, polite Athens in-
stead of rustic Sparta or catholic Rome served as the ideal example.
In espousing an urbanity that was only exemplified by ancient Athens,
Shaftesbury was attempting to discredit several of his political adversaries at
the same time. First of all, he struck a blow against a court he considered to
be corrupt and against the Tories he regarded as its supporters. Secondly, his
stance served as a criticism of France, a country he regarded as enslaved to
its monarchical court and as a present-day version of luxurious and imperial
64 See Shaftesbury, “Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author.”

152 Zabel
Rome.65 For the Independent Whig Shaftesbury, the French court was an in-
stitution fostering passivity and complacency, diminishing individual lib-
erty. As La Bruyère had already shown, its politesse was spurious and false.
Although evidently still in need of further refinement, the English genius
was nonetheless far superior to the superficial savoir-vivre that dominated
French culture:
It is evident our natural genius shines above that airy neighbouring na-
tion, of whom, however, it must be confessed that, with truer pains and
industry, they have sought politeness and studied to give the Muses their
due body and proportion as well as the natural ornaments of correctness,
chastity and grace of style.
For Shaftesbury the French, whatever their merits might be, were profoundly
shaped by a courtly culture which had succeeded in imposing a dreadful tyr-
anny on them.66
Such criticisms of France were crucial to Whig ideology after 1688. They
countered a Tory interpretation of history which asserted that French cul-
ture had been brought to England through the mediation of Charles ii and
James ii, both of whom had been in French exile, and that all English cultural
achievements where thus owed to the Stuart Kings.67 Shaftesbury, by contrast,
stressed the similarities between modern tyrannical France and ancient impe-
rial Rome, states which both had lost liberty and true politeness. And which
example could better serve to strengthen English pride against French ambi-
tions and pretensions than ancient Athens? It was Shaftesbury’s hope that the
example of ancient Athens would inspire the English to reform their manners
and to limit the influence of their court. If they succeeded in doing so, they
would culturally surpass the French. The Whig ideologist Shaftesbury thus op-
posed the Tory interpretation of recent English history by exposing the dangers
of the corrupt axis of France, Rome, and the Tories, and by once again pointing
to the desirability of taking ancient Athens as an example.68 His concept of
politeness was anti-Catholic, anti-Stuart, anti-French, anti-Tory and opposed
to the corruption of the court that had already enveloped a part the governing
65 For Shaftesbury’s views on contemporary France see Lawrence E. Klein, “The Figure of
France: The Politics of Sociability in England, 1660–1715,” Yale French Studies 92 (1997):
30–45.
66 Shaftesbury, “Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author,” 98.
67 Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, 177f.
68 Ibidem, 193 and Zabel, Polis und Politesse, 302–304.
Whig-Junta. His entire political message could be summed up by one historical

example: the ancient polis of Athens.
That Shaftesbury’s vision was of fundamental importance for the further
development of Whig ideology is clear from the fact that several Whiggish
periodicals adopted both his (and La Bruyère’s) concept of politeness and
its model, ancient Athens. The authors of these periodicals desired, as The
Spectator famously observed, to bring “Philosophy out of Closets and Librar-
ies, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables
and in Coffeehouses.”69 One can trace the presence of Shaftesbury’s image of
the p olite polis of Athens until the 1760s in such publications as The Tatler,
The Spectator, The World, and many others. In The Comedian, Or Philosophi-
cal Enquirer, which was published by the translator and writer Thomas Cooke
(1703–1756) between April 1732 and April 1733, the readers could even find a
poem taking up the analogy of Athens and London and adopting Shaftesbury’s
concept of Athenian-inspired urbanity:
London, an Ode.
Let antient Greece, for Arts and Arms renown’d,
Her Athens boast, whose Sons, preserv’d by Fame,
Still triumph over Time with Glory crown’d;
Proud City! Once tremendous in her Name!
While mighty Towns of former Days,
Now levell’d with the Dust, remain
Recorded for their letter’d Praise,
Or for the Numbers of their slain,
London, of the fairest Isle,
The Ornament and Honour stands;
Lo! Her Streets with Plenty smile,
Diffusing Blessing thro her Lands!70
By the middle of the eighteenth century, also schoolbooks dwelled on the

Athenian example and attempted to teach the young how and why the Athe-
nians had become the most eloquent and polite nation in the world.71
Throughout the middle decades of the century, imitation of the model of
ancient Athens continued to be viewed as a means to surpass the n
eighboring
69 The Spectator 1/10 (London, 1712 [12 March 1711]): 54.

70 The Comedian, Or Philosophical Enquirer 2 (London, May 1732): 26.
71 E.g. John Lockman, The History of Greece. By way of question and answer. In three parts. For
the use of schools (London, 1743).
154 Zabel
French monarchy. This was especially evident in the writings of Thomas Sher-
idan, a pro-English writer from Ireland. In 1756, he asked the readers of his
British Education if the English would not attract more people to their coun-
try if they followed the Athenian example in matters of philosophy, arts and
architecture:
[It] is evident from this circumstance, that the English artisans are uni-
versally allowed to exceed them in point of goodness of workmanship;
and had they the advantage in other respects also, what infinite sums
might be saved to this nation, that are now carried into France to en-
rich our enemies? and what large treasures might be brought into this
island from the other countries of the world, and even from France her-
self, to purchase such commodities as should be confessedly superior
to theirs? Would not this be the true way to bring down the power of
France, by cutting off the sources of her wealth? Would not this be the
means of lessening the admiration of her neighbours, and of raising the
glory of Britain upon her ruins? And would not the weakness of France
be the safety of England? Let us therefore suppose that architecture,
sculpture, with the several arts dependent on it, painting, poetry, and
music, were in as high a degree of perfection here as at Athens, and con-
sequently so far superior with regard to their state in France that there
could be no sort of competition; would not England in this case be the
country resorted to by the travellers of the whole world? Would not our
language be learned, and our noble authors studied by the people of all
nations? Would not the perfect knowledge which must then be spread
of our noble constitution, of our religion, of the glorious writings of our
philosophers and divines, strike them with awe and veneration, and
make them acknowledge an undoubted superiority in us over all other
countries? Would not London in this case become the capital not of
England, but of the world; and England be considered as a queen among
the nations?72
We can see here that the English reception of Athens was shaped by the French
image of Athens not only because English authors very closely read French
works on ancient Athens, but also because they thought that the imitation
72 Thomas Sheridan, British Education: or, the source of the disorders of Great Britain. Being
an essay towards proving, that the immorality, and false Taste, which so generally prevail,
are the natural and necessary Consequences of the present defective System of Education
(Dublin, 1756), 357f.
of Athens had brought France to its cultural and military power. English
authors writing from a Whig perspective tried to use an adapted version of
this French model in order to surpass the French themselves. The imitation
of ancient Athens was expected to lead to a period of artistic, philosophical
and architectural blossoming for England and to bring glory and wealth to
the country.
Conclusion
If we compare the English reception of ancient Athens in the mid-seventeenth

century to that same reception in the early and mid-eighteenth century, it is
obvious that a crucial change has taken place. In the initial context of classical
republicanism, Athens was discussed as a failed republic. It was held to have
been culturally successful, but had unfortunately also recklessly abandoned
the life of a free state, and had thereby become a negative example for Eng-
land. After the Revolution Settlement, this predominantly political reception
of ancient Athens was gradually replaced by a more cultural one. John Dun-
ton’s “Athenianism” and Shaftesbury’s views on the merits of Athenian culture
helped shape a Whig ideology in which Athens became the example of a polite
nation, of polite conversation, and of politeness in general. Athens now came
to be seen as the perfect model for an urban public life which was far removed
from a corrupt court, and which allowed and encouraged citizens to openly
discuss political and philosophical matters. It is for this reason that the praises
of ancient Athenian politeness were mainly sung in the periodical press, in
publications made available in the urban coffeehouses that were rapidly be-
coming the places “where one went to collect intelligence.”73 No wonder then
that the poet Samuel Butler (1612–1680) referred to the coffeehouse as “a kind
of Athenian School.”74 As early as the end of the seventeenth century, ancient
Athens ceased to be a negative example and became the model for a new ur-
banity that was seen as a shield against both the corrupt and corrupting court
and the undesirable influence of France. Ancient Athens provided the image
of a strong city peopled by highly educated and aesthetically refined citizens.
Its exemplary urbanity could serve as an inspiration to the m odern city dwell-
ers that were building a new financial world in London after the financial
73 Steven Pincus, “‘Coffee Politicians Does Create’: Coffeehouses and Restoration Political
Culture,” Journal of Modern History 67(1995): 807–834, 820.
74 Samuel Butler, “A Coffee-Man,” in: Characters, ed. Charles W. Davis (Cleveland, 1970),
256–258: 257; also see Pincus, “‘Coffee Politicians Does Create,’” 820.
156 Zabel
revolution. In the early eighteenth century, Athens therefore replaced the

formerly beloved republican models of Sparta and Rome. The references to
the socio-cultural model of Athens and its implications for urban and po-
lite behaviour, equality and liberty, could be summarised and styled as an
“ancient-polisism.”
chapter 7
Painting Plutarch: Images of Sparta in the Dutch

Republic and Enlightenment France
Wessel Krul
In the European intellectual tradition, few authors have had an influence and
popularity as long-lasting as Plutarch. His Moralia and his Parallel Lives, written
in the first century ad, were endlessly reprinted, translated and re-translated.
Since the Renaissance, Plutarch’s writings were, next to the Bible, the pre-
eminent source of moral examples. They defined what outstanding moral be-
haviour was and showed how to achieve it. Above all, Plutarch was a school
author. He was read at an early age. In his Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
remembered the excitement with which he, as a child, followed the actions
of the great men, until he knew long passages by heart.1 Many of Plutarch’s
stories became part of the common culture. Every educated person could be
expected to know them. Only in the course of the nineteenth century, when
classical morality began to play a less important role in public life, and when
the centre of interest shifted to historical explanations, his reputation began
to decline. It is no coincidence that Friedrich Nietzsche, in his diatribe against
the rise of historicism, in 1874 still admonished his readers: “Nurture your souls
on Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourself, while you believe in his heroes.”2
Plutarch’s biographies describe kings and generals, aristocrats and demo-
crats, but his writings are more particularly associated with what is now known
as classical republicanism. As a Greek author living in the first century of the
Roman Empire, he showed a distinct strain of nostalgia for earlier, suppos-
edly more straightforward ages. He praised the exploits of Alexander, but he
clearly felt more sympathy and respect for the Roman republic, for Athenian
democracy and for Spartan equality.3 His insistence on historia vitae magistra,
1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Confessions,” in: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1,

ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris, 1959), 9.
2 “Sättigt eure Seelen an Plutarch und wagt es, an euch selbst zu glauben, indem ihr an seine
Helden glaubt.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das L eben,”
(1874) in: Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke, vol. 1, ed. Karl Schlechta (München, 1954), 251.
3 This point was not lost on Rousseau: “De ces interessantes lectures […] se forma cet esprit
libre et républicain […] qui m’a tourmenté tout le temps de ma vie” (“Out of these interesting

158 Krul
on history as the teacher of life, made his work not only influential in educa-
tion, but also in the theatre and in the visual arts. Every time art theorists and
patrons tried to enlarge the scope of history painting, they referred to Plutar-
ch. “Only Plutarch can provide subjects worthy of the brushes of every painter
in Europe,” declared La Font de Saint Yenne in 1754, in one of his comments
on the present state of the visual arts in France.4 More than half a century
later, the best advice Jacques-Louis David could give to a pupil looking for an
appropriate subject still was: “Leaf through your Plutarch.”5 With David, the
republican tendencies in his classicism were obvious. But does this mean that
subjects taken from Plutarch always carry republican connotations, and there-
fore should be seen as signs of opposition towards the ancien régime? Was it
possible at all to transfer controversial political ideas into painting?
In this chapter, I will take a look at some scenes derived from Plutarch, both
in Dutch and in French art. I limit myself to subjects related to Sparta. In early
modern times, Plutarch was the almost exclusive source of knowledge about
ancient Sparta. Praise for Spartan institutions has always been regarded as be-
longing to the more radical manifestations of classical republicanism. It played
a prominent part in the ideology of the Jacobins during the French Revolution,
with whom David was closely associated. It seems an interesting test-case to
see in how far these radical aspects were reflected in the visual arts. Is “Sparta”
in painting loaded with the same connotations as it is in political thought, or
did the arts serve a different function?
Spartan Myths
Plutarch described the organisation of Spartan society in detail in his Lycurgus,

on the life of the legendary lawgiver and founder of the classical Spartan state.
Some of this material is briefly referred to in his lives of two Spartan military
leaders, Lysander and Agesilaus. He discussed Spartan institutions again in his
Agis and Cleomenes, the lives of the two Spartan kings who in the third century
readings grew the free and republican spirit that has tormented me all my life”). Rousseau,
Oeuvres, vol. 1, 9.
4 “Plutarque seul peut fournir des sujets dignes d’occuper les pinceaux de tous les peintres
de l’Europe.” La Font de Saint Yenne, Sentiments sur quelques ouvrages du Salon de 1753
(Paris, 1754), quoted in Jean Locquin, La peinture d’histoire en France de 1747 à 1785. Étude sur
l’évolution des idées artistiques dans la seconde moitié du xviiie siècle (1912, reprinted Paris,
1978), 164.
5 “Feuilletez votre Plutarque.” Jacques-Louis David, letter to A.-J. Gros, June 22, 1820, quoted in
Anita Brookner, Jacques-Louis David (London, 1980), 182.
Painting Plutarch: Images of Sparta 159
bc. tried to revive some of Sparta’s former greatness. More distantly related to
Sparta is his Phocion, about the Athenian general who, apparently out of ad-
miration for Spartan military discipline, rejected democracy, concluded a pact
with the Macedonians, and was executed in 318 bc. during a short-lived return
of democratic rule. Finally, two collections of moral examples and sentences
are usually ascribed to Plutarch, The Sayings of Spartans and the Sayings of
Spartan Women, in which the proverbial brevity of Spartan or “Laconic” speech
is illustrated.
Plutarch is vague about the dates of the earliest subjects of his Parallel
Lives. He apparently assumed that Lycurgus was active long before 600 bc.
As he himself wrote in the first century ad, this leaves a gap of at least 700
years between the author and the facts he related. By that time little was
left of traditional Spartan society and the unusual institutions that Lycurgus
supposedly introduced. Plutarch’s view of Sparta was not entirely without
historical foundation, but it was strongly coloured by an already centuries-
old idealisation of the past.6 The glorification of Sparta was not a modern
invention, but had its origins in Antiquity itself.7 His Life of Lycurgus there-
fore was, as Richard Talbert has cautiously put it, “the latest and fullest ac-
count of how Sparta’s admirers believed her to have been in the days of her
greatness.”8
From the sixteenth century, translations of Plutarch’s works became widely
available, first in Latin, but soon also in the vernacular languages. Deservedly
famous was the French translation by Jacques Amyot, published in 1559. It
6 Even among present-day historians it is a matter of controversy to what extent the laws and
institutions described in Plutarch’s Lycurgus reflect existing practices in ancient Sparta. Paul
Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia. A Regional History 1300–362 bc (Londen, 1979), for instance,
is sceptical, as is Karl-Wilhelm Welwei, Sparta. Aufstieg und Niedergang einer antiken Gross-
macht (Stuttgart, 2004), whereas Douglas M. Macdowell, Spartan Law (Edinburgh, 1986) and
Sarah B. Pomeroy, Spartan Women (Oxford, 2002) tend to accept much of the evidence. M.I.
Finley, “Sparta,” in: M.I. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History (London, 1975), 161–177, still is a
fundamental discussion.
7 On the growth of the Spartan myth in Antiquity, see François Ollier, Le mirage spartiate.
Étude sur l’idéalisation de Sparte dans l’antiquité grècque de l’origine jusqu’aux cyniques (Paris,
1933); François Ollier, Le mirage spartiate. iie Partie. Étude sur l’idéalisation de Sparte dans
l’antiquité grecque du début de l’école cynique jusqu’à la fin de la cité (Paris, 1943); E.N. Tiger-
stedt, The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity, 3 vols. (Stockholm, 1965–1978); the first
chapters of Elizabeth Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford, 1969) and
Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Athens on Trial. The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought
(Princeton, 1994).
8 Richard Talbert, “Introduction,” in: Plutarch, On Sparta, ed. Richard Talbert (London, 2005),
xiii.
160 Krul
was highly praised and frequently quoted by Montaigne in his Essais, and it
was still this version that two centuries later made such an impression on the
young Rousseau.9 From Plutarch, readers derived an image of Sparta that was
at the same time attractive and highly disturbing. The idea that a well-ordered
state could be created almost out of nothing by a wise lawgiver held a strong
appeal for all moralists. Many commentators thought Sparta admirable in its
discipline, its readiness to defend its freedom, its equality and its balanced
constitution. For, although it formally was a kingdom, it usually was seen as a
republic, because the kings had to share power with the five ephors, and could
in certain cases be deposed. Others were offended by the fundamental brutal-
ity of the Spartan system, its cruelty towards children and slaves, its neglect of
art and refinement, and—especially shocking to those brought up under strict
Christian morality—the freedom of Spartan women and its openly encour-
aged homosexuality.10
Although Plutarch made a distinction between institutions already existing
before Lycurgus, and other ones invented after his time, most writers in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw Lycurgus as the exclusive inventor
of the Spartan constitution. In the public discourse of the early modern age,
Sparta, already idealised in the classical sources, rapidly became subject to a
second idealisation or mythification. The Sparta of the humanists, moralists
and political theorists, was a semi-abstract concept, a model of a certain type
of society, based on a specific combination of ethics and institutions, which
one could applaud or deplore according to preference. The main point of dis-
cussion was not whether a society like this really had existed at some point
in time, but to what extent its principles could be used as an guideline or so-
lution for present-day problems.11 Plutarch, by his accessibility and immense
9 On Amyot and Montaigne, see A. Billault, “Plutarch’s Lives,” in The Classical Heritage in
France, ed. Gerald Sandy (Leiden, 2002), 219–235.
10 J.-L. Quantin, “Traduire Plutarque d’Amyot à Ricard. Contribution à l’étude du mythe de
Sparte au xviiie siècle,” Histoire, Économie et Société 7 (1988): 243–259, concludes that
the more shocking aspects of Spartan life in Plutarch’s Lycurgus were not minimised or
bowdlerised in the various French translations, rather the contrary.
11 On Plutarch and Sparta in early modern thought (and later), see Rawson, The Spartan
Tradition; Karl Christ, “Sparta-Forschung und Sparta-Bild,” in Sparta, ed. Karl Christ
(Darmstadt, 1986), 1–72; Volker Losemann, “Sparta. Bild und Deutung,” in Der Neue Pauly.
Enzyklopädie der Antike, vol. 15/3, ed. Manfred Landfester et al. (Stuttgart, 2003), 153–172;
Ian Macgregor Morris, “The Paradigm of Democracy: Sparta in Enlightenment Thought,”
in Spartan Society, ed. Thomas J. Figueira (Swansea, 2004), 339–362; Maxime Rosso,
La renaissance des institutions de Sparte dans la pensée française (xvie–xviiie siècle)
(Aix-en-Provence, 2005); Stephen Hodkinson and Ian Macgregor Morris, eds., Sparta in
popularity, confirmed the opinion that politics were first and foremost a mat-
ter of public morality.
The Dutch Republic
In so far as it has a propagandistic function, painting does rarely contest, but

usually confirms certain values. One might therefore expect to find represen-
tations of ancient Sparta, generally considered to be a republic, in a repub-
lican context, as a support of the official political ideology. This was indeed
the case in the Dutch Republic. It has often been assumed that there was no
scope for history painting in Holland, for lack of patronage from court and
church. Nonetheless a number of painters specialised in subjects from classi-
cal history and mythology, or occasionally accepted commissions of this sort.12
One of them was Caesar van Everdingen (1617–1687), who in 1660–61 painted a
large mantlepiece for the town hall in Alkmaar, depicting Lycurgus showing the
importance of education (Figure 7.1). The scene refers to a story which occurs
both in Plutarch’s Moralia and in the Sayings of Spartans: Lycurgus took two
puppies from the same nest, kept one of them at home and trained the other
for hunting.
Next he brought them in the assembly, put down some bones and deli-
cious tidbits, and then released a hare. Each of the two dogs went after
what it was used to; when the second of them had caught and killed the
Modern Thought. Politics, History and Culture (Swansea, 2012). General studies on the role
of antiquity in early modern ideas usually pay attention the subject as well, e.g. Chantal
Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France 1680–1789, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1995); Michel
Ganzin, ed., L’influence de l’antiquité sur la pensée politique européenne (xvie–xxe siècles)
(Marseille, 1998).
12 Although history paintings were only a small percentage of the whole Dutch painterly
production in the seventeenth century, enough of them have survived to fill several con-
secutive exhibitions: Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Dewey F. Mosby and Pieter J.J. van Thiel,
eds., God en de goden. Verhalen uit de Bijbelse en klassiek oudheid door Rembrandt en zijn
tijdgenoten (Amsterdam, 1981); Ben Broos, Liefde, list en lijden. Historiestukken in het Mau-
ritshuis (Den Haag, 1993); Albert Blankert et al., Hollands classicisme in de zeventiende-
eeuwse schilderkunst (Rotterdam, 1999); Peter Schoon and Sander Paarlberg, eds., Griekse
goden en helden in de tijd van Rubens en Rembrandt (Dordrecht, 2001). Apart from the
biblical tradition, however, the main source was Ovid. Cf. Eric-Jan Sluijter, De ‘heydensche
fabulen’ in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw. Schilderijen met verhalende onderwerpen
uit de klassieke mythologie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, circa 1590–1670 (Leiden, 2000).
162 Krul
Figure 7.1 Caesar van Everdingen, Lycurgus Showing the Importance of Education (1660–61).
Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar.
hare, Lycurgus said: “Citizens, do you see how, although these dogs belong
to the same family, their upbringing for life has made them turn out very
different indeed from each other? Do you see, too, how education is more
effective than birth for producing noble behavior?”13
13 Plutarch, “Sayings of Spartans,” in: Plutarch, On Sparta, 172. See also Plutarch, “The edu-
cation of children,” (Moralia 3ab) in: Plutarch, Moralia, vol. 1, transl. F.C. Babbitt (Cam-
bridge, ma, 1927), 12–13. A selection from the Moralia, including this part, was available
in a Dutch translation: R.T., Eenighe Morale of Zedige Wercken van Plutarchus, nieuwelycks
vertaelt (Amsterdam, 1634). The Parallel Lives had been translated from Amyot’s French
edition, with the strict Calvinist commentary by Simon Goulart the Elder: T’Leven der
doorluchtige Griecken ende Romeynen, tegen elck-anderen vergeleken (1603, reprinted
1644). Cf. Olga van Marion, “The reception of Plutarch in the Netherlands: Octavia and
Cleopatra in the Heroic Epistles of J.B. Wellekens (1710),” in Recreating Ancient History.
Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and Literatures of the Early Modern
Period, ed. Karl Enenkel, Jan J.L. de Jong and Janine De Lantsheer (Leiden, 2001), 213–234,
esp. 224–226.
The parable, with its stress on equality and acquiring rank by merit, can eas-
ily be adapted to republican or even democratic purposes. It was, as far as is
known, the first time the theme was used in a painting, but it had been il-
lustrated before in books on education. Otto Vaenius made an engraving of
Lycurgus and the two dogs for his Emblemata Horatiana (Antwerp, 1607). This
book, a kind of “Mirror for Princes,” was reprinted in 1646 with a dedication
to the French Queen Mother, and a recommendation to use it in the upbring-
ing of the young Louis xiv. In Vaenius’s engraving, the action takes place in a
market square, among a crowd of astonished burghers. Lycurgus is presented
as a bearded sage, an obvious analogy to that other great lawgiver, Moses. In
Van Everdingen’s painting, with its peculiar perspective, the scene is appar-
ently situated in a large room.14 Lycurgus, here shown as a young man, sits on
a kind of throne formed by three steps. He is surrounded by a group of serious
and thoughtful bystanders, some of them dressed like orators, others armed
and crowned with oak and laurel wreaths.
Van Everdingen obviously attempted to bring the subject into a more el-
evated sphere. It has been plausibly suggested that his painting for the Alk-
maar town hall referred to the obligations the city had accepted towards the
education of the young prince of Orange, the later William iii.15 The fact that
Lycurgus is portrayed as a young man fits the chronology of his activities in
Sparta. The demonstration with the two dogs must have taken place early in
his career, when he still had to convince the Spartans of the value of the insti-
tutions he had devised. The scene as a whole also symbolises the young Dutch
state, which had struggled for some time to find the right constitution, and
which was now, under the supervision of Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt, fi-
nally organised as a “True Republic.” This is why the representatives of the law
and the military look on in grave thought, as if conscious of the historical im-
portance of the moment.
The idea of the “True Republic,” that is, of a constitution in which the semi-
monarchical element represented by the House of Orange was excluded or mi-
nimised, bitterly failed in 1672, when Holland was attacked from all sides and
executive power was entrusted to the now adult William iii. After his death
in 1702, however, the province of Holland again decided to leave the office of
14 The figures seem to be seen simultaneously from below and at ground level. Cf. the entry
by Albert Blankert in Hollands classicisme in de zeventiende-eeuwse schilderkunst, 208–211
(catalogue nr. 37).
15 J.B. Bedaux, “Discipline for innocence. Metaphors for education in seventeenth-century
Dutch painting,” in: J.B. Bedaux, The Reality of Symbols. Studies in the Iconology of Nether-
landish Art (Maarssen, 1990), 109–169, esp. 155–160.
164 Krul
Stadtholder vacant. In the Republic as a whole this situation was not considered
definitive, and in the next decades a period of indetermination followed, dur-
ing which various plans for political reform were proposed. In this context, a
painter from Amsterdam once more chose a scene from Plutarch’s Lycurgus as
a comment on his times.
Isaac Walraven (1686–1765), a pupil of Gérard de Lairesse, was one of the few
Dutch artists who consequently tried to imitate French classicism in the grand
manner of Nicolas Poussin. Walraven was the son of a successful goldsmith,
who left him a considerable fortune. As he did not have to sell his paintings, he
kept them at home, and for a long time they were only known in the circle of
connaisseurs and collectors to which he himself belonged. In 1751, the publica-
tion of Johannes van Gool’s biographies of contemporary painters brought his
work to a wider attention.16 Walraven’s main claim to fame, according to Van
Gool, was his Death of Epaminondas, finished in 1726. The death on the battle-
field of the heroic Theban commander in 362 bc was a suitably tragic subject
for history painting. Plutarch offered no help here, as his life of Epaminondas
has not survived. Van Gool tells us nothing about Walraven’s reading or his in-
tentions, but it is probable that the subject of a great leader, who tried to unite
the Greeks in a stable alliance, but perished in the attempt, at least contained
an oblique reference to the disagreements dividing the United Republic.17
This seems all the more likely since, as Van Gool tells us, Walraven planned
to paint a counterpart to his Epaminondas under the title Lycurgus showing
the young Charilaus to the Spartan military leaders. The story is from Plutarch’s
Lycurgus, 3.1–4: Lycurgus had just succeeded his deceased brother as king in
Sparta, when the news reached him that his brother’s widow was pregnant.
In secret she offered to undergo an abortion on the condition that he, who
had already been acclaimed as king, would marry her. Lycurgus pretended to
agree to the pact, but he also pretended to be concerned about her health, and
persuaded her not to have the abortion. As soon as the baby would be born,
and if it was a male child, he would find means of doing away with it. At the
time when she was in fact going to give birth, he ordered his servants to bring
any male child immediately to him. So it happened, but Lycurgus, who was
having a meal with the Spartan magistrates, showed the baby to them with the
words “Spartiates, a king is born to you.” He laid it on the king’s seat, and called
16 Johannes van Gool, De Nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche Kunstschilders en Schilderes-

sen, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1751).
17 On Walraven’s Epaminondas, now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, see Reinier Baars-
en, Robert-Jan te Rijdt and Frits Scholten, Nederlandse kunst in het Rijksmuseum 1700–1800
(Amsterdam, 2006), 57.
it Charilaus, that is “People’s Joy.” Not much later, to prevent suspicion that he
wanted to regain power, he went on the travels during which he acquired much
of his political wisdom.18
No eighteenth-century reader can have missed the similarities to the New
Testament. Considering, however, that Walraven thought of his painting as a
companion to his Epaminondas, a more direct political intention may have
been present. If Epaminondas showed his frustration about the political dis-
cord in the Republic, his choice of Lycurgus and Charilaus may have expressed
his hope that someone might be born, or already was born, who would pave
the way towards a revision of the Dutch constitution. Sadly, Walraven never
completed the painting. Van Gool said that “he had already made the drawing
and all the necessary preparations, but the death of his father, which occurred
soon afterwards, caused him to abandon his plans, as from this time onwards
he had to occupy himself with other matters.”19 Perhaps he now thought, with
his recently acquired wealth, that doing manual work was below his status.
Or did he feel that the whole project was beyond his capacities? Modern art
historians have judged his Epaminondas rather severely.20 In any case, no other
Dutch painter attempted to follow in his footsteps.
France: Changing Perspectives
The Parallel Lives remained immensely popular throughout the eighteenth

century, perhaps even more than they already were. In France, Amyot’s clas-
sic text was supplemented by André and Anne Dacier’s new annotated trans-
lation, which began to appear posthumously in 1721. Other translations and
reprints followed regularly.21 Whole generations were, like the young Rous-
seau, inspired by Plutarch with a lasting desire to emulate the greatness of the
ancients. Madame Roland wept for not being a Greek or Roman, when she first
read Plutarch.22 Charlotte Corday is said to have spent the day absorbed in
18 My summary; in Plutarch’s Lycurgus the episode is told in more detail. Cf. Plutarch, On
Sparta, 5, and Plutarch’s Lives, vol. 1, transl. B. Perrin (Cambridge ma, 1914), 210–211.
19 Van Gool, De nieuwe Schouburg, vol. 2, 121.
20 Baarsen et al., Nederlandse kunst in het Rijksmuseum 1700–1800, 57.
21 Locquin, La peinture d’histoire en France, 159, n. 1, lists complete or partial French editions
of Plutarch in 1723, 1724–1734, 1728, 1753, 1759, 1762, 1763, 1777, 1778, 1784 and 1783–1787. See
also Harold Talbot Parker, The Cult of Antiquity and the French Revolutionaries (Chicago,
1937), 28–31 and Quantin, “Traduire Plutarque.” The century closed with a new translation
by the abbé Dominique Ricard, published in 1798.
22 Parker, The Cult of Antiquity, 38–39.
166 Krul
Plutarch, before she murdered Marat.23 “Already at forehand we were full of

admiration for the laws of Lycurgus and the tyrannicides,” said the novelist
Charles Nodier about his schooldays before the Revolution.24
In the course of the century, two important changes of perspective took
place. Traditionally, Plutarch was used as a source of moral examples, which
could be applied to actual situations without much concern for their original
context. Gradually however, especially in France, the discussion concentrated
with growing intensity on the question, not whether a text like Lycurgus of-
fered general moral guidelines, but in how far Spartan society, as Plutarch had
depicted it, could be used as a model for the contemporary world. This is to
say that, in the first place, the way in which Plutarch was read acquired a more
historical dimension. This was not yet a modern conception of history, as an
interest in practical morality or virtue held the upper hand; but there was a
growing awareness that virtue depended on social circumstances. Individu-
als could be virtuous, but societies as a whole could be so too, and a virtuous
society often was a precondition for personal moral excellence. Montesquieu
treated the problem at great length in his Esprit des Lois, and he was imitated
by many other political writers. Comparisons between past and present were
a standard part of their argumentation. If Spartan institutions had been as ex-
cellent as Lycurgus led one to believe, they could provide a solution for the
ills and ailments of the present. In this way, secondly, Plutarch, and his Sparta
in particular, became a source of oppositional and finally even revolutionary
thinking.
Alongside the classical authors, historical compendia now also began to de-
termine the public image of antiquity. An enormous success was Charles Rol-
lin’s Histoire ancienne, published between 1730 and 1738, but often reprinted
and re-edited in abridged versions. “Rollin” remained the standard history up
to the Revolution. It has been remarked that the frequent references to antiq-
uity in revolutionary oratory rarely went beyond the information that Plutarch
and Rollin had to offer.25 Rollin had the great advantage of being clear and
systematic. In his chapter on Sparta, he contrasted a list of things he thought
worthy of praise with a list of things to be blamed. Praiseworthy (louable) were
the mixed constitution with its distribution of power among kings, ephors
and elders, the education by the state, the abolition of money, the economic
23 The story is already told by Michelet in his history of the Revolution (1847–53). Cf. Jules
Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution Française, ed. Gérard Walter, vol. 2 (Paris, 1952), 499.
24 Charles Nodier, Souvenirs, vol. 1 (Paris, 1831), 80–81; quoted in Klaus Herding, Im Zeichen
der Aufklärung. Studien zur Moderne (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1989), 21.
25 Parker, The Cult of Antiquity, 33–34; Claude Mossé, L’Antiquité dans la Révolution française
(Parijs, 1989), 62–63.
self-sufficiency, the general discipline, and the readiness to defend the com-
munity.26 To be rejected (blâmable) on the other hand, were the shallowness
of intellectual life, the indifference to cruelty, the idleness of the warrior class
in times of peace, the oppression of the farmers and slaves, and more in par-
ticular the Spartans’ lack of shame and decency. Rollin did not explain what he
meant by this, and how it corresponded with the virtuousness he at the same
time ascribed to them, but as a Christian author he was evidently shocked by
Plutarch’s detailed description of Spartan sexual habits.27
Rollin’s typology of a positive and a negative Sparta formed a background
to the Enlightenment debate on politics and reform almost up to the Revolu-
tion. The contrast became sharper during the 1760s, when the call for political
change became more and more urgent, and when authors like Rousseau and
the abbé de Mably began to recommend the Spartan model no longer as a
remote ideal, but as a serious solution to the problems besetting the absolut-
ist French monarchy and the kind of society it had produced. During these
years, more was written about Sparta than ever before, both favourably and
unfavourably. As the discussion was seen as immediately relevant for the pres-
ent, praise of Sparta and its wise lawgiver inevitably implied a critique of con-
temporary social and political institutions. In the light of the cult of Sparta
during the Revolution, especially by the Jacobins, such statements have often
been interpreted as proto-revolutionary. But this is misleading. About the
same time, during the 1760s, the first paintings with subjects taken from Sparta
were shown at the Salon, the great bi-annual art exhibition in Paris. From these
paintings it becomes clear that ideas about Sparta could still serve official pur-
poses, even if the same subjects later acquired different connotations.
Cochin and Choisy
In France no iconographical tradition existed in relation to Sparta. The subject

of Lycurgus and the two dogs, even though Vaenius’s version was recommend-
ed to the young Louis xiv, seems not to have attracted any French painter or
26 On Rollin as a defender of Sparta, especially with regard to public education, see

M. Legagneux, “Rollin et le ‘mirage spartiate’ de l’éducation publique,” in Recherches
nouvelles sur quelques écrivains des Lumières, ed. Jacques Proust (Genève, 1972), 111–162.
27 Rawson, The Spartan Tradition, 224; Macgregor Morris, “The Paradigm of Democracy,”
339–342; Rosso, La renaissance des institutions de Sparte, 237–243; Haydn Mason, “Sparta
and the French Enlightenment,” in: Hodkinson and Macgregor Morris, eds., Sparta in
modern thought, 71–104, esp. 76–77; Michael Winston, “Spartans and savages: mirage and
myth in eighteenth-century France,” in: Ibidem, 105–163, esp. 109–112.
168 Krul
patron. Plutarch had, of course, provided the subject of Poussin’s two grave
and majestic paintings on the death of Phocion, dating from 1648. But the
grand manner in history painting had gone out of fashion in France during
the predominance of the Rococo. Only after the mid-eighteenth century a de-
mand arose for a more elevated and serious art, fitting the circumstances of the
time.28 The desire that the official Salon should show a morally uplifting kind
of painting coincided with the growing concern for political reform. Some of
the most vocal critics of the ancien régime had pronounced opinions on a re-
newal of the arts. Denis Diderot saw an immediate connection between types
of governments and the visual arts they produced. “Under a monarchy, where
one commands and obeys, the character or expression will be one of courtesy,
grace, sweetness, honour, and gallantry.” Under a republic, on the other hand,
people looked “high, harsh and proud.”29 When he, time and again, declared
his preference for “a grand, plain and true manner,” even to the point of repeat-
ing that one should “paint like they spoke in Sparta,” it was clear in what direc-
tion his political sympathies went.30
Nonetheless, the first works on Spartan themes exhibited at the Salon show
how much the official world of the ancien régime and the world of the “philos-
ophes” were still entangled. Since 1751, the function of “directeur général des
bâtiments,” in practice a kind of surveyor of the arts, was in the hands of the
Marquis de Marigny, brother to Madame de Pompadour. In private, Marigny
conformed to the elegant Rococo taste in painting prescribed at court, but in
his official position he saw the need for a more didactic art. He was assisted in
this project by Charles Cochin (1715–1790), permanent secretary of the Royal
Academy of Painting and Sculpture, an artist and engraver who through his
28 Maurice Badolle, L’abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélémy (1716–1795) et l’Hellénisme en France dans

la seconde moitié du xviiie siècle (Paris, 1926), 401–403, lists the paintings with ancient
Greek subjects at the Salon exhibitions between 1753 and 1789. The titles show a gradu-
al shift from mythological to historical themes. See also Locquin, La peinture d’histoire,
251–253, and Grell, Le Dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France, 629, 1192–1196.
29 Denis Diderot, Essais sur la peinture; Salons de 1759, 1761, 1763, ed. Gita May (Paris, 1984), 42.
30 Denis Diderot, Salon de 1765, ed. E.M. Bukdahl and A. Lorenceau (Paris, 1984), 30; De-
nis Diderot, Héros et martyrs. Salons de 1769, 1771, 1775, 1781; Pensées détachées, ed. E.M.
Bukdahl, et al. Paris, 1995), 415. “Peindre comme on parlait à Sparte” is a saying attrib-
uted to Poussin. It must be added that Diderot’s critiques of the Paris Salon, written for
Grimm’s Correspondance Littéraire, had only a limited circulation, and that he was, as has
frequently been remarked, far from consistent in his artistic preferences. His insistence
on grandeur, severity and public morality was always counterbalanced by his desire for
private sensual enjoyment. See for instance Jean Seznec, Essais sur Diderot et l’antiquité
(Oxford, 1957), 101–103.
friendship with Diderot and Marmontel somewhat counted as a “philosophe”

himself.31 In 1760 Cochin invented a programme for the decoration of the Châ-
teau de Choisy, one of the summer mansions of Louis xv. Before the paintings
were put in place at Choisy, the designs, by a selected group of artists, were
shown at the Paris Salon as a gesture, clearly related to the ongoing war, in-
dicating a new sense of responsibility within the government.32 All subjects
had to do with charity, magnanimity, justice and self-sacrifice. Apart from a
number of scenes from Roman history there were a Solon having the Athenians
swear an oath on his laws, and a large drawing by Cochin himself, Lycurgus
showing himself to the people of Sparta after being wounded during a sedition
(Figure 7.2).
Figure 7.2 Charles Cochin, Lycurgus Showing Himself to the People of Sparta After Being
Wounded in a Sedition (1761).
Louvre, Paris, Dept. of Prints and Drawings.
31 The most comprehensive study is Christian Michel, Charles-Nicolas Cochin et l’art des lu-
mières (Rome, 1993).
32 Locquin, La peinture d’histoire, 23–25; Seznec, Essais sur Diderot, 98–99; James A. Leith,
The Idea of Art as Propaganda in France, 1750–1799 (Toronto, 1965), 73–76; Hugh Honour,
Neoclassicism (Harmondsworth, 1968), 23. See also Michel Hilaire, Sylvie Wuhrmann and
170 Krul
Cochin took the idea from Plutarch’s Lycurgus, 11.1–2. Lycurgus banned luxury
and tried to strengthen social cohesion by introducing a tradition of common
meals. Some of the richer inhabitants of Sparta protested and began to pelt
him with stones. Lycurgus tried to escape to the Agora, but when he arrived
there and turned round, one of his pursuers struck him in the eye with a stick.
“However, Lycurgus did not give in because of this blow, but stood to confront
the citizens and show them his bloodstained face and ruined eye.”33 After this
demonstration of courage, the Spartans felt ashamed and obeyed. Lycurgus
spared the life of his attacker, took him as a servant and educated him into
a responsible citizen. The story includes a number of standard virtues asso-
ciated with good government: justice, determination and strength, balanced
with unselfishness and forgiveness towards the enemy. In the context of the
actual political situation, Cochin may have had a more particular message in
mind. Lycurgus had, without regard for his own safety, tried to integrate the
well-to-do into the community by taking away some of their privileges. Similar
plans, which came down to a form of taxation of the nobility, were prominent
in government circles at the time, if only because of the cost of the war.
Cochin’s Lycurgus raised much comment when it was exhibited at the Sa-
lon in 1761. Diderot admired the way the sudden change in the Spartans from
anger to commiseration was depicted. On the whole he thought the drawing
“de grand goût,” by which he perhaps also was referring to the austere setting
of the scene, with its background of large Doric columns.34 But he found the
heroic posture of Lycurgus himself somewhat childish, with his finger point-
ing to his wounded eye.35 Here he touched upon the major weakness of the
design: its emphatic didacticism. The paradox, of course, was that a work like
this was intended as a decoration for one of the king’s pleasure haunts, itself
one of the symbols of privilege and neglect of public affairs. The king himself
was not pleased at all. Of Cochin’s whole scheme, only the subjects referring
to kings and emperors were installed at Choisy, and not much later Louis xv
decided that even these should be replaced with less demanding works by the
official court painter, François Boucher.36 The Choisy programme has been
Olivier Zeder, eds., Le goût de Diderot. Greuze, Chardin, Falconet, David … (Paris, 2013),
268–271.
33 Plutarch, On Sparta, 13.
34 Locquin, La peinture d’histoire, 246–247.
35 Diderot, Essais sur la peinture, 162.
36 The paintings showing Trajan and Marcus Aurelius were shown at the Salon in 1765, but
it is incorrect that the programme as a whole dated from the year before: Robert Rosen-
blum, Transformations in Late Eighteenth Century Art (Princeton, 1969), 56–57.
interpreted as a sign that in the early 1760s, even after the controversies over
the Encyclopédie, there still was a measure of agreement between the govern-
ment and the “philosophes,” at least in their attitude towards the nobility and
the “profiteers.”37 But to introduce such figureheads of classical republicanism
as Solon and Lycurgus as models for royal behaviour clearly was a step too far.
As an engraving by Demarteau in 1769, however, Cochin’s Lycurgus reached a
wide audience. To explain its meaning, it carried a long quotation from Plutar-
ch, which underlined its republican or even revolutionary potential. This was
of course far from Cochin’s original aims. The Lycurgue blessé may be seen as a
visual equivalent of the political terminology of the 1760s, which was gradually
adapted to new circumstances and acquired more radical connotations.38 Un-
der the Directoire, in the year v of the French Revolution (1796), the drawing in
red chalk by Cochin was one of the very few examples of eighteenth-century
French graphic art to be exhibited in the rapidly expanding collections of the
Louvre. By then, it could be seen as an expression of the revolutionary govern-
ment’s intentions to follow in the footsteps of the great Spartan statesman.39
It survived this transformation as well, and was on show in the museum until
well into the nineteenth century.40
Stoicism versus Hedonism
Cochin’s Lycurgus was part of the revival of interest in Sparta as a model for
contemporary society that emerged in the early 1760s. In his Quatrième lettre
sur le Salon de 1763, Charles Mathon de la Cour described how he was “en-
grossed in the study of Spartan customs,” and how he enjoyed pondering “the
severe laws of Lycurgus.” He eagerly desired “once more to become a Lacede-
monian citizen.”41 This renewed interest must be seen, on the one hand, as a
37 Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité, 550–552.

38 Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution. Essays on French Political Culture in
the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1990), 7–11.
39 After the fall of Robespierre in 1794 the name Sparta became associated with memories of
the dictatorship; moreover, many authors began to realise that the historical Sparta had
not been an ideal society at all. Nonetheless, Lycurgus’s constitution remained a point
of reference during the Directoire. See in particular Andrew J.S. Jainchill, Reimagining
Politics after the Terror. The Republican Origins of French Liberalism (Ithaca and London,
2008).
40 Michel, Cochin, 101.
41 Quoted in Locquin, La peinture d’histoire, 159. In 1767, Mathon de la Cour won the
first prize in a contest by the Royal Academy of Letters to write an essay on The reasons
172 Krul
sign of frustration with the apparent inability of the absolutist monarchy to

implement any effective reform, and on the other hand, as a contribution to
the ongoing debate about the origins of political and social virtue or moral-
ity. Plutarch and Rollin’s Histoire ancienne still set the terms. The conventional
view, as in Rollin, was that Lycurgus had made an admirable attempt at pre-
venting the growth of individual self-interest, but that the price he paid was a
neglect of the more refined aspects of life, and a grossly indecent pragmatism
in sexual matters. In most discussions of Sparta one of the two contrasting
aspects was stressed. Spartan egalitarianism always had its sympathisers. After
all, it was not incompatible with Christian principles. Others violently rejected
the whole Spartan idea, like Voltaire, to whom Spartan society was nothing but
a community of armed monks, “a sublime system of atrocity.”42 From the mid-
century onward, however, the clash of arguments became both more intense
and more complex.
In his De l’esprit, published in 1758, Claude Helvétius (1715–1771) outlined a
view of Sparta from the point of hedonism, not of asceticism, an interpreta-
tion he further developed in his posthumous De l’homme (1773).43 According
to Helvétius, Lycurgus had not tried to curb the passions, but had channeled
them into socially useful purposes. This was especially clear in Plutarch’s de-
scription of Spartan sexuality. The desire for sexual gratification was taken as
an incentive, both for men and women, to prove their worth as a member of the
community; those who had successfully done so were rewarded with sensual
pleasures. The wisdom of Lycurgus, and the reason why he, of all statesmen, had
best fathomed the human heart, was that his institutions did not run counter
to the basic human impulses, as did Christian morality. Helvétius’s writings en-
countered much opposition, not only from the church, but also from theorists
who found it hard to accept his materialism, and who held an exalted opinion
of Spartan sobriety and purity. Rousseau had already praised Sparta in his Dis-
cours sur les sciences et les arts (1750) as “a republic of demi-gods, rather than of
men.”44 In his Lettre à D’Alembert (1758), his Contrat social (1762), and various
other writings, such as his project for a Polish constitution (1772), it once again
appeared as an ascetic society, in which virtue was acquired through strict and
why and in what stages the laws of Lycurgus have been changed, until they were lost
altogether.
42 Voltaire, letter to Catherine the Great of Russia, 13 September 1774; quoted in Legagneux,
“Rollin,” 151.
43 Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité, 483–486.
44 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Ray-
mond (Paris, 1964), 12.
systematic education. He kept silent about the relative freedom that women
enjoyed in Sparta according to Plutarch, and, although he did not mention
his name, evidently rejected Helvétius’s recommendation of lust as a social
instrument.45
The most accessible and widely-read defense of the virtuous Sparta against
Helvétius were the Entretiens de Phocion by the abbé de Mably, published in
1763. Mably (1709–1785), perhaps the most consistent “Laconophile” in the
eighteenth century, had already set down his ideas in various treatises, but now
he decided to popularise them in the form of a dialogue. The subject was of
course inspired by Plutarch, whom Mably quoted in Dacier’s translation. Pho-
cion, a successful Athenian general from the fourth century bc, turned against
democracy, and concluded a pact with the Macedonians. Plutarch suggested
that he, who had always lived a life of the utmost discipline and sobriety, de-
cided to do so in the hope that they would bring back some of the social and
military virtues of Sparta in its heyday.46 When the democratic party briefly
regained power, he was summarily condemned to death. Not much later, a re-
habilitation followed.47
Mably’s Entretiens pretended to be an account by one of Phocion’s friends,
taken from a recently discovered manuscript, of conversations between the
old Phocion and an enthusiastic young Athenian, who is rapidly converted
from a life of luxury to discipline, self-sacrifice and service of the community.
The message is simple: a well-ordered state needs good laws and good govern-
ment, but to endure these must be based on virtue. “Without morals, the laws
45 In his Lettres écrites de la montagne (1764), Rousseau explained that he had not attacked
Helvétius openly, because this author was already being persecuted by the church and the
authorities: Rousseau, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 693.
46 Plutarch, Phocion, 20.2–3; cf. Plutarch, The Age of Alexander, ed. Ian Scott-Kilvert and
Timothy E. Duff (London, 2012), 253.
47 Plutarch is almost the only source about the life and career of Phocion. Whether he really
was moved by nostalgia for ancient Sparta is difficult to establish. The most one may say,
according to Nick Fisher, is that “it seems likely enough that Phocion […] did not object to
an association with some traditional Spartan values.” N.R.E. Fisher, “Sparta Re(de)valued.
Some Athenian public attitudes to Sparta between Leuctra and the Lamian war,” in The
Shadow of Sparta, ed. Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson (London, 1994), 347–400: 361.
On the Phocion legend in later times, see Andrew J. Bayliss, After Demosthenes. The Politics
of Early Hellenistic Athens (Londen, 2011), 10–48 and Johnson Kent Wright, “Phocion in
France: Adventures of a Neo-Classical Hero,” in Héroïsme et Lumières, ed. Sylvain Menant
and Robert Morrissey (Paris, 2010), 152–176. Several victims of the French revolutionary
Terror in 1793–94 thought of themselves as a new Phocion: Tolbert Roberts, Athens on
Trial, 196.
174 Krul
are useless.”48 A wise lawgiver therefore must educate his people. The governing
classes must realise that reason, not the passions, should be their guideline.
The primacy of reason necessarily leads to social equality, as reason is some-
thing everybody holds in common; and from this it follows that most other
things should be held in common as well.
Mably was not a very profound thinker, but his utopian vision of Sparta has
given rise to radically opposed interpretations. Because of his egalitarianism,
his rejection of commerce, luxury, and even of private property, he has
sometimes been regarded as a revolutionary and a proto-socialist. Oth-
ers have described him as a nostalgic conservative.49 It is difficult to estab-
lish whether he meant his programme as a serious proposal for political
reform, or as an intellectual protest against the spirit of the age. In the En-
tretiens, anyhow, his point of view is consistently aristocratic. The group
within which e quality should reign, does not include the common people.
“The people does not think.”50 By abolishing the laws of Solon, Aristides
paved the way for democratic rule. This became the downfall of Athens, for
“the restlessness and insolence of the people knows no bounds.”51 Those
who promoted Mably as an advocate of radical democracy, as did many Ja-
cobins during the French Revolution, should have been warned by his choice
of protagonist. The name “Phocion” above all referred to a disgraceful but
heroically endured death, imposed by a fickle and ungrateful populace.
This was the subject Poussin had chosen for his famous paintings of 1648.
There, the message was Stoicism: the wise man has to accept his fate; his vir-
tue will be recognised by posterity. With Mably, it was his version of classi-
cal republicanism, that is, an appeal to the French nobility not to give in to
commercial values.
48 [G.B. de Mably], Entretiens de Phocion sur le rapport de la morale avec la politique, traduits
du Grec de Nicoclès (Amsterdam, 1763), 182.
49 Johnson Kent Wright, A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France. The Political
Thought of Mably (Stanford, 1997), 7–15, gives a useful review of earlier interpretations,
which range over the whole political spectrum from proto-communism to a Christian-
inspired conservatism. Wright himself admits to an insoluble “ambiguity” in Mably (Ibi-
dem, 15). Rawson, The Spartan Tradition, 248, nicely expressed the paradox in calling him
a “nostalgic communist.” Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 86–106, takes Mably as
prime example of an author whose political vocabulary acquired new connotations in the
course of the Revolution.
50 Mably, Entretiens, 96.
51 Ibidem, 211. Tolbert Roberts, Athens on Trial, 162–163, lays particular stress on the anti-
democratic aspects of Mably’s writings.
Spartan Paintings
In spite of their popularity, no painter was inspired by Mably’s Entretiens to

depict scenes from the life of Phocion. The standard set by Poussin proved
hard to emulate.52 Moreover, Mably himself counted the fine arts among the
redundant luxuries. But there was a closely related subject which was repre-
sented with increasing frequency at the Salon, beginning in 1761 and culminat-
ing in David’s great work of 1787: the death of Socrates. The comparison was
already drawn by Plutarch himself. The direct counterpart in the Parallel Lives
was Cato of Utica, the stoic defender of the Roman Republic, but the final pas-
sages of the life of Phocion are full of references to Socrates. Both were forced
to drink hemlock, and both behaved with uncommon dignity during their final
hours. The death of an unjustly condemned heroic figure was in itself a suit-
ably tragic subject for history painting. In an actual context, it could be seen as
an indictment of any arbitrary measure against a prominent person, one of the
“philosophes” as well as a discharged government minister. To paint the last
moments of Socrates might be a sign of opposition, but it always also carried a
warning against the rule of the majority. This ambivalence was there even with
David in 1787.53
The preference for subjects like these reflected the increasing mood of grav-
ity and seriousness that pervaded the French art world in the 1770s and 1780s.
From 1774, under the reign of Louis xvi, the government official responsible for
the arts was the Comte d’Angiviller (1730–1810), who by various incentives tried
to stimulate a national programme of history painting.54 In this he succeeded
only to a certain degree. The majority of paintings exhibited at the Salon still
consisted of landscapes, portraits, still lives and genre scenes. Nonetheless,
52 Though it is not true that Poussin gave “the sole pictorial representations of Phocion in
European art,” as is asserted by Wright, “Phocion in France,” 157. Gioacchino Assereto
(1600–1649), a contemporary of Poussin, painted a Phocion Refuses the Gifts of Alexan-
der (Nantes: Musée des Beaux-Arts), and Jean Millet (1642–1679), a follower of Poussin,
a Landscape with Conopion Carrying the Ashes of Phocion (Southampton City Art Gallery,
uk). The catalogue of the Salon of 1787 mentions a Death of Phocion by Nicolas Monsiau
(1754–1837), and in the early nineteenth century the school of J.-L. David produced two
versions of the same subject by Joseph-Denis Odevaere (1775–1830) and Charles Brocas
(1774–1835), while Charles Meynier (1768–1832) painted a Burial of Phocion.
53 Thomas Crow, Emulation. Making Artists for Revolutionary France (New Haven, 1995),
95–99, looks for a radical tendency in the representation of homo-erotic sentiments in
David’s Socrates, not in its overt political message.
54 Leith, Art as Propaganda, 78–81; Thomas Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-
Century Paris (New Haven, 1985), 192–209.
176 Krul
in the decades before the Revolution the percentage of history paintings at

the Salon, with scenes from antiquity as well as from more recent history, al-
most doubled.55 Many of these depicted sombre, often tragic moments. In part
this had to do with the sources. Historians have always been best at describ-
ing human misery, as Cochin already complained to Marigny in 1761.56 But the
growing severity in style and subject was also related to an awareness that the
existing political system was running into unsurmountable difficulties. As an
instrument of winning sympathy for the government, therefore, D’Angiviller’s
programme ultimately proved counter-productive. In vain he asked Louis La-
grenée (1724–1805), the director of the French Academy in Rome, to send more
uplifting images.57
The increase in history painting does not necessarily implicate an increase
in historical erudition among the painters. For antiquity, Plutarch continued to
be the most frequently consulted author, supplemented by Rollin; and as many
editions of Rollin’s history were illustrated with competent engravings, the vi-
sual examples lay close at hand.58 The protracted debate on the merits of the
Spartan constitution that followed the publications by Rousseau and Mably
hardly left any trace in the visual arts. Between 1771 and 1789, only a handful
of paintings at the Paris Salon referred to Sparta.59 Most of these were entirely
uncontroversial, such as Noël Hallé’s Agesilas, King of Sparta, is surprised by
one of his friends while playing with his children (1779), which was obviously
meant to flatter king Louis xvi. In 1787, at the most neoclassicist Salon be-
fore the Revolution, Nicolas Monsiau contributed to the mood of heroic de-
spair with a Death of Phocion, alongside a drawing with the Death of Cato the
Younger. The only well-known French art work from this period on a Spartan
theme, however, is also the earliest: the Spartan Mother admonishing her son
by Lagrenée, exhibited at the Salon of 1771 (Figure 7.3).
The painting illustrates an example of Laconic speech from Plutarch’s Say-
ings of Spartan Women. A mother hands her son, who is going to battle, his
shield with the words: “Either with this or on this.” That is, you must return
either as a victor (with your shield) or as a victim (on your shield), having
55 Locquin, La peinture d’histoire, 251–253; Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité, 628–629.

56 Quoted in Leith, Art as Propaganda, 76.
57 Rosenblum, Transformations in Late-Eighteenth Century Art, 67, n. 2.
58 Peter S. Walch, “Charles Rollin and Early Neoclassicism,” The Art Bulletin 49/2 (1967):
123–126.
59 From the list of paintings with Greek and Roman subjects at the Salon between 1763 and
1789 in Grell, Le dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité, 1192–1196, only five seem to be related to
Sparta, and of these only three (by Lagrenée, Hallé and Monsiau) can be identified.
Figure 7.3 Louis Lagrenée, A Spartan Mother Admonishing her Son (1771).

Stourhead, Wiltshire (copyright National Trust).
given your life for the fatherland.60 Here, however, sentimentality, the other
side of neoclassicism, got the upper hand. In Lagrenée’s profusion of drapery
and plumage there was nothing to remind the viewer of the austerity preached
in Mably’s Phocion. Instead, we seem to be in the theatre, not in the world
60 Sayings of Spartan Women, 26, in: Plutarch, On Sparta, 186–187.

178 Krul
of Lycurgus, but in the Sparta from Greek mythology and Roman poetry, the
Sparta of Helen and Menelaos, or the Sparta full of amorous intrigues from
Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Castor et Pollux, first performed in 1737, and re-
vived every few years after 1754.
Lagrenée, usually called the Elder to distinguish him from his younger
brother and pupil Jean-Jacques, was an immensely prolific painter of mytho-
logical and historical scenes.61 He was also a more or less official artist. In 1762,
he was appointed professor at the Academy in Paris, and from 1781 to 1787 he
served as director of the French Academy in Rome. In the course of time his
subjects became more serious and “philosophical,” but he never completely
abandoned the Rococo elegance and eroticism that originally characterised
his work.62 Diderot, who initially appreciated Lagrenée’s work, soon became
tired of its easy fluency. The artist painted too much, his work was repetitive,
and it lacked the moral vigour he had come to see as indispensable. In 1767
he wrote that Lagrenée had “neither wit, nor imagination,” and in 1771 he re-
marked about his Spartan mother and her son: “Is this a Spartan? Is this a La-
cedemonian woman? Remove the shield, and you will see nothing but a young
man declaring his love to a woman who is not of his own age.”63
Diderot knew nothing, or at least said nothing, about the political back-
ground of the painting. The Spartan mother and a companion piece, Telema-
chus meets Thermosiris, a priest of Apollo, who teaches him the art of being happy
while being a slave, were commissioned by the Duc de Choiseul, the long-time
prime minister under Louis xv, who in 1770 was struggling to maintain his hold
on the French state.64 The subject of the second picture was not taken from
ancient history, but from François Fénelon’s popular anti-absolutist novel Télé-
maque (1699). The two paintings, while not revolutionary in spirit at all, can be
seen as reminders to be firm and resolute in the face of great danger or subjec-
tion, and in the actual context, as an expression of the aristocratic opposition
against royal absolutism. Choiseul’s premonitions soon enough turned out to
be true. In 1771 he fell in disgrace and was banished from the court. By the
time Lagrenée exhibited the two works at the Salon, his former patron was no
61 Marc Sandoz, Les Lagrenée, I. Louis ( Jean, François) Lagrénée, 1725–1805 (Tours, 1983).
62 Locquin, La peinture d’histoire, 204–205; Michael Levey, Painting and sculpture in France,
1700–1789 (New Haven, 1992), 226.
63 Denis Diderot, Ruines et paysages. Salon de 1767, ed. E.M. Bukdahl, M. Delon and A. Lo-
renceau (Paris, 1995), 126; Diderot, Héros et martyrs, 145. In spite of Diderot’s strictures,
Lagrenée’s contribution to the Salon in 1771 was generally admired. Crow, Painters and
Public Life, 176.
64 Sandoz, Les Lagrenée, i, 96.
longer able to pay his debts. The paintings were subsequently bought by Lord
Hoare, the English banker, to adorn his country-seat Stourhead in Wiltshire,
where they still can be seen today.65
One of the paradoxes of D’Angiviller’s programme of the 1770s and 1780s
was that, while history painting became more and more classicising in style
and “republican” in its moral intentions, the patrons and buyers of these paint-
ings still almost exclusively belonged to a limited élite of extremely wealthy
representatives of the ancien régime, among them D’Angiviller himself. It was
all very good and well for the government to set up competitions and to award
prizes and scholarships for history painting, but apart from the state, there
were only a few collectors who were able to afford and display these often large
canvases. As a result, many classical scenes teaching a message of hard work,
frugality, unselfishness, and so on, ended up, after being shown at the Salon,
on the walls of the grand courtiers and churchmen.66 A case in point is the
subject of Caius Furius Cressinus showing his agricultural implements after be-
ing accused of sorcery.
The story is from Pliny, Natural History, 18.41–43: a farmer whose crops are
more abundant than those of his neigbours is accused of witchcraft; brought
before the court, he shows his oxen, his plough and other instruments to dem-
onstrate that his success is the natural result of dedicated labour. The subject
was painted in 1775 by Nicolas Brenet for a private patron, but D’Angiviller
liked it so much that he set it as theme for next year’s competition. A much
larger version was shown by Brenet at the Salon of 1777.67 The scene remained
popular for a long time, and was depicted by several other painters, perhaps
precisely because it was open to various interpretations. It could refer to the re-
habilitation of a virtuous and unjustly accused citizen; it could be taken as an
endorsement of experimental agricultural policies and of the theories of Phys-
iocracy; but it could also be regarded with pleasure by a banker or landowner,
as a reminder of the sources of his wealth. Scenes from Plutarch’s Lycurgus
seem to have been much less easily adaptable to such multiple purposes and
audiences. The very fact that ancient Sparta was constantly present in public
debate, may have prevented it from being present in the Paris Salons. It was
left to an outsider, not by coincidence a countryman of Rousseau, to express in
65 Ibidem, 210.
66 Colin B. Bailey, Patriotic Taste. Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris (New Ha-
ven, 2002), 203–205.
67 Leith, Art as Propaganda, 78; Bailey, Patriotic Taste, 85; see also G. Sprigath, Themen aus
der Geschichte der römischen Republik in der französischen Malerei des 18. Jahrhunderts
(Munich, 1968), 101, 105, 181.
180 Krul
painting all the hopes and radical expectations, doubts and ambiguities, that
had by now accumulated around the notion of Sparta.
Spartan Eugenics: Saint-Ours at the Salon of 1791
Jean Pierre Saint-Ours (1752–1809) was a descendant of French Calvinist crafts-

men who had fled from persecution to Switzerland.68 After an initial training
in Geneva, his birthplace, Saint-Ours went to study at the Académie Royale in
Paris with Joseph-Marie Vien. There he met David, whose example he followed
in experimenting with a gradually more severe neoclassical style. In 1780 he
won the Prix de Rome with a Rape of the Sabines.69 In the end, however, the
prize money was withheld on the grounds that he was of Swiss nationality,
and therefore a foreigner. Saint-Ours settled in Rome nonetheless, aided by a
modest subsidy from home. Lagrenée, then director of the French Academy
in Rome, accepted him as an “adopted member.” In Rome, where he again for
some time worked alongside David, he made a successful career as a history
and portrait painter.70
From the very beginning, Saint-Ours was an enthusiastic supporter of the
French Revolution. One of the highlights of the first revolutionary Salon in
Paris in 1791, the so-called Salon de la Liberté, was his group of three paintings
illustrating “the manners of different peoples from Antiquity.” It seems to have
been his original aim to complete four large history paintings, depicting scenes
from four ancient civilisations, and at the same time symbolising the four ages
of man: childhood, youth, manhood and old age.71 Of these only three were
68 There is as yet no monograph on Saint-Ours. But see Anne de Herdt, “Jean Pierre
S aint-Ours: Geneva 1752–1809,” in 1789: French art during the French Revolution, ed. Alan
Wintermute (New York, 1989), 281–288; Anne de Herdt, “Saint-Ours et la Révolution,”
Genava N.S. 37 (1989): 131–170, also published as “Ébauche pour le portrait d’un artiste
révolutionné: Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours,” in Révolutions génévoises, 1782–1798, ed. Livio For-
nara (Genève, 1989), 139–151; Mylène Koller, Zur Genfer Historienmalerei von Jean-Pierre
Saint-Ours (1752–1809) (Bern, 1995); Anne de Herdt, Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours. Un peintre
genévois dans l’Europe des Lumières (exh. cat. Genève, 2015).
69 The painting remained in possession of the École des Beaux-Arts, but was sent on loan in
1889 to Guadeloupe in the French Antilles. There it was lost in a hurricane in 1928. Koller,
Genfer Historienmalerei, 27, note 82.
70 J.W. von Goethe listed Saint-Ours among the painters who “upheld the fame of the
French” in Rome. Goethe, Italienische Reise, in Werke, xi (München, 1978), 391.
71 Koller, Genfer Historienmalerei, 113; Anne de Herdt, “Rousseau illustré par Saint-Ours,”
Genava N.S. 26 (1978): 229–271, 233.
shown in Paris: The Selection of Children in Sparta, Marriage Among the Ancient
Germans, and The Olympic Games. The painting illustrating “childhood,” The
Selection of Children in Sparta, was the earliest in the series (Figure 7.4). Saint-
Ours started work in 1784, and the final version was first exhibited in Rome
in 1786.72 The choice of a Spartan subject was probably inspired by Rousseau,
Saint-Ours’s favourite author, no less than by Plutarch. But the painting did
not simply endorse Rousseau’s optimistic view of classical Spartan society. At
the Salon in Paris in 1791 it impressed the public by its message of stern moral-
ity, but it also caused uneasiness and even revulsion. “Such acts of rigor are
repugnant to our ways of life,” a critic wrote, and another one even found the
painting “horrible.”73
These reactions are in themselves sufficient to disprove the opinion, ex-
pressed relatively recently, that “the elimination of the children that were
thought too weak is not clearly shown in the painting.”74 The Selection of Chil-
dren in Sparta does not represent “the place of rejection” on Mount Taygetus
where, according to Plutarch, deformed new-born children were left to die. But
it illustrates the passage in Plutarch immediately following: “Women would
Figure 7.4 Jean Pierre Saint Ours, The Selection of Children in Sparta (1784–86).
Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire.
72 Now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Histoire in Geneva. It was preceded by a smaller
version, now in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
73 Quoted in De Herdt, “Saint-Ours et la Révolution,” 140.
74 Danièle Buyssens, La question de l’art à Genève: du cosmopolitisme des Lumières au roman-
tisme des nationalités (Genève, 2008), 226.
182 Krul
test their babies’ constitutions by washing them in wine instead of water. The
effect of the unmixed wine on ailing and epileptic children is said to be that
they lose their senses, and their limbs go stiff, whereas healthy ones are tough-
ened by it and acquire a hardier constitution.”75 In the upper left-hand corner
of the painting we see women busy bathing children in a large basin, presum-
ably filled with wine. The right-hand side is devoted to a happy outcome: a
father has just presented his new-born son to the Council of Elders, and has
gained their approval to keep and rear him. A group of Spartans of different
ages looks on as witnesses to the official judgement.
Very prominently on the left-hand side, however, we see a father whose
child has been condemned or has not even survived the test. He leaves the
hall shattered by grief. Some of the bystanders look at him with compassion.
The painting, therefore, is deeply ambivalent about ancient Sparta. It shows
two sides of its social system: the care taken by the state to maintain a healthy
and vigorous body of citizens, but also its fundamental indifference towards
individual emotions. In other words, it shows an awareness that there must
have been losers as well as winners in the Spartan model, with its continuous
tests and its constant demands to sacrifice private life for the common good.76
Saint-Ours had clearly read his Plutarch with attention. He was not afraid to in-
clude other aspects of Spartan life that its admirers usually preferred to ignore,
such as its institutionalised homosexuality.77 The two young men standing
with their arms around each other on the right of the painting are obviously
intended to be seen as lovers.
The figure of the grieving father, however, was an afterthought. A prepara-
tory drawing has been preserved in which this dramatic moment is still absent
(Figure 7.5). In the course of his work on the painting, Saint-Ours must have
changed his mind.78 What was originally meant as a positive, even laudatory
image of an important aspect of Spartan life, now came to include a severe
75 Lycurgus, 16,2, in: Plutarch, On Sparta, 20.

76 This was pointed out forcefully by Finley, “Sparta,” 165.
77 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 17–18. In a letter to his elderly patron François Tronchin in Geneva,
Saint-Ours wrote that the subject allowed him to depict “the decency and beauty of the
young people, which can be pleasantly varied with that of the wet-nurses.” But Tronchin
never saw the painting, which was bought by a collector in Paris. Quoted in De Herdt,
Saint-Ours. Un peintre genévois, 51.
78 It is unclear whether this change occurred between 1786 and the Paris Salon in 1791, or
already before the painting was first shown in Rome. According to Anne de Herdt, Dessins
génévois, de Liotard à Hodler (Genève, 1984), 114, there is no doubt that the drawing with-
out the grieving father, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Histoire in Geneva, predates
the painting.
Figure 7.5 Jean Pierre Saint Ours, The Selection of Children in Sparta, preliminary drawing.
Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire.
criticism of these institutions. Of course Saint-Ours knew that loud demon-

strations of grief were a very un-Spartan reaction. In the light of everything
Plutarch tells us, the disappointed father should have accepted the fate of
his child with Laconic endurance. Saint-Ours evidently tried to combine two
contradictory elements taken from his reading of Rousseau: an idealisation of
the ancient republics, and the cultivation of “natural” and spontaneous emo-
tions.79 His painting shows the conflict between the stern morality of classic
republicanism and the late eighteenth-century cult of sensitivity and senti-
mentalism, between the claims of civic virtue and those of brotherhood and
social sympathy.80
Saint-Ours’s further career illustrates the same dilemma. He returned to
Geneva in 1792, and there was commissioned to paint a Caius Furius Cressinus
79 De Herdt, Saint-Ours. Un peintre genévois, 52, reads the painting as a protest against
the oligarchic government in Geneva: those unfit for their function should be forc-
ibly dismissed. There is no doubt that Saint-Ours supported the political opposition
in his home town, which in 1782 had been subjected to severe counterrevolution-
ary measures. But the message of his work, a product of the French Academy in Rome
and patronized by French collectors, is clearly situated in a more general political and
philosophical context.
80 On the conflict of these two concepts of vertu in the later eighteenth century, see Herding,
Im Zeichen der Aufklärung, 14–16, and especially Marisa Linton, The Politics of Virtue in
Enlightenment France (Basingstoke, 2001), 128.
184 Krul
by a landowner who thought himself unjustly accused of corruption.81 Almost

immediately, he became involved in revolutionary politics. In the following
years he played a very active role in the new democratic government of the
city. But the turn taken by the events, including the annexation of Geneva to
France in 1798, left him deeply disillusioned. His final comment on the Revolu-
tion was a large-scale Earthquake, of which he painted several versions dur-
ing the late 1790s. It shows, with transparent symbolism, a group of victims
helplessly trying to escape an overwhelming natural disaster.82 During the
reign of Napoleon, Saint-Ours retired into private life, and concentrated on
portrait painting.
Leonidas
Saint-Ours, a painter whose reputation has gone through a long eclipse,

even in his home town, was at some point disparagingly called “a diminutive
David.”83 But the fact that the careers of both painters during the first years
of the Revolution followed a similar pattern, was not a result of imitation. As
a political argument, Sparta was constantly brought forward in the struggles
between the Jacobins and the Girondins during the first years of the French
Republic. One would expect a painter like Jacques-Louis David, an ardent sup-
porter of the Jacobin cause and official propagandist of the Comité du Salut
Public, to have chosen a Spartan subject, or to have included references to an-
cient Sparta, at least once or twice in the radical revolutionary years between
1792 and 1794. But he did not. In 1791, when there was still hope for a renewal
of the French monarchy, he made a first sketch in oils for a Lycurgus showing
the Spartans their king, that is, the newborn Charilaus, in the scene that early
81 Koller, Genfer Historienmalerei, 53. The painting is now in the Los Angeles County Mu-
seum of Art (lacma).
82 On the Earthquake: Anne de Herdt, “Jean Pierre Saint-Ours: Geneva 1752–1809,” 281–288.
83 Henri Focillon, La peinture au xixe siècle. Le retour à l’antique, le romantisme (Paris, 1927),
416. Daniel Baud-Bovy, Peintres Genevois 1702–1817: Liotard, Huber, Saint-Ours, De La Rive
(Genève, 1903), 81, 97–98, deplored the fact that Saint-Ours had become “ambitious” and
had left his native Geneva. W. Deonna, Les arts à Genève. Des origines à la fin du xviiie
siècle (Genève, 1942), 387, summarised the current opinion on Saint-Ours as “a cold and
pompous academicism.” See also Koller, Genfer Historienmalerei, 19–20. Political reasons
played an important part: many middle-class families in Geneva tried hard to forget their
own radical past. After the Paris Commune in 1871, Saint-Ours’s last surviving daughter
burnt many documents concerning his revolutionary activities. Cf. De Herdt, “Saint-Ours
et la Révolution,” 132–133.
in the c entury had also captured the imagination of the Dutch painter Wal-
raven.84 But he abandoned the project. It seems likely that David’s activities
as revolutionary director of the arts left him little time for independent work.
Moreover, in view of the rapidly changing political situation, Sparta remained
a dangerous subject. Saint-Just, full of memories of Plutarch, liked to pretend
that he was a reborn Spartan, even a new Lycurgus, but Robespierre for a long
time remained hesitant. His famous pronouncement that “Sparta shines like a
flash of lightning amidst immense darknesses” dates from May 7, 1794, shortly
before his downfall.85
Among the painters, a new interest in Sparta only arose after the Revolution
had run its course. By then, to paint a Death of Phocion was no longer an en-
dorsement of radical republican views, but rather a commemoration of those
who had unjustly perished during the Terror.86 A subject such as A Spartan
mother handing his shield to her son became part of Napoleon’s war propagan-
da, but the image was also used in the context of the patriotic movements dur-
ing the Restoration.87 The most impressive monument to the myth of Sparta,
however, was erected by David in his great painting Leonidas at Thermopylae
(Figure 7.6). David had started work upon a first version in 1799. At that mo-
ment, the scene where the Spartan king and his men are arming themselves
for their last stand against the Persians in 480 bc, could hardly be taken as
anything other than a sign of regret for the lost cause of the Revolution. Napo-
leon immediately detected the mood of nostalgia. The story is that he sharply
rebuked the painter: “One does not paint moments of defeat.” David waited
84 See above. David’s sketch is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Blois.
85 Maximilien Robespierre, discourse of 18 Floréal ii (May 7, 1794). In this speech, Robespi-
erre was full of praise for J.-J. Rousseau as a precursor of the Revolution.
86 As is the case in the version from 1804 (Paris, Académie des Beaux-Arts) by the Belgian
painter Joseph-Denis Odevaere. See Sandra Janssens and Paul Knolle, eds., Brugge, Parijs,
Rome. Joseph Benoît Suvée en het neoclassicisme (Ghent, 2007), 118–119. The continuing
political debate on the example of Sparta in the decade after 1794 is illustrated in Jainchill,
Reimagining Politics after the Terror.
87 The painter and writer Jean-Jacques Le Barbier (1738–1826) returned most often to Spar-
tan themes. His Spartan Mother (1806, Portland Art Museum, Oregon) is only slightly
more martial than the one by Lagrenée from 1771. Some of David’s students took his ad-
monition to study their Plutarch to heart. But works such as Three Spartan boys training
themselves (1812) by Christopher Wilhelm Eckersberg (Hirschsprungske Samling, Copen-
hagen) had a purely patriotic intention. The poet Giacomo Leopardi used the image of
the Spartan mother in one of his hymns to the fatherland written around 1820: “Nelle
nozze della sorella Paolina,” lines 68–75; cf. Leopardi, Canti, transl. Jonathan Galassi (New
York, 2010), 46–47.
186 Krul
Figure 7.6 Jacques-Louis David, Leonidas at Thermopylae, Drawing (1813).

Louvre, Paris, Dept. of Prints and Drawings.
more than ten years before he finished and exhibited his work. By then, in 1814,
it came to stand for the heroism of the French nation in the face of disaster and
foreign invasion. But the eighteenth-century illusion of Sparta as the original
homeland of liberty, equality, companionship and sacrifice for the common
good was still there, for one last time.88
Conclusion
Classical republicanism was based on examples from ancient Athens and

Rome, and to a lesser extent from ancient Sparta. Of the three, Sparta was
considered to be the most radical case. It distinguished itself not only by egali-
tarianism, but also by sobriety, strict discipline and a jealously guarded inde-
pendence. The Spartan example was frequently invoked when the unity of the
nation and its self-defense were at stake. In France, especially in the second
88 Cf. Martin Kemp, “J.-L. David and the Prelude for a Moral Victory for Sparta,” Art Bulletin
51/2 (1969), 178–183.
half of the eighteenth century, it found special favour with authors who re-
jected everything the commercial culture of the French monarchy stood for,
such as Mably and Rousseau. The claims of the admirers of Sparta led to a
protracted debate about the appropriateness of this particular model for mod-
ern society. During the Revolution, “Sparta” became a rallying-cry for its most
fanatical adherents.
The association of the Spartan idea with the revolutionary Terror had a
long-lasting effect. There has been a tendency to see every reference to ancient
Sparta in eighteenth-century France as a sign of opposition to the Ancien Ré-
gime, and as a prefiguration of revolutionary ideologies. This ignores the many
occasions before 1789 when the ancient republics, Sparta included, were cited
in an official context. That the Spartan strand in classical republicanism was
put to more complex uses than has sometimes been assumed, can easily be
discerned when we look at its manifestations in art. History painting—and
scenes from ancient Sparta by definition belonged to this exalted genre—al-
ways had a propagandistic function, or at least expressed certain political or
religious ideas. It therefore seems plausible that the ongoing political discus-
sions about the ancient republics at some point had a visual reflection.
Paintings with Spartan subjects are relatively rare. Without exception, they
are no more than an incident in the artist’s oeuvre. Nonetheless, even in this
small trickle a certain pattern can be distinguished. It is not altogether a sur-
prise to find Lycurgus, the legendary founder of the Spartan state, depicted
at moments of crisis in the United Provinces, the most powerful republic in
early modern Europe. In eighteenth-century France, the painters who chose
Spartan subjects initially did so in response to official demands. This was the
case with Cochin, at a point when a reconciliation between the government
and the “philosophes” still seemed possible, and again with Lagrenée, who re-
acted to the official desire to have more patriotic subjects shown at the Salon.
Art works such as these carried no revolutionary, but at best a mildly reformi-
stic message.
The radical praises of Sparta by Mably and Rousseau at first had no echo
in painting at all. This can be partly explained by an inherent paradox: paint-
ing formed part of the luxury goods these authors hoped to abolish, and the
painters depended for the most part on the opinions of their patrons. In
the 1780s, however, when Rousseau’s writings were widely read, and when the
call for reform had become almost universal, several painters began express-
ing a more radical version of classical republicanism. David is of course the
best known, but the revolutionary idea of Sparta, reflected through a read-
ing of Rousseau, was most strikingly illustrated by the Genevan artist Saint-
Ours. Curiously, David himself avoided Spartan subjects during the reign of
188 Krul
obespierre and his c ommittee, when “Laconophilia” was at its height. He

R
turned to Sparta only after the revolution was over, and made his Leonidas into
its epitaph.
Political concepts change their meaning over time, depending on context
and circumstance. That the favorite topoi of classical republicanism have
sometimes carried completely divergent, even opposite messages, is not only
evident in the history of politics, but in the visual arts as well.
chapter 8
Against Democracy: Dutch Eighteenth-Century

Critics of Ancient and Modern Popular
Government
Wyger Velema
During the past half century, the way historians view the revolutions of the
late eighteenth-century has profoundly and dramatically changed. Whereas
around 1960, for instance in R.R. Palmer’s magisterial volumes on The Age of the
Democratic Revolution, it was still possible and indeed plausible to regard the
American revolution, the French revolution and all the other revolts and revo-
lutions of the last quarter of the eighteenth century as unambiguously modern
and as primarily inspired by the progressive political thought of the Enlight-
enment, it has since become clear that these political movements also owed
a substantial intellectual debt to much older republican traditions, traditions
that were ultimately rooted in classical antiquity.1 It was, of course, in the work
of those two giants of the Cambridge School, J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skin-
ner, that attention was first drawn to the fact that, ever since the Renaissance,
there had remained in existence a strong and classically oriented strand of po-
litical thought that was fundamentally opposed to monarchical absolutism.2
Whether the main inspiration for these largely oppositional forms of early
modern classicising republican thought came from Greece or from Rome, and
whether they should be referred to as civic humanism, classical republicanism
or the neo-Roman theory of liberty, remains a bone of contention among his-
torians to this very day. What matters for our purposes, however, is that these
classically oriented forms of republicanism survived until the very end of the
eighteenth century, as a host of historians have by now demonstrated.3
1 R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe and America,
1760–1800, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1959–1964).
2 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Repub-
lican Tradition (Princeton, 1975); Quentin Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought,
2 vols. (Cambridge, 1978). Also see J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, Chiefly in the
Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985) and Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cam-
bridge, 1998).
3 Over the past decades, the study of republicanism has become a veritable academic growth-
industry. Listing all or even the most relevant publications is therefore impossible. For some of

190 Velema
This should perhaps not particularly surprise us, for the Age of the Enlight-
enment was at the same time one of the great ages of classicism—and not
only in an aesthetic sense. As Gordon Wood has observed: “in the eighteenth
century to be enlightened was to be interested in antiquity.”4 This fundamental
truth has long been familiar to historians, as may be seen from the fact that
in 1966 Peter Gay entitled the first part of his study on the Enlightenment
“The Appeal to Antiquity.”5 Yet after Gay’s heroic synthesis, it has until fairly
recently been somewhat lost from sight. Fortunately, however, the historio-
graphical tide is now turning, and historians are once again acknowledging
the continued importance of the classical past for the enlightened eighteenth
century in all fields of thought.6 Far from ending in a resounding and unam-
biguous triumph for the moderns, the Querelle des anciens et des modernes or
the Battle of the Books of the decades around 1700 is nowadays seen as ush-
ering in a prolonged process of reflection on the relationship between the
ancients and the moderns of unprecedented comprehensiveness. In politi-
cal thought, this process was given a tremendous boost by the appearance, in
1748, of Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des Lois, a European and Atlantic bestseller
in which the political virtue of the ancient republics was extolled, but at the
same time was declared to be a phenomenon that probably could no longer
be realised in a modern commercial world composed of large territorial states.
As so many of his enlightened contemporaries, Montesquieu tried to under-
stand the politics of modernity first and foremost through comparison with
antiquity. The same might be said of the generation that followed the mid-
century High Enlightenment. In making the revolutions of the late eighteenth
century, these men may be said to have always kept one eye on the classical
past. Whether they saw an u nbridgeable distance between the ancients and
the key issues in the debate see James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civic Humanism. Reapprais-
als and Reflections (Cambridge, 2000); Robert E. Shalhope, “Republicanism,” in The Blackwell
Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole (Cambridge, Mass.
and Oxford, 1991), 654–660; Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism.
A Shared European Heritage, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2002); Dario Castiglione, “Republicanism
and its Legacy,” European Journal of Political Theory 4 (2005): 453–465; Manuela Albertone,
“Democratic Republicanism. Historical Reflections on the Idea of Republic in the 18th cen-
tury, ” History of European Ideas 33 (2007): 108–130.
4 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), 100.
5 Peter Gay, The Enlightenment. An Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York 1966–1969), 1: 29–203.
6 Dan Edelstein, “The Classical Turn in Enlightenment Studies,” Modern Intellectual History 9
(2012): 61–71; Wyger R.E. Velema, “Oude waarheden. Over de terugkeer van de klassieke oud-
heid in de verlichtingshistoriografie,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 127 (2014): 229–246.
Against Democracy 191
the moderns or held the ancient world up for imitation and emulation, it was
simply always there.7
These general observations also fully apply to the eighteenth-century Dutch
Republic and its political culture. Literate eighteenth-century Dutchmen were
raised in a humanist and republican environment that was positively saturated
with knowledge of the ancients. The Enlightenment, with its organised sociabil-
ity and its broadening of the reading public, reinforced rather than diminished
this classical presence and made knowledge of the classical world increasingly
available to those who did not read either Latin or Greek. Given this pervasive
presence of the classics, nobody found it particularly strange or unusual when
in 1737 the Zeeland regent Lieven de Beaufort published a massive treatise on
political liberty in which hardly any modern authors were cited and examples
from the classical world abounded.8 De Beaufort, it is true, was somewhat ex-
treme in his obsessive preoccupation with the politics and political thought of
the classics, yet for most literate Dutchmen throughout the century the clas-
sical world was and remained a primary point of reference. Those who wrote
enlightened histories of the Dutch Republic embedded these in discussions of
the rise and fall of the ancient republics. The perceived decline of the Seven
United Provinces, moreover, was constantly and almost habitually compared
to the decline and fall of ancient Rome. Given this widespread intellectual ori-
entation, it comes as no surprise that the so-called Patriot movement for politi-
cal reform which emerged around 1780, and which would ultimately topple the
Dutch ancien régime, also evinced a strongly classical bent.9
Emerging from a background of deep pessimism about the moral state of
the Dutch Republic, the Patriot movement first and foremost wanted to restore
republican political virtue to the country. The Patriots were convinced that the
ever increasing power of the monarchical element in the mixed constitution,
that is to say the Stadholderate, had brought the Dutch Republic to the brink of
political slavery. Their program, at least in its earliest phase, therefore p
rimarily
7 See, e.g., Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England
(Cambridge, 1997); Chantal Grell, Le Dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France 1680–1789,
2 vols. (Oxford, 1995); Claude Mossé, L’Antiquité dans la Révolution française (Paris, 1989);
Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics. Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment
(Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1994).
8 [L.F. de Beaufort], Verhandeling van de vryheit in den burgerstaet (Leiden and Middelburg,
1737).
9 N.C.F. van Sas, “Voor vaderland en oudheid. Het klassieke paradigma in de laat achttiende-
eeuwse Republiek,” in Edele eenvoud. Neo-classicisme in Nederland 1765–1800, ed. Frans
Grijzenhout and Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken (Zwolle, 1989), 13–31; Wyger R.E. Velema,
Omstreden Oudheid. De Nederlandse achttiende eeuw en de klassieke politiek (Amsterdam,
2010).
192 Velema
consisted in a call for the strengthening of the democratic part of the constitu-
tion and for increased citizen participation in politics. Such, at least, was the
view of the most prominent Patriot spokesman, Joan Derk van der Capellen tot
den Pol.10 Around the time of Van der Capellen’s early death in 1784, however,
the Patriot movement suddenly and rapidly radicalised. Theorists such as Pieter
Vreede now came to the conclusion that a return to a properly mixed and bal-
anced republican government was neither possible nor desirable and started to
argue that the only truly free state was one in which the people was permanent-
ly sovereign. The Patriots, in other words, moved from republican mixed gov-
ernment to republican democracy, indeed redefined a republic as a democracy.
They emphatically pointed out that the democracy they wanted was based on
the principle of representation and therefore fundamentally different from the
direct democracies the ancient world had known. Yet despite the fact that they
thus distanced themselves from the turbulent politics of the classical world,
their program retained a substantial number of features that derived from clas-
sical republicanism. Thus they remained convinced that each citizen should be
a bearer of arms, that political virtue was the necessary basis of any viable re-
public, that such a republic was by necessity small, and that representation was
no more than a necessary evil, a poor substitute for direct citizen participation
in politics, and should never be allowed to lead to a separation between the
representatives and those they represented. These classically inspired convic-
tions remained a powerful presence in Dutch political debate at least until the
moment the first modern constitution was adopted in 1798.11
Although more research in this field would be both welcome and useful, it
has nonetheless by now been firmly established that the Dutch Patriots and
their successors, the Batavian revolutionaries, whatever uses they may also
have made of modern theories of natural and inalienable rights, in develop-
ing their theories about popular government remained deeply indebted both
to the classics themselves and to the early modern classical republican tradi-
tion. What we know next to nothing about, however, is whether those who
10 For recent interpretations of the political thought of Van der Capellen see Arthur West-
steijn, ed., A Marble Revolutionary. The Dutch Patriot Joan Derk van der Capellen and his
Monument (Rome, 2011).
11 The political thought of the Patriots is discussed in S.R.E. Klein, Patriots Republikanisme.
Politieke cultuur in Nederland (1766–1787) (Amsterdam, 1995). For the Batavian revolution
see Frans Grijzenhout, Niek van Sas and Wyger Velema, eds., Het Bataafse experiment.
Politiek en cultuur rond 1800 (Nijmegen, 2013). The best overview of the period in English
remains Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813
(New York, 1977).
opposed the Patriot and Batavian revolutionaries also made use of the classical
past and if so, in which ways. That, therefore, is the topic I shall address in this
chapter. Given the prominent presence of classical themes in the thought of
the Dutch reformers and revolutionaries, one potential way to counter them,
of course, was altogether to deny the relevance of the classical world to the
modern age and to stigmatise those who insisted on deriving their inspiration
from the classical republics as dangerous and regressive. Although this tactic
was followed by some late eighteenth-century Dutch conservatives, it was by
no means the only way in which the revolutionaries could be and were coun-
tered. It is easy to understand why this should have been the case. The perva-
siveness of the classics in Dutch late eighteenth-century political culture and
the great authority references to the classics carried in public discourse meant
that it was insufficient simply to declare classical politics irrelevant. In order to
counter the political radicals in a convincing way, the opponents of the intro-
duction of democracy needed to show that their interpretation of the meaning
of the classical heritage was wrong. The battle between revolutionaries and
conservatives therefore did not primarily revolve around the relevance of the
classics for the modern world, but around the question of the proper uses to be
made of the classical past.
That conservative political thinkers could be as much enamored of the
classical past as reformers and revolutionaries is clear from the case of Lau-
rens Pieter van de Spiegel (1737–1800). Van de Spiegel’s credentials as an
anti-revolutionary are impeccable: not only was he the last Grand Pension-
ary of Holland, but in 1795, immediately after the outbreak of the revolution,
he was incarcerated as one of the main pillars of the by now widely detested
ancien régime. He used this most unwelcome and undignified otium to put his
thoughts about the eighteenth century to paper. In November of 1795, still in
prison without trial, he completed his Thoughts about the Enlightenment of the
Eighteenth Century, above that of Previous Centuries. Contrary to what his un-
fortunate circumstances might lead one to expect, Van de Spiegel had many
positive things to say about the century in which he lived. True enlightenment,
he observed, meant that people became both wiser and better. Looking at his-
tory from this point of view, it could not be denied that the eighteenth century
had been quite enlightened “in comparison with the centuries of rudeness
in which Europe, after the demolition of the western Empire, had sunk be-
cause of the invasions of the Barbaric Peoples.” But it was also true, he signifi-
cantly added, that “in comparison to the Ancients, we are in most fields still
merely children and have only begun to spell what they could already read.”
This, according to Van de Spiegel, was particularly evident in the field of pol-
itics and political thought, the most important branch of philosophy. There
194 Velema
the eighteenth century had shown itself to be unhealthily obsessed with “the
art of self-aggrandisement and self-enrichment” and had reduced noble lib-
erty to little more than the notion that everyone should live as he wants and
should try to stay out of prison. How different all this had been in classical
antiquity, when it had been realised that the most essential part of politics
was to be found in the good morals and manners of the people. Laws and in-
stitutions had therefore been organised in such a way as to systematically en-
courage virtue. Positions of honor could only be obtained by those of excellent
behavior, meritorious citizens were crowned with laurel wreaths, and heroes
got a decent statue. In politics, in short, the ancients were far superior to the
eighteenth-century moderns and could still serve as a shining example for the
century of Enlightenment.12
Particularly noticeable in Van de Spiegel’s rather abstract praise for the po-
litical virtue of the ancients was the complete absence of the core contention
of those of his contemporaries who argued for the introduction of popular
government: namely that the permanent participation of the sovereign citi-
zens in the political process was the necessary condition for both the existence
of liberty and the revival of political virtue. This, of course, was a deliberate
omission, which clearly suggested that whatever might be admired in ancient
politics, it certainly was not the permanent sovereignty of the people. Whereas
Van de Spiegel made this point in an indirect way, many of his fellow con-
servatives were rather more explicit. Through examples derived from ancient
history, and particularly through discussions of Athenian democracy, they at-
tempted to demonstrate that the introduction of popular government had al-
ways been an unmitigated disaster and had brought liberty in any meaningful
sense of the word to an end. In what follows, I shall discuss three prominent
representatives of this anti-democratic use of ancient, and especially Athe-
nian, history.13
12 Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel, “Gedagten over de verlichting der achttiende eeuw, boven
de voorgaande,” in Mr. Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel en zijne tijdgenooten (1737–1800), ed.
G.W. Vreede, 4 vols. (Middelburg, 1874–1877), 4: 483–527. The quotations are on 502 and
516. On Van de Spiegel see J.C. Boogman, Raadpensionaris L.P. van de Spiegel: een reformis-
tisch-conservatieve pragmaticus en idealist (Amsterdam, etc., 1980).
13 Jennifer Tolbert Roberts has written an excellent overview of the historical debate on the
merits of Athenian democracy, although she entirely neglects the Dutch contribution:
Athens on Trial. The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought (Princeton, 1994). See
also Mogens Herman Hanson, “The Tradition of the Athenian Democracy a.d. 1750–1990,”
Greece & Rome, Second Series 39 (1992): 14–30 and Wilfried Nippel, Antike oder moderne
Freiheit? Die Begründung der Demokratie in Athen und in der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main,
2008).
A Classical Republican Out of His Depth: Johan Luzac
The first protagonist is Johan Luzac (1746–1807), a descendant from a distin-

guished Huguenot family that arrived in the Dutch Republic in the late sev-
enteenth century, who was famous throughout the Atlantic world through
his editorship of the Gazette de Leyde, generally considered to be one of the
most important newspapers of the later eighteenth century.14 It is not in his
role as newspaper editor that he interests us here, however, but in his capac-
ity as political theorist inspired by the classics. In 1785, Johan Luzac was ap-
pointed professor of Greek language and Dutch history at the University of
Leiden. From the very start of his professorship, he made it abundantly clear
that he regarded the study of ancient history and culture as one of the most
important ways to come to grips with the present, and particularly with pres-
ent politics. In his inaugural lecture, held at the time the Patriot revolt was
reaching a climax and devoted to the relationship between learning and civic
virtue in free states, Luzac told his audience that there were few things it could
better devote its energies to than the study of Greek and Roman poets, orators,
philosophers and above all historians.15 From poets such as Homer one could
learn about the grave dangers posed to the state by “faction and self-interest.”
It was impossible to read Demosthenes and the other sublime classical ora-
tors “without feeling one’s bosom glow with a blazing love of liberty, or a noble
detestation for tyrants and evil citizens.” The classical philosophers could be
usefully perused for timeless advice on such topics as justice and virtue. The
works of the ancient historians, finally, were of such vital importance that those
ignorant of their content would never succeed in becoming good citizens.16
The best of these classical authors, Luzac stressed, had put their thoughts to
paper in free states. From them, it was possible to learn, in the first place, what
had caused the rise and decline of the ancient free republics, but also—and
this was of at least equal importance—how to keep modern liberty alive.
What exactly were the political lessons to be derived from these authors?
They had made it abundantly clear, to start with, that monarchy was to be
regarded as a form of government in which liberty could not possibly flourish.
14 Jeremy D. Popkin, News and Politics in the Age of Revolution. Jean Luzac’s Gazette de Leyde
(Ithaca and London, 1989).
15 Joannis Luzac, Oratio de eruditione, altrice virtutis civilis praesertim in civitate libera
(Leiden, 1785); in 1786 a Dutch translation by Jan de Kruyff was published, also in Leiden:
Johan Luzac, Redevoering ten betooge dat de geleerdheid de voedster is der burger-deugd,
vooral in een vry gemeenebest.
16 Luzac, Redevoering, 26–39.
196 Velema
Should anyone doubt this, he could do no better than to study the dreadful tale
of the gradual erosion of the Roman republic and the subsequent rise of the
ruthless rule of the emperors.17 The ancient writers had moreover also demon-
strated that “the unbridled lust for power of the great” was equally pernicious.
This was a lesson perhaps best illustrated by the gruesome and abominable
record of the thirty tyrants in Athens.18 Yet, dreadful as they may have thought
both the unlimited rule of the one and that of the few, the classical writers had
reserved their greatest scorn for popular government, “that wild rule of the
multitude, under which true virtue has never lacked in powerful enemies and
varnished vice has never lacked in unearned rewards.” Here again, of course,
it was Athens that proved the point. Even the briefest glance at the history of
Athenian popular government made it immediately clear that this had been a
system in which men of true merit had fallen prey to popular jealousy and in
which political dominance had been sought and gained by “seditious, deliri-
ous, scheming, slanderous, rebellious” demagogues. Indeed, it was impossible
to say anything positive about democratic Athens, for it had time and again
sacrificed its most eminent men to the jealousy of the people, had put its fate
in the hands of sly and corrupt counselors, and had thus entrusted the general
good to raving lunatics.19 Fortunately, however, the best classical authors had
not limited themselves to exposing the dangers of these various pure forms of
government, but had also thoughtfully provided an answer to the question of
how their evils might be avoided. This answer was the mixed form of govern-
ment. Luzac acknowledged that there were many possible variations of this
form and that for instance, as Montesquieu had pointed out, a mixed govern-
ment in a territorially extended state needed a monarchical element. The basic
mechanism of mixed government, however, consisted in balancing the power
of people and the power of the aristocracy in such a way “that, on the one side,
the people will not actually take part in governing or in dispensing justice, and
that, on the other side, the appointment of governors will not be made inde-
pendent of the voice of the people.” It was through such an “aristo-democratic”
balance that the drawbacks of the various pure forms of government were best
avoided.20
In all of this, of course, Luzac showed himself to be an impeccable early
modern classical republican. His emphasis on civic virtue and on the great
advantages of mixed government, in which the democratic element and the
17 Ibidem, 42–45.
18 Ibidem, 45–48.
19 Ibidem, 48–53.
20 Ibidem, 53–55.
independent citizen played an important role, firmly placed him, at least un-
til the mid-1780s, in the Patriot camp and among those who welcomed the
American revolution. Indeed, there are striking similarities between Luzac’s
political thought and that of the prominent Patriot leader Van der Capellen
tot den Pol.21 Yet already in the year 1785, when he held his inaugural lecture,
Luzac was vaguely aware that Patriot thought was starting to move beyond the
classical republican tradition. When he started to discuss the disadvantages of
ancient (and by implication modern) popular government in his inaugural lec-
ture, he remarked that his views would no doubt displease those in the audito-
rium who were “convinced champions of democracy.”22 At the time, there were
still relatively few of these, but their number rapidly grew after the outbreak of
the French revolution in 1789. Luzac, however, didn’t give an inch and refused
to alter his views on the merits of pure democracy, whether direct or represen-
tative. On February 21, 1795, just weeks after the French troops had moved into
the Dutch Republic and the Batavian Republic had been proclaimed, he once
again warned his compatriots of the dangers of democracy in an academic
lecture. This time, he did so through a discussion of the sad fate of Socrates.
During the eighteenth century it was, of course, far from unusual to ap-
peal to the figure of Socrates. He appeared in a wide variety of contexts and
had, for instance, figured prominently in the lengthy Enlightenment debates
on the existence of virtuous pagans, on proto-Christianity, and on religious
tolerance.23 Throughout the century, Socrates—and his death in particular—
had also played a prominent part in anti-democratic polemics, witness for in-
stance the revealing title of the 1716 play Socrates Triumphant; or, the Dangers
of being Wise in a Common-Wealth of Fools.24 Luzac’s choice of subject mat-
ter was thus far from original and seamlessly fitted into a long tradition. Yet
the moment he chose to present his views on the Athenian philosopher was
particularly fraught. In his lecture De Socrate cive, Luzac depicted Socrates, as
many authors before him had done, as a dutiful and virtuous man, who lived
in great sobriety and had decided not to accept political office because of the
depraved manners and morals dominant in Athenian democracy. Yet he had
21 See above, footnote 10.

22 Ibidem, 48–49.
23 Ian Macgregor Morris, “The Refutation of Democracy? Socrates in the Enlightenment,” in
Socrates from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, ed. Michael Trapp (Aldershot and Burling-
ton, vt, 2007), 209–227. On the Dutch uses of Socrates in these contexts see Ernestine van
der Wall, Socrates in de hemel? Een achttiende-eeuwse polemiek over deugd, verdraagzaam-
heid en de vaderlandse kerk (Hilversum, 2000).
24 The play has been attributed to John Beval and to John Thornycroft. See Macgregor Mor-
ris, “The Refutation of Democracy?,” 214–216.
198 Velema
not withdrawn into a life of contemplation, but had constantly urged his fel-
low citizens to better their ways—and this had ultimately been his undoing.25
These were fairly conventional views, but to express them in 1795, at the very
moment Dutch revolutionaries were trying to establish a democratic repub-
lic, was of course a conscious act of political provocation. Luzac’s superiors
were quick to act and soon after his performance he lost his job.26 He still,
however, saw no reason whatsoever to change his mind. This became abun-
dantly clear in 1796, when a greatly expanded Dutch edition of De Socrate cive
appeared.27
In the extremely long notes and appendices attached to the Dutch edi-
tion of his lecture, Luzac argued his case against Athenian-style democracy
in great detail. He first of all presented his readers with a “Brief sketch of the
Athenian government.” Such a sketch was necessary, he insisted, since an over-
view of the development of Athenian political arrangements did not exist in
the Dutch language and was particularly needed in the current political situ-
ation, in which everybody incessantly discussed democratic politics without
any knowledge of the relevant classical history.28 Luzac started his sketch with
high praise for the reforms of Solon: “He founded a democracy, and prevented
its dangerous aspects from developing by balancing it with a fair and salutary
aristocracy: and experience has taught that the more the Athenians distanced
themselves from this prudently balanced arrangement, the more their com-
monwealth approached its decline and fall.”29 He proceeded to discuss Solon’s
institutions in considerable detail, constantly stressing the fact that the wide
powers granted to the people had been effectively checked by an admixture of
aristocracy.30 Two developments in particular had put an end to this felicitous
form of government. The first of these was the fatal decision to start paying
people for performing their duties as citizens. This measure, pushed through
by unscrupulous demagogues, had resulted in the appearance of “sentencing
day laborers” and in the rise of a deeply misguided sense of equality. Even
25 Joannis Luzac, Oratio de Socrate cive, etc. (Leiden, 1796).

26 The conflict between Johan Luzac and Leiden University is analysed at length in I.
Schöffer, “Een Leids hoogleraar in politieke moeilijkheden. Het ontslag van Johan Luzac
in 1796,” in Geen schepsel wordt vergeten. Liber amicorum voor Jan Willem Schulte Nord-
holt ter gelegenheid van zijn vijfenzestigste verjaardag, ed. J.F. Heijbroek, A. Lammers and
A.P.G. Jos van der Linde (Amsterdam and Zutphen, 1985), 61–80.
27 Johan Luzac, Socrates als burger beschouwd, etc. (Leiden, 1796). An even further expanded
second edition of the Dutch translation was published in 1797.
28 Luzac, Socrates als burger beschouwd, 93–94.
29 Ibidem, 99–100.
30 Ibidem, 100–124.
worse, however, had been the fact that the position of archon had been opened
up for everybody. This removal of the “supporting pillar of aristocracy” had led
to the complete triumph of the savage will of the people, “or rather of those
who, being complete masters of the masses, in the people’s name made the
state obey their own wishes.”31
Having analysed the degeneration of Athenian government from Solon’s
aristo-democracy to the unbridled rule of the demagogues and the masses, Lu-
zac turned to a discussion of the concept of aristocracy. His “Treatise about the
word aristocracy, and about the true meaning and essential nature of that form
of government” flatly and directly contradicted the emerging democratic con-
sensus that aristocracy was inherently evil and was to be avoided at all cost.32
To Luzac, for whom aristocracy remained something wholly positive and nec-
essary to the survival of liberty, the revolutionary rejection of all forms of aris-
tocracy was both incomprehensible and dangerous. He acknowledged that an
oligarchic form of government, in which a small group of people held all power
on arbitrary grounds such as heredity or accumulated wealth, was both despi-
cable and undesirable. But aristocracy was something completely different. It
was nothing but “the power of the best,” the predominant position which in a
free state “the most eminent, the most honest, the most virtuous, in short the
best inhabitants” should have in government. What could possibly be wrong
with that? Aristocracy also was, Luzac once more pointed out, the best and
only way to keep democracy alive. It worked like a healthy splash of spring wa-
ter added to an excessively strong and powerful wine, making it a wholesome,
fortifying and refreshing drink.33 Had not, he once again desperately asked his
democratic contemporaries, the history of Athenian pure democracy unam-
biguously demonstrated that most people simply did not possess the requisite
virtues to make such a form of government work?34 It was a serious question,
but not one most his contemporaries were any longer willing to pose or cared
to answer. The classical republican Johan Luzac had been overtaken by both a
political and a conceptual revolution. The latter had redefined a republic as a
democracy and had made Luzac’s brand of republican mixed government ob-
solete. He consistently failed to acknowledge this and therefore, like his close
31 Ibidem, 125–132.
32 On the changing meaning of the concept of aristocracy in the Dutch late eighteenth cen-
tury see Klein, Patriots Republikanisme, 228–243 and Mart Rutjes, Door gelijkheid gegre-
pen. Democratie, burgerschap en staat in Nederland 1795–1801 (Nijmegen, 2012).
33 Luzac, Socrates als burger beschouwd, 143–167.
34 Ibidem, 182–183.
200 Velema
American friend John Adams, ended his career in theoretical irrelevance—

albeit of a very revealing kind.35
An Enlightened Conservative Confronts the Classics: Elie Luzac
Johan Luzac’s veneration for classical antiquity was far from shared by his
equally learned but intellectually more adventurous cousin, Elie Luzac
(1721–1796).36 Elie, who was a distinguished publisher, a prolific publicist and
a creative conservative political thinker, was fully prepared to admit that the
ancients, and particularly the Greeks, had given the world works of enormous
value that could still be read with considerable profit. Yet he consistently op-
posed the uncritical cult of antiquity to be found among his contemporaries. It
was absurd, he argued, to keep regarding the writings of the ancients as canon-
ical and thus to appeal to authority instead of to rational argument. Such use
of the ancients did not lead to advances in knowledge, but only to dry, pedantic
and superfluous erudition.37 The obsession with classical antiquity was more-
over quite harmful in that it distracted eighteenth-century Dutchmen from
more important topics. In this indirect way it could, Luzac insisted, be held
responsible for the eighteenth-century decline of Dutch commerce and navi-
gation.38 The most deleterious effects of the cult of the classics, however, were
to be found in the fields of politics and especially of political thought. In poli-
tics, Luzac held the classical heritage to be largely irrelevant, since the world of
the classical republics was fundamentally different from the world of modern
states. The classical republics had, moreover, been so different from each other
that generalisations made little sense. “People keep referring to the classical
republics as examples,” he remarked in his commentary on Montesquieu’s
35 J.G.A. Pocock, “ ‘The Book Most Misunderstood Since the Bible’: John Adams and the
Confusion about Aristocracy,” in Fra Toscana e Stati Uniti. Il discorso politico nell’età della
costituzione Americana, ed. Anna Maria Martellone en Elisabetta Vezzosi (Florence, 1989),
181–201; Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters. What Made the Founders Different
(New York, 2006), 173–202.
36 Wyger R.E. Velema, Enlightenment and Conservatism in the Dutch Republic. The Political
Thought of Elie Luzac (1721–1796) (Assen and Maastricht, 1993); Rietje van Vliet, Elie Luzac
(1721–1796). Boekverkoper van de Verlichting (Nijmegen, 2005).
37 Elie Luzac, Du droit naturel, civil, et politique en forme d’entretiens. Programme (Leiden,
1796), 14–15.
38 Elie Luzac, Hollands Rykdom, behelzende den Oorsprong van de Koophandel, en van de
Magt van dezen Staat, etc., 4 vols. (Leiden, 1780–1783), 4:277–278.
De l’Esprit des Lois, “without realising that they have nothing whatsoever in
common, except their name.”39
Even worse, however, was the fact that certain classical delusions in the field
of political thought had found a wide modern acceptance. The first of these
was the classical conviction that liberty was incompatible with monarchical
rule. “This notion, or rather misconception,” Luzac observed, “was imprinted
on the popular mind by the Romans, after they had chased away Tarquin, and
has since found a considerable following.”40 Yet it was patently untrue, since
liberty was best protected in a mixed form of government in which the mo-
narchical element was a crucial presence. So strongly was Luzac convinced
of this, that he paradoxically claimed that the recognition of the necessity of
a monarchical element in government was the most salient characteristic of
true republicanism.41 Perhaps even more harmful than the antagonism to-
wards monarchical rule to be found in the classics was their incomprehen-
sible and arbitrary definition of liberty as the participation of the citizen in
politics. Not that Luzac was greatly surprised by such nonsense. “I have read,”
he quipped, “that there are people who consider themselves to be free when
they are allowed to wear a straight collar, a long scarf, or a hat in the shape of
a sugarloaf.”42 On a more serious note, he explained that liberty simply meant
independentia ab alterius voluntate, which in practice translated into protec-
tion against external conquest and, in domestic politics, the rule of law. In both
of these essential meanings of the word liberty, Luzac insisted, had nothing to
do with self-government or political participation.43
Despite his severe criticism of the uses the classical heritage was put to, Lu-
zac in the end came to the conclusion that he needed to confront his worst
political enemies, those Patriot and Batavian reformers and revolutionar-
ies who wanted to introduce a democratic republican system, on their own
ground: that of the interpretation of the history of the classical republics. He
characteristically started his ideological counter-offensive with a deadly insult:
convinced as they were of their own excellence and originality, contemporary
Dutch democratic republicans were in fact, he pointed out, only feebly echoing
39 Montesquieu, De L’Esprit des Loix. Nouvelle Edition. Avec des Remarques Philosophiques et
Politiques d’un Anonyme [Elie Luzac], etc., 4 vols. (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1763), 4:187.
40 [Elie Luzac], De Vaderlandsche Staatsbeschouwers, etc., 4 vols. (S.l., s.d. [1784–1788]), 1:125.
41 [Elie Luzac], Lettres sur les dangers de changer la constitution primitive d’un gouvernement
public (London, 1792), 360–362. Luzac’s preferences remind one of John Adams’ pleas for
a “monarchical republic.” See Wood, Revolutionary Characters, 189 and 191.
42 Luzac, Hollands Rykdom, 3:212.
43 Ibidem, 202; [Luzac], Lettres sur les dangers, 197–198.
202 Velema
the republican writings of the Dutch late seventeenth century, especially those
of the brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court. It was to these writings that he
therefore turned. He vigorously contradicted the general claim made by the
brothers De la Court that a popular government was the most natural, reason-
able, and just form of government that could be imagined.44 He then more spe-
cifically turned against their use of the example of the classical republics. Since
the De la Courts had, in the words of Arthur Weststeijn, “presented Athens as
a paradigmatic popular government, a truly commercial city-state that could
serve as a model,” Luzac focused on the Attic city-state.45 He first discussed the
history of Athens in some detail during the late 1780s, in a series of pamphlets
on “the advantages and disadvantages of popular influence on government.” In
doing so he made no claims to original historical scholarship, and based his in-
terpretation on a rather curious and far from up to date mixture of secondary
literature, ranging from the early seventeenth-century writings of Ubbo Em-
mius to the histories of Claude Millot. Luzac’s primary aim in discussing the
history of Athens was to demonstrate that it confirmed the general historical
truth that “the jura majestatica, the rights of sovereignty, have never and no-
where in their entirety or completely been in the hands of the people.”46
Luzac was, of course, aware of the fact that much of the early history of
Athenian political institutions remained shrouded in mystery. For his purpos-
es, however, the only thing that mattered was that Athens had started out as
a monarchy and that it had, under that initial form of government, become
quite prosperous. From this original blissful state, things had slowly started to
deteriorate in a way that for Luzac unambiguously demonstrated that it was
always safer and better for a state to hold on to its original political arrange-
ments and never to change them in any fundamental way.47 Ignorant of this
essential political truth, the Athenians had started to tamper with the form of
their polity. This process had been initiated by Theseus, who introduced a rudi-
mentary form of mixed government, and thereby awakened a desire for change
in the Athenians that would never thereafter cease, and would lead to “inces-
sant riots, rebellions, and revolutions.”48 The reforms of Solon, greatly admired
by Johan Luzac, for his cousin Elie constituted a significant further step in the
44 Velema, Enlightenment and Conservatism, 173–174.

45 Arthur Weststeijn, Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden Age. The Political
Thought of Johan & Pieter de la Court (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 215.
46 [Elie Luzac], De voor- en nadeelen van den invloed des volks op de regeering, 3 vols. (Leiden,
1788–1789), 1: 58.
47 Ibidem, 94.
48 Ibidem, 74–75.
political decline of Athens. With his complicated measures, Solon had fatally
weakened the political structure of Athens in two ways. He had first of all un-
dermined the necessary unity of government by removing all remaining traces
of monarchical rule. Even worse, however, was the fact that he had made the
people the ultimate and supreme political judge, thereby effectively delivering
his fatherland into the hands of fools.49 After Solon, it was only a matter of
time before the “government of the many” would completely triumph. Yet this
so-called popular government, Luzac kept repeating, was never really what it
claimed to be, since “the part played by the people in politics was limited to
the popular vote, which was used by a small group of ambitious men as an
instrument to dominate the state; […] and, under the pretense of furthering
the interest of the people, to arbitrarily rule according to their own whims.”50
Luzac further developed many of the themes he had first discussed in his
pamphlets of the late 1780s in a lengthy treatise entitled Lettres sur les dan-
gers de changer la constitution primitive d’un gouvernement public, published in
1792. Once again, he gave pride of place to the history of ancient Athens. As he
had done before, he stressed that he was not writing a work of history, but that
he was using history—“that faithful mirror, which shows us through the past
what the present promises us for the future”—to illustrate certain basic politi-
cal truths.51 The most important of these, as the title of his treatise already sug-
gested, concerned the imprudence of changing the original institutions of a
state.52 It was their refusal to follow this simple and commonsensical political
rule that had ultimately brought ruin to the ancient Athenians. By introducing
the first changes in the monarchical constitution of the Athenians, Theseus
had laid the basis for “that unquiet and turbulent spirit which would character-
ise the Athenians in later times and would bring them the constant upheavals
that ultimately caused their decline and fall.”53 Yet the history of ancient Ath-
ens was capable of yielding many further valuable lessons and insights. One of
these was that the Athenians had lived a happy and economically prosperous
life during their many centuries of monarchical government. It had been in
those early days, and not as was so often claimed under the later so-called pop-
ular government, that Athens had built up its commerce and prosperity. The
era of popular government, by contrast, had been characterised by aggressive
imperialism and ceaseless warfare. Luzac was both astonished and a ngered
49 Ibidem, 81.
50 Ibidem, 101–102.
51 [Luzac], Lettres sur les dangers, 55–56 and 7.
52 Ibidem, v.
53 Ibidem, 25.
204 Velema
by the fact that most modern historians of ancient Athens were unable or un-
willing to comprehend the importance of this simple observation. They kept
discussing the fifth century bc as the golden age of Athens, instead of treating
it, as it ought to be, as a period singularly lacking in public happiness. From
being a peaceful “trading people,” particularly adept at agriculture and naviga-
tion, and a model of temperance, happiness and justice, the Athenians had—
particularly after the disastrous reforms of Solon—so degenerated that the
only virtue left to them by the time of the fifth century was a destructive “mili-
tary virtue.” It was, Luzac insisted, simply ridiculous to hold up such a bellicose
people for modern praise and imitation.54
There was little hope for such insights to gain any ground, however, so
long as people continued to believe that the Athenians of the fifth century
had been particularly free, because they ruled themselves through a so-called
popular form of government. This, in the end, was the fundamental point to
which Luzac always felt compelled to return. Taking up a theme he had al-
ready discussed in many previous works, he once again explained that it was
both deeply misleading and highly dangerous to equate liberty with the self-
rule of the people, as so many modern authors did. Under their monarchical
rulers, the Athenians had lived contentedly for many centuries, enjoying both
protection against foreign intervention and “a reasonable civil liberty, that is
to say the capacity to exercise their rights according to the established laws
and regulations.” Nobody thought of liberty in terms of popular sovereignty.
“It was not until demagogues artfully started to suggest to the people the false
idea that civil liberty consists of a political arrangement in which there can be
no other sovereign in the state than the people (the idea of representatives of
the people seems to be of more recent origin), that the word liberty started to
take on this meaning.”55 This was a fateful development. Combined with the
abandonment of the original constitution, it caused Athens’s gradual slide into
chaos and confusion. Increasingly imbued with false notions of liberty and in-
dependence, the Athenian citizens demanded an ever greater say in politics.
The results were as sad as they were predictable: since the people could not
collectively act in politics or permanently exercise sovereignty, the notion of
the popular voice or popular sovereignty in practice meant the arbitrary reign
of unscrupulous manipulators. Luzac remained adamant that democracy
simply could not exist, because “the people as a whole is unable to act and is
therefore obliged to entrust its affairs to one or a few citizens.”56 Since a people
54 Ibidem, 108–115, 153–154, 159, 178–179, 204–208.

55 Ibidem, 188–189.
56 Ibidem, 149.
believing itself to be sovereign was nothing but a “blind animal,” unable to act
with honor, probity, or good faith, and inclined to sacrifice everything to the
“impetuous course of its favorite passions,” the choice of such leaders would be
determined by empty rhetoric.57 In a so-called popular government, in short,
the people could never be more than “the plaything of the flattery of orators”
and liberty could mean no more than “the passive capacity to be able to receive
the impulses oratory gives birth to.”58 This, according to Elie Luzac, was the
final and most dismal lesson the history of classical Athens had to offer. The
Dutch reformers and revolutionaries could hardly have been given a clearer
warning to abandon their classically inspired plans for a democratic republic.
Civil versus Political Liberty: Johan Meerman
Such warnings were also emphatically and repeatedly issued by Johan Meer-
man (1753–1815)—a patrician book collector, tireless traveler, meritorious
historian and distinguished civil servant.59 As was the case with Johan Luzac,
Meerman’s political views brought him into direct conflict with the Batavian
revolutionaries in 1795. Immediately after the fall of the Dutch ancien régime,
he was dismissed from all his jobs and had to endure “offensive treatment and
outrageous insults” from his political enemies.60 This was less than surprising,
since Meerman was perhaps the most ferocious opponent of democracy of
all three writers discussed in this chapter. He was certainly the one who went
furthest in dismissing as shortsighted and ridiculous the Dutch consensus that
republican government was superior to monarchical government. In 1787, in
an essay submitted to the academy of Châlons-sur-Marne on the best ways to
57 Ibidem, 167.
58 Ibidem, 220–222. The pernicious role played by the rhetoric of demagogues was also
the central theme in most eighteenth-century British condemnations of Athenian de-
mocracy. See Karen E. Whedbee, “The Tyranny of Athens: Representations of Rhetorical
Democracy in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Second Series 33
(2003): 65–85.
59 There is, unfortunately, no monograph on Meerman. See, however, P.W. Klein, “Johan
Meerman (1753–1815). Conservatief aan de kantlijn,” in Mensen van de Nieuwe Tijd. Een liber
amicorum voor A.Th. van Deursen, ed. M. Bruggeman et al. (Amsterdam, 1996), 399–413
and Jos van Heel, ed., Een wereld van verzamelaars en geleerden. Gerard en Johan Meer-
man, Willem van Westreenen en Pieter van Damme en hun archieven (Hilversum, 2012).
60 J.W. te Water, “Levensberichten van Frederik Willem Boers en Johan Meerrman,” in
Handelingen der jaarlijksche vergadering van de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letter-
kunde te Leiden, gehouden den 3 van Hooimaand 1816 (s.l., s.d.), 19.
206 Velema
promote patriotism in a monarchy, he emphatically remarked that, although

“born as a republican,” he could see no reason whatsoever why it was impos-
sible “to live happily under the scepter of a single ruler.”61 Deeply disturbed
by the apparently insurmountable political divisions in his own country, and
terrified by the rapid political radicalisation taking place in France, he went
on to write some of the most principled rejections of popular government to
appear in late eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. Completely reversing the
standard classical republican argument that liberty could only be guaranteed
and political slavery could only be prevented by the participation of the citi-
zen in politics, Meerman provocatively claimed that, on the contrary, it was
precisely popular participation in politics, and particularly full-blown popular
government, that lay at the root of political slavery.
He developed this thesis at length in a 1793 pamphlet entirely devoted to
the sharp contrast between civil and political or popular liberty.62 Civil liberty,
Meerman argued, arose when people, in order to protect themselves, decided
to transfer part of their natural liberty to a superior authority, on the condi-
tion that this authority would shield them from both foreign and domestic
harm: “The certainty that this authority […] can, will, and must protect my
person and goods; and that the one to whom I—in order to protect myself—
have partly subjected myself, will not maltreat me, is called civil liberty.”63
The greater this certainty, and the smaller the area in which the individual
was constrained in his behavior by the law, the greater civil liberty would be.
Meerman proceeded to demonstrate in great detail that the inhabitants of the
Dutch Republic enjoyed civil liberty to an almost unprecedented degree.64
Unfortunately, however, increasing numbers of Dutchmen were now suddenly
dismissing this glorious and extensive liberty as altogether inadequate, and
were beginning to claim that without political liberty there could be no true
republic. This, Meerman insisted, was a most dangerous “chimera,” since the
introduction of political liberty, defined as “the right of all or a great number
of the inhabitants of a country to participate in government either directly or
61 J. de Meerman, seigneur de Dalem, Discours presenté a L’Academie de Châlons-sur-Marne

en 1787. Sur la question qu’elle avoit proposée: Quels sont les meilleurs moyens d’exiter et
d’encourager le patriotisme dans une monarchie, sans gêner ou affoiblir en rien l’étendue de
pouvoir et d’execution qui est propre à ce genre de gouvernement, etc. (Leiden, 1789), 1–2.
62 Johan Meerman, De burgerlyke vryheid in haare heilzaame, de volks-vryheid in haare scha-
delyke gevolgen voorgesteld, inzonderheid met betrekking tot dit gemeenebest (Leiden,
1793).
63 Ibidem, 5.
64 Ibidem, 8–26.
through elected representatives,” necessarily meant the end of civil liberty.65

There was a great variety of reasons that led to this conclusion, but he particu-
larly emphasised two. In the first place, it was quite obvious that most people
were unfit to rule themselves or to elect representatives. Sovereignty could
simply not be responsibly exercised by those who lacked the requisite knowl-
edge and skills, the proper upbringing, and sufficient time. In consequence of
this, unscrupulous rabble-rousers would immediately seize their chance and
popular liberty would soon show its true face as “slavery to the most crafty,
eloquent and seditious demagogue who would succeed in bringing the people
under his influence.”66 Secondly, the introduction of popular liberty meant
that the distinction between rulers and ruled would altogether disappear, that
there could therefore no longer be any political stability or continuity, and that
the protection of life and property thus became highly uncertain. All of this
left room for only one conclusion: “Political liberty is, I can hardly find words
strong enough to express my conviction, the destructor, the exterminator, the
murderer of civil liberty.”67
It was during the first years of the nineteenth century, and after witnessing
years of experiments with democratic republicanism in the Netherlands, that
Meerman returned to these themes. Whereas in the early 1790s he had dis-
cussed the perils of democracy primarily in relation to the Dutch Republic, he
now did so in the context of classical, and particularly of Athenian, history. In
1800, Meerman acquired a manuscript by the young Hugo Grotius at a Utrecht
auction.68 It was the only surviving part of a larger work comparing the Dutch
Republic to ancient Greece and Rome. Meerman decided to publish the manu-
script, adding both a Dutch translation and a copious commentary.69 In his
notes and additions, substantially longer than Grotius’s text itself, he showed
65 Ibidem, 26–27.
66 Ibidem, 27–29.
67 Ibidem, 42.
68 Van Heel, ed., Een wereld van verzamelaars, 92.
69 Johan Meerman, ed., Hugonis Grotii, Batavi, parallelon rerumpublicarum liber tertius: de
moribus ingenioque populorum Atheniensium, Romanorum, Batavorum. Vergelijking der
gemeenebesten door Hugo de Groot. Derde boek: over de zeden en den inborst der Athe-
nienseren, Romeinen en Hollanderen, 4 vols. (Haarlem, 1801–1803). See Arthur Eyffinger,
“Hugo Grotius’ Parallelon rerumpublicarum,” in De Hollandse leerjaren van Hugo de Groot
(1583–1621). Lezingen van het colloquium ter gelegenheid van de 350-ste sterfdag van Hugo
de Groot (’s-Gravenhage, 31 augustus–1 september 1995), ed. H.J.M. Nellen and J. Trapman
(Hilversum, 1996), 87–95 and Arthur Eyffinger, “Een te lang veronachtzaamd juweeltje:
het Parallelon rerumpublicarum van Hugo de Groot,” in Limae labor et mora. Opstellen
voor Fokke Akkerman ter gelegenheid van zijn zeventigste verjaardag, ed. Zweder von
208 Velema
himself to be much more thoroughly informed about ancient history than Elie
Luzac had been. He used the full range of classical history available at the time,
from the latest German scholarship to Adam Ferguson and Edward Gibbon,
and from the ubiquitous abbé Barthélémy to Cornelis de Pauw’s Recherches
philosophiques sur les Grecques, to clarify every conceivable sort of theme from
the Greek and Roman past. Clearly, his education at the prestigious university
of Göttingen had not been wasted upon him.70 It was Grotius’s chapter De lib-
ertate et servitude that once again brought him to a discussion of the theme of
liberty. As he had done in his 1793 treatise, he started with general observations
on the nature of liberty, repeating his position that liberty primarily meant
the protection of each individual’s life and property under a government that
guaranteed the rule of law. Liberty thus defined could only be adequately pro-
tected under a stable government, whatever the legitimacy of its origins and
whatever its precise composition. Indeed, it might very well be a hereditary
monarchy. Wisdom, justice, and power were the essential characteristics of the
rulers in such stable governments. Particularly the first of these characteristics
made democracy a form of government incompatible with the existence of
liberty, since it was composed “for the greatest part of people without an up-
bringing, without education, used to earning their living with manual labor,
and therefore entirely incapable of handling the difficult problems arising in
governing a country.”71
Having set out his basic position on liberty once more, Meerman turned
to the history of liberty in the ancient world and particularly in Athens. He
did so not only because, as we have seen, the ancient republics remained of
paramount importance in contemporary political debate, but also because
he was convinced that history in its most essential aspects repeated itself.72
He had, moreover, intensively studied ancient history in his Göttingen days
and considered himself in many respects to be “an admirer of the ancients.”73
artels, Piet Steenbakkers and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leende, 2000), 127–144. Cf. on Grotius’
M
Parallelon Chapter 3 in this volume by Arthur Weststeijn.
70 Te Water, “Levensberichten,” 9.
71 Meerman, ed., Parallelon, 1: 199–212. The quotation is on 208–209.
72 J. de Meerman, Seigneur de Dalem, Discours qui a remporté le prix de l’Académie Royale des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, de Paris sur la question proposée en 1782: Comparer ensemble
la Ligue des Achéens 280 ans avant J.C., celle des Suisses en 1307 de l’Ere Chrétienne, & la
Ligue des Provinces-Unies en 1579; Dévelloper les causes, l’origine, la nature, & l’objet de ces
Associations Politiques (The Hague, 1784), 1–2.
73 Johan Meerman, “Athenen onder Cleo, of eene verhandeling over het toneeldicht van
Aristophanes: De Ridders, als bijlage tot het hoofddeel der vrijheid en slaavernij,” in Meer-
man, ed., Parallelon, 4: 1–154, 6.
When, later in life, he became the highest Dutch civil servant in charge of edu-
cational policy, he staunchly defended a continued and prominent role of the
classics in the curriculum.74 In his appreciation of the ancients, Meerman may
be said to have occupied a middle ground between the almost boundless ad-
miration displayed by Johan Luzac and the harsh criticisms formulated by Elie
Luzac. He berated Grotius, who in his humanist enthusiasm had followed the
conventions of the panegyric to such an extent that he had proclaimed the to-
tal superiority of the Dutch Republic over ancient Greece and Rome, for insuf-
ficiently appreciating the very real achievements of the ancient world. Yet at
the same time he found it impossible to deny that almost the entire course of
Greek and Roman history had been marred by “the restlessness of liberty, the
jealousy of parties, popular tyranny, the most outrageous ingratitude shown
to decent citizens.”75 It was particularly in the story of the rise of Athenian
democracy that he found ample evidence for this last contention.
Unsurprisingly, Meerman’s interpretation of the history of Athenian liberty
was closer to that of Elie Luzac, who had extolled the virtues of the early mon-
archy, than to that of Johan Luzac, who had seen Solon as the founder of an
exemplary mixed government. Athens’s initial period of monarchical govern-
ment, he agreed with Elie Luzac, had shown many signs of true liberty: “a king
clearly ruling with the consent of the people; wise laws designed to increase
the happiness of all subjects; an excellent judiciary, independent of the whims
of the monarch.”76 Fairly soon, however, the growth of commerce and the arts
had led to an increase in wealth and ambition, and to the first assaults on this
pristine liberty. Nonetheless, it was clear to Meerman that single-headed gov-
ernment had brought the Athenian state its greatest happiness and liberty.77
All subsequent experiments with the Athenian form of government, however
well-intentioned, had only brought Athens closer to its eventual decline and
fall. Solon’s constitutional architecture was a case in point. While Meerman
acknowledged the necessity of Solon’s economic measures, he deeply disap-
proved of his political reforms. By giving extensive powers to the assembled
people of Athens, Solon had basically introduced democracy. Yet in order to
prevent democracy from degenerating into “a tyranny of the people,” he had
designed various ways to restrain it. Thus he had instituted a Council of Four
Hundred (to which Meerman referred as “a senate”), in charge of preparing the
matters to be decided by the popular assembly. He had also seen to it that the
74 Klein, “Johan Meerman,” 402–408.

75 Meerman, ed., Parallelon, 1: 190–192.
76 Ibidem, 214–215.
77 Ibidem, 219.
210 Velema
Areopagus remained largely independent of the popular will. Yet it would soon
become clear that these arrangements were quite inadequate and could easily
be swept away by an unleashed democracy.78 This happened from the time of
Kleisthenes on, but it was Pericles who would deal the final blow to Solon’s
constitutional arrangements “by making the popular administration of justice
a matter of monetary gain, by undermining the authority of the Areopagus,
by depriving the senate of its influence on the general assembly, and by using
gifts and money to bring the avarice, corruption, pride and depravity of the
nation to levels hitherto unknown.”79 Despite his unmistakable greatness in
other areas, Pericles had thus been responsible for transforming Athens from
an “ordered and tempered popular government” into a “mad and unlimited
ochlocracy.” After the death of Pericles, the fickle population of Athens had in-
creasingly fallen prey to the specious schemes of self-interested demagogues,
with predictably disastrous results.
Meerman did not doubt that the Athenians had “completely lost what liber-
ty they had when the people, freed from every restraint, could fully impose its
will.”80 Yet even this apparently unambiguous and straightforward conclusion
seems not altogether to have satisfied him, for at the very end of his commen-
tary on Grotius he returned to the horrors of Athenian democracy at consider-
able length. This time, however, he did so in a way not previously encountered
in Dutch political debate. Following the example of his Göttingen teacher
Christian Gottlob Heyne, who in 1793 had discussed the perils inherent in
French revolutionary liberty and equality through the works of Aristophanes,
Meerman now also turned to this Greek playwright to once again and for the
final time expose the unmitigated dreadfulness of popular government.81 His
“Athens under Cleon, or Treatise on the play The Knights by Aristophanes” was
a curious mixture of historical and political commentary, literary paraphrase
78 Ibidem, 221–224.
79 Ibidem, 4: 2.
80 Ibidem, 1: 209.
81 Heyne had done so in his Libertatis et aequalitatis civilis in Atheniensium rep. delineato ex
Aristophane. See Marianne Heidenreich, Christian Gottlob Heyne und die Alte Geschichte
(Munich and Leipzig, 2006) 223 and 602. In 1794, Heyne’s treatise was translated into
Dutch as Verhandeling over de vrijheid en gelijkheid in de republiek der Atheniensen toege-
past op die van Frankrijk, etc. Late eighteenth-century British translators of Aristophanes
were also in the habit of writing prefaces “warning the reader of the evils of democratic
policy.” See Kyriacos Demetriou, “In Defence of the British Constitution: Theoretical Im-
plications of the Debate over Athenian Democracy in Britain, 1770–1850,” History of Politi-
cal Thought 17 (1996): 280–297, 285.
and a Dutch translation of certain key passages from the play.82 He had first
intended to translate the entire play, but had soon come to the conclusion that
it so strongly differed from contemporary Dutch morals and manners and con-
tained so many passages of a “disgusting impropriety,” that it was far preferable
to select only those parts fit for the sensibilities of a modern audience.83 Fortu-
nately there were many of these and, although fully aware that a comedy was
perhaps not to be regarded as the most reliable source of information on Greek
political life, Meerman was convinced that The Knights offered insights of fun-
damental importance about “the history, the politics, and the morals” of the
time in which it was written.84 Aristophanes had been particularly successful
in depicting Athenian democracy and the inevitable prominence in this form
of government of monstrous and criminal demagogues such as Cleon, the
main character in the play. This hero of the Athenian people was a man who
had risen from “the dregs of society” and had possessed no redeeming features
whatsoever: “he combined in his person the most shameless and despicable
character, the utmost cruelty, an insatiable avarice, and a willingness to sell, for
the appropriate sum, everything in the public domain that had been entrusted
to him.”85 Cleon, moreover, had been instrumental in disastrously lowering the
tone of public debate by using every imaginable form of histrionics to mislead
and win over the feckless Athenian crowds.86 It was, in short, simply impos-
sible to read Aristophanes on Cleon “without seeing the Athens of his days as a
quagmire of the most shameless rapacity and of injustice, filth and immorality
in all aspects of life.”87 But then what could one expect in a democracy?
Conclusion
Harsh criticism of the democratic experiments conducted in ancient Athens

was, as Jennifer Tolbert Roberts has shown with much subtlety and in great
detail, the rule rather than the exception in Western political thought until the
nineteenth century. Indeed, it was a political discourse that may be traced back
to ancient Greece itself and thereafter showed a remarkable degree of continu-
ity and resilience. Looked at from the broadest possible perspective, the three
82 Meerman, ed., Parallelon, 4: 1–154.

83 Ibidem, 6–7, 121.
84 Ibidem, 9.
85 Ibidem, 10.
86 Ibidem, 58.
87 Ibidem, 150.
212 Velema
late eighteenth-century Dutch opponents of the introduction of democratic

republicanism discussed in this chapter seamlessly fit into this long interna-
tional tradition of anti-democratic political thought.88 That these men were in
some respects echoing the commonplaces of a political discourse going back
many centuries, even millennia, should not, however, be allowed to obscure
the fact that they were doing so in a very specific time and place. If we study
these cases in the context of late eighteenth-century Dutch history and of the
late eighteenth-century political revolutions in general, they considerably gain
in depth and become decidedly more intriguing.
These three cases first of all show us that Dutch late eighteenth-century re-
formers and revolutionaries were not the only ones enlisting classical antiquity
in their political cause, but that those who opposed democratic republicanism
were doing so as well. Far from dismissing classical antiquity as irrelevant to
contemporary politics, and realising that the example of the ancients still car-
ried considerable weight, these opponents of revolutionary change, who were
all convinced that history had the capacity to provide the present with valu-
able lessons, regarded the history of ancient Athenian democracy as an indis-
pensable part of their political argumentation.89 These three cases moreover
demonstrate that criticism of the project of democratic republicanism through
the use of Athenian history not only could emerge from a great variety of back-
grounds and positions, but also could lead to unexpected results. Johan Luzac
was perhaps the least creative of our protagonists. His classical republican-
ism made him into an enthusiastic supporter of the early Patriot opposition in
the Dutch Republic, but also prevented him from following the reformers and
revolutionaries in their turn to revolutionary democracy. He was left isolated
and baffled. Elie Luzac had no great admiration for the classics to start with,
but nonetheless felt that a discussion of classical history was the best way to
counter the rise of republican democracy. In the course of his polemics, he in-
creasingly came to doubt the relevance of the traditional distinction between
republics and monarchies, and sought to replace it with one between arbitrary
and moderate governments, whatever their exact form. Johan Meerman in
turn even seems to have abandoned the age-old Dutch aversion to monarchy
altogether in his insistence that a hereditary monarchy was far superior to the
frenzied chaos inevitably caused by the introduction of popular government.
Thus, in the intense conceptual turmoil of the late eighteenth-century, the
Dutch consensus that a republic was always preferable to a monarchy seems to
have been undermined.
88 Tolbert Roberts, Athens on Trial, 3–226.

89 Cf. Ibidem, 175–207 and Demetriou, “In Defence of the British Constitution,” 280–290.
Finally, the polemics of these three opponents of democratic republicanism

illustrate the extent to which Dutch political debate in the revolutionary era
had become a dialogue of the deaf. Despite the fact that both revolutionar-
ies and conservatives made ample use of the classical past, there existed very
little common ground between them. The Dutch Patriot and Batavian reform-
ers and revolutionaries were obsessed with the classical world because, among
other things, they thought it offered a shining example of republican civic
virtue and of citizen participation in politics. What they never claimed was
that the democracy of ancient Athens could serve as a direct model for the
eighteenth-century Dutch Republic or that the introduction of direct rule by
the people was desirable. They were, in other words, seeking ways to adapt an-
cient liberty to the demands of the modern world and in the end mainly did so
through the device of political representation. Their conservative opponents,
however, were unable or unwilling to acknowledge the subtlety of the ways in
which the Patriots and the Batavians were appropriating and transforming the
heritage of classical democratic republicanism. They denied the relevance of
the distinction between direct and representative democracy and stubbornly
persisted in opposing all forms of democracy through discussions of ancient
Athens. To them, the history of the ancient world demonstrated beyond the
shadow of a doubt that all forms of democracy, whether direct or representa-
tive, were equally disastrous.
chapter 9
The Hebrew Republic in Sixteenth-Century

Political Debate: The Struggle for Jurisdiction
Guido Bartolucci
“Moses was a leader; a labor leader; a leader of revolt; and a great one. And he
was loyal to the people.”1 With these words the American journalist Lincoln
Steffens began his political description of the episode of Exodus as a model for
the Communist Revolution in Russia, in his book Moses in Red. The Revolt of
Israel as a Typical Revolution published in 1926. For the first time in the twenti-
eth century, the ancient history of the sons of Israel was used politically: after
1917, according to Steffens, all the old books and works had to be read under a
new light, a red one, the colour of revolution. In his work Steffens reinterprets
the story of the Hebrews in the desert and the events of their leader as an
important revolutionary moment, in which each step of the story of Exodus’
has a correspondence with what had happened in Russia.2 Steffens’ book has
played a key role in the development of political interpretation of the Bible
in the twentieth century, laying the foundation for the work of recent authors
such as Michael Walzer and Aaron Wildavsky. Yet the idea that the political
institutions of the Jews could be interpreted according to political categories
and absorbed into classical political thought was far from new.
Scholarly interest in Hebrew political institutions seems to have originated
in the second part of the sixteenth century, but thus far there is little clarity
about the cultural background to this phenomenon and its further develop-
ment.3 In the interpretation of Frank Manuel, “before the seventeenth century
1 Lincoln Steffens, Moses in Red. The Revolt of Israel as a Typical Revolution (Philadelphia,
1926), 51.
2 For an interpretation of Steffens’ work see Melanie J. Wright, Moses in America. The Cultural
Uses of Biblical Narrative, (Oxford, 2003), 13–42. For the influence of his book see Michael
Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York, 1985); Aaron Wildavsky, Moses as a Political Leader
(Jerusalem and New York, 2005).
3 The recent scholarship includes François Laplanche, “L’érudition chrétienne aux xvie et
xviie siècles et l’État des Hébreux,” in Groupe de Recherches Spinoziste, L’Écriture Sainte
au temps de Spinoza e dans le système spinoziste (Paris, 1992), 133–147; C.R. Ligota, “Histoire
à fondement théologique: la République des Hébreux,” in L’Écriture Sainte, 149–167; Bernard
Roussel, “Connaissance et interprétation du Judaisme antique: des biblistes chrétien de la

The Hebrew Republic in Sixteenth-Century Political Debate 215
there was great reluctance to turn the narrative parts of the Old Testament into
a consecutive secular story or to analyze the institutions of the patriarchal age,
the period of Moses’ rule or the kingships of the first and second Common-
wealths, as if they were states with histories similar to those of other nations.”4
Manuel argues that the conceptual instrumentation that authors subsequent-
ly applied to the history of the Hebrews was based on the dominant interpre-
tations of Greek and Roman history. In the seventeenth century, this develop-
ment resulted in the eventual transformation of the narrative sections of the
Old Testament into a story of secular and historical continuity, in which Jewish
political structures followed a course similar to that of Greece and Rome.
In this context, many scholars assume that the first treatises on the H ebrew
Republic, in particular De politia iudaica by Corneille Bertram (1574), De
seconde moitié du xvie siècle,” in La république des lettres et l’histoire du Judaisme antique,
xvie–xviiie siècles, ed. Chantal Grell and François Laplanche (Paris, 1992), 21–50; Petrus Cu-
naeus, De republica Hebraeorum, ed. Lea Campos Boralevi, (Florence, 1996), i-lv; Lea Cam-
pos Boralevi, “Per una storia della Respublica Hebraeorum come modello politico,” in Dalle
“repubbliche elzeviriane” alle ideologie del ‘900, ed. Vittor Ivo Comparato and Eluggero Pii
(Florence, 1997), 17–33; Vittorio Conti, Consociatio Civitatum: Le repubbliche nei testi elzeviri-
ani (1625–1649), (Florence, 1997); Jonathan Ziskind, “Cornelius Bertram and Carlo Sigonio:
Christian Hebraism’s first Political Scientists,” in Journal of Ecumenical Studies 37 (2000):
381–400; Lea Campos Boralevi and Diego Quaglioni, ed., Politeia Biblica, in Il Pensiero Po-
litico 35, 3 (2002); Y. Deutsch, “‘A View of the Jewish Religion.’ Conceptions of Jewish Practice
and Ritual in Early Modern Europe,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 3 (2001): 273–295; Fania
Oz-Satzberger, “The Jewish Roots of Western Freedom,” Azure. Ideas for the Jewish Nation, 13
(2002): 88–132; Lea Campos Boralevi, “Classical Foundation Myths of European Republican-
ism: The Jewish Commonwealth,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin
van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge, 2002), 1: 247–261; Kalman Neuman, “Political
Hebraism and the Early Modern ‘Respublica Hebraeorum’: On Defining the Field,” Hebraic
Political Studies 1.1 (2005): 57–70; Guido Bartolucci, La repubblica ebraica di Carlo Sigonio.
Modelli politici dell’età moderna (Florence, 2007); Guido Bartolucci, “Carlo Sigonio and the
Respublica Hebraeorum: A Re-evaluation,” Hebraic Political Studies 3 (2008): 19–59; Gordon
Schochet, Fania Oz-Salzberger and Meirav Jones, eds., Political Hebraism. Judaic Sources in
Early Modern Political Thought (Jerusalem and New York, 2008); Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Re-
public. Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought, (Cambridge, ma,
2010). Along with this literature the debate on the existence of a Jewish political thought,
interpreted through the categories of the classical tradition must be taken into account. On
this issue Michael Walzer’s works are fundamental: Michael Walzer, In God’s Shadow. Poli-
tics in the Hebrew Bible (New Haven and London, 2012); Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorber-
baum and Noam J. Zohar, eds., The Jewish Political Tradition, 2 vols. (New Haven and London,
2000–2003). For a different position see Daniel J. Elazar, ed., Kinship and Consent. The Jewish
Political Tradition and its Contemporary Uses (New Brunswick and London, 1997).
4 Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, 1992), 118.
216 Bartolucci
r epublica Hebraeorum by Carlo Sigonio, (1582) and De optimo imperio by Bene-

dict Arias Montano (1583), did not have a particular political meaning, com-
pared with subsequent works like De republica Hebraeorum (1617) by Petrus
Cunaeus. These works are allegedly confined to the field of Biblical archaeol-
ogy, and thus considered significant for studying the development of Hebrew
studies in the early modern age and for the improvement of knowledge of Jew-
ish life and institutions, rather than for their political contents. According to
this interpretation, the Jewish model acquired political significance only when
it became an object of reflection in the Dutch and English world, when the
history of the respublica Hebraeorum proved useful in the theological-political
problems of the Dutch Republic (especially during the clash between the
Calvinist orthodoxy and the Arminians in the 1610s) and of those in England
during the English revolution.5 Cunaeus and John Selden, together with Hugo
Grotius and James Harrington, figure as the ideal representatives of this politi-
cal use of the Jewish model opposed to their predecessors Bertram, Arias Mon-
tano and Sigonio. The works of Kalman Neuman and Eric Nelson provide good
examples of this historiographical perspective. In his contribution to defining
the genre of early modern studies on the Hebrew Republic, Neuman states that
the “genre should be seen in the context of early modern antiquarianism.”6
Following the same line as Manuel, Neuman therefore insists that the trea-
tises on the Hebrew republic followed a specific development, starting from a
general interest in the history of Jewish politics in the sixteenth century to a
more concrete political use in the next century. Nelson, who has published the
most important contribution in this field of studies, likewise maintains that
the thinking on the Hebrew Republic and particularly on Jewish theocracy
starting from Erastus, heavily influenced the debate on tolerance and the sepa-
ration of the religious and civil sphere in the Dutch Republic and in England
in the seventeenth century. Yet Nelson does not take into account the tradition
of the previous century, when the problem of the demarcation of religious and
5 Specifically on these countries see Jonathan Ziskind, “Petrus Cunaeus on Theocracy, Jubi-
lee and Latifundia,” Jewish Quarterly Review 48 (1978): 235–254; Campos Boralevi, “Classical
Foundation Myths of European Republicanism”; Guido Bartolucci, “The influence of Carlo
Sigonio’s ‘De Republica Hebraeorum’ on Hugo Grotius’ ‘De republica emendanda,’” Hebraic
Political Studies 2 (2007): 193–210; Arthur Eyffinger, “’How Wondrously Moses Goes Along
with the House of Orange!’ Hugo Grotius’ ‘De Republica Emendanda’ in the Context of the
Dutch Revolt,” in Schochet, Oz-Salzberger, Jones, ed., Political Hebraism, 107–147; Petrus Cu-
naeus, The Hebrew Republic, ed. Arthur Eyffinger, transl. Peter Wyetzner (Jerusalem-New
York, 2006); Nelson, The Hebrew Republic.
6 Neuman, “Political Hebraism,” 65.
civil power arose and when the same ideas of Erastus were discussed in detail,
in particular within the Calvinist milieu.7
Indeed, the use of the Jewish model in the political debate from the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries was much more articulated then Neuman
and Nelson assume, and it is not possible to understand what happened in
the Dutch Republic and in England without taking into account the way in
which Biblical sources were used earlier in other contexts, such as in the
Calvinist city of Geneva, Counterreformation Italy, or Habsburg Spain. Focus-
ing on key works published in these areas between 1574 and 1583, this chap-
ter shows that also scholars who spent part of their life producing works of a
highly antiquarian nature, such as Bertram, Sigonio and Arias Montano, used
the Jewish model in order to participate in the political debate of their time.
In the Bible and in other Jewish sources, they found the tools to think in a new
way about one of the main issues that confronted their societies: the equilib-
rium between civil and religious power. The model of the Hebrew Republic,
then, was not confined to strictly republican readings and uses, but it trav-
elled between different political contexts and areas, from republican Geneva
to papal Bologna and monarchical Spain, where it served primarily as intel-
lectual a rmory in the struggle for jurisdiction between princes and ministers,
emperors, popes and kings.
Corneille Bertram, the Hebrew Republic and the Erastus affaire
The first author who dedicated an entire work to the Hebrew Republic was
Corneille Bonaventure Bertram (1531–1594), a French Calvinist theologian and
Hebraist.8 Bertram studied law in Poitiers and Toulouse and Oriental languag-
es at the College Royal in Paris with the famous Hebraists Jean Mercier and
Angelo Canini. In 1561, in Cahors, he was a student of one the most important
French jurists, François Roaldes, and he became involved in strong Calvinist
propaganda. After the popular revolt against the Huguenots in 1561, he left Ca-
hors and sought refuge in Geneva, where he taught theology and Oriental lan-
guages. In Geneva he became a friend of Théodore Beza and, during the 1570’s,
he was a colleague of François Hotman, who taught Law in Geneva between
7 Nelson, The Hebrew Republic, 88–137.

8 The first author credited for analysing the Hebrew Republic in a political way is Jean Bodin,
but not in an autonomous work. See Anna Maria Lazzarino del Grosso, “The Respublica He-
braeorum as a Scientific Political Model in Jean Bodin’s ‘Methodus,’” Hebraic Political Studies,
5 (2006): 549–567; Bartolucci, La repubblica ebraica di Carlo Sigonio, 21–65.
218 Bartolucci
1573 and 1578.9 In 1586 Bertram went to Frankenthal, in the Palatinate, and
he then taught Hebrew language in Lausanne until his death in 1594.10 As a
French émigré in Geneva, Bertram observed with interest what was happen-
ing in his native country, in particular after the St. Bartholomew’s Day mas-
sacre in 1572. Two years later, he published his De politia iudaica. In that same
period, Hotman and Beza were elaborating a new Calvinist political theory
against the French monarchy, founded on constitutionalism and the right of
resistance.11
The scholars who have analysed Bertram’s work have assumed that he de-
fended a view of the church-state relation in a Calvinist way;12 in particular
Jonathan Ziskind argues that Bertram’s De politia iudaica “is a creative combi-
nation of Biblical history and ancient political thought.”13 Ziskind focuses his
attention on the passages in which Bertram summarises the structure of the
Hebrew Republic during its history and in which he uses the classical model of
the mixed constitution. Ziskind claims: “Although Polybius and Aristotle were
never cited by name, Bertram saw in this government of monarchy, aristocracy,
9 Cf. Donald R. Kelley, François Hotman: a Revolutionary’s Ordeal (Princeton, 1973), 273.
10 For the life of Bertram see Dictionnaire de Biographie Française (Paris, 1965), 6, col. 260;
Laplanche, “L’érudition chrétienne aux xvie et xviie,” 133–147; Albert de Montet, ed., Dic-
tionnaire biografique des Genevois et des vaudois, qui se sont distingués dans leurs pays ou
à l’étrager pour leurs talents, leurs actions, leurs oeuvres littéraires ou artistique etc. (Laus-
anne, 1877), 1: 48–49. In the dedication to Willem of Assia in his Lucubrationes, Bertram
reports some information about his education. See Bonaventura Cornelius Bertramus,
Lucubrationes Franktallenses seu Specimen aliquod interpretationum et expositionum
quas plurimas in difficillima quaeque utriusque Testamenti loca meditatus, (Spirae, 1588),
7–8: “Ergo et iam illo ipso tempore septemque deinceps annis, horis certe succisivis re-
cognoscendo Sanctis Pagnini Thesauro seu Dictionario hebraico, ea in memoriam revo-
cavi quae aliquando a Ioanne Mercero, Angelo Caninio et aliis quibusdam viris doctis de
genuino linguae Hebraicae et Aramaicae usu Lutetiae addidiceram, reliquo vero tempore
meditandis concionibus sacris, reliquisque rationibus quas ex Vetere et Novo Testamento
adhiberem moderando illi gregi qui meae fidei concreditus et commissus fuisset, earum
et Graecarum acceptione et sensu ab illis ipsis et ab Adriano Turnebo et Ioanne Stracelio
Graecis quondam Academiae Parisiensis professoribus audiveram.”
11 See Corrado Vivanti, Lotta politica e pace religiosa in Francia tra Cinque e Seicento (Tu-
rin, 1963); Julian H. Franklin, Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century.
Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza and Mornay (New York, 1969); Théodore de Bèze, Du droit
des Magistrats, ed. Robert M. Kingdon (Geneva, 1971); Michael Walzer, The Revolution of
Saints. A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, ma, 1965).
12 On the work of Bertram see Ziskind, “Cornelius Bertram and Carlo Sigonio,” and Roussel,
“Connaissance et interprétation du Judaisme antique.”
13 Ziskind, “Cornelius Bertram and Carlo Sigonio,” 384.
and democracy the Polybian concept of checks and balances of power and
the Aristotelian concept of beneficially blending the moral goals of desirable
governmental forms. Polybius compared Rome’s balanced constitution with
that of Sparta, and Bertram did the same with respect to the Mosaic regime.”14
Following this reading, Ziskind interprets the De politia iudaica as the result of
the encounter between a renewed interest in antiquity and a strong emphasis
on biblical and religious study, without any connection to the political events
of this period.
The introduction of De politia iudaica, dedicated to Beza, is divided into
two parts. In the first part Bertram describes how he discovered this topic
and, in particular, recalls his teacher Roaldes, the first who recommended that
he studied the civil and religious institutions of the Jews: this suggests that
the link between the Jewish institutions and the question of jurisdiction was
central to Bertram.15 In the second part Bertram writes that Beza’s work was
pivotal for his elaboration of De politia iudaica, stating that Beza closely fol-
lowed the composition of the treatise and that it was based on the ideas and
the material collected by Beza himself. Hence, Beza seems to have been the co-
author of the work, in a period in which, as we will see, Beza was reconsidering
the organization of the Calvinist society.16 The scholars who have studied De
politia iudaica have interpreted this close connection with the work of Beza
as a general link to Calvinist theology, in particular regarding the relationship
between state and church. However, Bertram’s words must be read as a much
more direct intervention in the concrete political and theological debate that
involved the Church of Geneva after Calvin’s death. In this perspective the idea
14 Ibidem, 385.
15 Bonaventura Cornelius Bertramus, De politia Iudaica (Geneva, 1574), 7: “Tertius et deci-
mus agitur annus, vir Clarissime, quum Franciscus Rhoaldus, iurisconsultus legum Ro-
manarum totiusque antiquitatis consultissimus, Cadurci meam in discutienda Iudaica
politia, eiusque duplici iurisdictione operam efflagitavit. ” The first part of the introduc-
tion, and especially the quotation of Roaldes, is important in order to understand the suc-
cess of the Hebrew political model in France. For a discussion of this topic cf. Bartolucci,
La repubblica ebraica di Carlo Sigonio, 45–65.
16 Bertramus, De politia Iudaica, 8: “Hoc ergo tuis auspiciis ita agressus sum, ut tuo consilio
tuaque opera assidue uterer, non solum dum institutum opus primum meditarer, sed et
ubi iam ad summum perduxissem. Adeo ut mihi profiteri necesse sit, quae in hunc li-
bellum congesta sunt, non modo tuo iudicio combrobata fuisse, sed et a te aucta atque
cumulata: immo ita expolita et adornata omnia, ut iam fere nihil in eo quod meum sit,
agnoscam, sed tua omnia esse palam praedicem, nec tam hic libellus in tuo nomine ap-
parere, quam tuus dici debeat.”
220 Bartolucci
of Hebrew Law developed by Bertram is paramount to understand the mean-

ing of the whole work. In the first chapter Bertram states:
The goal of all good laws, both those written or unwritten ones, is twofold:
either they concern the piety of man towards God, or they describe the
obligations among men. From here arises the dual form of the adminis-
tration of the Commonwealth: the divine one, which concerns piety, and
the human one, which describes the duties between men. We, however,
will call them the ecclesiastical administration and the civil one.17
The scheme presented in this passage reflects how Bertram developed his
entire treatise along a binary path in line with the aim of the law: the com-
mandments concerning God, on which religious government is based, and the
commandments regarding relations among men, which form the basis of civil
government. In the successive chapters Bertram analyses how the Jewish peo-
ple developed the institutions that had the task of defending, on the one hand,
the religious part of the law, and, on the other, the civil one. Bertram seeks to
show that, after the period of patriarchs, these two institutions were separated
from each other, and that each part had their proper magistrates and tribunals.
According to Bertram, the two spheres could not be mixed together. Hence,
in some passages he underlines that the best periods of the Jewish State were
when the civil and religious authorities were distinguished in a proper way.
This scheme is not an original elaboration of Bertram, but it is based on an
important passage of John Calvin’s Institutio. In Chapter 20 of the fourth book,
Calvin proposes to exceed the medieval division of Mosaic law into coerimo-
nialia, iudicalia and moralia, according to which only the last one would still
be valid for the Christian people. He assumes that the Decalogue, which rep-
resents the law of God, has to be divided into two parts: the commandments
regarding religion and those regarding the government of the state; both have
not only a historical meaning but also a moral one.18 Bertram likewise insists
on this distinction between the iurisdictio religiosa and civilis, as well as on
17 Ibidem, 9–10: “Legum omnium bonarum, sive sint scriptae, sive non scriptae, duplex est
scopus: autem enim hominis erga Deum pietatem respiciunt, aut hominum inter se of-
ficia describunt. Hinc duplex nascitur politiae genus, quarum unam quae ad pietatem
refertur, divinam, alteram quae hominum inter se officia continet, humanam merito vo-
cemus. Nos tamen ex commune loquendi more illa quidem ecclesiasticam istam vero
civilem appelabimus.”
18 John Calvin, Institutio religionis christianae 4.20.16. For the political thought of Calvin cf.
Marc-Edouard Chenevière, Le pensée politique de Calvin (Geneva, 1970).
their separation. In doing so, he quotes some examples from the Bible, in par-
ticular from the stories of David and Josaphat.19 For Bertram, both kings main-
tained the division of the two spheres, and during their kingship there was no
confusion between the two powers. But these references to the structure of the
Jewish State are not tied only to the work of Calvin and to his idea of Jewish
Law. Being published in 1574, De politia iudaica is also intimately connected to
the figure of Beza and to a specific period in the history of Calvinism.
After Calvin’s death, Beza, President of the Company of Pastors in Geneva
from 1563 to 1580, had to face a profound crisis of the organizational and dis-
ciplinary idea of the Reformed society.20 In particular, a series of events in the
second part of sixteenth century shook the Reformed Church, obliging Calvin’s
successor to modify his political ideas. The first was the work of Jean Moré-
ly and Pierre Ramé who, since 1561, had questioned the organization of the
Reformed Church and its lack of internal democracy. A second attack on the
Calvinist Church had arrived from the Principality of Palatinate: here the lay
theologian Erastus had reacted to the introduction of the Reformed faith by
Prince Frederick iii, maintaining that the Calvinist Church was subject to the
authority of the civil power.21 The reaction of Geneva’s authorities, and in par-
ticular of Beza, to Erastus was harsh, insisting on the jurisdictional prerogative
of the Church. The debate remained in manuscript until 1590, but it inevitably
influenced works that were published prior to that date.22 This is the case of
Bertram, whose work was a direct response to Erastus: in using Jewish history,
Bertram refused the subordination of the Church to the civil authority, reaf-
firming, for example, Church power on excommunication.23 Bertram’s work
19 Bertramus, De politia iudaica, 65: “Ex eadem ergo familia adhibiti sunt ad regendam ec-
clesiam et ad politiam civilem gubernandam, ita tamen ut nulla esset utriusque politiae
confusio et permixtio, ut etiam apparebit ex his quae a Iosaphato restituta sunt.”
20 See Toshiko Maruyama, The Ecclesiology of Theodore Beza. The Reform of the True Church
(Geneva, 1978), 106–129.
21 On Erastus see Charles D. Gunnoe Jr., Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate. A Renaissance
Physician in the Second Reformation (Leiden, 2010).
22 For the Erastian debate and its link to the Hebrew Republic cf. Nelson, The Hebrew Repub-
lic, 92–97.
23 Bertramus, De politia iudaica, 43–44: “Commune omnibus sacerdotibus officium erat do-
cere, precari et offerre ac proinde sanctuarii vasa adornare et instruere. Docendi munus
vel nudam verbi Dei explicationem spectabat, vel coniunctam etiam cum Iurisdictione.
Iurisdictio vel nudas repraehensiones, vel eas coniunctas cum legis sanctione. Legis
sanctio triplex ex legis ipsius interpretatione a veteribus rabbinis derivata est, longe ante
legem patribusprobata et postea ab apostolis rata habita. […] Secunda est cherem devo-
tio extremo cuidam exitio, excommunicatio, quando videlicet aliquis excindi dicebatur
222 Bartolucci
therefore had a clearly topical political meaning, closely tied to the Erastian
debate of his time. Indeed, in his analysis Bertram showed that since the early
days of the rediscovery of Jewish institutions under the guidance of Roaldes,
the jurisdictional problem between religious and civil authority had assumed
a very important role, a context in which the Mosaic model was considered the
best example to study.
Carlo Sigonio, the Mosaic Law and the Power of the Emperor
While Bertram was working on the De politia iudaica, he also published a new
edition of the Dictionarium linguae sanctae written by the Italian Christian He-
braist Sante Pagnini.24 In doing so Bertram added new Jewish sources and new
material to Pagnini’s definition of Hebrew items, shifting the meaning of the
words towards a “Calvinist” sense. Here Bertram presented his idea of Jewish
law, differentiating legal terminology into separate items, for example in the
case of the root chekek:
Statutes [Statuta] in the Sacred Scriptures (chukim in the male form or

chukot in the female one) are called the rites and ceremonies that are
related and indicate the precepts that are not understood by reason. They
differ from mishpat, with which they are often linked, which means po-
litical judgment [iudicia] and laws that concern the administration of
society. The statutes are therefore ceremonies relating to religion and
worship of God, such as circumcision, the sacrifices, holidays and more.25
ex populo suo et in eo amplius non censeri […] ex maiore aliquo delicto.” Significantly,
Constantijn L’Empereur, the important seventeenth-century theologian and Hebraist,
decided to publish Bertram’s work in order to affirm an orthodox Calvinist model against
Cunaeus. See Bonaventura Cornelius Bertramus, De Republica Hebraeorum (Leiden, 1641)
and Peter Van Rooden, Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies in the Sev-
enteenth Century. Constantijn L’Empereur (1591–1648) Professor of Hebrew and Theology at
Leiden (Leiden, 1989), 219–221.
24 Sante Pagninus, Thesaurus Linguae Sanctae, sive lexicon Hebraicum, auctore Sancte Pagni-
no, nunc demum cum doctissimis quibusque hebraeorum scriptis quam accuratissime colla-
tum, ex iisdem auctum ac recognitum, opera Ioannis Merceri, Antonii Cevallerii et B. Corneli
Bertrami, (Lyon, 1575). The first edition by Pagnini was published in 1529. For a discussion
on this source see Guido Bartolucci, “Introduction,” in Carlo Sigonio, The Hebrew Republic,
transl. Peter Wyetzner (New York and Jerusalem, 2010), xxiii-xxvi, xlix-l.
25 Pagninus, Thesaurus, 783–784: “Statuta in Scriptura masc. ‘huqim’ vel foemin. ‘huqot’
dicuntur ritus et cerimoniae aliquid referentes et repraesentes, quorum, ut Hebraei
In this passage Pagnini distinguished between two sets of orders, those that
collect the ceremonies relating to religion, chukim, and those concerning the
political sphere of government. In his dictionary we also find this definition of
tzedeka (justice):
These two terms are often joined together in the Sacred Scriptures, re-
spectively judgment (mishpat) and justice (tzedeka). The term judgment
means that part of the law which punishes the guilty men and criminals;
justice, on the other hand, defends the good people from the offenses of
the evil people. Both refer to the duty of the court. […] Also, in civil pro-
ceedings, we establish a judgment and we do justice, namely we absolve
the innocent and condemn the culprits.26
The definition in the Dictionary corresponds to the analysis made by Bertram

in the De politia iudaica, but it did not remain limited to the Calvinist world.
In fact the Dictionary had a wide circulation in the entire Republic of Letters,
reaching the private library of Ulisse Aldrovandi, one of the close colleagues
of the second author who dedicated a work to the Jewish political institution:
Carlo Sigonio (c. 1525–1584).27
Sigonio was one of the most famous historians of his time, teaching at the
University of Bologna between 1563 and 1584. During this period he published
several works on the medieval history of Italian cities and the Holy Roman Em-
pire, which included a stronger political interpretation than the one found in
his previous works on Roman and Greek antiquity. Furthermore, he also pub-
lished a work on the Hebrew Republic that, according to many scholars, is not
inquiunt, magna ex parte ratio ignoratur. Differt autem a ‘mishpat,’ cum quo saepe
iunctum videas, quod per iudicia ritus politici intelligantur et constitutiones quae ad
societatem tuendam pertinet. Statuta vero sint cerimoniae ad religionem et Dei cultum
pertinentes, ab ipso institutae, ut circumcisio, sacrificia, feriae et id genus.”
26 Ibidem, 2302: “Haec duo nomina, iudicii, hoc est mishpat, et tzedeqa, hoc est Iustitia,
passim in Scriptura videas simul iungi. Iudicii nomine ea iuris pars intelligitur, qua no-
centes et facinorosi puniuntur, iustitiae vero, qua boni defenduntur ab iniuria malorum
utrunque est ex officio iudicis. […] Ita et nos civiliter iubemur iudicium et iustitiam fa-
cere: id est iusta iustificare et iniusta damnare.”
27 See Maria Cristina Bacchi, “Ulisse Aldrovandi e la sua biblioteca,” L’ Archiginnasio 100
(2005): 256–366. The first page of all the books owned by Aldrovandi states: “Ulissi Al-
drovandi et amicorum” (owned by Ulisse Aldrovandi and friends), which testifies to
Aldrovandi’s habit of sharing his books. The main part of Aldrovandi’s library is in the
University Library of Bologna. The location of the Thesaurus is Bologna, Biblioteca Uni-
versitaria, A.M. P. iv 10.
224 Bartolucci
linked to his works on the ancient and medieval political tradition, but rather
to the religious and ecclesiastical policy of the bishop of Bologna, Gabriele Pa-
leotti.28 One of the most interesting parts of his work on the Hebrew Republic,
published in Bologna in 1582, lies in its description of Jewish law, which was
absolutely unprecedented for a treatise written by a Catholic at the end of the
sixteenth century. Sigonio finds the distinction between the religious and civil
authorities in the Jewish polity to be grounded in Mosaic law, and hence the
chapter entitled “The law given by God to the Israelites” is key to understand-
ing the work in its entirety.29 Sigonio imposes a two-part structure on Mosaic
law, and further divides each part into two. As in Calvin and Bertram, the re-
sulting four-part structure breaks with the medieval tradition which viewed
ancient Jewish law as consisting of three kinds of precepts: moral, ceremo-
nial, and judicial. For Christian theologians, first among them Aquinas, only
the first part (pertaining to moral precepts) was still valid for Christians, while
the remaining two could be applied only to the history of the Jewish people.30
Sigonio takes a different approach. He begins his analysis of Jewish law with
the two commandments of loving God and loving one’s neighbour, claiming
these to represent the categories of religious life and civil life respectively.
These categories cover all of Jewish law. Sigonio then goes into more detail and
differentiates between two types of commandments that regulate religious
life—mandates and precepts—and between two types of commandments
that rule the civil sphere—iudicia and iustificationes. The first two categories
include norms concerning ritual and religious organisation, and the last two
are strictly juridical in character (being, in effect, the God-given tools by which
humanity condemns the guilty and acquits the innocent).31 The juxtaposition
of Sigonio’s description and Bertram’s additions to Pagnini’s Dictionary makes
it clear that Sigonio used the latter. We do not know if Sigonio was aware that
28 On the life of Sigonio see William McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late
Renaissance (Princeton, 1989). On the interpretation of the link between Sigonio and
Paleotti see Paolo Prodi, “La storia umana come luogo teologico,” in Prodi, Profezia vs.
Utopia (Bologna, 2013), 217–242; Prodi, “Storia sacra e controriforma, Nota sulle censure al
commento di Carlo Sigonio a Sulpicio Severo,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico
in Trento 3 (1977): 75–104; Prodi, “Vecchi appunti e nuove riflessioni su Carlo Sigonio,” in
Nunc alia tempora, alii mores. Storici e storia in età postridentina. Atti del Convegno inter-
nazionale, Torino, 24–27 settembre 2003, ed. Massimo Firpo (Florence, 2005), 291–310.
29 Carolus Sigonius, De republica Hebraeorum libri vii (Bologna, 1582). The references are to
the English translation: Sigonio, The Hebrew Republic, 20–25.
30 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia 2ae, q 99, 1–6. On the meaning of the Deca-
logue in the Catholic tradition see Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, s.v. Decalogue.
31 Sigonio, The Hebrew Republic, 22.
the Dictionary he was using was a Calvinist work, but he found it extremally
useful for his purpose. Sigonio’s description, in fact, has two important impli-
cations that help us to understand his intentions and his idea of the Jewish
State. The first concerns the structure of the law, which makes it relevant in a
political-juridical sense and not just a theological one. Jewish law and the texts
expounding it then became relevant and comparable to the secular legacy of
Greece and Rome. The second point, which is actually more important in or-
der to understand the contribution of the Jewish state, concerns the result that
this division of the law produces in the distribution of powers within the state
itself. According to Sigonio, the theoretical separation between the religious
and civil spheres also requires a practical separation between the investment
of religious authority and civil authority in the hands of individuals. In other
words, those in charge of the administration of religious matters (the priestly
class) could not intervene in matters which pertained to the administration of
the state, and in particular the activities of the court. The pontiff, for example,
could preside over the Sanhedrin (when it acted as a court of law) only if the
crime to be judged was of a religious nature. One example of this idea is in
Chapter 5 of the first book, where Sigonio writes:
Moses, in fact, handed over the entire government to a large group of

men, men who were good and wise, so that some could look after the
sacred matters, and others the profane ones. (And of the men responsible
for sacred matters, one was the high priest and the rest were priests and
Levites. The latter handled profane matters: some devoted their time to
giving counsel, and others to judgements, and many of them saw to civil
or military education).32
Did Sigonio’s analysis have a political purpose? In order to understand this

point we need to turn our attention to another of his works, published in 1574
and then again in 1580, De regno Italiae libri xv.33 This treatise examines the
history of the Kingdom of Italy from the death of Emperor Justinian in 565 to
the death of Henry vi at the beginning of the thirteenth century. An important
part of the work is dedicated to the relationship between the power of the
32 Ibidem, 26.
33 Carolus Sigonius, De regno Italiae libri xv (Venice, 1574); De Regno Italiae libri xv (Bologna,
1580). On this work see McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio, 80–90; 275–285; Manuela Doni Garfag-
nini, “La prefazione al ‘De Regno Italiae’ di Carlo Sigonio,” in Garfagnini, Il teatro della
storia fra rappresentazione e realtà: storiografia e trattatistica fra Quattrocento e Seicento
(Rome, 2002), 197–230.
226 Bartolucci
pope and the power of the Emperor. In a passage in which Sigonio describes
the equilibrium between the two powers in the beginning of the Ottonian age,
he writes:
And certainly, although Italy was held by the king, who was the Em-
peror, and by the Roman pontiff, they did not have identical auctoritas.
The pope held Rome, Ravenna and the other regions by auctoritas more
than by imperium, because the cities regarded the pontiff as princeps of
a respublica, but the king as supreme lord and to him they paid tribute
and homage, which I have mentioned. The powers of the pontiff resided
in the power of excommunication (sacris detestationibus), then greatly
feared by Christian kings; those of the emperor in armies and military
intervention, to which the pontiffs themselves were often forced to suc-
cumb. […] Both were sacred powers, instituted for the conservation of
the Respublica Christiana.34
Sigonio’s passage proposes a representation of the two “universal” powers, the

papacy and the Empire, that is extremely articulate. In the first part, he por-
trays the relationship between the two auctoritates during the Ottonian pe-
riod, in which, Sigonio writes, the auctoritas of the pope in governing the cities
of his domain had no imperium, which was instead a prerogative of the Em-
peror. In distinguishing between auctoritas and imperium, Sigonio claims that
only the Emperor had those powers to resolve the issues raised between the
different parts of his kingdom. If then the first lines recognize a de facto limit
in papal auctoritas, in his later analysis Sigonio takes a further step: he seems to
proceed through a process of abstraction, from a concrete historical example
(the comparison between the powers of Otto and pope John xii) to the theo-
retical representation of the relationship between the two potestates (depicted
by the pope and the Emperor), legitimised by a single source (God), but which
34 Sigonius, De Regno Italiae libri xv (Basel, 1575), 290: “Et sane, quanquam Italia a rege, eo-
demque imperatore et a Romano pontifice tenebatur, non eadem tamen erat in utroque
auctoritas. Pontifex Romam Ravennamque et ditiones reliquas tenebat auctoritate ma-
gis quam imperio, quod civitates pontificem ut reipublicae principem, regem vero ut
summum dominum intuerentur, atque ei tributa obsequiaque quae dixi praeberent. Et
pontificis vires in sacris detestationibus versabantur, quas Christiani reges tum maxime
exhorruerunt, Imperatoris in armis et expeditionibus, quibus ipsi etiam pontifices cedere
saepe compulsi sunt. […] Utraque vero potestas sacra erat, ad Christianam conservan-
dam rempublicam instituta.” See McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio, 89; Guido Bartolucci, “Historian
Engagé. Republicanism and Oligarchy in Carlo Sigonio’s Political Histories,” Storicamente
8 (2012) http://www.storicamente.org/01_fonti/bartolucci_sigonio.htm [accessed 4 Febru-
ary 2015].
are exercised in two separate and distinct spheres (the spiritual and temporal)
in defense of the Christian respublica, without any hierarchical dependence.
This is an ideal representation, which could also be considered an ideologi-
cal description of the emergence and articulation of the different powers that
characterised the history of the Italian Kingdom from its beginning until Si-
gonio’s time. Its importance is further demonstrated by the content of Sigo-
nio’s later works, for example De Occidentali Imperio libri xx, published in 1578,
where he rejected the legitimacy of the Donation of Constantine.35 In his work
on the Jewish respublica, in particular, published two years after the last edi-
tion of De regno Italiae (1582), Sigonio took into account some central themes
of the Ottonian kingdom. Even in the Jewish State we find the idea of the law
that God gave to Moses and to the Jewish people distinguished into precepts
governing the spiritual sphere and those governing the temporal one, whose
principles and division the different magistrates had to conform to. In others
words, Carlo Sigonio was not only a historian committed, through the care-
ful study of the sources, to reconstructing fragments of Roman, Greek, Italian
history or the Jewish tradition; he was well aware that his studies, and in par-
ticular those on the late Empire, on the Kingdom of Italy, and on the Jewish Re-
public, had a profound meaning for his time. It is not difficult to imagine that
this reflection on the relationship between religious and civil institutions in
the state founded by God and the limits of papal power was highly pertinent to
the conflict between the two cities, Bologna, where Sigonio taught, and Rome,
a conflict with which he started to become familiar when he became professor
at the Studio in 1563.36 Furthermore, his analysis of certain major events in past
history, especially in the works of the last decade of his life, show that Sigonio
was engaged in an intellectual debate, not only locally but also nationally and
internationally on the nature and origins of power, with the Hebrew Republic
figuring as the starting point.
Arias Montano and Joshua as the Perfect King
From the 1580 onwards, the Catholic censors toughly attacked Sigonio’s
work. One of the manuscripts that contains parts of the censures to Sigonio’s
35 On the Donation see Guido Bartolucci, “Costantino nella storiografia della Controriforma.
Sigonio e Baronio tra filologia, censura e apologetica,” in Costantino I. Enciclopedia costan-
tiniana sulla figura e l’immagine dell’Imperatore del cosidetto editto di Milano 313–2013, 3
vols. (Rome, 2013), 3: 99–114.
36 See Angela De Benedictis, Repubblica per contratto. Bologna: una città europea nello Stato
della Chiesa (Bologna, 1995).
228 Bartolucci
c ommentary on Sulpicius Severus’s Historia Ecclesiastica and on De republica

Hebraeorum was owned by Benedict Arias Montano (1527–1598).37 Arias Mon-
tano was one of the most important Christian Hebraists of the sixteenth cen-
tury, and his masterpiece was the edition of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible printed
in 1572.38 He also composed several works on the ancient Jewish tradition in
order to reconstruct the context in which the stories of the Old and New Testa-
ment had taken place, mainly through the use of rabbinical sources. Thanks
to his knowledge of Holy Scriptures, Arias Montano, who participated in the
Council of Trent together with the Bishop of Segovia Martin Perez de Ayala in
1562, was considered one of the most important scholars of Oriental languages
of his time. This reputation impacted upon all his works, such as De optimo
imperio, causing them to be interpreted as learned treatises without any politi-
cal meaning.39 Modern scholars who have studied the tradition of respublica
Hebraeorum have interpreted Arias Montano’s work, in particular De optimo
imperio, as examples of Biblical archaeology.40 But actually this work, which
contains a commentary on the biblical Book of Joshua, is a sort of speculum
37 The role of Arias Montano in the elaboration of the censures to Sigonio’s work is unclear.
Moreover, we do not know if Montano used Sigonio’s De republica Hebraeorum in writ-
ing his work; no explicit references to Sigonio’s work were found. See Madrid, Biblioteca
Nacional, Ms. 12702. On the Censures see McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio, 251–290.
38 Ben Rekers, Benito Arias Montano (1527–1598) (Leiden, 1972).
39 Benedictus Arias Montanus, De optimo imperio sive in libro Iosuae commentarium,
(Antwerp, 1583). This text is not the only political work written by Arias Montano and
inspired by the Bible. In 1592 he published another book, a commentary on the book
of Judges, which analyses various forms of state: Benedictus Arias Montanus, De varia
republica sive commentaria in Librum Iudicum (Antwerp, 1592). In the introduction
he reconstructs the role of Biblical history in his political reflection, writing that if
Joshua was a perfect model of government but also a foundational one (as Moses had
been), the era of Judges represented the beginning of the “real political” history of the
Jews. Arias M ontano, De varia republica, *3v–*4r: “Atque superioribus illis duobus
voluminibus, maiore videlicet legis totius a Mose conscriptae et minore altero per Io-
suam concinnato, non tam Reipublicae summa aliqua, quam institutio tradita no-
bis videtur. […] Iosuae vero praecipuus labor in deducendo populo, hostibus bello ac
pugna pellendis, locis o ccupandis, haereditatibusque dividundis consumptus est, qui-
bus in rebus ille vir optimi, prudentissimi, piissimi atque innocentissimi et integerrimi
Imperatoris expressit imaginem. Iam vero Israelitis in promissa ante ac iam accepta re-
gione habitantibus, et reipublicae populique formam plane obtinentibus, cuiusmodi sta-
tus porro fuerint et duobus iis quos explicare aggredimur et quatuor proximis narrantur
libris.”
40 See for example Campos Boralevi, “Introduzione,” xv–xvi.
principum, in which Arias Montano recognises in the realm of Joshua a model

that teaches the King, Philip ii, the best art of government.41
In fact, the example of Joshua was for years at the heart of the European
political debate, especially within the Catholic world. The interpretation of his
story was twofold: first, especially among the Jesuits like Robert Bellarmine,
the story of Joshua was read through Numbers 27, 21:
And he (Joshua) shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall ask coun-
sel for him after the judgment of Urim before the Lord: at his word shall
they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the chil-
dren of Israel with him, even all the congregation.
On the basis of this passage, these interpreters supported the idea of the sub-
mission of civil power (represented by Joshua) to religious power (the high
priest Eleazar).42 The second interpretation, not using the passage from Num-
bers, instead based its analysis on the book of Joshua, where the relationship
between the successor of Moses and Eleazar was overturned and as a result,
the political power dominated over the religious one. The latter interpretation
was developed by Andreas Masius in his commentary on the book of Joshua
published in 1574, but it was Arias Montano who attributed a full political di-
mension to it.43 According to Arias Montano, the most important aspect was
the moment when God commanded Joshua to lead the people of Israel across
the Jordan River. It is at this point, he argued, that the deepest essence of Josh-
ua’s power emerged together with its relationship with the religious sphere
represented by the priestly class.
A first aspect of Arias Montano’s interpretation is already present in the first
few lines of the first chapter, when God said to Joshua: “Moses my servant is
dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and this people, unto the
land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.” Joshua therefore
received the mandate directly from God without the mediation of a priest.
Even more explicit, according to Arias Montano, was the episode in which God
told Joshua to command the priests to cross the Jordan with the Ark of the Cov-
enant. As is written in Joshua 4, 16–17: “And the Lord spoke unto Joshua, saying,
Command the priests that bear the Ark of the testimony, that they come up
41 The best interpretation of this work is José Luis Sánchez Lora, Arias Montano y el pensam-
iento político en la Corte de Felipe ii (Huelva, 2008), 91–106.
42 Ibidem, 94.
43 See Andreas Masius, Iosuae imperatoris historia illustrata atque explicata ab Andrea Masio
(Antwerp, 1574).
230 Bartolucci
out of Jordan.” According to Arias Montano the direct relationship between

God and Joshua recognised in him a prophetic spirit that turned him into an
instrument of God and thus raised him above the other political and religious
institutions. The key passage in which Arias Montano develops this thought
reads as follows:
To show clearly that Joshua had the responsibility and the authority both
on the religious and civil sphere directly from God, as a commander and
as a prophet, God commanded to Joshua to order to priests, who carried
the Ark of the Covenant, to leave the Jordan River. As we have already
said, this was not possible through a regular power, but due to the pro-
phetic authority, to which obeyed not only humble and important men,
but also princes, priests and pontiffs.44
A final aspect of the analysis made by Arias Montano is located in the final
chapters of the book of Joshua, which describes the distribution of land to the
tribes of Israel made by the Council which was laid in Shilo.45 In one of these
phases, and, specifically, at the moment when the Levites asked that forty-
eight cities were assigned to them according to the Law given to Moses, the
biblical account relates who were the members of this Council: Joshua, Eleazar
the high priest, and the twelve men representing the tribes. In this case, Arias
44 Arias Montanus, De optimo imperio, 123: “Ut religionis totiusque summae rerum adminis-
trandae cura et auctoritas Iosue tanquam Duci atque Prophetae divinitus tradita, publice
ostenderetur, iubet Deus Imperatori ipsi ut praecipiat sacerdotibus, nempe iis qui foede-
ris arcam portabant, ut ascendant de Iordane. Atque iam diximus hoc non ex communi
potestatis usu factum, sed ex propheticae auctoritatis ratione, cui non solum minores,
sed magnates etiam viros, atque adeo principes ipsos ac sacerdotes et Pontifices obsequi
oporteat.” Arias Montano analyzed this prerogative of Joshua also in his work of 1592 and
claimed that the prophetic power was not transmitted to other political leaders, but after
the death of Joshua, it became a responsibility of the priestly class. Arias Montanus, De
varia republica, 3–4: “Illo [Iosue] autem vita ac muneribus defuncto, quamquam guber-
nandae rei ius et authoritas ad successores deferretur legitime, tamen singularis illa va-
ticinandi praerogativa non omnibus gubernatoribus a Deo data est, sed ea authoritas ad
publicarum rerum usum apud sacerdotem haesit.” As to the relationship between Joshua
and the high priest, Arias Montano makes the dependence of Joshua on Eleazar in reli-
gious matters more evident, De varia republica, 3: “Duobus itaque muneribus Iosue prae-
ditus, altero vaticinandi, populi deducendi ac gubernandi altero, quod ad propheticum
officium pertinebat, cum ipsemet divina responsa saepe acciperet, non iubebatur sac-
erdotem consulerem, quod vero gubernationem spectabat, ubi quicquam magni atque
ardui consilii incidisset, pontificem petere ex religione debuit.”
45 Cf. Josh. 18
Montano, for the first time in his treatise, discusses the role of the high priest
and distinguishes it from that of Joshua. If, up to this point, the successor of
Moses had authority over all the people, including priests, here Arias Montano
seems to attribute to Eleazar the role of princeps of the religious sphere, distin-
guishing his role from that of Joshua, who, on the other hand, was the princeps
of the civil sphere. In doing so Arias Montano introduces a metaphor that ex-
plains the relationship between the two powers very well, namely the compari-
son with two stars (duo lumina), which establishes a relationship that is equal
and not subordinate to one another.46 But Arias Montano’s analysis does not
stop at this point. After having described the process that led to the distribu-
tion of the cities, he concludes his examination by arguing that the authority
of Joshua, who had received political authority directly from God, sanctioned
such distribution. Arias Montano seems here to reaffirm what he had already
said in comment to the previous chapters, that the political authority repre-
sented by Joshua in the affairs concerning the sphere of politics, was superior
to the priestly class, a superiority established by divine will.47
The exaltation of Joshua’s divine power attests Montano’s political project:
he wanted to legitimise the policy of Philip ii of Spain who, particularly after
1559, had come into conflict with the papacy in several areas, ranging from
foreign policy, the problem of the wars of religion in France, to jurisdiction
on the Church of Spain. This legitimization of the policy of Philip ii was to
occur through the use of a Christian Joshua as he was proposed as a model of
optimum imperium (more so than the Jewish kings David and Salomon, be-
cause they were consecrated by the high priest) and one in which a power
higher than the priest was conferred directly by God. Montano’s work was an
answer to two questions which concerned the relation between the Spanish
crown and the papacy. The first one was purely jurisdictional and political,
since it concerned relations between the Empire of Philip ii and the Church
of Rome: Philip wanted to maintain his dominion over his Italian possessions,
exposed to the papacy (Pope Pius v and Gregory xiii), which wanted to re-
store judicial prerogatives that had belonged to the Church in past centuries.48
46 Arias Montanus, De optimo imperio, 530: “Namque illi (Eleazar and Joshua), alter in iis
quae religionem praecipue spectarent, alter vero in civilibus rebus ac bellicis duo totius
populi principes ac veluti lumina in omni publico concilio primas obtinebant.”
47 Ibidem, 535: “Iam vero quisnam assignationis huius minister, executor et nomenclator
iure esse debuerit, indicatur nempe Iosue dux, penes quem bellicae atque civilis admin-
istrationis cura erat. Haec enim conciliorum esse ratio solet, ut quae publico atque com-
muni consensu decreta fuerint, principes exequantur, exercendaque curent.”
48 See in particular Gaetano Catalano, Controversie giurisdizionali tra Chiesa e Stato nell’età
di Gregorio xiii e Filippo ii. Atti della Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti di P alermo
232 Bartolucci
A second aspect concerned the legitimacy of authority and its relationship

with its source, namely the divine foundation of power. In this context, as we
have seen also in Sigonio’s work, the Biblical narrative became an important
place in which different ideas of political authority and links between religious
and civil spheres became strategic in the Catholic world.49
Conclusion
The work of Arias Montano, like Bertram’s and Sigonio’s treatises, sought to re-
spond to the conflict between religious and civil authorities. The three authors
acknowledged three different ideal constitutional models in Jewish history, a
mixed constitution for Bertram, an aristocratic republic for Sigonio and the
monarchy for Arias Montano, but all three also recognised that Jewish history
was the most important example in order to understand and justify the source
of political power and its relation to religious power.
Eric Nelson, as previously mentioned, has argued that the history of reli-
gious tolerance and the secularisation of political institutions have their ori-
gins in the work of Erastus on Jewish theocracy and have borne fruit in the
political thought of Cunaeus and Grotius in the Dutch Republic and of Selden
and Harrington in England. However, the history of the Jewish model is more
complex, involving from the beginning other authors and other countries.
What is common to all these authors and contexts is the idea that only the
Jewish tradition could help to solve the problems of the relationship between
religious and civil spheres (not a new problem, but one that could find a new
legitimacy through the Jewish past) and also that the Jewish history could be
read politically as any other experiences of human history.
(Palermo, 1955); Paolo Prodi, “San Carlo Borromeo e le trattative tra Gregorio xiii e
Filippo ii sulla giurisdizione ecclesiastica,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 11.2 (1957):
195–240; John Lynch, “Philip ii and the Papacy,” Transactions of the Royal Society, 5th se-
ries, 11 (1961): 23–42; Manfredi Merluzzi, “Considerazioni su Cesare Baronio e la Spagna,
tra controversia giuridica e ricezione erudita,” in Cesare Baronio tra santità e scrittura
storica, ed. Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, Raimondo Michetti and Francesco Scorza Bar-
cellona (Rome, 2012), 341–365.
49 On the use of the biblical model in Jesuit political literature of the seventeenth century
see Mario Rosa, “‘Per tenere alla futura mutatione volto il pensiero.’ Corte di Roma e cul-
tura politica nella prima metà del Seicento,” in La corte di Roma tra Cinque e Seicento.
“Teatro” della politica europea, ed. Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia
(Rome, 1998), 13–36.
The works of Bertram, Sigonio and Arias Montano show that, since its first
appearance in the sixteenth century, the Jewish model was immediately used
in political and religious debate. What characterised its use was primarily the
possibility for many authors to find solutions (or perhaps it would be better to
say justifications) in Biblical history for the different jurisdictional problems
involving the civil and religious authorities. The works that have been analysed
in this chapter reveal an established tradition of discussing and interpreting
the various sources, deepened by the religious division of Europe in the six-
teenth century. It is, therefore, difficult to find a specific influence of Jewish
sources in this type of analysis: the biblical and rabbinic texts provide only a
confirmation of what these individual authors wanted to prove. But what is
clear is that if the history of the Jewish model in the European political tradi-
tion reached its zenith in the seventeenth-century in the Dutch Republic and
England, it had its origin in sixteenth-century continental Europe, where the
first authors Bertram, Sigonio and Arias Montano, starting from similar po-
litical and religious problems, forged forms and vocabulary that would be the
basis of its further development.
chapter 10
The Hebrew Republic in Dutch Political Thought,

c. 1650–1675
René Koekkoek*
The notion of Neerlands Israel (“Dutch Israel”), the view that the Dutch peo-
ple were chosen by God, analogous to the biblical story of the Israelites as the
people chosen to be in covenant with God, was widespread in seventeenth-
century Dutch public discourse.1 A “Hebraic tint lay over Dutch society in these
days,” as the nineteenth-century literary critic and historian Conrad Busken
Huet put it.2 Simon Schama has contended that the Hebraic self-image of the
Dutch was “much more successfully a unifying bond than a divisive dogma.”
In a same vein Willem Frijhoff has also emphasised the unifying character of
the analogy: “Among the religious models of unity, the notion of new Israel
or ‘Dutch Israel,’ was particularly important.”3 Schama’s and Frijhoff’s evalua-
tions of the inclusiveness of the model of the biblical Israelites, however, are
only valid to a limited extent. The issue of how to read the Old Testament po-
litically was highly contested between different sides of the ideological spec-
trum in the Dutch Republic in the third quarter of the seventeenth century.
* I would like to thank Scott Mandelbrote, Joris van Eijnatten, and Frank Daudeij for their help-
ful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
1 It is also sometimes referred to as ‘second’ or ‘new’ Israel. The idea of Holland as a new Israel
surfaced for the first time in pamphlets and songs of the Geuzen (‘Beggars’), the rebelling
Dutch (lower) nobles, who fought the Spanish troops and played a decisive part in the Dutch
Revolt against Spain. See E.T. Kuiper, ed., Het Geuzenliedboek (Zutphen, 1924); R. Bisschop,
Sions vorst en volk. Het tweede-Israelidee als theocratisch concept in de Gereformeerde kerk van
de Republiek tussen ca. 1650 en ca. 1750 (Veenendaal, 1993); G. Groenhuis, De predikanten. De
sociale positie van de gereformeerde predikanten in de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden
voor ± 1700 (Groningen, 1977), 77–102; Idem, “Calvinism and the National Consciousness: The
Dutch Republic as the New Israel,” Britain and The Netherlands 7 (1981): 118–33; S. Schama,
Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York,
1987), 51–125; H. Smitskamp, Calvinistisch nationaal besef in Nederland vóór het midden der
17e eeuw (The Hague, 1947).
2 C. Busken Huet, Het land van Rembrandt. Studiën over de Noordnederlandsche beschaving in
de zeventiende eeuw, 2 vols. (Haarlem, 1882–1884), 2: 406.
3 Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 97; W. Frijhoff, “Religious Toleration in the United Prov-
inces: From ‘Case’ to ‘Model,’” in Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age,
ed. H. van Nierop and R. Po-Chia Hsia (Cambridge, 2002), 27–52: 50.

The Hebrew Republic in Dutch Political Thought 235
The arguments, examples, imagery, lessons, and political models that orthodox
Calvinist ministers such as Abraham van de Velde, Hermannus Witsius, and
Jodocus van Lodenstein culled from the Old Testament were often diametri-
cally opposed to the interpretations of radical writers like Adriaen Koerbagh,
Baruch Spinoza, and Lambertus van Velthuysen. At stake in these debates were
the lessons the Bible might provide with regard to questions about the most
desirable relationship between Church and State, the scope of toleration, and
more generally the political organization of the commonwealth. They more-
over concerned the nature of history (providential or secular), the concept of
divine election, and ultimately the status of the Bible itself.4
This chapter argues that against the background of these debates about
the example provided by the ancient Hebrew Republic within the context of
the Hebraic self-perception of the Dutch grounded in the analogy with this
ancient commonwealth, a refreshing light can be shed on Spinoza’s extensive
discussion of the Hebrew Republic in his Theological-Political Treatise of 1670.
Spinoza’s discussion of the Hebrew Republic is notoriously difficult to under-
stand, even though a number of thoughtful essays have drawn attention, from
a variety of angles, to some key issues and historical, political and intellectual
contexts. Michael Rosenthal has rightly insisted that Spinoza did not reject,
as some have argued, the example of the ancient Hebrew Republic altogether
and that we need to turn to the specific political context of the period and
seventeenth-century political thought to grasp what Spinoza was up to.5 Lea
Campos Boralevi, in an article in which she presents “the Jewish Commonwealth”
as one of the “classical foundational myths of European republicanism,” has
moreover reconstructed a rich Dutch tradition of political Hebraeism, which
tapped into a broader early modern European interest in ancient Israel’s politi-
cal institutions. The key text within this tradition is De republica Hebraeorum
(1617) of Petrus Cunaeus, the chair of politics at Leiden University from 1614 to
1638. A close friend of Hugo Grotius, Cuneaus offered this republic—“the holi-
est ever to have existed in the world, and the richest in examples for us to emu-
late”—for consideration to the States of Holland.6 Although Campos Boralevi
holds that Spinoza’s treatise can be seen as both the “conclusion” and the “over-
turning” of this tradition, her remarks are only an epilogue to an o therwise
4 Cf. M. Bodian, “The Biblical ‘Jewish Republic’ and Dutch ‘New Israel’ in Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Thought,” Hebraic Political Studies 1 (2006): 186–202; D. Novak, “Spinoza and the Doc-
trine of the Election of Israel,” Studia Spinozana 13 (2003): 81–99.
5 Rosenthal, however, does not draw on Dutch primary sources. M. Rosenthal, “Why Spinoza
Chose the Hebrews: The Exemplary Function of Prophecy in the Theological-Political Trea-
tise,” History of Political Thought 18 (1997): 207–241, 231–240.
6 Petrus Cuneaus, The Hebrew Republic, ed. A. Eyffiner, trans. P. Wyetzner (New York, 2006), 3.
236 Koekkoek
rich article.7 Eric Nelson’s important book The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources
and the Transformation of European Political Thought regards Spinoza primar-
ily as an exception, that is, as standing outside or overturning a tradition of
seeing the Hebrew Republic as an authoritative example commanding the su-
preme sovereignty of the civil magistrate in religious matters and embracing
toleration. This was a tradition, Nelson argues, to which Grotius, Cunaeus, John
Selden and James Harrington belonged.8
As the discussion in this chapter will show, however, Dutch republican au-
thors in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, including Spinoza, used
the Hebrew Republic as a distinctly negative example in their arguments for
broad religious toleration. The chapter thereby follows up on Theodor Dun-
kelgrün’s suggestion that the phenomenon of Neerlands Israel should be un-
derstood comprehensively, within the combined contexts of Calvinist political
theology, Christian Hebraism, and humanist Biblical antiquarianism.9 Situ-
ating Spinoza’s use of the Hebrew Republic more robustly within a range of
contemporary Dutch voices on the Hebrew Republic, the chapter discusses
authors who have attracted much scholarly attention in the last decade or so,
such as the brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court and Adriaen Koerbagh.10
With the exception of Spinoza, however, remarkably little has been written on
their political readings and rhetorical use of the Old Testament.11 Moreover,
7 L. Campos Boralevi, “Classical Foundational Myths of European Republicanism: The Jew-

ish Commonwealth,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. M. van Gelderen
and Q. Skinner, 2 vols., (Cambridge, 2002) 1: 247–262. Campos Boralevi does not draw on
Dutch primary sources either.
8 Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Po-
litical Thought. (Cambridge, ma, 2010), 134.
9 Theodor Dunkelgrün, “‘Neerlands Israel’: Political Theology, Christian Hebraism, Biblical
Antiquarianism and Historical Myth,” in Myth in History, History in Myth, ed. Laura Cruz
and Willem Frijhoff (Leiden, 2009), 201–236: 229.
10 On the De la Courts, see A. Weststeijn, Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden
Age: The Political Thought of Johan & Pieter de la Court (Leiden, 2011); E.H. Kossmann,
Political Thought in the Dutch Republic: Three Studies (Amsterdam, 2000); W.R.E. Velema,
“‘That a Republic is Better than a Monarchy’: Anti-monarchism in Early Modern Dutch
Political Thought,” in Republicanism, ed. Van Gelderen and Skinner, 9–26. On Koerbagh:
J.I. Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man
1650–1752 (Oxford, 2006), 185–196; M. Wielema, “Adriaan Koerbagh: Biblical Criticism and
Enlightenment,” in The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, 1650–1750, ed. W. van
Bunge (Leiden, 2003), 61–80.
11 On Spinoza’s discussion of the Hebrew Republic there is a large body of literature. See,
for instance, L. Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (Boston, 1958), 119–135; Novak,
“Spinoza and the Doctrine of the Election of Israel”; Rosenthal, “Why Spinoza Chose the
Hebrews,” 207–241; M. Terpstra, “De betekenis van de oudtestamentische theocratie voor
unlike a number of contextualist studies of Spinoza whose narratives are

mainly about Spinoza’s intellectual allies and hardly about his intellectual op-
ponents, this chapter also pays serious attention to the writings of orthodox
Calvinist ministers.12 To the extent that these intellectual opponents of Koer-
bagh and Spinoza are discussed, their views are generally presented sketch-
ily, as being incoherent, traditional or backward. Accordingly, Jonathan Israel
has presented the views of prominent Calvinists such as Voetius as “resistance”
against a supposedly unstoppable rise of “the New Philosophy.” Voetius and
his followers are more or less reduced to the phrase “fundamentalist, hard-
line confessional orthodoxy.”13 Such a presentation, it seems to me, obscures
our understanding of the ideological landscape of Spinoza’s time, and hence
makes it difficult to appreciate Spinoza’s intervention. This chapter thus turns
first to the notion of Neerlands Israel in Dutch Calvinist political theology,
followed by a discussion of Van Velthuysen and the De la Court brothers. For
these Dutch republican authors, Thomas Hobbes’s writings, which had just be-
come available in the Dutch Republic, became highly relevant as they picked
up—and re-appropriated—some of Hobbes’s insights in the unity of civil and
ecclesiastical authority. The last part of the chapter explores Spinoza’s seminal
contribution to this debate, and shows not only how in his political thinking
the Hebrew Republic turns out to be both a model and an anti-model, but also
the ways in which the exemplum of the Hebrew Republic functioned within
Spinoza’s broader view on the need for a public religion and broad toleration
at the same time.
Neerlands Israel and the Orthodox Calvinist Ministers’ Political

Reading of the Old Testament
On the death of Prince William ii in 1650 the Dutch Republic entered what is
known as the First Stadholderless Period. During this period that lasted until
1672, when William iii restored the political power of the House of Orange, the
de politieke filosofie van Spinoza. Een hoofdstuk uit de geschiedenis van de politieke
theologie,” Tijdschrift voor filosofie 60 (1998): 292–320; T. Verbeek, Spinoza’s Theologico-
Political Treatise. Exploring the Will of God (Aldershot, 2003), 121–150.
12 H.W. Blom, Causality and Morality in Politics. The Rise of Naturalism in Dutch Seventeenth-
Century Political Thought (Ph.D. Dissertation, Utrecht University, 1995); W. van Bunge,
From Stevin to Spinoza. An Essay on Philosophy in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic
(Leiden, 2001).
13 J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Ox-
ford, 2001), 25. A similar approach can be discerned in E.H. Kossmann’s classic collection
of studies Political Thought in the Dutch Republic, 44–46.
238 Koekkoek
lax approach on the part of the States General, the provincial States and the city
councils to combatting dissenting Protestant groups (other than the Calvinist
Reformed Church), Catholics, Jews, and the “new philosophy,” aroused enor-
mous frustration and drew heavy criticism from orthodox clergymen. Most
prominent among them was the theologian and university professor Gisbert
Voetius (1589–1676), whose theological rigor and precision, insistence on the
practice of piety, and pleas for a “further” reformation of society, played a vital
role in the renewal of orthodoxy among reformed ministers.14 The pious mode
of life that Voetius and his followers aimed to restore was ideologically backed
up by their rhetorical use of the notion of Neerlands Israel. Representative ex-
amples of Dutch Calvinist (Voetian) discourse concerned with the notion of
Neerlands Israel were Abraham van de Velde’s Wonderen des Alder-hooghsten
(Miracles of the Almighty, 1668), Hermannus Witsius’ De Twist des Heeren (The
Lord’s Dispute, 1669), and Jodocus van Lodenstein’s Beschouwinge van Zion
(Considerations of Zion, 1674–77).15 All three authors urged their readers to
“let the Israelites […] be an example” to them.16
Published in the late 1660s, Van de Velde’s Wonderen des Alder-hooghsten
provides a fairly representative picture of the reasoning and language used in
the public preaching of Voetian ministers in the 1650s and 1660s.17 In it Van de
14 J.R. Beeke, “Toward a Reformed Marriage of Knowledge and Piety: The Contribution of
Gisbertus Voetius,” Reformation and Revival 10 (2001): 124–155; F. van Lieburg, “From Pure
Church to Pious Culture: The Further Reformation in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Re-
public,” in Later Calvinism. International Perspectives, ed. W. Graham (Kirksville, 1994),
409–421; D. Nobbs, Theocracy and Toleration. A Study of the Disputes in Dutch Calvinism
from 1600 to 1650 (Cambridge, 1938).
15 A. van de Velde, De wonderen des Alder-hooghsten, ofte aenwijsinge vande oorsaecken, we-
gen en middelen, waer door de Geunieerde Provintien, uyt hare vorige onderdruckinge soo
wonderbaerlijck, tegen vermoeden van de heele Wereldt, tot soo grooten macht rijckdom,
eere, en onsaggelijkheydt zyn verheven (Middelburg, 1668); H. Witsius, Twist des Heeren
met sijn wyngaert, deselve overtuygende van misbruyk sijner weldaden, onvruchtbaerhey-
dt in ‘t goede, en al te dertele weeldrigheydt, in schadelijcke nieuwigheden van opinien, en
schandelijcke outheyt van quade zeeden, met bedreyginge van sijn uyterste ongenade (Leeu-
warden, 1669); J. van Lodenstein, Beschouwinge van Zion ofte Aandagten en Opmerckingen
over den tegenwoordigen toestand van ’t Gerformeerde Christen Volk (Utrecht, 1674).
16 Van Lodenstein, Beschouwinge van Zion, ii, 50. Citations are taken from the H.P. Scholte
edition (Amsterdam, 1839).
17 Wonderen des Alder-hooghsten would become an influential and popular book in the late
1660s and 1670s. In 1669, soon after its first publication, a second edition came out in
both Middelburg and Utrecht, and in 1677 a third in Hoorn. Its influence, however, ex-
tends to later centuries as well: it saw as much as fifteen editions, the latest of which
was published in the 1980s. J. van der Haar, Schatkamer van de gereformeerde theologie in
Velde narrates how the hand of God could be seen at work at numerous critical
moments in the history of the liberation of the Dutch Republic from the Span-
ish monarchy. Indeed, he wrote, “[i]f there is something remarkable in the af-
fairs of The Netherlands, it is this visible and evident help of God, who used the
entire nature, heaven, earth, air, and sea, to our advantage, and through them
fought against our enemies.”18 The question whether it was strictly the Dutch
people as a whole, or only the elected community of the Reformed church that
was identified with the Israelite people has been endlessly disputed.19 For “the
elect” in seventeenth-century Calvinist theology was a universal category; they
could be found in other countries as well.20 But it was not so much the case
that Dutch orthodox ministers denied the universality of an elected church
community. Rather, the notion of a “special” election of the Dutch people was
used as a rhetorical device to convey the message that the Dutch ought to be
worthy of God’s help. It was used as a legitimization to uphold a certain social
order or public structure that was embedded within a higher divinely ordained
order. In Hermannus Witsius’s De Twist des Heeren this special relationship was
exemplified thus:
Or do you want me to put it more clearly? You are the people of God, to
whom The Lord has come so near, whom he, from so many peoples, in
a special way, chose to be his own, and of whom he fairly expects more
than of the rest.21
Nederland (c. 1600–c. 1800) (Veenendaal, 1987), 513–514. Van de Velde was a minister, first
in Zevenhoven and Schoonhoven in the 1640s, and in 1651 in Utrecht. Because of his ful-
mination against the civil authorities in a dispute over the property of a former Catholic
chapter, Van de Velde was dismissed as minister and banned from the city by the States
of Utrecht in 1660. He returned to Zeeland and decided to stay and preach in Middelburg
from 1663 until his death in 1677. It was probably in this period in Middelburg that he
wrote De Wonderen des Alder-hooghsten. See “Velde, Abraham van der,” in Nieuw Neder-
landsch Biografisch Woordenboek, ed. P.C. Molhuysen and P.J. Blok, 10 vols. (Leiden, 1911–
1937), 5:996; “Velde, Abraham van de,” in Biografisch lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het
Nederlands protestantisme, ed. J.W. Buisman and G. Brinkman, 6 vols. (Kampen, 1978), 1:
392.
18 Van de Velde, Wonderen des Alder-hooghsten, 80.
19 Groenhuis, “Calvinism and the National Consciousness,” 124; E.H. Kossmann, In Praise of
the Dutch Republic: Some Seventeenth-Century Attitudes (London, 1963), 12; Smitskamp,
Calvinistisch Nationaal Besef, 14–17.
20 Pasi Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined: Changing Perceptions of National Identity in
the Rhetoric of the English, Dutch, and Swedish Public Churches, 1685–1772 (Leiden, 2005).
21 Witsius, Twist des Heeren, 119.
240 Koekkoek
The point that Witsius and Van de Velde wanted to convey was that this special
providential relationship required maintenance. The word of God, often meta-
phorically described as a “tree” or a “candlestick,” was “planted” in the Dutch
Republic, but could also be taken away.22 Hence these ministers cautioned that
God can “remove his candlestick” if the people would desert “the holy doctrine
of Reformed truths,” as Van Lodenstein put it.23 Just as the Jews were ordered
by God to drive out idolatry and the Canaanite religion, Van Lodenstein argued
that similarly the Reformed people ought to dispel Catholic public worship.
In Witsius’ Twist des Heeren God’s “vineyard” was “the people of Israel” in
which “the stinking sins and wickedness had obtained the upper hand” over
the “good grapes.”24 Witsius warned his readers that it was their duty to pre-
vent this. Among such rotten grapes Witsius reckoned Cartesianism and the
“new philosophy that would like to arrogate to itself the domain of theology
and the word of God.” He rejected the idea that the Bible in matters concern-
ing natural phenomena is accommodated to “the opinions of the evil people.”
The Bible, he reasserted, is the “undeniable authority” and “infallible truth” in
“whatever kind of matters.”25 The history of the Hebrew people proved that
“God had removed the idols (Afgoden) from their midst” and “purified them of
false doctrines and heresies.” Referring directly to the work of the republican
brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court (which will be discussed further on),
Witsius charged the De la Courts for spreading the pernicious idea that “public
teachers” are only allowed to preach “in the name of the political authority.”
The example of the early Christians, apostles and “loyal ministers,” who under
the pagan emperors were labelled “rioters” and “rebels” for teaching the “holy
truth,” showed according to Witsius the foolishness of such maxims. Even with
regard to this historical example in which Christians were branded rebels by
the reigning authorities, Witsius claimed, “they [the De la Courts] hold that
the public judgment of good and evil,” including the judgment whether “their
laws are in conflict with God’s commands,” belongs to the political sovereign.26
Witsius also pointed his venom at the “atrocious maxims of some politi-
cal flatterers” and other “political lords” who want to turn “the servants of the
22 Indicative of this preoccupation is that twelve of the sixteen sermons in the orthodox
minister Jodocus van Lodenstein’s Boet-predikatien (penalty sermons) dealt with the text:
“Behold, that which I have built will I break down, and that which I have planted I will
pluck up, even this whole land” (Jeremiah 45:4). Bisschop, Sions vorst en volk, 71–73.
23 Van Lodenstein, Beschouwinge van Zion, i, 245.
24 Witsius, Twist des Heeren, 4.
25 Ibidem, 262, 278–279.
26 Ibidem, 223.
Word not only into kissers but also into footstools of their feet.” Witsius was all
too aware of the arguments of his opponents, as he consciously put his argu-
ments in opposition to the “detestable” works, the anonymous De jure ecclesi-
asticorum (1665), and Grotius’ De imperio summarum potestatum circa sacra
(1647), the central contention of which was that the supreme power in matters
concerning theology or “the sacred” should reside with the civil authority.27 To
decide the matter once and for all, Witsius referred to the example of the “Jew-
ish council,” the Sanhedrin. This what Witsius took to be a political authority
had “threatened” and forbidden no-one less than the apostles Peter and John
to teach that faith in Jesus was “the only way to salvation.” These examples
make abundantly clear, Witsius concluded, that ministers should always retain
the right to judge, admonish and remind the political authority to their duty to
the word of God. They have the supreme authority in interpreting the word of
God and deciding on the nature of “true religion.”28
In perfect agreement with Witsius’ argumentation were the stern measures
suggested by Van de Velden in his Wonderen des Alder-hooghsten. In order to
keep God’s tree in the Republic Van de Velde first stressed the restoration of
the prophetic status of Calvinist ministers: they “have received the treasure
of sacred truth” and ought to reveal it.29 Secondly, Christian ceremonies and
doctrines, such as Sunday observance, Lord’s Supper, feast-days, and public
prayer, should be strictly adhered to and placed under the authority of the
ecclesiastical authorities. More generally, all sinful aspects of daily life should
be placed under the strict exercise of church discipline. Thirdly, ministers
ought to counter erroneous and heretical teachings. “Should ministers re-
frain from refuting doctrinal errors,” so that “Christians can better unite with
each other?” Van de Velde asked rhetorically. Clearly aware of the arguments
in favour of passive toleration, his answer was an unambiguous “no.” Instead
he made an appeal to the regents to promote godliness, avert and punish
godlessness, and give a “strong example.” Moreover, political functions should
be open only for those who adhere to the Reformed religion and only Re-
formed schools should be a llowed. All harmful books and slander must be pro-
hibited, and lastly, Socinianism, Remonstrantism, Catholicism and Cartesian
27 Ibidem, 343, 351 (emphasis in original). De Iure Ecclesiasticorum was published under the
pseudonym Lucius Antistius Constans in Amsterdam in the year 1665. For this work, see
the introductions of Hans Blom and Christian Lazzéri in the reissued Latin edition (with
French translation) edited by V. Butori et al. Lucius Antistius Constans, Du droit des ec-
clésiastiques (Caen, 1991), ix-xli.
28 Witsius, Twist des Heeren, 353–356.
29 Van de Velde, De wonderen des Alder-hoogsten, 264.
242 Koekkoek
philosophy must be fought. For “[i]f our fatherland was ever in great danger, it
must be now,” Van de Velde warned, “because of these atrocities and seducing
doctrines.”30
In the eyes of Van de Velde and his Voetian colleagues, then, the growth of
de facto toleration under the political regime of Grand Pensionary Johan de
Witt had to be reversed. Whereas in the 1640s and the first half of the 1650s
the rise of Cartesian philosophy at Dutch universities was mainly an internal
academic discussion (conducted in Latin), during the second half of the 1650s
and the 1660s it seemed as if theology, the Bible, and thus the religious and
social authority of the Church and its clergy were being openly challenged
on the streets.31 As the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 height-
ened the expectation that the young Prince William iii would one day return
to the Republic, orthodox clerics—who were almost without exception sup-
porters of the return of an Orangist stadholder—took up a more confident
position to put more pressure on their efforts to purify Dutch society.32 They
sought to bring the regents, as members of the Reformed church, under their
religious authority. Their claim to be the only righteous interpreters of the
word of God not only threatened the independence of the regents but was
also directed towards the daily life of people. Neither civil authorities nor com-
mon people, including philosophers and university professors, they argued,
should have the right to challenge this authority. This was, however, precisely
what the brothers De la Court, Koerbagh, Van Velthuysen, and Spinoza did.
As we shall see, in particular Hobbes’s De Cive, and later his Leviathan, offered
them intellectual armour with which to oppose the orthodox Calvinist min-
isters’ claim to independent authority in ecclesiastical matters alongside the
civil sovereign.
Hobbes and Dutch Republican Authors on the Supreme

Sovereignty of the Civil Magistrate in Religious Matters
In 1667 a Dutch version of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan was published by Jaco-

bus Wagenaar, a young bookseller who owned a small bookshop located in a
narrow alley in the centre of Amsterdam named Des-Cartes. It was translated
into Dutch by the theologian and doctor of medicine Abraham van Berkel
30 Ibidem, 260–261, 276.

31 R. Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans. The Reception of the new Astronomy in the Dutch Re-
public, 1575–1750 (Amsterdam, 2002), 272–294.
32 Israel, The Dutch Republic, 637–690.
(1639–1686).33 The opening sentence of Van Berkel’s introduction to the text

of Leviathan stated that for “absolute supreme powers” (onbepaelde Opper-
magten) there is “no more necessary knowledge” thinkable than understand-
ing wherein their sovereign right lies. What is more, Van Berkel immediately
added, the prosperity and decline of a state are wholly dependent upon such
knowledge:
For, after the Jews had dismissed θεοκρατία [theocracy] (as Josephus
coined their state in praise of his fellow compatriots) or government
by God, and in imitation of other peoples had chosen and been given
a king, so one can usually find in Holy Scripture that God, through his
prophets, often bursts into this lamentation; that the damnation and de-
struction, and the persecution they have suffered from others […] result-
ed from this; that they did not have sufficient knowledge of sovereignty.34
Van Berkel’s reference to the decision of the ancient Hebrews to “dismiss” (ont-
slaan) God and choose a mortal king instead, which in his eyes signified the be-
ginning of the dreadful decline of the Hebrew Republic, and which illustrated
his claim that a clear understanding of sovereignty within a state might be
crucial for its survival and well-being, serves as a revealing point of entry into
the topic of Hobbes’s reception in the Dutch Republic.35 Van Berkel’s carefully
chosen reference not only gives us a hint about what it was in Hobbes’s work
that he thought would appeal to the Dutch audience he intended to reach, but
it also represented an important voice in contemporary Dutch public debates
concerning the lessons that might be drawn from the history and nature of the
biblical Hebrew Republic.
In this context, it was no coincidence that Van Berkel referred to the Jew-
ish historian Flavius Josephus. A popular and widely read author in the Dutch
Republic, Josephus was one of the central intellectual sources relevant to the
controversies about the status and meaning of the Hebrew Republic as the
second book of his Against Apion provided a lively depiction of the history of
33 The full title page reads: Leviathan: of van de stoffe, gedaente, ende magt vande kerckel-
ycke ende wereltlycke Regeeringe. Beschreven door Thomas Hobbes van Malmesburg. By
Jacobus Wagenaar, Boeck-verkooper, op de hoeck van de Mol-steegh, in Des-Cartes. (Am-
sterdam, 1667). The introduction is signed by ‘A.T.A.B.’: Abraham Theodorus à Berkel. The
translation was based on the ‘head-edition.’ See C.W. Schoneveld, Intertraffic of the Mind:
Studies in Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Dutch Translation (Leiden, 1983), 29–62.
34 Van Berkel, ‘Voor-reden’ (preface) to Van Berkel’s translation of Leviathan.
35 C. Secretan, “La réception de Hobbes aux Pays-Bas au xviie siècle,” Studia Spinozana 3
(1987): 27–45.
244 Koekkoek
the Jewish commonwealth.36 Josephus was the first who suggested that the
political constitution of the Israelites under Moses should not be classified as
one of the traditional forms of “polity”—rule by one, a few, or the many—but
is better understood by the neologism “theocracy.” In this unique constitu-
tion, Josephus explained, all sovereignty and authority was placed in the hands
of God.37
Josephus’ account of the Hebrew Republic figures prominently in the work
of Hobbes. In Chapters sixteen and seventeen of De Cive Hobbes ascertained
that under God’s kingship over the Israelite people, Moses was “the sole inter-
preter of God’s word, and also held sovereign power in civil matters.”38 This
unity of ecclesiastical and civil authority, Hobbes continued, was essentially
retained thereafter. After Moses, it was handed over to the high priests and
when their rule came to an end their authority was ceded to the Kings of
Israel.39 After the Babylonian captivity supreme authority was again restored in
what Hobbes called the “Priestly Kingdom” (Regnum Sacerdotale). For Hobbes
the history of the Hebrews was an authoritative example for c ontemporary
Christian sovereigns, who likewise should be head of both the commonwealth
and the Church, “for a Christian Church and a Christian Commonwealth are
36 Josephus was translated into Dutch as early as the thirteenth century: see R. Veenman, De
klassieke traditie in de lage landen (Nijmegen, 2009), 30. Other editions in the vernacular
appeared in 1552 and 1580 (Antwerpen), 1636 (Haarlem), and 1647 (Amsterdam). A suc-
cessful Latin version was the 1534 Basel edition Flavii Iosephi Antiquitatum Judaicarum
libri xx (reissued in 1537 and 1540). Spinoza owned a copy of the 1540 edition. Van Berkel
appears to have owned a 1567 edition entitled Josephi Judaei opera Latine (Basel, 1567)
and an earlier Opera Graece (Basel, 1516). See “Book Sales Catalogues of the Dutch Re-
public, 1599–1800” [mf 2986]. Earlier in the seventeenth century Josephus had been an
important source for both Grotius and Cunaeus: Nelson, The Hebrew Republic, 88–111. On
the relationship between Josephus and Spinoza, see W. Klever, Spinoza classicus. Antieke
bronnen van een moderne denker (Budel, 2005), 253–267.
37 Josephus, Against Apion, Book 2, in: Flavius Josephus. Translation and Commentary. Vol-
ume 10: Against Apion ed. S. Mason (Leiden, 2007), 261–263.
38 Hobbes, De Cive: The Latin Version, ed. H. Warrender, (Oxford, 1983), 244–245; Hobbes, On
the Citizen, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge, 1998), 196–197.
39 Hobbes, De Cive: The Latin Version, 243; Hobbes, On the Citizen, 196. In Leviathan Hobbes
presented an identical argument: ‘Therefore the Civill and Ecclesiasticall Power were
both joined together in one and the same person, the High Priest.’ And later on: ‘To the
judges, succeeded Kings: And whereas before, all authority, both in Religion, and Policy,
was in the High Priest; so now it was all in the King.’ Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpher-
son (London, 1968; 1651), 506–507. See also J.P. Sommerville, “Hobbes, Selden, Erastian-
ism, and the History of the Jews,” in Hobbes and History, ed. G.A.J. Rogers and T. Sorell
(London, 2000), 160–188.
one and the same thing.”40 In Leviathan Hobbes basically reiterated his analy-
sis: “[F]rom the first institution of God’s Kingdome, to the Captivity, the Su-
premacy of Religion, was in the same hand with that of the Civill Sovereignty.”
Accordingly, “we may conclude that whosoever in Christian Commonwealth
holdeth the place of Moses is the sole messenger of God and interpreter of his
commandments.”41
Hobbes’s writings became widely available in the Dutch Republic in the pe-
riod 1647–1675.42 The translation of Leviathan in 1667 was clearly part of an en-
deavour of Van Berkel and other radical authors to challenge and push back the
growing influence of ecclesiastical authorities both by a process of educating
the common people intellectually and by encouraging the regents to reclaim
their sovereignty in ecclesiastical matters. Indeed, Hobbes’s interpretation of
God as civil sovereign of the Hebrew Republic and his discussion of sover-
eignty based on free consent was an inflammable issue in the Dutch Republic.
This can be inferred from the fierce attack on De Cive by Gisbertus Cocquius
(1630–1708), a disciple of Voetius and Calvinist minister from Kockengen, a
small town near Utrecht. His Vindiciae pro lege et imperio […] contra tractatum
Hobbii de cive (1661) criticised Hobbes’s account of popular sovereignty and his
picture of the Israelites choosing Samuel as their king by free consent, prefer-
ring to argue the other way around, that is, that God had elected the Israelites
as “his” people, and that hence the notion of popular sovereignty was mistak-
en.43 The original source of legitimate sovereignty, Cocquius argued, was God’s
will, not the consent of the people.44 Hobbes’s interpretation of I Samuel 8 was
undoubtedly one of Cocquius’s greatest concerns about the work (in particu-
lar v. 11–19 which recounts all the terrible things that will happen when a king
established by free consent will rein), as he decided to add Voetius’s Disquisitio
textualis ad I Sam. 8. v. 11–19. de Jure Regio Hebraeorum (originally published in
1653) as an annex to his work.
40 Hobbes, De Cive: The Latin Version, 244–246, 279; Hobbes, On the Citizen, 197–199, 233.
41 Hobbes, Leviathan, 326, 329.
42 C.W. Schoneveld, “Holland and the Early Editions of Thomas Hobbes,” in Sea-Changes.
Studies in Three Centuries of Anglo-Dutch Cultural Transmission, ed. C.W. Schoneveld
(Amsterdam, 1996), 31–47; and Idem, Intertraffic of the Mind, 29–62.
43 W. Hübener, “Die Verlorene Unschuld Der Theokratie,” in Religionstheorie und Politische
Theologie, Vol. 3: Theokratie, ed. J. Taubes (Munich, 1987), 29–64: 49.
44 Cocquius, Vindiciae pro lege et imperio, sive Dissertationes duae, quarum una est de lege
in communi, altera de exemption principis a lege, institutae potissimum contra tractatum
Hobbii de cive (Utrecht, 1661). A revised edition under the title Hobbes έλεγχομενος; sive,
Vindiciae pro Lege, Imperio, et Religione, contra Hobbesii tractatus de Cive et Leviathan ap-
peared in 1668.
246 Koekkoek
A few years later, the eminent Dutch lawyer and diplomat Dirck Graswinckel
(1600–1666), in his defence of the absolute sovereignty of the States of Holland,
was like Cocquius eager to point out that “the whole body of subjects” does not
have “the right or power of supreme authority.” According to Graswinckel, who
was also an avid reader of Josephus, it was God who, “due to his right of abso-
lute power and property,” is “the sovereign and monarch of the republic of the
whole world.”45 Supreme authority was established solely “through God’s word,
will and power.”46 Thus when the Israelites committed the “crime” of rejecting
God and asking Samuel to be their (mortal) king, Graswinckel warned that
“these folks should not have imagined that they had any right or power from
themselves to institute a supreme head above them on their own authority.”47
Although Graswinckel shared with Cocquius his rejection of Hobbes’s concep-
tion of sovereignty based on popular consent, his overall defence of the sover-
eignty of the States of Holland put him rather in the camp of De Witt. His work
can therefore best be read as a counterargument against the two Leiden cloth
merchants who also have usually been counted among the supporters of De
Witt’s republicanism: the brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court.
In Consideratien van Staet, ofte Politike Weegschaal (Considerations of State,
or Political Balance) the De la Courts had put forth an argument, based on
a republicanised reading of Hobbes, for the “reasonableness, naturalness,
and fairness” of a “popular government.”48 The brothers also discussed the
succession of the Kingdom of God over the Hebrews by a kingdom ruled by
mortal kings. Although they were keen to appropriate Hobbes’s language of
a natural state and the equal natural right of self-preservation, they strongly
opposed Hobbes’s view that the high priests were the successors of Moses as
supreme sovereign of both civil and religious matters. Instead, the De la Courts
emphasised that the high priests were “unarmed” and could be deposed as
presidents of the Sanhedrin by the Elders of the different Israelite tribes. In
other words, the high priests lacked the means to enforce law, and moreover,
45 D. Graswinckel, Nasporinge van het recht van de opperste macht toekomende de edele groot
mogende heeren de Heeren Staten van Holland en Westfriesland (1667), 8–9. Cf. Ibidem, 334,
450–452, for reference to Josephus.
46 Ibidem, 4.
47 Ibidem, 32.
48 [Johan and Pieter de la Court], Consideratien van Staat, ofte Politike Weeg-schaal (Amster-
dam, 1662), 530. Five editions of Consideratien van Staat, Ofte Politike Weeg-schaal were
published between 1660 and 1662. Quotations are from the fourth edition. Spinoza owned
a copy of the second edition. For an informed discussion of the De la Courts’ appropria-
tion of Hobbesian concepts, see Weststeijn, Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Gold-
en Age, 147–157.
were ultimately subordinate to the people, represented by the Elders. When

Samuel and the high priest Eli were ever more seeking after “their own well-
being than after the honour of God and the republic’s well-being,” the De la
Courts explained, the Israelites (“fools as they are”) instead of “diminishing the
power of the all too powerful head, the high priest,” asked for a king. Originally,
the De la Courts maintained, God had established a republic, with “laws and
magistrates” ruling in the name of God, who they accepted “as their lord or
king.” Once they rebelled against God and refrained from reinstituting “their
old and free government,” they fell into slavery.49 So while the De la Courts em-
braced Hobbes’s theory of an undivided sovereign, they only partially accepted
Hobbes’s arguments and the biblical interpretations that supported it. Anti-
monarchical thinkers as they were, they accepted Hobbes’s argument for the
supreme authority over civil and ecclesiastical matters but resolutely rejected
his suggestion that this supreme authority was handed over to priest-kings.
A more elaborate critical engagement with Hobbes’s argument for the unity
of civil and ecclesiastical authority can be found in the thought of Lambertus
van Velthuysen (1622–1685), a student of philosophy, theology and medicine at
the University of Utrecht. A prolific writer and prominent member of the local
patriciate in Utrecht at a time of bickering between the city council and the as-
sertive Church council led by Voetius, Van Velthuysen did not shun polemics.50
In the aftermath of his notorious polemic with Voetian theologians over the
biblical basis for the rejection of Copernicanism, Van Velthuysen wrote two
pamphlets that appeared in the year 1660 entitled Het Predick-Ampt en ‘t Recht
der Kercke [The Office of Minister and the Right of the Church, hereafter: Het
Predick-Ampt] and Ondersoeck of de Christelijcke Overheydt eenigh quaedt in
haer gebiedt mach toe laten [Inquiry whether the Christian Government may
allow any Evil in its Territory, hereafter: Ondersoeck].51 As Het Predick-Ampt and
Ondersoeck appeared in the same year, the two pamphlets can be read as com-
plementing each other: the former argued for the subordination of the Church
and its ministers to the authority of the State; the latter dealt with the question
how much scope for religious “error” a “Christian government” should allow.
49 De la Court, Consideratien van Staat, 155–159.

50 His Opera Omnia, published in 1680, counts almost 1600 pages. L. van Velthuysen, Opera
omnia (Rotterdam, 1680).
51 L. van Velthuysen, Het Predick-Ampt en ‘t Recht der Kercke (Amsterdam, 1660); idem,
Ondersoeck of de Christelijcke Overheydt eenigh quaedt in haer gebiedt mach toe laten
(Middelburg, 1660). Ondersoeck also appeared in Latin translation in Opera Omnia. On
Van Velthuysen’s polemic with Voetian theologians over Copernicanism, see Van Bunge,
From Stevin to Spinoza, 74–85; Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans, 272–293.
248 Koekkoek
Van Velthuysen wrote Het Predick-Ampt against “the sentiments of some re-
formed ministers who expand their own power more than they ought to.” In
his pamphlet Van Velthuysen questioned what source of authority there was
for appointing ministers. His answer involved a small excursion into Church
history. The first, “primitive” Church, he admitted, appointed clergymen “out-
side of the authority and knowledge of the magistrate.” These “first Christians”
were justified in doing so on the basis of “natural” or “private” right. But such a
natural right only applied to “private persons” in situations of “emergency, per-
secution, confusion, and hostile activities […] against them.” In a later chapter
Van Velthuysen elaborated this point: “The Christian Church was established
under pagan supreme powers.” In this “emergency situation” circumventing
magisterial authority was justified. But such a right comes to an end “when the
magistrate is taking care of our safety and tranquillity, and has restored order.”
According to Van Velthuysen, Calvinist political theology has misinterpreted
the example of the early Church (which, as we have seen, Witsius was to re-
peat a few years later). This explained where “the confusion,” that is, that the
Church has a special right within a polity, had come from. This misinterpreta-
tion was “the foundation of that false distinction between Church and polity,
worldly and spiritual power.”52 Therefore, he concluded, “one cannot base the
right of Church on this example.”53 Van Velthuysen subsequently set out to
offer a natural right based argument that the magistrate is to decide what reli-
gion his subjects should adhere to, and that accordingly, it is the right and duty
of the magistrate to appoint ministers, to “speak the word of God purely,” and
to “administer the holy sacrament purely and according to God’s direction.”
Van Velthuysen furthermore emphasised that “these matters are no less politi-
cal, because they are executed by someone else,” i.e. by appointed ministers.54
The magistrate ought to rule the Church as a “college,” similar to “colleges of
midwives” or “colleges of justices.” Thus, “so as to bring this issue once and
for all to a final conclusion,” Van Velthuysen stated that “the Church is not only
within the polity” but is “a political society.” And “so it is the case that religion,
which descends from heaven immediately through revelation […] is part of
the polity, and a political affair.” As a consequence, “the divine decree becomes
a political decree.”55 Civil law thus included laws on ecclesiastical matters and
divine worship.
52 Van Velthuysen, Het Predick-Ampt, 101–103, 107.

53 Ibidem, 47–49, 53, 56.
54 Ibidem, 97.
55 Ibidem, 61–62, 87, 94, 97 (emphasis in original).
At this particular point, Van Velthuysen invoked the Hebrew Republic, as a

negative example, to demonstrate that a Christian commonwealth, such as the
one he claimed to be living in, should allow for considerable toleration for dif-
ferences of religious opinion, whereas in the ancient Hebrew Republic this was
an entirely different matter. The ancient Hebrews, he wrote,
had a bold commandment to accept no-one into the community of the

Republic of Israel who did not promise to abide by the Jewish religion.
And on this foundation the Jewish magistrate not only had the right to
admonish his subjects and to advise them to stick to the Jewish religion,
but also to formally command it.
This right of the magistrate in the Hebrew state was not based on contract or
nature, but on fundamentally different grounds:
[W]hoever abandoned the Jewish religion was punishable, because he

formally acted against the commandment; in such a way that this right
of the Jewish magistrate, to demand such a religion of his subjects, and
punish those who acted against it, did not originate from the right of self-
defence, but because God had subjected the consciences of the Jewish sub-
jects to the command of the Magistrate.
A “Christian magistrate,” on the other hand, although he also “commands and

demands a particular religion,” cannot do this because “he has neither jurisdic-
tion nor the right to administrate justice over the consciences of his subjects.”
In a Christian commonwealth, Van Velthuysen insisted, it is not the case that
“someone who does not subjects his mind and conscience” to the command-
ment of the magistrate “commits the sin of disobedience.”56 Instead, Christian
regents may avert error “not from the nature of sin and error, as if it would
spark off the wrath of God […] but from reason of state.”57 Disbelief, in other
words, is not a form of political disobedience as it had been in the Hebrew
Republic.
Van Velthuysen was not alone in making this argument. The brothers De la
Court in their Politike Discoursen (1662) too stressed the uniqueness of the way
in which the “divine Republic” handled religious deviance, just as, as we will
see below, Spinoza did. In the Hebrew Republic God had “commanded the kill-
ing of heretics, or better, those who taught a different God and religion,” the
56 Van Velthuysen, Ondersoeck, 87–88 (emphasis in original).

57 Ibidem, 47.
250 Koekkoek
De la Courts averred. But “our” government, they continued, is not obliged to

act accordingly, because “they are not bound to the Mosaic political laws, but
to reason and fairness alone.”58 Thus Van Velthuysen’s and the De la Courts’
counter-point to the theocratic aspirations of Calvinist ministers was that a
Christian commonwealth differed in a fundamental respect from the Hebrew
Republic. Whereas the political authorities in the latter were ordered by God
to be intolerant, the political authorities in the former need not necessarily
follow this example. The Mosaic laws, they held, were uniquely meant for the
Hebrew Republic, whereas in a Christian republic political prudence, natural
right, and reason of state superseded the claims of the Voetian theologians.
The State, they argued, had the right to follow its own judgment in these mat-
ters, undermining thereby the political-theological basis for intolerance. At the
same time, both Van Velthuysen and the De la Courts agreed that “a public re-
ligion in a state” is nevertheless “necessary.” Otherwise subjects might become
“disloyal” and “uncharitable,” and rulers “would only be chasing their private
advantage.”59 For these authors, as for Spinoza, a public religion ordered by the
State and broad toleration did not preclude each other.
The Model and Anti-model of the Hebrew Republic in Spinoza’s

Theological-Political Treatise
The debate about the Hebrew Republic in the Dutch Republic took on a new
dimension with the work of Adriaen Koerbagh (1633–1669), and above all with
that of Spinoza. In 1668 Koerbagh published his treatise Een ligt schijnende in
duystere plaatsen: om te verligten de voornaamste saaken der Gods geleertheyd
en gods dienst (A Light Shining in Dark Places to Illuminate the Main Questions
of Theology and Religion), followed two years later by Spinoza’s Theological-
Political Treatise. Both works questioned the very foundations underlying
Dutch Calvinist political theology, including the authority of the example of
the Hebrew Republic: namely, the notion of divine election, the nature of the
Bible, and the nature of history. In doing so, they fundamentally undermined
the notion of Neerlands Israel as Calvinist orthodox ministers understood it.
The Theological-Political Treatise, although systematically and philosophi-
cally superior to Een ligt schijnende in duystere plaatsen, shared its aim of
58 [Johan and Pieter de la Court], Politike Discoursen handelende in Ses onderscheide boeken,
van Steeden, Landen, Oorlogen, Kerken, Regeeringen en Zeeden (Leiden, 1662), 322–323.
59 Ibidem, 288.
istoricizing and secularizing the status of the Bible, which in turn had major
h
repercussions for their views on the model of the Hebrew Republic.
Koerbagh’s starting point was the observation that people have fallen back
into various false religions “full of superstitions, fictions and fabrications” and
are more concerned with violently imposing their beliefs on others, than with
worshipping the one, unchanging, eternal God.60 In fact, Koerbagh main-
tained, Moses himself installed superstitious practices, even though the Bi-
ble says the Lord had spoken to him. In a long chapter on religion Koerbagh
turned to the burning issue of the right of governments to make religious laws,
noting that “the government has such a power” as “is also shown by Thomas
Hobbes.”61 A central part of his argumentation revolved around the “lawgiver”
Moses and the example of the Hebrew Republic. “Did Moses hold meetings
with hundreds of clergymen to make laws and ordinances and then approve
them?” Koerbagh asked. “Oh no! He made them himself.”62 Moses “has to be
considered as a ruler and a statesman.” He, not high priest Aaron, “gave laws,
both spiritual and state laws, and introduced ordinances.” What is more, Koer-
bagh suggested, we
would rather criticise Moses and speak against him, and claim that Mo-
ses should have openly said: these laws, which I have devised through
divine wisdom and which I know to be very necessary among such a large
group of people, you must accept as divine and holy laws and live accord-
ing to them.63
In Koerbagh’s view, then, the laws that Moses had laid down were simply a
matter of political expediency. It might indeed be correct to call the laws of
the Hebrews “the law of God,” but only in the sense that God had bestowed
upon Moses “an enlightened intellect” so that he was capable of making up the
laws himself.64 God’s word was in Koerbagh’s philosophy unchangeable and
eternally true, but in a radical different way than the manner in which Calvin-
ist theology understood it. For “Holy Scripture is not God’s word but the word
of the people, which they [governments] may change if they wish since it only
applies to the Jews.” “The real word of God,” Koerbagh held, “is reason, for, just
60 A. Koerbagh, A Light Shining in Dark Places, to Illuminate the Main Questions of Theology
and Religion, ed. and trans. M. Wielema (Leiden, 2011), 299.
61 Ibidem, 253.
62 Ibidem, 225, 257 (translation slightly altered).
63 Ibidem, 391, 395–397.
64 Ibidem, 387.
252 Koekkoek
as God the Lord is unchangeable, eternal and true, so is reason.”65 Koerbagh

thus stripped the Hebrew Republic and their laws from their special divine ori-
gins and situated it within a secularised historical framework. By implication
the notion of “elected people” became highly problematic.
It was precisely this crucial misunderstanding, that is, the idea of a divine
election of the Jews, Spinoza in his Theological-Political Treatise wanted to get
rid of. In fact, he sought to remove any notion of divine election whatsoever,
including the orthodox Calvinist notion of Neerlands Israel. Moses’s belief
that God had chosen the Hebrew nation was in Spinoza’s eyes merely an in-
terpretation based on assumptions that Moses had already made. This was not
surprising, Spinoza thought, since the Hebrews were “primitive and reduced
to abject slavery” and could not be expected to have a sound conception of
God.66 Since God’s direction “is the fixed and unalterable order of nature or
the interconnectedness of [all] natural things,” a conception of God Spinoza
would famously work out in his Ethica, God cannot favour any nation in par-
ticular. The Jews’ idea of election and vocation, Spinoza explained, was an act
of their imagination that can be explained by “the success and the prosperity
at that time of their commonwealth,” which was a consequence of “the [form
of] society and laws” under which they lived.67
Since Spinoza identified the government of God over the Hebrews as “the
Kingdom of God,” he may at first glance seem to have followed the analysis of
Hobbes and Josephus. Civil law and religion in this state, Spinoza confirmed,
“were one and the same thing.” That is to say, “religious dogmas were not doc-
trines but rather laws and decrees.” This state, therefore, “could be called a
theocracy.” But then Spinoza fundamentally departed from both Hobbes and
Josephus: God cannot be considered to have been the actual king of the Jews.
This view was “more opinion than reality.” Instead, Spinoza introduced a “pre-
mosaic” theocracy which was established after the Jews departed from Egypt
and found themselves in a “natural state.” Initially, on Moses’ advice,
[t]he Hebrews did not transfer their right to another person but rather
all gave up their right, equally, as in a democracy, crying with one voice:
“We will do whatever God shall say” (making no mention of an interme-
diary). It follows that they all remained perfectly equal as a result of this
65 Ibidem, 299, 303.

66 Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, ed. J.L. Israel, trans. M. Silverthorne and J.L. Israel
(Cambridge, 2007), 37–38; Spinoza, Opera, ed. C. Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg, 1925),
3:39–41.
67 Theological-Political Treatise, 44, 46–47; Opera, 3:45–48.
agreement. The right to consult God, receive laws, and interpret them
remained equal for all, and all equally without exception retained the
whole administration of the state.
This first covenant introduced by Spinoza as a sort of experiment in “demo-

cratic theocracy,” was, however, untenable. Because of their flawed conception
of God the “primitive” Hebrews became “exceedingly terrified and astonished”
when they consulted God and thus begged Moses to do so for them. As a result
of giving up their rights to Moses under a “second” covenant, Moses became
“the sole maker and interpreter of divine laws.”68
Spinoza’s bold reading of the doctrine of election ruled out the existence
of sacred or providential history and thereby fundamentally undermined a
cornerstone of Dutch Calvinist political theology. But his interpretation was
at the same time a refutation of Hobbes’s Leviathan. Hobbes had attributed
to God “a twofold kingdom”: one natural, “wherein he governeth […] by the
Dictates of Right Reason,” the other prophetic, “wherein he had chosen out
one peculiar Nation (the Jewes),” whom “he governed […] by Positive Lawes.”69
Spinoza dismissed Hobbes’s notion of a prophetic kingdom and rejected his
eschatological notion of the restoration of the Kingdom of God through the
return of Christ.70 In Spinoza’s philosophy the covenant with God “is no longer
written in ink or on stone tablets but rather on the heart by the spirit of God.”
God therefore “cannot be conceived as a prince or legislator enacting laws for
men.” A covenant, “from which the law of religion arises,” can only be made
with an “intermediary.”71 For Spinoza the Hebrew Republic was no authorita-
tive example in the sense that it was a uniquely and divinely ordained consti-
tution ordered by God himself.
Yet Spinoza held that many lessons could be learned from the “excellent”
state in the period after the death of Moses and before the appointment of
kings. The Hebrew Republic was in certain circumscribed respects still a model
to be followed. The reason for thinking so was that Spinoza deemed his theo-
retical foundation of the state (within a largely Hobbesian framework) to be
one thing; but once established, “it is not so easy to ascertain” how citizens “can
68 Theological-Political Treatise, 213–214; Opera, 3:205–207.

69 Hobbes, Leviathan, 397.
70 J.G.A. Pocock, “Time, History and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes,” in The
Diversity of History: Essays in Honour of Sir Herbert Butterfield, ed. J.H. Elliot and H.G. Koe-
nigsberger (London, 1970), 149–198.
71 Theological-Political Treatise, 214, 229–230, 241; Opera, 206, 221, 231.
254 Koekkoek
be helped to keep up their loyalty and virtue consistently.”72 The issue com-
manded close attention, Spinoza thought, and the best way of probing it was
by exploring both the excellence and shortcomings of the form of government
that the state of the ancient Hebrews had adopted.
Intriguingly, Spinoza thought it was precisely the theocratic character of the
Hebrew Republic that was the determining factor for its stability and prosper-
ity. As illustration he mentioned among other things the practice that the Jew-
ish people as a whole congregated every seven years to learn and read about
the religious laws, so that
the leaders therefore had to take very good care, if only for their own
sakes, to govern entirely according to the prescribed laws […] if they
wanted to be held in the highest honour by the people who at that time
revered them as ministers of God’s government and as having the place
of God.73
The people themselves, in whose minds was aroused “a unique love” for their
country, since they believed to be living in the republic of God, were “held in
check” by the theocratic principles of their state. Their patriotism was not sim-
ply based on love, but was a form of (religious) piety. So it was an obligation at
certain times of the year, Spinoza noted, for them to partake in feasts for God.
About this ritual cult he remarked: “I do not think anything can be devised
which is more effective than this for swaying men’s minds.”74
After describing the organization of the state, and the manner in which this
contributed to the loyalty and obedience of its citizens, Spinoza praised the
fact that there were “no sects in their religion, until the high priests obtained
the authority to issue decrees and manage the business of government.”75 In-
deed, the decline of the Hebrew state was due to a decision to have the Lev-
ites (i.e. the tribe from which the high priests were chosen) consult God. This
decision in the end created a “government within a government.”76 From the
moment that the high priests started to usurp control of the state, the degen-
eration of true religion set in and the number of doctrines proliferated. What
may also be inferred from their history, Spinoza argued, is that turning divine
law into complex philosophical articles of faith, and subsequently making laws
72 Theological-Political Treatise, 210; Opera, 203.

73 Theological-Political Treatise, 220; Opera, 3:212.
74 Theological-Political Treatise, 220, 231; Opera, 3:212, 222.
75 Ibidem.
about them, is a recipe for oppression and potentially schismatic disputes.

What the history of the Hebrew Republic suggested were simple doctrines in-
stituted solely with an eye to the practice of piety under the supreme authority
of a civil magistrate.
After the destruction of the Hebrew state, Spinoza explained, the era of Jew-
ish theocracy was over. When the Hebrew Republic came to an end, “religion
could no longer be regarded as the prescription of a particular state.” And so
the era of the “universal religion of reason” had begun. In this new stage of civil
history, religion can only be ordered by the right of the political sovereign, for
“God cannot be conceived as a prince or legislator.” Spinoza was well aware
that “there has always been controversy about this right in Christian states.”
The Hebrews, on the other hand, “never had any doubts about it.” This is not
surprising, Spinoza held, echoing Van Velthuysen,
if we reflect on the earliest beginnings of the Christian religion […] It was

not kings who first taught the Christian religion, but rather private indi-
viduals, who were acting against the will of those who exercised political
power, whose subjects they were […] Among the Hebrews the situation
had been completely different. Their church began at the same time as
their state, and Moses, who held absolute power, taught the people reli-
gion, organized the sacred ministries and selected the ministers.77
Whereas piety in the Hebrew Republic was religious in nature and political
loyalty and religious loyalty to the State were one and the same thing, in Chris-
tian states piety was merely directed “towards one’s country,” that is to say, to-
wards the well-being of the state. To see the difference, it may be clarifying at
this point to recall the distinction that Spinoza made between “public” and
“private” forms of religion, worship and piety. “Pious conduct” and external
“formal religious worship” on the one hand, must be determined by the politi-
cal sovereign. “Piety itself” or “private worship,” on the other hand, “are under
everyone’s individual jurisdiction.”78 In so far as religion was not connected to
external acts it remained a private affair, according to Spinoza, just like making
judgments on any kind of philosophical or religious topic. In so far as religion
was public, that is, in so far as it applied to the public practice of piety, charity
and justice, and moreover, to the duty of obedience to the moral law, an indi-
vidual did not have the liberty to interpret religion “at his own discretion.”79
77 Theological-Political Treatise, 241, 247–248; Opera, 3:231, 237.

78 Theological-Political Treatise, 239–240; Opera, 3:229.
256 Koekkoek
In Christian states, then, as long as the religion of private (groups of) indi-
viduals stayed within the political boundaries stipulated by the state religious
pluralism may be tolerated. In the Hebrew Republic this was unthinkable.
Echoing the observations of Van Velthuysen and the De la Courts, Spinoza’s
observed that the Hebrews “had to do whatever they were commanded by the
authority of the divine response received in the Temple or via the Law deliv-
ered by God without consulting reason.”80 In addition, he recalled the obliga-
tion that he thought the Hebrew people were under, “to denounce to a judge
anyone who committed an offence against the stipulations of the Law […] and
slaughter that person if condemned to death.” Such violent intolerance was
unique to the Hebrew Republic, Spinoza thought. Moses laid down his laws
as a public person; they were meant as political laws solely for the Hebrew Re-
public. Laws about what they should eat, how they should dress, how to shave
their beards, and so on, Spinoza pointed out, were meant to impress on the
people that they “should do nothing at their own discretion and everything at
the command of another.”81 The teachings of Jesus, on the other hand, have a
universal moral character. The prophets who preached his universal message
did so as “private individuals.” And although the pagan rulers had not autho-
rised the prophets to do so, Spinoza still thought their preaching was justified
“by right of the power they had received from Jesus.” His contemporary Calvin-
ist ministers should enjoy this liberty as well, that is to say, as private men, and
provided that they remained within the boundaries set by the supreme politi-
cal authority.82
While Spinoza rejected the harsh intolerance of the Hebrew Republic, he
did see the need for a shared, public, or what may be called a, civil religion.83
The overriding consideration that informed Spinoza’s argument was that Bib-
lical narratives and the prospect of salvation from simple obedience to the
moral law of the Bible might raise people’s spirits to become better citizens.

81 Theological-Political Treatise, 68, 75; Opera, 3: 69, 75.
82 Theological-Political Treatise, 244; Opera, 3: 233.
83 The term was of course coined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Book iv, Chapter 8 of his On
the social Contract. Yet I think that it captures nicely what Spinoza had in mind by a ‘uni-
versal religion’ under the jurisdiction of the civil sovereign. The term has been applied to
other seventeenth-century authors as well. See especially M. Goldie, “The Civil Religion
of James Harrington,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. A.
Pagden (Cambridge, 1987), 197–222; R. Tuck, “The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes,” in
Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. N. Phillipson and Q. Skinner (Cambridge,
1993), pp. 120–138; see also R. Beiner, Civil Religion. A Dialogue in the History of Political
Philosophy (Cambridge, 2011).
Especially the common people, or multitude, who lack philosophical insight,

Spinoza thought, are required to be to taught simple moral doctrines and obe-
dience by church ministers.
Against this background we are better able to understand Spinoza’s favour-
able estimation of ceremonies, public cults and worship. It was clear for him
that neither ancient Hebrew nor Christian ceremonies contributed anything
to (divine) salvation per se. Thus in contrast to the orthodox Calvinist view,
Spinoza insisted that the precepts and laws of the Old Testament were solely
meant for the Hebrews. They were only conducive to “material prosperity and
peace” of their state. They belong, in other words, to things that are “indiffer-
ent” to salvation.84 Yet, as long as ceremonies were “consistent with the sta-
bility and conservation of the commonwealth,” they could be very helpful to
turn the common people into loyal and virtuous citizens. In his (unfinished)
Political Treatise, published in the Opera Posthuma (1677), Spinoza realised
that he “omitted some points” that pertained to this topic. These are first,
“that all patricians should be of the same religion, a very simple religion of a
most universal nature as described in that treatise [the Theological-Political
Treatise]”; second, that “churches dedicated to the national religion (religio
patriae) should be large and costly”; and third, that “only patricians and sena-
tors should be permitted to administer its chief rites […] they alone should be
acknowledged as ministers of the churches and as guardians and interpreters
of the national religion.”85 Spinoza’s view of a civil (or national, public) religion
drew inspiration from the example of the Hebrew Republic, but was stripped
from its theocratic nature.
Conclusion
For Spinoza, Koerbagh, the De la Courts, and Van Velthuysen, the Hebrew Re-
public was both a model and an anti-model. It was a model primarily for the
reason that it constituted an important authoritative example for the unity
of civil and religious authority within one supreme civil sovereign. They em-
ployed this example as a counterargument against the orthodox Calvinist vi-
sion of an intolerant Neerlands Israel paralleling the divine, orthodox republic
of the Hebrews. This example provided Calvinist ministers an argument for
purifying Church and society of religious convictions other than those of the

85 Spinoza, Political Treatise, in: Spinoza, The Complete Works, trans. S. Shirley (Indianapolis,
2002), 740.
258 Koekkoek
Reformed creed. In this sense the De la Courts, Van Velthuysen, Koerbagh and
Spinoza fit within the tradition that sees the Hebrew Republic as an authorita-
tive example in early modern political thought to counter the Church’s claim
to religious authority independent of the State. But these Dutch republicans
did not invoke the Hebrew Republic in ways that early modern authors as dis-
cussed by Nelson in his The Hebrew Republic did. Authors like Grotius, Selden,
Harrington and others, Nelson maintains, “nurtured by deeply felt religious
convictions,” established the view based on rabbinic literature that God’s own
republic had “embraced toleration” by demanding the emptying of “the set of
religious matters deemed worthy of civil legislation.”86
It has become clear from the discussion in this chapter that Van Velthuysen,
Koerbagh, the De la Courts, and Spinoza, presented the Hebrew Republic as a
negative example, an anti-model, of theocratic intolerance. What mattered to
them was the fundamental difference between the Hebrew state and the Chris-
tian state. A Christian state should be ruled according to the maxims of reason
of state, peace and public morality. These maxims, in their eyes, encompassed
a widely felt need for a tolerant public religion. But it is crucial to understand
they did not propound this vision of a broad tolerant moral community that
could unite both the multitude and the reasonable, because they thought that
God had commanded it. It might be true that a significant number of authors
in early modern Europe drew lessons of tolerance from the Hebrew Republic,
but like with so many passages of the Bible, and perhaps any ancient intellec-
tual source whatsoever, for many others it was perfectly possible to infer from
the same passages diametrically opposed conclusions.
86 Nelson, The Hebrew Republic, 4–5, 16, 91.

chapter 11
The Helvetians as Ancestors and Brutus as a Model:

The Classical Past in the Early Modern Swiss
Confederation
Thomas Maissen*
The present volume in many respects continues in the research tradition

of “classical republicanism” and “civic humanism,” which originated in the
thought of Hannah Arendt and Hans Baron, and was popularised by John
Pocock and Quentin Skinner in the 1960s and 1970s.1 In the past two decades
the original perspective, which focused on the Italian Renaissance and on the
Anglo-American world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has been
considerably broadened.2 During this process, it has become clear that an in-
terest in the tradition of the classical past developed in many early modern
locales—not least in the few existing republics—and that this interest took
many different forms. It also was increasingly realised that it would be a mistake
to see references to the Greek poleis or the Roman Republic as sufficient proof
of an early modern political preference for a particular—republican—consti-
tutional model. On the one hand, interest in the Roman Empire and heroes
like Augustus and Hadrian was equally enduring and pervasive as the interest
in the Roman Republic; and a fascination for the latter and its protagonists
was notable among authors who were not likely to have had any republican
sympathies. One example of this is Corneille and his tragedy Sertorius, another
is constituted by the many references to Sparta during the French Enlighten-
ment, which generally aimed at championing order rather than at establishing
a republican constitution.3 On the other hand, in the search for the models
* I am most grateful to Angela Roberts and Felicitas Eichhorn for their valuable help in trans-
lating and editing this text. All translations of quotations are mine unless stated otherwise.
1 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Re-
publican Tradition (Princeton, 1975); Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political
Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1979).
2 Quentin Skinner and Martin van Gelderen, eds., Republicanism. A Shared European Heritage,
2 vols. (Cambridge, 2002); Quentin Skinner and Martin van Gelderen, eds., Freedom and the
Construction of Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2013).
3 Chantal Grell, “Le modèle républicain antique à l’âge des Lumières,” Méditerranées 1 (1994):
53–64. See also Chapter 7 in this volume by Wessel Krul.

260 Maissen
and means to legitimate their rather unusual political constitutions, the early
modern republics drew not only on classical antiquity, but also on many alter-
natives. Indeed, they usually based their independence and lordship over their
territory on customary law, which was based on privileges granted by emperors
and popes. In the Middle Ages, this formed the legal foundation of the Italian
communes, and remained so for the German imperial cities until 1806.
The approach taken in the Swiss Confederation inhabited the consider-
able space between these two models. The freedom and form of government
of each canton were based on privileges granted by the Holy Roman Empire,
which were carefully preserved and copied into books.4 When a new emperor
was crowned, he usually acknowledged these privileges. Indeed, up to the six-
teenth century the Swiss cantons regularly asked for this confirmation, and for
several of them this remained important into the seventeenth century. Even
by the middle of the eighteenth century the two-headed imperial eagle still
graced the coins of a few minor Catholic cantons like Schwyz or Appenzell In-
nerrhoden. It was only after the Westphalian Peace that the Swiss slowly began
to adopt the conventions of modern public and international law and its core
concept of sovereignty, which gradually replaced traditional imperial law in
the Confederation.5
It was during this process of transition from an imperial universe to the
European state system, and from medieval burghers to early modern citizens,
that the confederates began to see themselves as republicans and began to
look at contemporary republics such as Venice or the Dutch Republic, as well
as at the ancients, for inspiration. In the Catholic city of Lucerne, Johann Carl
Balthasar, a member of the Small Council, illustrated this new ambition with a
bold and impressive ceiling fresco in his house that was completed around 1690.
Twelve panels in the painting depict heroes of the Roman Republic: Scipio, Co-
riolanus, Mucius Scaevola, Cato Uticensis, Lucretia and Marcus Curtius among
them. In the main fresco (see figure 11.1), a personification of Rome sits with
Romulus, Remus and their wolf in front of the Senatorial Palace on the Capi-
toline Hill. In her right hand Rome holds a book, perhaps containing legal or
historiographical content, while her left hand rests on a statue of Nike, who
spurns the monarchical symbols—a crown and an imperial banner—that lie
4 Regula Schmid, “Bundbücher. Formen, Funktionen und politische Symbolik,” Der Geschichts-
freund. Mitteilungen des Historischen Vereins der Fünf Orte Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden
ob und nid dem Wald und Zug 153 (2000): 243–258.
5 For the gradual detachment from the Holy Roman Empire, see Thomas Maissen, Die Geburt
der Republic: Staatsverständnis und Repräsentation in der frühneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft
(Göttingen, 2006).
The Helvetians as Ancestors and Brutus as a Model 261
Figure 11.1 Johann Carl Balthasar, Roma teaching Hollandia, Venetia and Helvetia, c. 1690,
Lucerne.
before her in the dust. To banish any doubt regarding the message, a banderole
reads PRAECLARAM ROM[A] REIP[UBLICAE] LIBERTATEM DOCET:
“Rome teaches the wonderful liberty of the republic.” And indeed, three curi-
ous personifications sit at Rome’s feet following her lessons: Venetia with the
lion of St. Mark; Hollandia and her lion, holding the bundle of seven arrows
that symbolise the United Provinces; and in the foreground, Helvetia embrac-
ing William Tell’s son, who displays the iconic apple on his head.6
As this image demonstrates, the classical past played an important role in
the transition from imperial membership to republican sovereignty, a shift
that also awakened a republican consciousness in the Confederation, albeit
6 Georg Carlen, Manierismus und Frühbarock—Bilder für Kirche und Staat. Barockmalerei in
der Zentralschweiz, Innerschweizer Schatztruhe, ed. Jost Schumacher, vol. 1 (Lucerne, 2002)
46, fig. 35; Maissen, Geburt, 521, fig. 38.
262 Maissen
only since the seventeenth century. This chapter presents two examples of this
use of the ancients: first, the discovery of the Helvetians as the ancestors of the
Swiss; and second, the different uses of Lucius Iunius Brutus as a champion of
liberty.7
The Helvetians Thesis
The discovery of Helvetian ancestors did not develop from a mere fascination
with antiquity, but was the result of a serious struggle over historical legiti-
macy. The Confederation was a defensive league of—since 1513—thirteen free
or imperial cities and rural cantons within the Holy Roman Empire and was
in this respect similar to other lasting alliances such as the Swabian League
(1488–1534) and the Hansa. When the confederates fought against the Ger-
man king, a member of the Habsburg dynasty, during the Old Zurich War
(1440–1450) and especially during the Swabian War in 1499, notable humanists
such as Sebastian Brant, Jakob Wimpfeling and Heinrich Bebel accused them
of disloyalty to their legitimate lord.8 To delegitimise the Confederate claims
these authors dismissed the original legends of the inhabitants of central Swit-
zerland, especially the Herkommen der Schwyzer und Oberhasler (The Origins
of the peoples from Schwyz and Oberhasli), a tale probably created by Hein-
rich von Gundelfingen in the later fifteenth century. This legend was similar
to the model narrative used elsewhere by noble families, who tended to trace
their origins back to the main characters of universal history to legitimise and
further ennoble themselves. According to the Herkommen, Swedes, under the
leadership of Swytherus, immigrated to and named the valley of Schwyz. Later
in the fifth century, they aided the emperor and the pope in a battle against the
7 For an extended discussion of these issues in German, see Thomas Maissen, “Weshalb die
Eidgenossen Helvetier wurden. Die humanistische Definition einer natio,” in Diffusion des
Humanismus. Studien zur nationalen Geschichtsschreibung europäischer Humanisten, ed.
Johannes Helmrath et al. (Göttingen, 2002), 210–249; and Thomas Maissen, “‘Mit katonischem
Fanatisme den Despotisme daniedergehauen.’ Johann Jacob Bodmers Brutus-Trauerspiele
und die republikanische Tradition,” in Bodmer und Breitinger im Netzwerk der europäischen
Aufklärung (Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert. Supplementa), ed. Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Göt-
tingen, 2009), 350–364.
8 Cf. Claudius Sieber-Lehmann and Thomas Wilhelmi, eds., In Helvetios—wider die Kuhsch-
weizer. Fremd- und Feindbilder von den Schweizern in antieidgenössischen Texten aus der Zeit
von 1386 bis 1532 (Bern, 1998); Peter Ochsenbein, “Jakob Wimpfelings literarische Fehde mit
den Baslern und Eidgenossen,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 79 (1979):
37–65.
pagan lord, Eugen. Gundelfingen’s Legend has it that as a reward for this assis-
tance, these so-called Schwyzer received privileges—liberties (freyheitten)—
and were freed from subordination to a ruler.9
In his Soliloquium of 1505, Jakob Wimpfeling (1450–1528), who was from the
imperial region of Alsace, mocked this version of events, which was included
in the rhyming Kronigk on the Swabian War, published in 1500 by Nikolaus
Schradin (c. 1470–1531), a scribe from Lucerne, and the first work ever print-
ed on an event in the Confederation’s history.10 Wimpfeling called the pre-
tended exemtio Suitensium (the privilege granting them an exemption from
their overlords) a “fairy tale” (fabulae aniles) and “phantasm” (phantastico-
rum somnia) and thus the opposite of true hystoria. He not only asked for the
name of the pope, who had allegedly privileged the Swiss, and for the bulla
that had instituted this privilege, but also wondered where such a Lord Eugen
was mentioned, what could have been his realm, and who could have been
his historical e nemies. In short, Wimpfeling summarily dismissed the legend
as the anachronistic nonsense of an ignorant would-be poet (historiarum
o mnium ignarus).11
Although the confederates won the Swabian War of 1499 and defeated their
noble enemies, including, most notably, King Maximilian, they risked losing
the propaganda war if they allowed themselves to be cast as ignorant brag-
garts. The legends of the Schwyzer, and by extension of the Swiss origins, no
longer held up against humanist critiques. It is in this context that the notion
of Helvetia and the Helvetians became a subject of dispute among some mem-
bers of the same group of scholars. Caesar had written quite favorably about
9 Albert Bruckner, ed., Das Herkommen der Schwyzer und Oberhasler, Quellenwerk zur Ent-
stehung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, Abt. iii: Chroniken und Dichtungen,
vol. 2 (Aarau, 1961); Guy P. Marchal, Die frommen Schweden in Schwyz. Das “Herkommen
der Schwyzer und Oberhasler” als Quelle zum schwyzerischen Selbstverständnis im 15. und
16. Jahrhundert (Basel, 1976).
10 Nikolaus Schradin, Konigk [sic] diß kiergs [sic] gegen dem allerdurchlüchtigisten hernn
Romschen konig als ertzrhertzogen zu Osterich und dem schwebyschen pund, etc. (Sursee,
1500), fol. avj–bij.12.
11 For extracts see Sieber-Lehmann and Wilhelmi, In Helvetios, 162–217; cf. for polemical re-
marks against Schradin 164, 172, 192, 196, and Jakob Wimpfeling, Briefwechsel, Opera Selec-
ta, eds. Otto Herding and Dieter Mertens, vol. 3 (Munich, 1990), 585. For the Soliloquium
see Ochsenbein, “Wimpfelings literarische Fehde” and Guy P. Marchal, “‘Bellum justum
contra judicium belli.’ Zur Interpretation von Jakob Wimpfelings antieidgenössischer
Streitschrift Soliloquium pro pace Christianorum et pro Helvetiis ut resipiscant … (1505),” in
Gesellschaft und Gesellschaften. Festschrift Ulrich Im Hof, ed. Nicolai Bernard and Quirinus
Reichen (Bern, 1982), 114–137.
264 Maissen
the Helvetii in the Bellum gallicum, but the word Helvetia was not recorded by
him or any other author in antiquity. Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the propagator
of humanism north of the Alps, was the first to use the term Helvecia in his
De Europa of 1458; however, this was not a reference to Switzerland but to the
Alsace, which according to Piccolomini was once called Helvecia: in Alsacia cui
quondam Helvecia nomen fuit.12
Perhaps inspired by Piccolomini, the Zurich-born scholar Felix Fabri
(c. 1441–1502), who later emigrated to Ulm, first used the term Helvetia in ref-
erence to the country (terra) that was confined by the Alps and the Rhine
between Constance and Basel—the core of nowadays Switzerland’s German
speaking area. This country had allegedly been conquered by the Svitenses, a
modification of Svesi, which suggested a connection to the Swabians (Svevi).
Hence, according to Fabri, Helvetia formed the superior part of the region of
Swabia that stretched from Franconia to the Alps. Swabia was thus conceived
as an integral part of the provincia nostra—namely, Germany—which Fabri
referred to in his work as Germania, Alamannia, Teutonia, Cimbria and even
Francia.13 He thus invented Helvetia as the southern half of Swabia, or rather of
the Duchy of Swabia as it had existed in the High Middle Ages until the decline
of the Staufer dynasty in 1250. Shortly after Fabri’s writing, the two halves of
this historical duchy fell into kind of a civil war, the above-mentioned Swabian
War of 1499, which, interestingly, the Swabians, and Germans thereafter, re-
ferred to as the Swiss War.
In Fabri’s work, the population of Helvetia is correctly referred to as Suit-
enses and not as Helveti, despite the fact that the appellation Helvetus ap-
peared in some humanists’ contemporary correspondence (albeit rarely).14
This terminology was possibly inspired by the editio princeps of Caesar’s
Bellum gallicum, which was printed in 1469 and was followed by numerous
subsequent editions. After 1477 these editions also contained geographic regis-
ters, which allowed for references to contemporary locations. Although Caesar
stated in his first book that the civitas Helvetia consisted of four districts (pagi),
he named only two: the pagum Tigurinum and Verbigenum; in another passage
he also mentioned the Lepontii as inhabitants of the Alps near the source from
12 Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Cosmographia in Asiae & Europae eleganti descriptione (Paris,
1509), 124.
13 Felix Fabri (Schmid), Descriptio Sveviae, Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte, ed. Hermann
Escher, vol. 6 (Basel, 1884), 128–131; for Germany 109–110 and note 1, 120–124.
14 Wilhelm Oechsli, “Die Benennung der Alten Eidgenossenschaft und ihrer Glieder,” Jahr-
buch für Schweizer Geschichte 42 (1917): 89–258, 156; Albrecht von Bonstetten, Briefe und
ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Albert Büchi, Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte, vol. 13 (Basel
1893), 88 (Ascanio Sforza, 4 April 1478?), 148 (Berchtold von Mainz, 12 July 1498).
where the Rhine springs. Around 1495 a Zurich-born mathematician and doc-
tor, Conrad Türst (c. 1455–1509), drew the first technically detailed map of the
Confederation, which by then consisted of ten cantons. Türst took up Caesar’s
partition and identified the district of Zürich (pagus Tigurinus), the Birggöuw
of central Switzerland (pagus Leopontinus) and the Bernese Aargau, which he
called the pagum Helvetium. Accordingly, Türst was probably the first to equate
the former Helvetians and the modern confederates (Helvetii sive Confoederati;
in the German version: Ergöuwern und Eydgnossen).15 Around the same time
Peter von Neumagen, a chaplain who had received a humanistic education,
read Caesar’s sentence omnis civitas elvetia in quattuor partes divisa est in his
copy of De bello gallico (an incunabulum from 1482). By adding in the margins
Hodie in octo, Peter von Neumagen interpreted the eight cantons as districts;
more importantly, he assumed a territorial continuity from the classical era
through to his own time.16
This was a highly controversial claim around 1500, a time of deep conflict.
Again, Wimpfeling, the Alsatian who continued to profess his deep and con-
tinued loyalty to the empire, opposed the confederates and declared that the
term Helvetii should be understood as a reference to the Alsatians. Wimpfel-
ing referred to Piccolomini’s above-mentioned sentence and declared that the
river Alsa vel Helva, today known as the Ill, flowed from the Upper-Alsace (the
Sundgau or the Helvecia) down to Strasbourg. In order to underscore his posi-
tion on the issue, Wimpfeling had written Helvecii, hoc est Alsatici in his let-
ters since 1498. Accordingly, he referred to himself as Helvetius, and in 1502 in
De laudibus sanctae crucis, he referred to Strasbourg as urbs Helvetiorum, the
Helvetians’ city. In his Germania of 1501, Wimpfeling did not only talk about
the Alsatians as the Helvetii, but called the territory Helvetiam, id est Alsatiam
as well. As for the Suitenses, they should be named (E-)Leuci or Leponcii, in
agreement with Caesar. Wimpfeling professed a deep disappointment that in
his own time the population of the Alpine backwoods had usurped the name
Helvetii from the Alsatians.17
15 Conrad Türst, De situ confoederatorum descriptio, Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte, vol.
6. (Basel, 1884), 1–2, 22; cf. Caesar, De bello gallico, 1, 12 (pagus Tigurinus); 1, 27 (pagus Ver-
bigenus); 4, 10 (Lepontii).
16 Gaius Iulius Caesar, Commentariorum de bello gallico, ed. Hieronymus Bononius (Venice,
1482), Zentralbibliothek Zürich ink K 283, fol. 3; cf. Guy P. Marchal, “Höllenväter—Hel-
denväter—Helvetier. Die Helvetier und ihre Nachbarn als Identifikationsfiguren der heu-
tigen Schweizer,” Theorien und Auswirkungen = Archäologie der Schweiz 14 (1991), 5.
17 Wimpfeling, Briefwechsel, vol. 3, 392 (before the 28th of August 1502): “Doleo Helveciorum
nomen tribui sylvestribus illis Alpes incolentibus, quos Suitenses vocant, cum revera sit
proprium Alsaticorum vocabulum.”
266 Maissen
It was typical for the day that an Italian humanist finally made the deci-
sive step in this German contest over the true successor to the region’s antique
ancestors. Between 1500 and 1504, the Milanese humanist Balcus composed a
Descriptio Helvetiae that to a large extent followed the Superioris Germaniae
confoederationis descriptio (1479), written by the Swiss humanist Albrecht von
Bonstetten (1441/45–1503/05). However, by prepending his topography with
a historic account of the Helvetii that was based on Caesar and Tacitus, Bal-
cus made an original contribution to the genre. He summarised the wars of
the Helvetians against the Romans and concluded that the name of the for-
mer had disappeared over time, and that their present descendants (horum
modo posteri), the Svitenses, were named after Schwyz.18 Although he spoke of
posteri—descendants—Balcus did not exactly specify the degree to which the
contemporary Swiss and the Helvetians were connected. His decision to attach
the history of the Helvetians to a monograph on the Confederation, however,
was a crucial change in historiography, although it remained in manuscript.
When Erasmus’s student, Heinrich Loriti of Glarus (1488–1563), who later
adopted the humanist name Glarean, entered the scene, another text predicat-
ed on the same assumption became more accessible. Around 1510, in his epos
De pugna confoederatorum Helvetiae commissa in Naefels, Glarean presented
the warriors who had fought against Caesar in the battle of Bibracte as maiores
nostri to his fellow citizens, thereby very clearly identifying the Helvetians as
ancestors of the Swiss.19 In 1514 Glarean published a didactic poem Descriptio
de situ Helvetiae, which presented the Confederation topographically and his-
toriographically and was reprinted several times. He was the first to systemati-
cally exploit Caesar, Strabo, Ptolemy, Pliny the elder, Tacitus, Pomponius Mela
and others to explain his view on Swiss geography.20 Glarean even employed
the neologism Helvetia in the title of the poem, a choice that the commentator
Oswald Myconius still needed to explain to readers in 1519: Helvetiae vocabu-
lum apud veteres nusquam inveniri, sed Helvetios (“unlike Helvetii, the word Hel-
vetia cannot be found in classical texts”).21 Glarean’s aim was to trace out the
18 Balcus, Descriptio Helvetiae, Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte, ed. August Bernoulli,
vol. 6. (Basel, 1884), 73–105, 77: “Helvetiorum nomen sicuti caetera fere antiquitate de-
siit atque immutatum; est [et?] horum modo posteri Svitenses a Svitia, ipsorum oppido,
nuncupantur.”
19 Heinrich Glarean, “Carmen de pugna confoederatorum Helvetiae commissa in Naefels,”
Jahrbuch des historischen Vereins des Kantons Glarus (1949), 98, v. 614–625.
20 Arthur Dürst, “Glarean als Geograph und Mathematiker,” in Der Humanist Heinrich Loriti,
genannt Glarean, 1488–1563. Beiträge zu seinem Leben und Werk (Mollis, 1983), 119–144, 120.
21 Heinrich Glarean, Descriptio de situ Helvetiae […] cum commentarijs Osvaldi Myconij
L ucernani (Basel, 1519), 11 [= Helvetiae descriptio cum iiii Helvetiorum pagis ac xiii urbium
panegyrico & Osvaldi Molitoris Lucerini commentario (Basel, 1554), 8].
spatial dimensions of his fatherland explicitly, and he implicitly contradicted

Piccolomini and Wimpfeling by declaring that it was incorrect to speak of the
Alsace as Helvetia. Instead, Glarean identified Helvetia with his homeland and
defined its borders as the Jura, Lake Geneva, the Rhone and the Rhine, as had
been the case in De bello gallico, which had separated the Roman from the
barbarian territories. The authority of the ancients remained uncontested, and
Glarean reassessed their geographical descriptions for his own time. Thus, he
grouped each of the four districts (pagi) found in Caesar—without being able
to locate them precisely—around rivers: Thur, Limmat, Reuss and Aare. This
loosely corresponded to the structure of the Confederation, which was made
up of thirteen cantons by then.22
In spite of all the difficulties of identification, Glarean’s attempt to har-
monise the classical tradition with the modern Swiss Confederation prom-
ised to be more fruitful than the contested genealogies of Swytherus and his
ilk. In Glarean’s view, the Swiss Confederation was no longer understood as
merely a confederatio, a relatively young and loose alliance formed to main-
tain public peace and order (Landfriede) within a part of the empire. Instead,
the Confederation now had its own people, the Helvetii, and a particular terri-
tory, Helvetia, and both had already existed for over a thousand years. Thus, the
Confederates made the same shift as the southwest German humanists around
Wimpfeling had done in reference to the Germani: they were praised for being
indigenae or aborigines, as substantiated by antique authorities such as Caesar,
and thus replaced the medieval narratives about the origin of the nation in
a people of immigrants.23 Likewise, (mostly Italian) humanists like Bonifacio
Simonetta, Paolo Emilio and Alberto Cattaneo had begun to replace the no-
tion of itinerant Franci who had immigrated from Troy, with the notion of the
aboriginal Gauls.24 The Germani and Franci had populated the historiography
22 Heinrich Glarean, Helvetiae Descriptio Panegyricum, ed. and trans. Werner Näf (St. Gallen,
1948) v. 13–14, 24–25, 56–57, 94–97: “Quisve typus patriae, quae forma quibusque remensa
limitibus […] Idcirco Alsatia non recte a nonnullis Helvetia dicitur quando neque Rho-
danum, neque Juram montem qui lacui Lemanno propinquus est, attingat […] Utque illi
scripsere, hodie quoque ita esse probemus.” For the rejection of the Alsatian version cf.
the prose version of the Descriptio by Otto Fridolin Fritzsche, “Glareana,” Centralblatt für
Bibliothekswesen 5 (1888): 77–91, 81. See also Caesar, De bello gallico, 1.2.
23 Herfried Münkler, Kathrin Meyer and Hans Grünberg, Nationenbildung. Die Nationalisier-
ung Europas im Diskurs humanistischer Intellektueller—Italien und Deutschland (Berlin,
1998), 235–261; cf., for example, Heinrich Bebel’s Demonstratio Germanos esse indigenas
(ca. 1500), in Opera sequentia, Pforzheim 1509, fol. diij v–eij.
24 Cf. Thomas Maissen, Von der Legende zum Modell. Das Interesse an Frankreichs Vergangen-
heit während der italienischen Renaissance, Basler Beiträge zur Geschichtswissenschaft,
vol. 166 (Basel, 1994), 327–350; for the later French debates about the Gaulish ancestors
268 Maissen
and ethnography continuously for centuries, however, whereas the notion of

Helvetii only emerged around 1500. Still, they were most noble, because their
origins as recorded in the classical authors reached even farther back than the
Roman Empire and Christianisation. For this reason, the Helvetii were seen as
uncontroversial in the ferocious confessional conflicts that followed between
Protestant and Catholic Swiss. Indeed, they granted the Swiss Confederation
some legitimacy: with antique roots it could no longer be deprecated as the
result of a late medieval rebellion against the rulers of the House of Habsburg
whom God had deployed. Thanks to the original Helvetian freedoms, the con-
tested imperial privileges became secondary in the struggle for legitimation.
This was a welcome development during a time of ongoing tension with the
Habsburg emperor.
The ethnicisation of the Swiss and the territorialisation of the Swiss Con-
federation in an antique-Helvetian tradition formed the basis for new confed-
erate legitimacy strategies in the sixteenth century. What this ethnicisation
actually meant becomes clear from the contrast between Petermann Etterlin
(c.1430/40–c.1509) and Aegidius Tschudi (1505–1572). In 1507, Etterlin pub-
lished the first printed comprehensive history of the Swiss Confederation. In
this Kronica von der loblichen Eydtgnoschaft, jr harkommen und sust seltzam
strittenn und geschichten, he explained that the inhabitants of central Switzer-
land did not belong to the same nation, a declaration he substantiated with
reports on the different and fabulous origins of the peoples of Uri, Schwyz and
Unterwalden.25 In contrast to Etterlin, Tschudi, the most important Swiss his-
torian of his time, constructed the coeval Swiss as a single nation, at least in the
humanists’ sense of the word “nation.”26 In the middle of the sixteenth century,
Tschudi was engaged in writing different works on Swiss history: the Gallia
Comata (printed only in 1758) and the influential Chronicon Helveticum, which
was not published until 1734/36, but was already influential in its manuscript
Nos ancêtres les Gaulois. Actes du colloque international de Clermont-Ferrand 23–25 juin
1980 (Clermont-Ferrand, 1982); Krzystof Pomian, “Francs et Gaulois,” in Les lieux de mé-
moire, ed. Pierre Nora, vol. 2 (Paris, 1997), 2245–2300.
25 Petermann Etterlin, Kronica von der loblichen Eydtgnoschaft, jr harkommen und sust
seltzam strittenn und geschichten, Quellenwerk zur Entstehung der Schweizerischen Ei-
dgenossenschaft Abt. iii, 3, ed. Eugen Gruber (Aarau, 1965), 79: “das die landlüt in den
Lendern nit von einer nacion gewesen”; on fol. 7 in the original from 1507; a facsimile has
been published by Guy P. Marchal in the series Helvetica Rara (Zurich, 2011).
26 See Caspar Hirschi, Wettkampf der Nationen. Konstruktionen einer deutschen Ehrgemein-
schaft an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (Göttingen, 2005) and Caspar Hirschi,
The Origins of Nationalism. An Alternative History from Ancient Rome to Early Modern
G
ermany (Cambridge, 2012).
version and later became a main source for Friedrich Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell.
While Tschudi conjured up powerful myths in his founding saga about Tell and
the Confederates’ oath on the Rütli, he heavily criticised the legends that had
already been shattered by the foreign humanists. In the margins of his person-
al copy of the previously mentioned medieval Herkommen der Schwyzer und
Oberhasler, Tschudi noted that this story could not possibly be a true account
of the times, and questioned the very existence of the popes and emperors
playing a role in the plot. In his own Chronicon, Tschudi replaced the medieval
foundational legend with an even nobler ancestry: the people of Uri, Schwyz
and Unterwalden were so ancient that they did not derive from the Swedes
or from the East Frisians; they were, by common knowledge and according to
Julius Caesar’s reports, Helvetians.27
The Urner, Schwyzer and Unterwaldner, who in Etterlin’s Kronika were not
yet one nation, in Tschudi’s account had become a single people with classical
roots. These roots lay left of the river Rhine, as did Gallia in former times, and
thus the Helvetians were not a Germanic tribe but actually Gauls. This was
the crux of Tschudi’s argument in his Alpisch Rhaetia, which was printed in
1538 and heavily relied on classical ethnography. Curiously, he also suggested
that the Helvetians had “doubtless spoken German,” indicating that the Hel-
vetians were German-speaking Gauls!28 In order to make this claim Tschudi
relied on Strabo, who had mentioned German-speaking Gauls. The ethnic dif-
ference was also linguistically manifest, at least according to Tschudi, because
the age-old “tütsch” of the Helvetians (and later Swiss) differed from the Ger-
manic “teutsch.”29 Thus, in a cultural sense, the Swiss belonged to Germany
(Tütschland), which was composed of many other different—Germanic—
peoples or “nations.” The Helvetians had originally been free but, after a brave
battle against Caesar, they had been integrated into the Roman Empire. During
the Barbarian Migration, these German-speaking Gauls were then divided: the
27 Marchal, Frommen Schweden, 74–76: “nit wahrhafft […] nach rechnung der zitt und der
jahren, so die selben bëpst und keißer gelept hand […] die Urner, Switter und Underwald-
ner vil ein elter volck sind dann es hierinn meldet und komen nit weder von Swedien
noch von Ostfriesen, dann si sind von rechten alt Helvetier, darvon dann Julius Cesar der
Römer clarlichen schribt”; cf. Tschudi to Simler, 12 October, 1568 in Jakob Vogel, Egidius
Tschudi als Staatsmann und Geschichtsschreiber. Ein Beitrag zur Schweizergeschichte des
16ten Jahrhunderts (Zurich, 1856), 254.
28 Aegidius Tschudi, Grundtliche und warhaffte beschreibung der uralten Alpischen R hetie
(Basel, 1560) (orig. 1538), fol. P iijr/v: “on zwyfel tütscher spraach gewesen”; in Latin:
Aegidius Tschudi, De prisca et vera alpina Rhaetia (Basel, 1538), 109.
29 Bernhard Stettler, Tschudi-Vademecum. Annäherungen an Aegidius Tschudi und sein
“Chronicon Helveticum” (Basel, 2001), 22.
270 Maissen
three districts of the Burgundian West had become Roman, while the unruly
Tigurini (around Zurich and including Tschudi’s home Glarus) in the East had
formed an alliance with the Swabians, to become known as the “Alemani.”30
Tschudi asserted that the name Alemani derived from the fact that they were
composed of all kinds of men (“allerley Volcks”). Hence the Alemani, in contrast
to the indigenous Helvetians, had not formed a single nation, but constituted
an anti-Roman war alliance. To support this argument, Tschudi studied the an-
tique divide along the Rhine and between the Gauls and Germanic peoples.
Swabia had
always been between Lake Constance and the Rhine in Vindelecia—

Germania—and close to the Black Forest, […] while Zurich and the
Thurgau lay in Gallia and did not belong to the same nation. They had
been two different peoples—the Thurgovians in Gallia and the Swabians
in Germania—and had joined together with numerous other Germanic
peoples into the Alemannic federation. […] the Zurichers and the Thur-
govians are Alemanni, and so are the Swabians, but they are two nations
and two territories and not all the same people. Similarly, Picards and
Normans are French; but no Picard wants to be a Norman, and no Nor-
man wants to be a Picard.31
In the Middle Ages, the historical center of the Duchy of Swabia had been lo-
cated around Lake Constance and had encompassed the area south and north
of the lake. Tschudi’s recourse to antique ethnography meant that this area
became a historical dividing line, although it actually had been such only since
the Swabian War of 1499. Tschudi’s new territorial concept of the Confeder-
ation was also a reaction to the expansion towards the West after Bern had
conquered the French-speaking Vaud in 1536 and brought Calvinist Geneva
30 Tschudi to Simler on 27 July, 1568, in Vogel, Tschudi, 249; Aegidius Tschudi, Beschreibung
von dem Ursprung-Landmarchen-Alten Namen-und-Mutter-Sprachen Galliae Comatae,
etc., ed. Johann Jakob Gallati, (Constance, 1758), 93.
31 Tschudi, Galliae Comatae, 93: “ennet dem Bodensee und Rhein in Vindelicia—Ger-
mania—und am Schwartzwald, … hinwider Zürich und das gantz Turgäu in Gallia, seynd
gar nicht einer Nation, doch seynd beyde Völcker—die Turgäuer in Gallia und die Schwa-
ben in Germania, und etliche Germanische Völcker mehr im Allamanischen Pundt gew-
esen. … die Zürcher und Turgäuer seynd Alamannier, die Schwaben auch, doch zwerley
Nationen und Landen und nicht einerley Volcks. Picardier und Normandier seynd Fran-
zosen; es will aber kein Picard ein Normandier, noch ein Normander ein Picarder seyn.”
Cf. Ibidem, 239–252: “über die Irrtümer, so mit den Namen Alamanni, Suevi und Germani
gebraucht worden.”
closer. Although he was Catholic, Tschudi explicitly promoted closer ties be-
tween the Swiss Confederation and the two Protestant, but strategically impor-
tant cities of Geneva and Constance; the latter was situated left of the Rhine,
as were Gallia and Helvetia. However, Constance eventually lost its autonomy
in the Schmalkaldic War, when the emperor Charles v conquered the imperial
city in 1547 and turned it into a Catholic Austrian municipality.
Although Tschudi remained unsuccessful with his claim for Swiss support
to Constance, his references to antiquity legitimised the anti-Habsburg and
anti-Savoy foreign and territorial policies. He maintained that the Helvetians
had lived as one people between Lake Constance and Lake Geneva, but that
the separation between Burgundian and Alemanian Switzerland during the
Migration Period had produced two different “nations,” and that the names
Helveti and Helvetia had been lost. According to Tschudi, the western regions of
Aargau, Üechtland, the Vaud and the Valais, as well as Savoy, all had joined Bur-
gundia, while the Thurgau was Alemanian. Thus the Barbarian Migration had
created two distinct nations in former Helvetia; but in Tschudi’s own time, and
thanks to the grace of God, these regions were reunited and the name Helvetia
was restored.32 This re-unification occurred when it became clear to the Swiss
that the elective kings in the Empire no longer respected or protected their
original—that is, Helvetian—freedoms. This transpired around 1300 when
the confederates, gathered around William Tell, rose up against the Habsburg
reeves. Through the Rütlischwur, the oath on the Rütli allegedly made by the
confederates in 1307, the land of the Helvetians, which the confederates now
called Switzerland, was restored to its original order and liberty.33 In light of
this, the Bernese conquest of the western, formerly Savoyan, part of Switzer-
land in the year 1536 could be interpreted as the complete reunification of the
Burgundian part of antique Helvetia, instead of as an illegitimate expansion.
It is symptomatic that Tschudi also provided the concept for an influen-
tial map that was printed in 1538 together with the Alpisch Rhetia. Today the
map only exists as an etching from the second edition of 1560.34 Its recep-
tion, however, started earlier. The publisher of the 1538 Alpisch Rhetia was the
32 Ibidem, 76: “[…] von deßhin ist Ergäu, Uchtland, die Waat, Wallis, Savoyen etc. allweg
des Burgundischen Namens gewesen und das Turgäu Alemannisch—und dardurch zw-
eyerley Nationen worden und von einander gar abgesöndert, diser Zeit aber von Gottes
Gnaden alle vier Theil widerum zusamen gefügt und den Namen Helvetiae erneueret.”
33 Aegidius Tschudi, Chronicon Helveticum, Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte N.F., i, 7/3,
ed. Bernhard Stettler, vol. 3 (Basel, 1980), 224: “das land Helvetia (jetz Switzerland genant)
wider in sin uralten stand und frijheit gebracht worden.”
34 Cf. Walter Blumer, Bibliographie der Gesamtkarten der Schweiz von Anfang bis 1802, Biblio-
graphia Helvetica, ed. Schweizer Landesbibliothek Bern, vol. 2 (Bern, 1957), 33–45.
272 Maissen
cosmographer Sebastian Münster (1480–1553), who in 1540 also printed his edi-
tion of Ptolemy in Basel. In the latter book, the Swiss Central Plateau for the
first time appeared as Helvetia on a European overview map. It was located
between France (Franckreich) and Germany (Tütschlandt), but in smaller let-
ters; the font size of Helvetia corresponded with the circumjacent regions of
Sabaudia, Burgundia and Suevia. Münster also produced a small but detailed
map of the antique Helvetia prima. In doing so, he was explicitly referring to
Tschudi and thereby to Caesar, whose authority standardised the borderline
Rhine, Rhone and Jura. In one fell swoop he thus saw to it that those who dared
call Alsatia Helvetia would henceforth be regarded as entirely misguided.35 In
Münster’s own Cosmographey, which was first published in 1544, the map Ei-
dgnoschafft, Elsass und Brisgow also contained a symptomatic text describing
“Helvetia, that is Switzerland or the Confederation” with a detailed historical
commentary.36
Tschudi’s suggestions, only partially printed in the sixteenth century, were,
in addition to Münster’s book, also made accessible in the Gemeiner loblicher
Eydtgnoschaft Stetten, Landen und Voelckeren Chronick (1547/48), a bulky folio
publication by the Zuricher Johannes Stumpf (1500–c.1578). Stumpf accom-
plished the ethnicisation and the territorialisation of the Swiss leagues by con-
flating the original Helvetians and the present-day Swiss, and by referring to
them as the same alpine people (Alpenvolck); that is, the natural inhabitants
of an everlasting and free Helvetia, confined by clear geographical boundaries,
the existence of which reduced all internal differences to matters of secondary
importance.37 Stumpf illustrated this point of view on the maps that accompa-
nied his folios and referred back to Tschudi’s map of 1538 (see figure 11.2). Prob-
ably for the first time in the history of cartography, dotted borderlines were
used to separate the territory of the Confederation (whose borders correspond
almost exactly with its contemporary dimensions, with the Valais and Grisons
enclosed) from the surrounding countries.
Thus the “national” level of this union was made strikingly clear: in Stumpf’s
comprehensive map of Europe (see figure 11.3), Helvetia is written in
35 Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geographia, ed. Sebastian Münster (Basel, 1540): “Errant ergo qui
Alsatiam audent dicere Helvetiam.”
36 Sebastian Münster, Cosmographey (Basel, 1544), ccv–ccclxvii: “Helvetia, das ist Sch-
weitzerland oder Eidtgnosschafft.”
37 For Stumpf, Gemeiner loblicher Eydgnoschafft Stetten, Landen und Voelckeren Chronick
(Zürich 1547/48), with the corresponding references, see Thomas Maissen, “Ein helvetisch
‘Alpenvolck.’ Die Formulierung eines gesamteidgenössischen Selbstverständnisses in der
Schweizer Historiographie des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Historiographie in Polen und der Sch-
weiz, ed. Krzysztof Baczkowski and Christian Simon (Krakow, 1994), 69–86, esp. 79–83.
Figure 11.2 Excerpt of Johannes Stumpf, Landtaflen, Zurich, 1548.
ntiqua as a Latin word, like Avernia (Auvergne) or Apulia for example;

A
these names c orrespond to the German names, in Gothic print, of Bavaria (Bei-
ern), Swabia (Schwaben), Burgundy (Burgund) or Savoy (Saffoyen). In contrast,
the countries Italia, Germania, Gallia and Francia, all labeled in Latin, form a
different dimension and are presented in large typeface.38 Stumpf, who origi-
nated from the German city of Bruchsal, conceived Switzerland as Helvetia and
placed it on the same level as a German stem duchy that had evolved over
time into an imperial state: next to Bavarians and Swabians, there were now
also Helvetians, and they all belonged to one all-encompassing Germania. At a
time when Holstein (1474), Württemberg (1495), Prussia (1525) and other new
duchies were constituting themselves politically, the n atio Helvetica, though it
was not ruled by a duke, was historiographically catapulted into that same cat-
egory. In contrast to the historic stem Duchy of Swabia, Helvetia was a purely
humanist invention that gave a classical-sounding name to a recently formed
defensive alliance made up of citizens and farmers, thereby propelling it to a
position of its own on the map of the imperial territories.
38 Johannes Stumpf, Landtaflen, ed. Arthur Dürst (Zurich, 1975); for the dotted border,
see Uta Lindgren, “Die Grenzen des Alten Reiches auf gedruckten Karten,” in Bilder des
R
eiches, Irseer Schriften, vol. 4, ed. Rainer A. Müller (Sigmaringen, 1997), 34.
274 Maissen
Figure 11.3 Excerpts of Johannes Stumpf, Landtaflen, Zurich, 1548.

This invention of classical roots for a new nation was the achievement of hu-
manists and of humanistically-educated politicians. They distinguished them-
selves in their own country because they knew how to intellectually oppose
what Tschudi had called aemuli Helvetiorum, the foreign foes of the Helvetians.
Basing themselves on the canonised classical texts that had become available
in print, these authors defined their natio as clearly and unambiguously as was
possible within the confines of a scholarly dialogue. This meant divesting it of
any medieval myths of origin. Virtuosi in handling written texts and the recent
medium of print, and acting as an intellectual “regulatory force,” the united
humanists of all the countries competed externally against one another to gain
an internal monopoly on inventing and transmitting narratives that gave a his-
torical sense to their political communities.39 The losers in this process were
the clergy and the nobility, which continued by and large to hold on to oral
traditions and to the universal institutions represented by the emperor, the
pope and the universities. These medieval institutions were confronted with
a changing national public sphere which the humanists knew how to exploit
to their own advantage. As recognised experts in history and ethnography, and
crowned with poets’ laurels, they began to replace the clergy as the education-
al elite and to declare themselves the new intellectual aristocracy. This new
cultural hierarchy was indispensable for the development of a solidly patriotic,
integrative self-assurance, a core element of early modern statehood.40
Lucius Iunius Brutus as a Freedom Fighter
The greater accessibility of printed works by classical authors not only made
possible the development of new views on notions such as people and territo-
ry, but also provided numerous exempla of heroic personalities. Although not
entirely unknown in the Middle Ages, the genre De viris illustribus and—more
rarely—De mulieribus illustribus had experienced a significant boom since the
age of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Classical authors such as Cicero, Livy, Plutarch,
Suetonius and Valerius Maximus furnished rich material that was often used
for discussions of current issues. A well-known example of this was the con-
frontation between Caesar and Marcus Iunius Brutus: Dante saw the latter as a
traitor, whereas Leonardo Bruni praised him as a noble tyrannicide. Lorenzino
dei Medici similarly saw himself as a new Brutus when he murdered his rela-
tive Alessandro dei Medici, the Duke of Tuscany, in 1537. To justify his deed,
39 Münkler et al., Nationenbildung, 25–28.

40 For this whole process, see Hirschi, Wettkampf.
276 Maissen
Lorenzino employed the same symbols as the murderer of Caesar had done:
the dagger and pileus. Michelangelo’s bust of Brutus also referred to this event
and further justified the action taken.41
During the Renaissance, Brutus became also a popular figure in the Con-
federation, although here it was Marcus’s alleged ancestor—Lucius Iunius
Brutus—who attracted most attention. According to Livy, he cast out the dy-
nasty of the Tarquinii and founded the republic in 509 bc. The theme of Bru-
tus is encountered, probably for the first time in Switzerland, at the beginning
of the sixteenth century in the anonymous play Urner Spiel von Wilhelm Tell
(1512?), which, despite its title, was most likely composed in Zurich. The intro-
ductory allegory mentions the debasement of Lucretia’s dignity and—in an
explicit parallel to the legendary struggle for Swiss liberty—the subsequent
indignation of the Romans who banished the king and all his men and became
free.42 In his already previously mentioned poem Descriptio de situ Helvetiae,
Glarean in 1515 wrote that history had granted the Confederation its own Bru-
tus in William Tell.43 Likewise, in an adaption of the Tell play in 1545, Jacob Ruf
(1505–1558) spoke of Brutus as the first Roman “burgomaster.” As we shall see,
this amalgamation of Zurich and the Roman Republic was not unique.44
In 1533 Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), who succeeded Ulrich Zwingli as An-
tistes of Zurich, published a Nice theatre play about the story of the noble Ro-
man Lucretia […] and furthermore about the steadfastness of Iunij Bruti.45 The
41 Manfredi Piccolomini, The Brutus Revival. Parricide and Tyrannicide during the Renais-
sance (Carbondale, 1991), 65–94; also see Alois Riklin, Giannotti, Michelangelo und der
Tyrannenmord (Bern, 1996).
42 “Ein hüpsch Spyl gehalten zu Ury in der Eydgnoschafft von dem frommen und ersten
Eydgnossen Wilhem Thell genannt,” in Schweizerische Schauspiele des sechszehnten Jah-
rhunderts, ed. Jakob Bächtold, vol. 3 (Zurich, 1893), 13–56, 16: “Veriagtend den Küng und
all sin man, Deß sy in fryheit thatend kommen.” A more recent edition is Das Urner Tel-
lenspiel, Quellenwerk zur Entstehung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, ed. Max
Wehrli, vol. 3, 2 (Aarau, 1952).
43 Glarean, Helvetiae Descriptio, 88–90, v. 390–402.
44 Jacob Ruf, Ein hüpsch und lustig Spyl […] von dem frommen und ersten Eydgnossen Wilhelm
Thellen Jrem Landtmann (Zurich, 1545); on Ruf see Hildegard Keller, ed., Jakob Ruf: Leben,
Werk und Studien (Zurich, 2006).
45 Heinrich Bullinger, “Ein schön Spil von der geschicht der Edlen Römerin Lucretiae, und
wie der Tyrannisch küng Tarquinius Superbus von Rhom vertriben, und sunderlich von
der standhafftigkeit Junij Bruti, des Ersten Consuls zu Rhom (Basel, 2. März 1533),” in Sch-
weizerische Schauspiele des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts, ed. Jakob Bächtold, vol. 1 (Zurich,
1890), 105–169; Käthe Hirth, “Heinrich Bullingers Spiel von ‘Lucretia und Brutus’ 1533”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Marburg, 1919); Rémy Charbon, “Lucretia Tigurina. Heinrich
Bullingers Spiel von Lucretia und Brutus (1526),” in Antiquitates Renatae. Deutsche und
französische Beiträge zur Wirkung der Antike in der europäischen Literatur, ed. Verena
story is not so much about Lucretia, as about the political question “how one
could keep the new liberty against all kinds of tyranny and oligarchy (this is
against such a force, where only a few are masters).” The answer to this ques-
tion could be found in the orders of Brutus (“uß der ordnung Bruti”).46 The play
is deliberately set in a Swiss town, where Bullinger introduces the audience to a
poor farmer. Such figures did not usually appear in the tragic genre nor—as the
Reformer explicitly mentions—in the classical sources. In this case, the poor
farmer is used in order to illustrate the fact that he is helpless, since the wealthy
Plutus can alter the law under the despotic rule of Tarquinius Superbus. After
the banishment of Tarquinius, the great tartar (“große wueterich”), the farmers’
rights and law and order in general are restored. It is at this moment in the play
that the nobility laments the passing of its life of luxury and idleness. Brutus’
sons, who are described as arrogant and dressed in foreign clothing, are among
these noblemen. They are, in another reference to Bullinger’s time, represent-
ed as mercenary entrepreneurs. The two brothers, who receive their money
from the emigrated king, dislike the new leaders whom they do not consider
as free, because they must work all the time. Bullinger’s Brutus juxtaposes his
own concept of liberty, which has its roots in law and impartial jurisdiction,
with this aristocratic understanding of liberty. Institutionally, the supervi-
sion by the pious councils, the participation of the citizens in major public
issues and the alternating administration by the two consuls or burgomasters
(“zween Consules, oder Burgermeyster”)—another similarity between Zurich
and Rome—guarantee that rulers are sometimes also subjects, and thus have a
strong incentive to act with a certain degree of modesty and restraint.47
The central concept for Bullinger in this context was the contrast between
law and order on the one hand, and the self-interest and despotism of the no-
bility on the other. By condemning his own children, without any regard for
friendship, family or even for their direct pleas, Brutus becomes the incarna-
tion of a virtuous ruler who does not raise himself above the law and who uses
his sword in the service of God’s will. The message of the drama was clearly
aimed at Zurich’s masters (“unsren Herren”). Indeed, the epilogue states that
they must lead the people that God had confided to them with just advice.48 In
Ehrich-Haefeli et al. (Würzburg, 1998), 35–47; Emidio Campi, “Brutus Tigurinus. Aspekte
des politischen und theologischen Denkens des jungen Bullinger,” in Geschichten und ihre
Geschichte, ed. Therese Fuhrer (Basel, 2004), 145–174; Anja Buckenberger, “Heinrich Bull-
ingers Rezeption des Lucretia-Stoffes,” Zwingliana 33 (2006): 77–91.
46 Bullinger, “Schön Spil,” 107: “wie man die erobert fryheit behalten mög wider alle Tyranny
und Oligarchi (das ist wider ein sölchen gwallt, do wenig lüdt herren und meyster sind).”
47 Ibidem, 133.
48 Ibidem, 147, 167.
278 Maissen
other words, the authorities had to abide by the same eternal, God-given rules
as everyone else. For Bullinger, as long as political rule was in accordance with
God’s deontology, its form did not really matter. Since correctives for individu-
al misbehaviour were generally absent in a monarchical government, however,
justice was more likely to be found in a republic. Bullinger thus agreed with
Zwingli’s conviction that Brutus had replaced tyranny with aequitas futurae
democratiae, or in Leo Jud’s translation “the uniform, common and fair rule of
the people” (glychmäßige, gemeyne unnd billiche Regiment des volcks).49
The predominantly and even exclusively political interpretation of the
Brutus theme evinced by the Swiss authors of the sixteenth century was far
from universal or self-evident and was quite different from, for example, Hans
Sachs’s contemporaneous Tragedia von der Lucretia (1527). This play remained
rooted in the ribald tradition of the Shrovetide plays and focused on the erotic
motives of the characters highlighted in the literary tradition. The political line
of interpretation remained a Swiss peculiarity, more especially a Zurich one.
Although it was far from an established tradition, Roman and local constitu-
tional history came to be seen as parallel phenomena.
This development was further fostered in the second half of the seventeenth
century, when Zurich and the other Swiss cantons came into contact with a new
form of antimonarchical republicanism which had evolved in the Netherlands,
and which had adapted the modern doctrine of sovereignty to suit republican
needs during the wars first with Spain and then with France.50 The confed-
erates gradually adopted these models after the Peace of Westphalia granted
them the privilege of exemption that was soon interpreted as sovereignty. It
was in this context that Zurich built a new town hall, which was inaugurated
on June 22, 1698. A sophisticated programme of figures on the façade and in
the interior of the town hall expressed the city’s political identity. Among other
republican symbols, this decorative programme included window pediments
on the ground floor showing twenty-three busts of republican heroes from an-
cient Greece and Rome and from the eight original cantons of the Confedera-
tion. To this day, on the left front-hand corner of the building (see figure 11.4),
Lucius Iunius Brutus continues to remind the magistrates that they must place
their republican virtue before all other concerns: LIBERTAS SANGUINE
PRAESTAT—“liberty precedes one’s own blood,” meaning the blood of Brutus’
sons. Like most of the other busts, from Themistocles to the Scipios, and from
William Tell to Arnold von Winkelried, Brutus reminds his viewers that the
49 Huldreich Zwingli, “Sermonis de providentia dei anamnema (1530),” in Sämtliche Werke,

vol. 6.3, Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 93.3 (Zurich, 1983), 217.
50 Cf. for this process Maissen, Geburt der Republic, 345–365 (the Netherlands) and 383–400
(Zurich’s town hall).
Figure 11.4
Bust of Lucius Iunius Brutus,
Zurich town hall, 1698.
salvation of the fatherland depends on the readiness of each individual to

make personal sacrifices. Libertas took up the idea of sovereignty and inter-
preted it as the independence of the petty state of Zurich from foreign powers.
It was this lesson that spread across Switzerland after the Peace of Westphalia.
The special significance of the elder Brutus for Zurich was also manifest
in the parallels drawn between him and Zurich’s founding figure, the four-
teenth-century mayor Rudolf Brun. In 1679, an Allusio inter Brutum et Brunium
was submitted to the first society of the early Enlightenment, the Collegium
Insulanum. It praised the older Brutus and criticised the younger Brutus for
murdering Caesar.51 Such comparisons between Rome and Zurich, neither of
which was described as subordinated to any higher authority, would become
frequent during the eighteenth century. Sebastian Walch’s series of portraits of
Zurich’s mayors (1756), for example, presented Rudolf Brun as the founder of
the city’s new constitution (“neues Stadt-Regiment”). This constitution had to
be defended against both external and internal enemies (that is, against both
the Habsburgs and the nobility), just as Brutus had once protected the Roman
51 Heinrich Werdmüller, Vom ersten Rider Rathsperiodo und damaligen Regierung der Stadt
Zürich und dem ersten geschwornen Brief. Allusio inter Brutum et Brunium, 16. Juli 1679,
Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Ms P 6224, 93–96.
280 Maissen
Republic simultaneously against the Etruscan ruler Porsenna and the ban-
ished tyrant Tarquinius. Mayor Brun was judged to have been courageous and
wise in his defence of the city, and to have thus lived up to and even partially
surpassed the example provided by Brutus.52
The most relevant Zurich adaptation of the subject was the tragedy Junius
Brutus, published in 1761 by the council scrivener Salomon Hirzel (1727–1818).
He dedicated the play to his teacher Johann Jacob Bodmer (1698–1783), who
was the leading proponent of the Swiss Enlightenment. In the same year that
he wrote his play, Hirzel became a founding member of the famous Helve-
tische Gesellschaft, the enlightened Helvetian Society. His tragedy began with
some thoughts on the transformation of the state and argued that Brutus’s ac-
tions had laid the foundation for a severe republican virtue and thereby for
the prosperity and the magnitude of Rome.53 The strength of Hirzel’s tragedy
lay in the neo-classical attempt to grant every character a modicum of high-
mindedness and thereby to attribute credible and comprehensible motives to
all characters—including Brutus’s antagonists. For Tiberius, one of Brutus’s ill-
bred sons, the motive is love for Princess Tarquinia; for the other son, Titus, it
is longing for the glory of Rome, which he believes can only be realised in a
monarchy and not under plebeian rule.
Titus feels that these sentiments are in conflict with his duty towards his fa-
ther and his fatherland. Duty is the central theme in Hirzel’s drama, and it com-
pels Brutus to sacrifice everything for the welfare of his country, even his sons.54
Against Titus’s ideal of a heroic monarchy, Hirzel’s Brutus sketches the alterna-
tive of a free, virtuous and mild regime of brethren who divide political power
among one another, and where love of duty and of country live in every heart.
Titus’s contempt for the plebs is unjustified: “if they [the common citizens]
have learned to rule, through willing obedience and love of duty, then what hin-
ders us from confiding sacred authority to them, and where is the harm, if they,
fraught with the will to do good, fulfil even the most important duties?”55
52 Sebastian Walch, Portraits aller Herren Burger-Meistern, der vortrefflichen Republique,

Stadt und Vor-Orths Zürich (Kempten, 1756): “Und so hat dieser Burger-Meister Brunn
noch manche treffliche Proben seiner Klugheit und Tapfferkeit gegeben, und sich also
dem ersten roemischen Burger-Meister Brutus vollkommen aehnlich gemacht, wo Er Ihn
nicht gar in vielen Stuecken uebertroffen hat.”
53 Salomon Hirzel, Junius Brutus. Ein Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen (Zurich, 1761), 5: “zu der
strengen Republicanischen Tugend, und also zu dem Wohlstand und der Grösse Roms,
den ersten Grund legte.”
54 Ibidem, 127, 135, 138.
55 Ibidem, 111: “Wenn sie vom willigen Gehorsam und der Liebe zur Pflicht herrschen gelernt;
was hindert uns denn ihnen die geheiligte Gewalt anzuvertrauen, und wo ist das Unglück,
wenn sie, zu jedem Guten gestärkt, auch die wichtigsten Pflichten erfüllen?”
In some respects, Hirzel’s version closely followed Voltaire’s drama Brutus

(1730), for instance in the characterisation of Titus as torn between sentiment
and devoir. But the liberal ethos proclaimed by Voltaire’s Brutus did not sit well
with a republican constitution. It was mainly meant and understood as a de-
fence against unbridled, absolutist monarchy, or despotism in Montesquieu’s
sense; thus, Voltaire’s Brutus calls out: “Rome eut ses souverains, mais jamais
absolus.”56 In contrast to Voltaire’s plea for a limited monarchy, Hirzel insisted
on the necessity of rigorous virtue in a true republic. Like his teacher Bodmer,
he criticised the luxury and venality of Zurich’s elite, which he felt undermined
the moral foundations of the republic.
Johann Jacob Bodmer not only praised Hirzel’s play, but also presented a dra-
ma of his own on the same topic in 1762: Tarquinius Superbus.57 Although the
play as a whole was rather dull it was nevertheless saturated with a fiery, egali-
tarian republicanism: “Man is born free, liberty flows from his nature and is his
eldest right.”58 The tyrant, or rather the despot, opposes this principle, because
he claims full control over the property of his subjects. “Leave him your silver as
inheritance, your sons as henchmen and your daughters as concubines”—such
are the king’s demands in Tarquinius Superbus.59 Bodmer made a traditional
distinction (which had recently been refreshed by Montesquieu) between on
the one hand the free peoples and civilisations of the West, and on the other
hand the barbarians. For the latter, despotism might well be appropriate, but
the Romans, Zurich’s citizens and, it may be presumed, other Europeans were
bound together as a “sociable people” that lived in a situation of law and order,
and were unfit for arbitrary rule. Their authorities, and indeed all members of
their states, were bound by law, order, conventions and institutional checks.60
As he grew older, Bodmer developed an almost obsessive interest in Bru-
tus. Although he also occasionally alluded to the elder Brutus, in most of his
dramas he focused on the younger.61 In an unsuccessful attempt to imitate
56 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), “Brutus,” in Les oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 5 (Ox-
ford, 1998), 192 (i, 2).
57 See Bodmer’s letter to Sulzer, 20 December, 1759, quoted in Jakob Baechtold, Geschichte
der Deutschen Literatur in der Schweiz (Frauenfeld, 1892), 195.
58 Johann Jacob Bodmer, “Tarquinius Superbus,” in Politische Schauspiele (Zurich, 1768), 147:
“Der Mensch ist frey gebohren, die Freyheit fliesst aus seiner Natur, und sie ist sein äl-
testes Recht.”
59 Ibidem, 128: “gebet ihm euer Silber zum Erbe, eure Söhne zu Häschern, eure Tochter zu
Beyschläferinnen.”
60 Ibidem, 130: “gesellschaftliches Volk.”
61 Cf. Johann Jacob Bodmer, “Marcus Brutus,” in Politische Schauspiele (Zurich, 1768), 95:
“Marcus Brutus verdient eine Bildsaeule, neben des Junius Brutus. Junius Brutus ist
auferstanden.”
282 Maissen
Shakespeare and Voltaire, the Zuricher wrote a number of tragedies: Julius

Caesar (1763), Marcus Brutus (1768), and Brutus und Kassius Tod (The Death of
Brutus and Cassius, 1782), his final opus. In these works Caesar is depicted as
a one-dimensional tyrant who despises his fellow citizens and seeks to profit
from Rome’s crisis in order to become an absolute ruler. In one instance, he
even exclaims: “Cursed be the first Brutus, who under the appearance of an
august virtue, chased away his rightful and legitimate king, a sacred person,
and sowed the first seeds of an inhumane hate against king, crown, diadem
and tiara in the people’s minds.”62 As for Marcus Brutus, like his ancestor Lu-
cius Brutus he seeks to belie the “maxim of tyranny,” which holds “that on the
peak of republican liberty, it is impossible to tame the passions and even more
impossible to preserve mutual consent and peace.”63 Liberty, according to
Bodmer’s younger Brutus, can only prevail where customs, virtue, temperance,
love of law and order exist together with the Greek love of beauty and good-
ness. This works much better than laws in protecting states from “lusts, splen-
dour, inequality and any pest.”64 Indeed, the existence of such a morality is
seen as the very condition of political liberty. In the absence of an overpower-
ing monarchical authority, it is only republican and civil virtue that guarantees
political order and prevents anarchy.65 Thanks to the cultivation of his virtue
the insightful citizen is able to voluntarily submit himself to the law. Thus for
Bodmer, man-made law is the foundation of the state, and Brutus had been its
first and dutiful bailee.
Bodmer’s cult of Brutus was not just a literary or academic gimmick. In 1762,
one year after the publication of Hirzel’s tragedy, the Grebelhandel occurred. In
this famous affair, Bodmer’s teachings mobilised his students Johann Caspar
Lavater (1741–1801) and Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825) to act against Felix
Grebel, Zurich’s corrupt bailiff in the small city of Grüningen. Their manifesto
began with a complaint against nepotism that was inspired by Plutarch and
62 Ibidem, 22: “Verflucht sey der erste Brutus, der unter dem Schein einer erhabenen Tugend
seinen rechtmaessigen, erkannten Koenig, eine unverletzliche Person, verjagt, und den
ersten Samen zu unmenschlichen Hasse, gegen Koenig, Kron, Diadem und Thiare, in die
Gemuether geworfen hat!”
63 Ibidem, 9: “Daß es unmoeglich sey auf dem Gipfel der republicanischen Freyheit die
Leidenschaften zu bezaehmen, und dann noch unmoeglicher die Einigkeit und Ruhe zu
erhalten.”
64 Ibidem, 30.
65 Cf. Johann Jacob Bodmer, “Polytimet,” Politische Schauspiele (Zurich, 1768), 328–329,
where Aristodem answers Polemon’s question whether republics and their citizens will
be able to cope with their freedom: “O sie müssen zuvor noch um ethliche Grade tugend-
hafter werden. Ich fürchte, sie haben noch zu wenig von der politischen Tugend, welche
die Neigung ist, sein eigenes Bestes in dem allgemeinen Besten zu suchen.”
Voltaire: “You, Brutus! And you sleep! Oh, if only you lived!”66 The pamphlet
called for a “Iunius Brutus among the Christians,” who would hand over the
“ill-bred sons” to justice and even destroy the godless. The fact that both the
elder and the younger Brutus had sacrificed their own blood for the sake of the
fatherland and for republican liberty particularly impressed the members of
Bodmer’s circle. Many rebellious youths saw themselves in a similar s ituation
when confronting the authorities. Even more astonishing was the radical
way in which these rebels, who belonged to Zurich’s leading families, fought
against members of their own circle. They called for tyrannicide, for murder-
ing the “outrageous” Grebel, “whose death I long for.”67 Similar justifications
could be found in the weekly society journal Der Erinnerer (The Reminder),
which in 1766 printed a Totengespräch zwischen Brutus und Cäsar, an imag-
ined conversation between the dead Caesar and Brutus, composed by Antoine
Roustan, a follower of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.68 Bodmer and Lavater may even
have inspired Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein’s painting of Lucius Iunius
Brutus judging his sons (1784), which in turn possibly influenced the famous
1789 painting of Brutus by Jacques Louis David.69
Conclusion
The afterlife of the two Bruti in Zurich is enlightening in many ways. In the
first half of the sixteenth century, Bullinger maintained that God-given rights,
perverted by the arbitrary rule of noblemen, should once again receive rec-
ognition in a static, hierarchical, corporative society. Ready for sacrifice, the
66 [Johann Heinrich Füssli and Johann Caspar Lavater], Der ungerechte Landvogt, oder
Klagen eines Patrioten, Der von Jo. Caspar Lavater glücklich besiegte Landvogt Felix Greb-
el (Arnheim, 1769), 9: “Du, Brutus! und du schläfst? ach, wenn du lebtest!” Cf. William
Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” in The Complete Works, ed. W.J. Graig (London, 1957), 826 (ii,
1, 48): “Brutus, thou sleep’st: awake!”; Voltaire, “La Mort de César,” in Les oeuvres compètes
de Voltaire, vol. 8 (Oxford, 1988), 195 (ii, 2): “Tu dors, Brutus, et Rome est dans les fers!”
For the context, see Rolf Graber, Bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit und spätabsolutistischer Staat.
Sozietätenbewegung und Konfliktkonjunktur in Zürich 1746–1780 (Zurich, 1993).
67 [Füssli and Lavater], Der ungerechte Landvogt, 15–16: “Vertilgung dieses Bösewichts.”
68 Bettina Volz-Tobler, Rebellion im Namen der Tugend. “Der Erinnerer”—eine Moralische
Wochenschrift, Zürich 1765–1767 (Zurich, 1997), 247–250.
69 Hubertus Günther, “‘Brutus! und du schläfst? ach, wenn du lebtest!’ Das Zürcher Brutus-
Bild des Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung 31. 7./1. 8. (1993),
49–50; Hubertus Günther, “Das Urteil des Brutus. Vom Paradigma der Gerechtigkeit
zur aufrührenden Tragödie,” in Geschichten, ed. Fuhrer, 89–144, 130–131. Many thanks to
Sebastian Bott for the reference to Tischbein.
284 Maissen
late seventeenth-century Brutus on the façade of the town hall guaranteed the
sovereignty and thus the liberty of the Zurich Republic against outside forc-
es, but did not highlight the internal constitution of the city or the citizens’
participation. In the eighteenth century Hirzel, on the other hand, was very
preoccupied with Zurich’s internal order. In contrast to Bullinger, he assumed
the existence of a dynamic and secular society, in which each individual need-
ed to develop a strong sense of duty in order to cope with the continuously
changing imponderabilia of life. This sense of duty arose, according to Hirzel,
as the result of an individual and social process of learning that was funda-
mentally open to everyone: in other words, whoever emancipated himself to
civic virtue through intellectual and moral education could hope for politi-
cal emancipation. For Bodmer, by contrast, it was not virtue, but the abstract,
secular law inspired by Rousseau’s volonté générale that was the supreme ruler,
and all citizens had to subordinate themselves to it equally. With its emphasis
on natural equality, liberty and popular sovereignty, Bodmer’s radical position,
with its nostalgia for an original community of customs among equals, was
strongly pre-modern and even anti-modern, if not anti-liberal.
In other Swiss cantons and among allies like Geneva one finds many other
references to the classical past in the Enlightenment. In Bern, for example,
Johann Rudolf Tschiffeli in 1766 boasted that his city was “clever as Rome,
staunch as her citizens and adopted the same measures under the same
circumstances.”70 But Tschiffeli was actually wrong, for the references to the
classical past eventually helped the Swiss to become something that neither
Rome nor the Confederation ever had been: a democratic nation-state. To take
up Georg Jellinek’s well-known definition, a Staatsvolk, a Staatsgebiet and a
Staatsgewalt are the indispensable prerequisites of the modern state. Although
the Confederation was an alliance of cities and rural communities, humanists
like Fabri and Glarean invented Helvetia as a territory; out of city dwellers and
countrymen, historians like Stumpf and Tschudi constructed a Swiss people
linked to its imagined ancestors, the Helvetians, through the eternal qualities
of an Alpenvolck; and the radical Enlightenment of Hirzel and Bodmer turned
Bullinger’s static concept of collective freedom into the idea of the free-born
and emancipated citizen and member of a sovereign people able to exercise
sovereign authority over itself.
70 Johann Rudolf Tschiffeli, “Grundsätze der Stadt Bern in ihren ersten Jahrhunderten, zu
einiger Erläuterung der Geschichte dieses Freystaates,” in Patriotische Reden, gehalten
vor dem hochlöblichen aussern Stande der Stadt Bern (Bern, 1773), 62–63: “Klug wie Rom,
standhaft wie seine Bürger, ergreiffet Bern, bey gleichen Umständen, die gleichen Mass-
regeln”; quoted in Daniel Tröhler, “Kommerz und Patriotismus. Pestalozzis Weg vom
politischen zum christlichen Republikanismus (1764–1780),” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für
Geschichte 50 (2000): 325–352, 333.
chapter 12
Classical Models in Early Modern

Poland-Lithuania
Tomasz Gromelski
The importance of the classical tradition to the polity that became known as
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth represents a problem that certainly de-
serves a close scholarly attention. Historians of early modern Poland-Lithuania
readily acknowledge and almost unanimously agree that classical themes
played a central role in the political thought and political culture of this polity,
and that these themes thoroughly permeated the country’s constitution and
laws. Yet, despite the concentrated attention that modern eastern- and central-
European historiography continues to devote to the study of the political insti-
tutions and political practices of this community poised precariously between
the Russian tsardom, the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, the
political impact of the classical tradition in Poland-Lithuania has never really
become the subject of an in-depth systematic analysis, and consequently re-
mains much under-researched.
This chapter examines evidence to support the assertion that Greco-
Roman antiquity saturated political and social discourse in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Poland-Lithuania, and that the country’s political and
intellectual elite embraced and internalised the classical virtues with the kind
of zeal and enthusiasm that they are conventionally credited with. The chap-
ter focuses on some of the most conspicuous topics of contemporary public
debates, and especially ones centred around the key institutions, doctrines,
principles, and concepts that lay at the foundation of the Polish-Lithuanian
constitution and that shaped political structures and socio-economic rela-
tionships in the country. It does so to establish the links between the prevail-
ing themes, attitudes, and rhetorical modes with what falls under the general
heading of the classical tradition, and to assess the role and overall impact
of the latter on the Commonwealth’s culture. It uses a wide range of sourc-
es, which includes political treaties and pamphlets, chronicles, armorials,
parliamentary journals, statutes, sermons, eulogies, correspondence, counsel
literature, and poetry to demonstrate more clearly why and how early mod-
ern Poles and Lithuanians turned to Greek and Roman authors, and classical
antiquity in general, to understand and explain the workings of the world, to
gain insight into the future of societies and states, to seek moralising examples,

286 Gromelski
to provide justification for their actions, or simply to achieve their rhetorical

goals or to create an artistic effect.
Noble Culture and Humanist Education
Why should Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, or the Commonwealth of Two

Nations, seemingly a rather distant cousin of the western European polities
that traced their lineage to the great Mediterranean empires of the past, be-
come a fertile ground for the reception of the classical past, and particularly
in its political and constitutional dimensions? What was the political, social,
economic and intellectual climate that created the conditions for the flourish-
ing of ideas linked inextricably with republican Rome and Greek city-states?
In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and part of the eighteenth century the
conjoined Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a ter-
ritorially vast, populous, multi-ethnic and pluri-religious polity with consid-
erable financial and military potential. It was dominated and governed by a
numerous but hermetic hereditary noble class known as the szlachta, which
constituted between five and eight per cent of the population (with signifi-
cant regional variations). The nobility’s exceptionally strong position resulted
directly from the monarchy’s weakness, brought about by political and so-
cial developments during the period of fragmentation (1138–1320), and by a
great number of concessions exacted from members of the Hungarian Anjou
(1370–1385) and the Jagiellonian dynasties (1385–1572) in exchange for support
for the rulers’ ambitious dynastic and military plans. These special privileges
or liberties (wolności), as they were most often described, enabled the szlachta
effectively to enslave the peasantry, subdue the frail burgher class, infiltrate the
clerical estate, and to gain enormous influence over all aspects of the nation’s
life. An additional factor that enhanced the nobility’s power and had serious
cultural consequences was the fact that, unlike their counterparts elsewhere,
the Polish-Lithuanian nobilitas had never become internally stratified in any
formal sense. Because of the lack of a full-blown multi-tiered feudal hierarchy,
the knightly estate (stan rycerskii) came to encompass both powerful mag-
nates and petty landless squires, who enjoyed equal rights and subscribed to
the same set of values.
By the mid-sixteenth century, as all other voices were supressed, noble cul-
ture reigned supreme. The szlachta’s narrow class interests, which boiled down
to preserving and strengthening a socio-economic system based on serfdom
and to maintaining the status quo in relation to the throne, became conflated
with the national interest and common good. The nobility were immensely
Classical Models in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania 287
proud of their Rzeczpospolita, which they perceived as simultaneously a prod-

uct and emanation of the innate wisdom and natural virtues of many genera-
tions of native aristocracy. They believed that their ancestors had arrived at
the best possible constitutional solutions and the best social arrangements
instinctively and unaided. The political writer and philosopher Wawrzyniec
Goślicki (1530?–1607) wrote:
And what shall I say about our forefathers, who established for us a com-
monwealth not much different from the Roman one? They were not ac-
quainted with the teachings of Plato, Lycurgus, Solon, Aristotle and the
greatest philosophers and lawmakers; their state arose solely from virtue,
which they found not in books but in themselves. Their wisdom was to
submit to virtue and neither to do nor to conceive anything against it.1
At the same time the nobility were fully aware that it was difficult to make
cultural progress completely unassisted without relying on the experiences of
others. They found that learning about the great polities and communities of
the past, and understanding the languages they spoke, were essential to the
shedding of the stigma of barbarity that haunted most northern and east-
ern Europeans; what was necessary, in effect, to become part of the civilised
world. The sixteenth century was the time of a cultural leap, when large sec-
tions of the better-off citizenry craved and acquired access to Europe’s classical
heritage—a development described by Stanisław Orzechowski (1513–1566), a
popular political commentator:
Before, Greek writings in Poland were rare and almost unheard of, and
they were so little known among our people that when someone failed to
comprehend something, he called it Greek. Even the Latin speech, how
rough and barbaric it was […] Compare with this what you studied and in
what your children are schooled. You will say that Poland has become not
barbarian but Greece, not Sarmatia but Italy, and so it may seem that, by
God’s will, not the Greek and Roman muses but these cities themselves,
1 Warzyniec Goślicki, O senatorze doskonałym księgi dwie. De optimo senatore libri duo, trans.
Tadeusz Bieńkowski, ed. Mirosław Korolko (Cracow, 2000), 206: “Quid dicam de maioribus
nostris, qui non multum dissimilem Romanae, nobis quoque Rempublicam condiderunt?
Aberant tum a Polonis longe Platonis, Lycurgi, Solonis, Aristotelis, summorumque Philos-
ophorum & legislatorum disciplinae, sola virtute res illorum crevit, quam non e libris sed a
seipsis petebant. Haec sapientia fuit illis, virtuti obsequi, nihilque contra hanc, nec facere,
nec sentire.”
288 Gromelski
Rome and Athens, have moved to Poland […] In the mouths of our peo-
ple the spirit, sound and subtlety of both tongues appear to be not alien
but domestic, not foreign but native.2
Crucially, education was seen as benefiting not just the individual, who gained
personal enlightenment, but also his country, by forming a dutiful citizen de-
termined to use his knowledge and skills to build his nation’s greatness. As
another author stated at the start of the seventeenth century:
They say that an ignorant man is as distant from a learned man as a

corpse is from a living body. And rightly so! For as the sun illuminates
everything so studying discourages us from evil things and leads towards
good. It adorns and saves from error, moderates violent and dangerous
minds, directs to concord and shows the way to worthy causes, it sharp-
ens reason and, finally, makes one an honest and useful servant of the
Commonwealth. Should then a nobleman lie among the dead? God for-
bid! His country is proof of Epaminondas’s learned wisdom; Greece of
Philopoemen’s; Rome of Julius Caesar’s.3
Despite this realisation the majority of rank and file nobility remained un-
educated and unaware of the wider world. This was partly due to the lack of
means to continue education beyond the parish school or basic home-tuition
level, and partly because university studies and academic interests in general
2 Stanisław Orzechowski, Funebris oratio: habita a Stanislao Orichouio, Ruteno, ad Equites Polo-
nos, in funere Sigismundi Jagellonis, Poloniae Regis (Cracow, 1548), Cvi: “Rarum fuit antea, ac
pene inauditum in Polonia Graecarum litterarum nomen, quae ita erant hominibus nostris
incognitae, ut id quod quis non intelligeret, Graecum esse diceret. Iam vero Latina ipsa ora-
tio, quam absona fuerit, atque barbara […] Conferte nunc cum his eas que et ispsi didicistis et
in quibus liberi exercentur vestri: non barbariam, sed Graeciam, non Sarmatiam sed Italiam
dicetis factam esse Poloniam, ut iam non musae Graecae, neque Latinae, sed urbes medius
fidius ipsae, Roma atque Athenae […] commigrasse in Poloniam videatur. Ita mens, sonus,
ac subtilitas utriusque orationis non externa, sed vernacula, non peregrina, sed domestica in
ore nostrorum hominum versari mihi videtur.”
3 Wacław Kunicki, Obraz szlachcica polskiego (Cracow, 1615), Br: “Powiadają o tym, że nieuk od
uczonego iest tak daleki iako umarły od żywego. I słusznie, ponieważ iako słońce wszystko
nam oświeca tak nauka od rzeczy szkodliwych na dobre nawodzi: z złego razu wyrywa y zdo-
bi, srogie y porywcze umysły miękczy, do łaskawości, do zgody prowadzi, do zacnych spraw
drogę ukazuie, umysł zaostrza; a na ostatek godnym y pożytecznym sługą Rzeczypospolitej
czyni. Y miałby szlachcic między trupami leżeć? Zachowaj tego Boże. Świadkiem nauki Epa-
minondeszowey iego Oyczyzna. Świadkiem Philopemenowey Grecia, Świadkiem Juliusza
Cesarza Rzym.”
were not seen as part of the nobility’s ethos. On the other hand, sons of the
wealthier and more refined szlachta would usually receive a good education
with a focus on history, rhetoric, law, and classical and modern languages. As
is frequently pointed out by historians, the majority of significant sixteenth-
and early seventeenth-century political authors and a considerable proportion
of politicians spent many years travelling and studying abroad, especially in
Bologna, Padua, Rome, Vienna, Heidelberg, Wittenberg, Leipzig, Ingolstadt,
Cologne, Tübingen, and Königsberg. They returned immersed in the humanis-
tic tradition, well versed in classical literature, and often strongly influenced by
the ideas of the Protestant Reformation.
Accordingly, the country’s political and intellectual elite had been exposed
to and had a good understanding of both older and newer concepts and the-
ories pertaining to the field of political philosophy and jurisprudence. This
knowledge, however, did not stimulate the sort of learned scholarly debate
that would play any large role in shaping the Polish-Lithuanian constitution
and the law. Throughout the early modern period both political thought and
political culture seem to have been to a much larger degree a product of politi-
cal practices at the local and national level than of measured exchanges be-
tween academic theorists. In the words of a seventeenth-century Polish poet:
“Elsewhere eloquence resides in books, here it reigns in assemblies, in courts
of law and in parliament. And so a Spaniard is by nature a theologian, an Ital-
ian a philosopher, a Frenchman a poet, a German a historian, and a Pole an
orator.”4 As a consequence, much of our understanding of what contempo-
raries thought about politics is based on sources documenting actual discus-
sions in public fora that took place at the time of important political events or
processes, or else shortly thereafter.
As we have seen, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Polish and Lithuanian
commentators were proficient at quoting classical authors and at evoking
Greek and Roman examples to reinforce their argument or to provide an in-
formative comparison. How could this phenomenon, symptomatic of a much
wider cultural trend, be explained? What were the reasons for the fascination
with classical antiquity, and its political institutions in particular, in early mod-
ern Poland-Lithuania?
4 Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, O poezji doskonałej czyli Wergiliusz i Homer (De perfecta poesi,
sive Vergilius et Homerus), ed. Stanisław Skimina (Wrocław, 1954), 100: “Alicubi eloquentia
latet in libris, apud nos in conventibus, in foro, in comitiis dominatur. Itaque ut Hispa-
nus proprio theologus, Italus philosophus, Gallus poeta, Germanus historicus, ita Polonus
orator est.”
290 Gromelski
Political Freedom and Polish Golden Liberty
If there was one notion that could be described as the very centre of the
szlachta’s conceptual universe, a principle underpinning all their thinking and
practices, it was without doubt the idea of freedom. When discussed more
inquisitively freedom would normally be placed within a framework of moral
and theological premises. But the majority of early modern commentators
were entirely satisfied with the observation that “freedom is mankind’s great-
est possession.”5 From this it followed that
liberty ought to be cherished and valued above all treasure and wealth,
for once it is forfeited and neglected, all prosperity, all riches are nothing,
and even life itself cannot be joyful. As Diogenes the Cynic said when
asked what would be the best thing in the world. He said: Libertas, hac
enim amissa non facile recuperatur. Which saying is not different from
this one: Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro.6
Of course, freedom and liberty—the Polish language does not distinguish be-
tween the two—are capacious terms that contain a number of concepts and
apply to many different fields of human activity. What constituted the primary
concern of the Polish-Lithuanian citizenry, however, was freedom in the pub-
lic sphere, that is libertas politica. They understood it primarily as the ability
to participate in power in an unrestrained way in the absence of a superior
coercive authority, and as such, it was a prerequisite of individual freedom and
civic liberties.
Naturally, according to contemporary opinion, this kind of freedom could
only exist in polities whose citizens’ moral awareness, civic virtues, and un-
derstanding of politics had reached the highest standards characteristic of the
most developed societies. Where do we look, asked Poles and Lithuanians, for
5 Andrzej Wolan, De libertate politica seu civili. O wolności Rzeczypospolitej albo ślacheckiej, ed.
Maciej Eder and Roman Mazurkiewicz (Warsaw, 2010), 74: “omnium rerum humanarum pul-
cherrimum […] libertas.”
6 Anon., Philopolites to iest Miłosnik Oyczyzny, albo o powinności dobrego obywatela, Oyczyźnie
dobrze chcącego i oną miłujacego, krótki traktat (Cracow, 1588), Fr.: “Wolność pospolita, tha
nad wszytki bogactwa ma być przekładana y w uważeniu miana. Bo za upuszczeniem, za
zaniedbanim wolności, wszelakie dostatki, wszelakie zbiory nizacz nie są, na osthatek y
sam żywot smaczny być nie może. Jako ono Dyogenes Cynikus będąc pytany, coby było na
swiecie najlepszego. Odpowiedział: Libertas, hac enim amissa non facile recuperatur. Kthora
powieść iego nie iest od oney rozna: Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro.”
such perfect polities designed specifically to facilitate political liberty? It was a

rhetorical question because the answer was blatantly obvious.
The form of commonwealth […] which we call free […] of which there
have been only three in the world: the Roman one, founded by them [the
Romans] in a new, unusual and hitherto unheard of manner; and as long
as they fared in it, they were fortunate and illustrious, so much so that
other nations craved their government and their liberty, and so because
of such almost willing submission by other nations they came to rule the
whole world. After, it passed on to the Venetians and exists there to this
day. Our ancestors established the third one.7
Another author added that should “Polish Golden Liberty,” as it was often de-
scribed, be in peril, then “we should turn to the good old Lycurguses or Solons
or Greek Platos or Jewish Salomons, who established commonwealths among
people wisely, governed them sagely and wrote about them in a thorough
manner.”8
Throughout the early-modern period and beyond, a common belief among
the szlachta was that Poland-Lithuania not only benefited directly from the
political legacy of classical antiquity, but that it also developed it creatively and
improved on it, achieving the quickest progress on the road to realizing the
ideal of a state and society built on the foundation of true liberty. When writ-
ing about their patria most authors could not resist the temptation to throw in
a concluding remark that
the commonwealth of the Polish kingdom is so thoughtfully conceived

that it surpasses the wisdom of those sage founders of commonwealths,
7 Anon., Libera respublica—absolutum dominium—rokosz, in Pisma polityczne z czasów Roko-

szu Zebrzydowskiego, 1606–1608, ed. Jan Czubek, 3 vols. (Cracow, 1916–18), 2: 407: “to jest forma
tej Rzpltej […] którą wolną zowiemy […] i których nie było, jedno trzy na świecie: rzymska,
od nich nowem, niezwykłem, nigdy przedtym niesłychanem obyczajem wynaleziona, i póki
w niej trwali, byli szczęśliwemi i sławnemi byli, tak iż wszytkie narody do ich rządu i wolności
garnęły się i za dobrowolnem prawie się poddawaniem narodów przyszli byli do tego, że
opanowali wszytek świat; potym się przeniosła do Wenetów i po dziś trwa. Przodkowie naszy
[…] postanowili tę trzecią.”
8 Stanisław Orzechowski, Dyalóg albo rozmowa około egzekucyjej Korony Polskiej in Orzechows-
ki, Wybór pism, ed. Jerzy Starnawski (Wrocław, 1972), 415: “trzeba by nam ku temu onych
starych Likurgów albo Solonów albo też Platonów greckich albo Salomonów żydowskich,
którzy mądrze rzeczpospolite między ludźmi stanawiali i rozumnie je rządzili i gruntownie o
ich pisali.”
292 Gromelski
as they describe Lycurgus, Solon, Romulus and so forth. Which is clearly

apparent: for Poland has flourished so much that no nation in the world
has greater freedom and liberties.9
Mixed Government and Classical Models
The state of full political freedom could only come into existence and thrive
in a certain type of political system. That system was mixed government. The
idea that in the interest of the national community the state should not be
controlled entirely by a single person or a small elite, but that responsibility for
public welfare should be shared, was seen as a foundation of civilised society.
As Wawrzyniec Goślicki stated:
Some consider a commonwealth to be best if it comprises three sorts and

orders of men; for this reason they laud the Spartan polity, which was
composed of the aristocracy, that is senators, the regime of one, that is
kings, and the people, embodied in the ephors, who were elected from
among the people. Polybius extols to the skies with the greatest praises
the Roman commonwealth for it also embraced and was made up of a
king, the aristocracy, and the people, in which monarchs could not grow
haughty for fear of the people, and the people dared not scorn monarchs
because of the senators. This kind of commonwealth was considered, and
not without reason, to be the most just. For as on strings a consonance
is achieved through moderation of different tones: the highest, the low-
est, and the middling orders; and as Cicero says, from sounds is effected
harmony, which is the strongest and the best bond in a commonwealth.10
9 Anon., Naprawa Rzeczypospolitej koronnej do elekcyi nowego króla, 1573, ed. Kazimierz
Turowski (Cracow, 1859), 4: “Rzeczpospolita królestwa polskiego od przodków naszych
tak jest mądrze postanowiona, iż przechodzi rozumy mądrych onych stanowiec
rzeczypospolitych, co piszą o Likurgu, Solonie, Romulusie, etc. Co acz łacno rzecz sama
pokazuje: bo tak zakwitnęła Polska, iż żaden naród pod światem wolności i swobód
więtszych nie ma nad nas, wszakże i wywody jasnemi to sie pokazać może.”
10 Goślicki, O senatorze doskonałym, 70, 72: “Quidam optimam reipublice formam esse
putant, si fuerit ex tribus hominum generibus, ordinibusque temperata et constituta:
proptereaque Lacedaemoniorum rempublicam laudant, quod ex optimatibus, id es sena-
toribus erat composita: ex unius imperio, regibus scilicet; e populo, is enim in Ephoris
consistebat, eo quod ex populo eligebantur. Polybius rempublicam Romanam summis in
coelum effert laudibus, quod ea quoque conflata fuisset et compacta, ex rege, optimatibus,
et populo; in hac reges insolescere non poterant, metu populi; populus reges despicere
Poles and Lithuanians contrasted their government with those of other poli-
ties, both existing and historical, and concluded that their own constitutional
setup represented a particularly well-balanced mixed state or mixed monar-
chy, which was the most advanced regime, far superior to any contemporary or
past political systems. This habit of searching for the classical origins of ideas
and institutions, and the urge to compare contemporaneous and ancient po-
litical and social orders, and to find parallels between them, was not limited
to general concepts and issues. Given the slightest opportunity, the majority
of early-modern Polish-Lithuanian commentators would immediately point
out the similarities between their constitution and the political and social ar-
rangements that according to their knowledge existed in the classical world
and served the primary purpose of preventing the rise of tyrannical rule and
upholding and enhancing civic liberties.
The cornerstone of the Polish-Lithuanian constitution, the elective monar-
chy, and the act of royal election, whereby all noble citizens had the right to
participate personally and even to stand as candidates, were therefore often
presented as institutions that had originated in Rome and Athens. In the for-
mer case, it was argued, it all started with
Numa Pompilius, who after Romulus’s death and a year-long interreg-

num was in such manner most concordantly elected king. The people
first began to riot against the elders and to complain about increased bur-
dens, that many lords arose in place of one, and finally demanded that
the king be elected by none but the people […] The elders gave power
to the people and allowed them to elect whomever they wished without
any objection.11
non audebat, propter senatores. Quod genus reipublicae non sine ratione iustissimum
fuit existimatum. Sicut enim in fidibus concentus, ex dissimilium vocum moderatione,
concors efficitur: sic e summis, infimis, et mediis ordinibus, uti Cicero dicit, tanquam so-
nis, ubi harmonia est effecta, arctissimum atque optimum est in republicam vinculum,
omnium incolumitatis.”
11 Krzysztof Warszewicki, De optimo statu libertatis libri duo, in Krzysztofa Warszewickiego
i Anonima uwagi o wolności szlacheckiej, ed. Krzysztof Koehler (Cracow, 2010), 149, 154:
“Omnium namque comitiorum magnus est aestus, sed elecionum maximus. Itaque pru-
dentissimus ille omnium historicorum, Cornelius Tacitus, qui tot tamque varios casus et
eligendorum caesarum viderat exitus et qui non solum interfuerat ipse, sed et praefuerat
rebus […] quodam loco monet minore periculo sumi quam quaere reges […] Numae
Pompilii exemplum Romae memorabile fuerit, qui extincto Romulo post unius anni in-
terregnum rex concordissime hoc modo fuit electus. Plebs primum contra patres furere
ac conqueri coepit multiplicatam servitutem, pro uno multos multos dominos esse factos,
294 Gromelski
The same solution was applied in the early days of the Attican empire. In his
celebrated treatise De optimo senatore Goślicki explained that “after [their]
state was established by Theseus, the Athenians […] would elect a king from
among those excelling in virtue by pointing with their extended hands.”12 Like-
wise, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament, or Sejm, resembled closely and was
modelled on what could be found in classical polities. Provincial members of
the lower house, or posłowie, were chosen and
appointed as monitores consiliariorum et custodes libertatis et praeroga-

tivarum nobilitatis et legum publicarum: a praiseworthy institution for
the Polish nation […] in the likeness of institutions by the wise found-
ers of the Roman and Lacedemonian commonwealths, who, in order to
restrain their superior authorities so that the commonwealth might be
watched over; had in Rome the tribunos plebis, and the Lacedemonians
their ephoros.13
Confederations, formalised institutions of resistance, were regarded highly

and praised as one of the pillars of liberty in Poland-Lithuania. The right to
renounce obedience and actively oppose a monarch became a constitutional
right in the sixteenth century, and this too had classical archetypes. “Let us
look at the history of Rome,” wrote the author of a 1600s political pamphlet,
“when a magistratus became oppressive towards the populus, when their liber-
ties were at stake, then they [would go] ad Montem Sacrum, ad Aventinum to
gather, and in such manner they freed themselves from oppression and mul-
tiplied their liberties.”14 The same was being said about the country’s highest
regem denique non alium quam a plebe eligendum […] Patres potestatem plebi dederunt
et ut ipsa eligeret, quem vellet, regem, citra omnem controversiam permiserunt.”
12 Goślicki, O senatorze doskonałym, 58, 60: “Athenienses […] post institutam a Theseo rem-
publicam regem, e virtute praestantioribus eligere, ac porrigendis manibus designare
solebant.”
13 Anon., Naprawa Rzeczypospolitej, 21: “nie jako przysięgli do rady, ale jako jako monitores
consiliariorum et custodes libertatis et praerogativarum nobilitatis et legum publicarum:
chwalebne postanowienie narodowi polskiemu […] na kształt postanowienia mądrych
stanowiec rzeczypospolitych Rzymian i Lacedemonów, którzy dla pohamowania władz
zwierzchnich swych, ażeby dozór był w rzeczypospolitej, rzymska miała tribunos plebis,
a Lacedemoni ephoros.”
14 Anon. [possibly Jan Szczęsny Herburt], Skrypt o sluszności zjazdu stężyckiego, in Pisma
polityczne z czasów Rokoszu, 2: 261: “Wejźrymy w historye rzymskie […] kiedy jedno
populo był ciężki magistratus, kiedy szło o wolności ich, ali oni do gromady, to ad Montem
Sacrum, to ad Aventinum i tak zrazieli z siebie niewolą, pomnożeli wolności swe.”
court of law—the Crown Tribunal, or Trybunał Koronny, established in 1578. In

the 1540s, when it was still only a parliamentary proposal, many argued that a
“tribunal consisting of select judges, to whom all private cases would be con-
ferred, and whatever they decree, their sentence would stand without appeal”
should be called into existence as soon as possible. The project’s proponents
wrote that in their
opinion nothing wiser or more practical or more salutary for the king-
dom, could be conceived. In such manner Greece once ran its affairs well,
whereby having chosen men from chief cities, it had judges, whom the
Greeks called amphictyones, to handle all their quarrels. Which practice
Rome then followed […] And because these tribunals were seen as not
only the cause of justice among citizens but also of peace and concord,
then France gave her parliament this form with such power that in pri-
vate cases the king himself became subject to its judgement. And for the
same reason Germany desired to have one tribunal for the whole empire
[…] which Germans commonly call kammericht.15
Even the most carefully designed institutions emulating those conceived and
established by the ancient Greeks and Romans were in themselves no guar-
antee of the stability of the political system, or that civil and political rights,
and consequently freedom of the individual, would be realised and protect-
ed. The Polish-Lithuanian nobility believed that this could be facilitated only
through adopting and closely adhering to the principle of the rule of law—
another mark of a civilised and progressive society. Again, as with everything
else, the value of the lex est rex concept consisted in the fact that it had been
15 Stanisław Orzechowski, Fidelis subditus, ed. Teodor Wierzbowski (Warsaw, 1900), 15: “iudi-
cium in regno ex delectis iudicibus, ad quos omnes controversiae rerum privatarum defe-
rantur, et ut ab his nulla sit provocatio, sed illorum iudicio stetur, quiquid decreverint. Nil
mea sententia neque sapientius, neque utilius, neque quod ad salutem huius regni magis
pertineat, potuit decerni. Hoc modo vixit olim salvis rebus Graecia, quae ex primoribus
civitatibus delectos viros habebat omnium controversiarum suarum iudices, quod Graeci
amphictyones vocant; quem deinde morem secuta Roma […] Et quoniam haec iudicia
non tantum iustitiae inter cives, sed etiam pacis et concordiae videbantur esse causae,
ideo et Gallia parlamentum suum ad hanc formam constituit auctoritatis tante, ut etiam
regem ipsum illi iudicio in privatis causis subiiceret. Et Germania quoque non dissimili
retione unum iudicium ese in cuncto imperio suo voluit […] quod vulgo Germani vocant
kammericht.”
296 Gromelski
thought-out, endorsed and employed by the ancients. As explained in the in-

troduction to the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania compiled in 1588:
Laws are created for the reason that the mighty and the great be not free
to do as they will, as Cicero said: we are slaves to laws so that we might use
our freedom […] Because the aim and effect of all laws throughout the
world are and ought to be, that all keep their good name, health and pos-
sessions in their entirety and suffer no loss of any kind […] not only our
neighbour and our fellow citizen in this motherland but also the prince
himself, our lord, may not have authority over us except only to such ex-
tent as the law allows.16
Serfdom and (in)equality of Citizens
Almost every aspect of Polish-Lithuanian political culture and the country’s

constitution and law could be discussed with reference to institutions and
practices that existed, or were believed to exist, at the time when the heroic
Greek and Roman leaders and thinkers walked the earth and led their coun-
tries to greatness. The same was true about socio-economic arrangements, and
especially the relationship between the szlachta and the “meaner sort,” and
between the ordinary nobilitas and the upper echelons of their caste.
In the first case the nobility used Plato’s and Aristotle’s considerations about
natural inequality and slavery, and about the nature of multitude, to explain
their elevated position in society and to provide a moral justification for what
effectively amounted to the enslavement of much of the rural population. A
classic argument, frequently advanced, was that for a well-functioning polity
it was
necessary that it has that kind of people, who are born for and capable of
virtue, good fortune, honesty. And so artisans, merchants, serfs we exclude
16 Statut Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego naprzód, za nayjaśniejszego hospodara Zygmunta

iii, w Krakowie w roku 1588 (Vilnius, 1819), c: “Bo dla tego prawa są postanowione, aby
możnemu i potężnemu nie wszystko było wolno czynić, jako Cycero powiedział, iżeśmy
niewolnikami praw dlatego, żebyśmy wolności pożywać mogli […] Bo ten cel i skutek
wszystkich praw jest i ma być na świecie, aby każdy dobrą sławę swą, zdrowie i majętność
w całości miał, a na tym wszystkich żadnego uszczerbku nie cierpiał […] nie tylko sąsiad,
a spólny nasz Obywatel oyczyzny, ale i sam hospodar, pan nasz żadney zwierzchności nad
nami zażywać nie może, iedno tylko wiele mu prawo dopuszcza.”
from the commonwealth: for the life of that degree of people is vile and
contrary to virtue. Albeit they are useful for the preservation of civic soci-
ety, yet, because they occupy themselves with crafts unbecoming of free
people, they are utterly excluded from governing the commonwealth.17
Indeed, history provided numerous examples of how the people could easily
turn into a mob and could not be trusted. Krzysztof Warszewicki (1543–1603), a
historian, political writer, statesman and Jesuit priest, argued:
Did not […] this father of great prudence and eloquence [Plato] openly
argue that the multitude has no reason, no sound judgement, no wis-
dom? Which the most eminent chronicler of Roman history Polybius and
also T. Livy reasserted in many places. And also experience, the teacher of
truth itself, tells us that there is nothing more volatile than the multitude.
[…] The most memorable story of the Roman people’s fickle nature is
when after the defeat at Cannae, they praised to the skies the courage and
good fortune of Hannibal, the enemy of the fatherland, and condemned
their own commanders.18
The natural conclusion deriving from these considerations was that the com-
monalty constituted a subspecies of men and as such should be closely su-
pervised and put to work for the benefit of the community of true citizens
in the manner of Spartan helots, who were seen as the archetypal and most
efficiently managed class of serfs. Consequently, the commonalty in the lands
of Poland-Lithuania, and especially the unfree soil-bound peasants had to face
a grim reality. Both domestic and foreign commentators agreed that there was
17 Goślicki, O senatorze doskonałym, 78: “necesse est, ut illa genus hominum ad virtutem,
felicitatem, honestatem, natumet aptum habeat. Itaque artifices, mercatores, servos, a re-
publica arcemus: vilis est enim eiusmodi hominum vita, et virtuti adversa. Qui tametsi ad
civilem societatem luendam utiles sunt, quoniam tamen artes, hominibus liberis minus
dignas exercent, a reipublica administratione prorsus arcendi sunt.”
18 Warszewicki, De optimo statu libertatis, 167–169: “An […] ille magni consilii et eloquentiae
pater [Plato] non rationem, non discrimen, non consilium vulgo esse aperte non testifi-
catur? Cui et rerum Romanarum gravissimus scriptor Polybius ac item T. Liuius multis in
locis adstipulanuntur. Et ipsa veritatis magistra docuit nos experientia vulgo ventosius
esse nihil […] Sed una omnium maxime de populi Romani inconstantia memorabilis
est historia, quando post Cannensem cladem Hannibalis patria hostis fortitudinem et
felicitatem laudibus in caelum ferebat, suorum vero ducum et populi Romani fortunam
contemnebat.”
298 Gromelski
no other European polity “wherein subjects and ploughmen would be under

such absolutum dominium as the nobility exerts without any legal restraint.”19
Despite the harsh treatment that the plebeians received at the hands of the
szlachta, and the rigidity of the social structure, the majority of early modern
commentators seemed to agree that some members of the multitude were ca-
pable of virtue and were therefore eligible to become gentlemen and enter the
ranks of nobility, which automatically conferred on them full civic rights. Al-
though the law of 1505 clearly stated that noble status could be claimed only by
those “whose both parents are noble and born into a noble family, and who […]
live on their estates, in their castles, towns or villages according to the custom
of this land and after the manner of the nobility,” it was clear that there must
be exceptions to the rule.20 As in other cases, Greek and Roman histories were
relied on to provide relevant examples. One author noted:
Even among the lower orders you can find a gallant youth. […] There are
many of this degree who became great men and won kingship […] Agath-
ocles had been an apprentice potter and then became a lord in Sicily; in
his youth emperor Maximinus was a shepherd in montibus Traciae; Justin
was a herdsman; Galerius and Licinius were of peasant stock.21
Or, in the words of the poet Mikołaj Rej (1505–1569): “And from whence was
Varrus, Homer, Cicero, from whence Cato/ Socrates, Euripides, or the virtuous
Plato/ They say they all rose from obscurity,/ Yet their minds easily reached
high planes of divinity.”22
19 Piotr Skarga, Kazania sejmowe, ed. Janusz Tazbir and Mirosław Korolko (Wrocław, 1984),
195: “nie masz państwa, w którym by barziej poddani i oracze uciśnieni byli pod tak abso-
lutum dominium, którego nad nimi szlachta bez żadnej prawnej przeszkody używa.”
20 Volumina Constitutionum, ed. Stanisław Grodziski, Irena Dwornicka and Wacław Uruszc-
zak, 3 vols. (Warsaw, 1996–2013), 1/1, 140: “Cuius uterque parens nobilis et ex familia nobili
sit progenitus; et quod […] habitarunt et habitant in suis possessionibus, castris, oppidis
vel villis, iuxta morem patriae et consuetudinem nobilitatis.”
21 Walenty Kuczborski, Przestroga dla króla Zygmunta z roku 1569, in Sześć broszur polityc-
znych z xvi i początku xvii stulecia, ed. Bronisław Ulanowski (Cracow, 1921), 79: “Najdzieć
i między tem podłem stanem niepodłego junaka […] trafiali się przed tym z tego cechu
takowi, którzy wielkimi ludźmi zostawali i do cesarstwa przychodzili […] Agatocles był
zduńczyk, a potem panem in Sicilia został; Maximinus cesarz był zmłodu owczarzem in
montibus Traciae; Iustinus był wołowiec; Galerius et Licinius z kmieci się porodzili.”
22 Mikołaj Rej, Wizerunek własny żywota człowieka poczciwego, ed. Władysław Kuraszkie-
wicz, 2 vols. (Wrocław and Warsaw), 1: 445: “Także z małego stanu, gdy szczęście przypad-
nie / Obierze sie ślachetny narod barzo snadnie. / Skąd by Warro, Homerus, Cycero, skąd
The nominal equality of all noble citizens as guaranteed by law was c herished
as one the main pillars of the political system and repeated ad nauseam in par-
liamentary speeches and during elections, in political tracts, sermons, litera-
ture, and correspondence; but the ideal hardly matched reality. Wealth, lineage,
office-holding, tradition, and several other factors inevitably set some nobles
apart from their “brethren.” Those who “are so poore as they drink water, and
follow the plough bare-footed” and “are forced to attend on other gentlemen”
could hardly equate themselves with the great magnates, who owned or
leased scores of town and hundreds of villages and manors inhabited by thou-
sands of enslaved peasants.23 Subsequently, the szlachta became divided,
in the words of Jerzy Zbaraski (1573–1631), castellan of Cracow, into “two orders
[…] by reason of a certain small superiority, which classes must be in every as-
sembly of men.”24 This did not lead, h owever, to any sharp internal divisions
that might have escalated into conflict. The harmonious r elations between the
great nobles and the ordinary szlachta were described by Sir George Carew, a
surprisingly well-informed royal ambassador visiting Poland in 1598. Noting
the existing equality under the law, he observed how
the voyce of every poore servingman being a gentleman weighes as

muche in all Conventes and elections as the greatest princes […] is
the common bande of unity between the riche and the poore, bothe
by that meanes participating in the benefittes of the lande, the one by
commaunde, and the other by dependency of the Commaunders tren-
cher, besides the correspondency of patrone, and Cliente, imitating in
that the auncient Rommane state, which by that order was united and
kepte in mutuall amity, the Patricians being the patrones of the Plebe-
ians, counselling them, following theire suites, pleading theire causes,
and defending them in all cases without fee or reward, and on the other
syde the Clientes observing, honoring and with greate respecte wayting
on theire patrone.25
Kato, / Sokrates, Ewrypides, albo zacny Plato? / Z tych sie każdy podobno z prostakow
wylągnął, / A wżdy drugi rozumem aż nieba dosiągnął.”
23 Fynes Moryson, Shakespeare’s Europe: Unpublished Chapters of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary,
Being a Survey of the Condition of Europe at the End of the 16th Century, ed. C. Hughes
(London, 1903), 90.
24 Jerzy Zbaraski, Listy księcia Jerzego Zbaraskiego, kasztelana krakowskiego, z lat 1621–1631,
ed. August Sokołowski (Cracow, 1878), 47: “duos ordines […] ratione trochę wyższej supe-
rioris, które gradus w każdej kupie ludzi zawżdy być muszą.”
25 Sir George Carew, Relation of the State of Polonia and the United Provinces of that Crown
Anno 1598, ed. Charles H. Talbot, Elementa ad Fontium Editiones 13 (1965): 86.
300 Gromelski
Civic Virtues and the Active Life
The area where the political culture of early-modern Poland-Lithuania seems

to have been most influenced by classical antiquity was in the realm of civic
virtues, with all its accompanying and complementary ideologies and n otions.
Deliberations on the ideal of the good citizen usually started with the a ssertion
that man’s activities could be conveniently grouped into two categories, in oth-
er words, two modes of interacting with the world. Łukasz Górnicki (1527–
1603), an ennobled courtier, poet and translator of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano
stated:
There are men in the world who are only concerned with shrewdness
of mind and witty deliberations upon things, and others who entertain
enterprise and valour; those two manners of living the Latinists divided
into activam and contemplativam vitam.26
Although they were not totally incompatible, more often than not the active
life and the contemplative life were perceived as inherently antagonistic. The
active life was, of course, superior because of its significance in the context
of state and society. The nature of the individual’s relation with the national
community was in his obligation to protect it, which of course entailed action.
As one author put it:
in a few words a good citizen cannot be any other than he who is a good
man and useful to the commonwealth. For firstly he ought to have before
his eyes this maxim of Plato’s from his letter to Archita (followed in this
by Cicero), in which Plato admonished him to remember that man was
not born for himself only, but partly for his country, partly for his kin,
partly for his friends, and for posterity. Which maxim of this worthy man,
when considered properly, makes everyone understand that he owes his
country service, succour, and assistance at all times, bearing in mind that
he benefits from it in no small manner.27
26 Łukasz Górnicki, Dworzanin polski, in Górnicki, Pisma, ed. Roman Pollak, 2 vols. (Warsaw,
1961), 1: 396: “jedni ludzie na świecie, którzy telko sie około bystrości rozumu i subtyl-
nie obaczania rzeczy pętają; drudzy zasię są, którzy telko około spraw a dzielności; otóż
obadwa te żywoty Łacinnicy na activam a contemplativam vitam rozdzielili.”
27 Anon., Philopolites, Bv: “Dobry obywatel krothkoscią słow oznaczony, inaczey być niemoże,
iedno dobrym mężem y Rzeczypospolithey potrzebnym. Wprzod bowiem ma mieć przed
oczyma swoimi one Sentencyą Plathonowe w liscie do Archity napisaną (w czym go też
The ultimate test of one’s civic virtue was of course the ability and pre-
paredness to sacrifice one’s own life and possessions in service of the
community and country. The Greeks and Romans, it was argued, excelled at
this. Although
a heathen people, they loved their fatherland so much that they would
save nothing in its stead, not their possessions or their health or the
lives of their wives or their children. Cicero said about this: […] To ev-
ery one of us parents are dear, so are our children, kin and companions,
but love of the fatherland is above all these ties, and which good man
would not be glad to die for it so as to save it? And they held nothing in
greater esteem than their good name and honest reputation, for which
they lived and for which they were not afraid to die. Which was shown by
the Scaevolas, Curtiuses, Deciuses, Reguluses, Cocleses, and many oth-
ers who would not preserve their wealth or health in stead of their com-
monwealth and its good name. And for this love and affection they had
toward for their motherland, God rewarded them in such manner that
no other people ruled them but they ruled many peoples et imperii sui
leges imposuerunt. […] And to this day their great and famous memory
continues among all nations.28
Cycero nasladuie) gdzie go napomniał aby pamiętał na to, że cz łowiek nie sam dla siebie
narodził sie, zle częscią dla Oyczyzny, częscią dla powinnych, dla przyjaciół y dla potomst-
wa. Ktora to męża thego zacnego Sentencya, gdy w dobrym uważeniu będzie, rozeznać to
każdy musi, że Oyczyznie swej iest powinien pomoc, ratunek y podporę każdego czasu,
oglądając sie na to, że od niej niemałe dobrodzieystwa odnosi.”
28 Anon., Elekcya króla krześcijańska, in Pisma polityczne z czasów pierwszego bezkrólewia,
ed. Jan Czubek (Cracow, 1906), 315: “Rzymianie, ludzie pogańscy, tak miłowali ojczyznę
swoje, iż dla niej niczego nie litowali, ani majętności ani zdrowia ani gardł ani żon ani
dzieci swoich. O czym Cicero tak powiedział: […] Każdemu z nas mili są rodzice, miłe
są dziatki, mili krewni i towarzysze, ale nade wszytkie te powinowactwa więtsza jest
miłość ojczyzny, za którą ktoby dobry nie rad umarł, by jej tylko mógł ratować? I nic so-
bie więcej nie ważyli, jako dobrą i uczciwą sławę, dla której samej tylko na świecie żyć
chcieli i dla niej samej umrzeć nie wątpili. Co skutkiem pokazali Scewolowie, Kurcyu-
sowie, Decyusowie, Regulusowie, Koklesowie i innych wiele, którzy ani majętności ani
zdrowia swego dla rzeczypospolitej i dobrej sławy ojczyzny swej nie litowali. Za którą
miłość i życzliwość, którą mieli przeciwko ojczyźnie swej, tym je Bóg uczcił, iż jem żaden
naród obcy nie rozkazował, ale oni wiele narodom rozkazowali et imperii sui leges impo-
suerunt. I jeszcze po dziś dzień z pisma i z historyj miedzy wszystkiemi narody wielka i
sławna ich jest pamięć.”
302 Gromelski
The nature of good citizen’s duties entailed a number of skills and quali-
ties referred to as virtues, such as martial prowess, resilience, determina-
tion, but also the ability to provide counsel and lead others. These could
be acquired through a combination of breeding, training, and proper
lifestyle. Again, the ways of the ancient Romans and Greeks served as a
source of inspiration but also as a warning about the dangers of rejecting or
neglecting virtue.
Ennius writes: Moribus antiquis res stat romana virisque. And Saint Au-
gustine writes that it was legitimum imperium of God for their justice
and great righteousness of their manners. They were wise people but in
a simple manner, spoke little, accomplished much, wore their hearts on
their sleeves, were hard-working, knew hunger and cold, were strict to
their children whom they raised in the country, loved not luxury, were
content with little, preferred a sword, a horse, a galea. Behold! when
they abandoned their old ways, and when ambition and gluttony made
a home among them and then luxus and debauchery of the young: thus
perished Rome.29
Failure to comply with this ideal was subject to criticism. In his Coats of Arms
of the Polish Knighthood, Bartosz Paprocki (1543–1613), an antiquary, genealo-
gist and historian of Poland and Bohemia, included short biographies of many
of his noble contemporaries, focusing in particular on their achievements and
shortcomings as citizens. About one Mikołaj Koryciński of Korytno in Lesser
Poland, for example, he wrote:
A man of great wit and learning […] vir probus, moderatus and constans
[…] His great fault was that with such superb worthiness, which was in
him to serve the commonwealth, he sat quietly at home being content
with modesty in everything, in lands as in money, and not craving more.
For offices which would engage him too much, he cared not; and when
29 Anon., Naprawa Rzeczypospolitej, 9–10: “Pisze Ennius: Moribus antiquis res stat romana
virisque. A święty Augustyn tak pisze, że to było legitimum imperium od Pana Boga dla
sprawiedliwości i wielkiej ućciwości obyczajów ich. Byli to ludzie z prosta mądrzy, mało
mówili, wiele czynili, co w sercu to w uściech, pracowici, głód, zimno cierpieli, dziatki swe
na wsiach wychowywali grubo, nie kochali sie in luxu, na małe przestawali, kochanie ich
było szpada, koń, galea. Patrzże, jako skoro stare obyczaje opuścili, a wniosła sie do nich
ambicya, potem łakomstwo, za łakomstwem luxus, rozpusta młodzi: te rzeczy zgubiły
Rzym.”
someone else was promoted above him he would say as the Laconian
Paedaretus, Gratias vobis habeo dii, quod tot homines meliores me huic
regno dedistis.30
Conclusion
This chapter set out to provide an overview of the reception of classical

republicanism, and more generally classical antiquity, in early modern Poland-
Lithuania—a problem that as yet has not been studied in detail, particularly
in relation to its importance for the understanding of political thought and
political culture in the Commonwealth of Two Nations. As we have seen,
Polish-Lithuanian political and intellectual elites were fascinated with Greek
city-states and Rome. They believed that, uniquely among states past and pres-
ent, the polities of ancient Greece and the Roman Republic had established,
perfected, and upheld political systems that favoured and protected the free-
dom of the individual without compromising the common good. They put
much effort not only into tracing parallels between their own constitution and
the political systems they believed had existed in Athens, Sparta and Rome,
but also into moulding their Rzeczpospolita in the likeness of those ancient
states. They sought to fuse the native Sarmatian tradition and legal system with
the laws, institutions and codes of behaviour of public life as described by Aris-
totle, Plato, Polybius, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Tacitus and other venerated authors.
The Poles and the Lithuanians considered themselves to be an elite blessed
with an innate and inalienable virtue inherited from the citizenry of Athens
and Sparta and from the Roman equites. In order to associate themselves more
closely with the classical past, a number of leading families went so far as
to claim descent from Greek and Roman aristocracy. Several Lithuanian clans,
for example,
30 Bartosz Paprocki, Herby rycerstwa polskiego, ed. Kazimierz Turowski (Cracow, 1858), 100:
“człowiek nauki i dowcipu wielkiego […] vir probus, moderatus, constans. Owa wszystkie
cnoty, z których dobrego męża chwalą, tam zastaniesz. To nawiętsza w nim wina, że z taką
godnością swą wielką, która w nim była do służb r. p. cicho sobie w domu zasiadał, będąc
na wszystko dostatecznym; tak w majętność jako i w pieniądze, więcej u szczęścia nie
prosił. O urzędy żadne, któreby go turbować miały, nie dbał, tylko gdy przed nim komu
jaki urząd oddano, właśnie by on Padaretus lakoński mawiał: Gratias vobis habeo dii,
quod tot homines meliores me huic regno dedistis.”
304 Gromelski
traced the genealogy of their house to Roman lords, […] descendants of

Roman duke Palemon, or Publius Libon, or his companions, who sailed
the English and Baltic oceans and into the Sound narrow straits, and
through God’s marvellous fiat, arrived in these northern parts, that is to-
day’s Somogitia, Livonia or Latvia and Lithuania, with five hundred of
Roman nobility and four more notable families.31
By the mid sixteenth century it had become commonplace to evoke Greek

and Roman institutions, political practices, customs, and eminent figures.
All kinds of sources from the period in question, ranging from legislative acts
and judicial records to private correspondence and prose, poetry and drama,
abound in pertinent references and quotations. When choosing the topic of
his doctoral thesis—to be completed at the university of Padua—Jan Zamo-
yski (1542–1606), Crown Chancellor and Grand Hetman, one of the most influ-
ential politicians of his era, unhesitatingly picked the Roman senate. Classical
antiquity served as an inexhaustible source of wisdom. It was frequently ar-
gued that the Romans left “all kinds of examples of the art of governing cities,
as well as different and multiple testimonies of valour and military art and
industry. And as the Greeks once taught posterity through their precepts, so
did the Romans through deeds and example.”32 Many subscribed to the view
that running the country and devising solutions for urgent problems required
no more than consulting Greco-Roman authors. A Gdańsk philosopher and
theologian, Bartholomäus Keckermann (1572–1609), wrote in his methodologi-
cal essay published shortly after his death: “If it is necessary to give counsel to
the Polish commonwealth, we should compare with it the commonwealths of
Sparta, Rome, Venice and others both at the time of peace and trouble, and
31 Maciej Stryjkowski, Kronika polska, litewska, żmódzka i wszystkiej Rusi, ed. Ignacy
Daniłowicz and Mikołaj Malinowski, 2 vols. (Cracow, 1846), 1: 114: “wywod narodu swego
pewną genealogią wiedli z rzymskich panów […] potomkami Palemona albo P ubliussa
Libona Rzymskiego xiążęcia, albo towarzyszami jego być musieli, który w ty strony
północne, gdzie dziś Żmodź, Liflanci albo Łotwa i Litwa, z piącią set szlachty rzymskiej i
cztermi familiami przedniejszymi […] przez Angielski i Bałtycki Ocean ciasnościami Zun-
dzkimi, dziwnym lossem Bożym przyżeglował.”
32 Warszewicki, De optimo statu libertatis, 253: “omnis generis exempla, tam urbanarum in
gubernatione artium quam variae et multiplicis virtutis et industriae scientiaeque milita-
ris. Quod enim olim aliquando Graeci praeceptis, hoc Romani factis et exemplis posteros
docuerunt.”
learn from this comparison about the existing forms.”33 Overall, this enthusias-
tic embracing of the classical tradition and classical republicanism in particu-
lar by the Polish-Lithuanian elite had a lasting impact on the constitution and
on political culture in the Rzeczpospolita and the political entities that came
into being after its eventual collapse.
33 Bartholomäus Keckermann, De natura et proprietatibus historiae commentarius (Hanau,

1610), 213: “Consilium dandum est pro Rep. Polona, comparamus cum ea Remp. Spartanam,
Romanam & Venetam, & ex salutaribus consiliis datis pro Rep. Spartana, Romana, aut
Veneta in statu pacato aut turbato, invenimus ex ista similitudine formarum, quae est in
his Rebusp. consilium salutare pro Republica Polona, sive in pacato, aut turbato statu.”
chapter 13
America’s Antiquities: The Ancient Past in the

Creation of the American Republic
Eran Shalev
“We have the power to create the world anew,” Thomas Paine asserted as Brit-
ish North Americans were inching toward declaring their independence and
establishing a republic. Paine was able to convert many of his contemporaries,
as well as future generations, to the view that the United States was a nation
born modern. Indeed, Americans have always made much of their “newness”
and isolation from—or transcendence of—the kind of “history” suffered by
peoples of the Old World. The “end of history” trope long antedates Francis
Fukuyama’s famous 1992 book, serving as a foundational premise of exception-
alist mythology since the new nation’s founding: as the vanguards of moderni-
ty, Americans make their own history and are therefore exempt from the tragic
fates of all other peoples.1
But Americans’ focus on the future is in fact predicated on their under-
standings of the past. Their very status as a “people” depended on creative-
ly constructing a past—or, indeed, multiple pasts—in order to delegitimise
the imperial old regime, demystify monarchical authority, authorise the cre-
ation of a plurality of new republican regimes and cohere as “Americans.”
E.J. Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, and other students of modern national-
ism have emphasised the importance of invented traditions, including the
fabrication of legitimating historical narratives, for the nation-making project.
Meanwhile, pathbreaking historians of the American Revolution revealed the
importance of history and the formulation of historical consciousness to creat-
ing an infrastructure for the newly founded American republic. These strains
1 For the latest scholarly analysis of American exceptionalism, the notion of the uniqueness
of the course of the United States’ history, see the articles in the symposium “American Ex-
ceptionalism” in American Political Thought 1 (Spring 2012): 3–128. See also Joyce Chaplin,
“Expansion and Exceptionalism in Early American History,” Journal of American History 89
(2003): 1431–1455 and Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (New York, 1992),
22–52.

America’s Antiquities 307
are imperative for making sense of the drama that unfolded in British North
America after 1765.2
From the beginning national independence generated a lasting intellectual
problem: the American union of states was a modern polity, but as such it was
a nation that lacked historical precedence. Not content with the new world
they were busy creating, the citizens of the young United States repeatedly
attempted to place their political experiment in a historical perspective. They
did so by elaborating compelling narratives, which interweaved America with
the histories of the most revered and ancient past societies. Revolutionary
patriots first drew inspiration from the Whig historical narrative they shared
with metropolitan Britons, but soon discovered a pedigree for their nascent
republicanism in the primitive purity of pre-Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxon
institutions. After independence, as they extricated themselves from English
and British history, a plurality of histories came usefully into view, particularly
those of ancient Rome and ancient Israel. Far from rejecting “history,” the self-
authorised American nation was to an extraordinary degree dependent on his-
tory for its very existence.
Anglo-Saxon Liberty
From the early days of their resistance to Britain’s attempt to tax the colonies
in the mid-1760s, the Anglo-Saxons provided revolutionary Americans with a
paradigm of a free society ruled by law. The disgruntled British North Amer-
icans found the Dark-Age Germanic tribes, who stemmed from the thick of
northern Europe’s forests and settled the English isle in the early fifth century,
particularly attractive during the early stages of the revolution. They were fas-
cinated by the free and raw form of government the Anglo-Saxons supposedly
imported with them to England, which enabled the English, so they believed,
to retain their identity as a free people through centuries of conquests and
upheavals. The English could achieve this because they managed to preserve
2 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, etc., 1992);
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of National-
ism. Revised Edition (London and New York, 1983). The most important studies of the role
of history in the making of the American Revolution are Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological
Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), Gordon S. Wood, The Creation
of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969); and J.G.A. Pocock’s The Machiavel-
lian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton,
n.j., 1975).
308 Shalev
an ancient, unwritten, and customary constitution, which was understood to

be Anglo-Saxon in origin. That constitution restrained the sovereign and guar-
anteed liberties that came to be seen as essential to the identity of English-
men. During the years leading to independence American colonists repeatedly
appealed to an Anglo-Saxon golden age of freedom. The Anglo-Saxons were
already a staple in English oppositional thought, evoked regularly during the
tumultuous seventeenth century’s battles against the Stuarts by revolutionar-
ies such as Algernon Sidney and later by eighteenth-century Whig Common-
wealthmen. Americans were thus making use of a well-established British
tradition of opposition to what was widely perceived as governmental arbi-
trariness and referred to as “tyranny.”
American colonists were making use of the English view of history that has
come to be called “Whig” and evolved in the first half of the eighteenth century
among a circle of Commonwealthmen opposition writers. Indeed, they were
taking the lead of authors in oppositional venues such as The Craftsman, the
leading anti-Walpolean journal, which periodically expressed the notion that
“from the earliest accounts of time, our ancestors in Germany were a free peo-
ple, and had a right to assent or dissent to all laws; that right was exercised and
preserved under the Saxon and Norman Kings, even to our days.” The Saxons,
before they had invaded Britannia, had been
a free people, living under a constitution of liberty. When They were

settled, according to their Liking, They form’d a Government upon the
same Model though it hath been often interrupted, or depress’d, by Con-
quest, Usurpation, and arbitrary Power, the Stamina of it have been still
preserved, and transmitted down to us thro’ all Ages and Changes of
Government.3
In the wake of the unprecedented attempts to tax the North American colo-
nies, colonists habitually extended this Whig view of history to their own situ-
ation, as they described parliament as yet another “Norman yoke.” Americans,
in the tradition of English oppositional discourse, believed that Westminster
attempted to subdue their tenacious and pristine spirit of liberty, which was
molded in the German forests, imported to Britain, and given a new birth
in the New World. Revolutionaries thus positioned themselves in numerous
speeches, sermons and petitions as direct descendants, virtually and at times
literally, of the Anglo-Saxons and their free society. In the attempts to block
and prove wrong the imperial ambitions to tax the colonies and later to assert
3 The Craftsman, no. 470, July 5, 1735 and no. 405, April 6, 1734.
English sovereignty over North America, colonial spokesmen evoked their

“Gothic predecessors” for several reasons.
First among the reasons to appeal to the Saxons were their political arrange-
ments, which were supposedly enshrined in the unwritten but sacrosanct
British constitution. The Virginian Richard Bland (1710–1776), in attempting
to demonstrate that the colonists were opposed to any attempt to tax them
without their consent, was among the earliest to address the Anglo-Saxons rel-
evance to the American situation. During the Stamp Act crisis (1765–66), Bland
argued that it was
a Fact, as certain as History can make it, that the present civil Consti-
tution of England derives its Original from those Saxons who, coming
over to the Assistance of the Britons […] made themselves Masters of the
Kingdom, and established a Form of Government in it similar to that they
had been accustomed to live under in their native Country.4
James Otis (1725–1783), a Massachusetts lawyer who too rose as a leading voice
of the patriot cause in the early years of the imperial crisis, elaborated Anglo-
Saxonism’s most generally accepted historical premises:
Few people have extended their enquiries after the foundation of any of
their rights, beyond a charter from the crown. There are others who think
when they have got back to old Magna Charta, that they are at the begin-
ning of all things. They imagine themselves on the borders of Chaos (and
so indeed in some respects they are) and see creation rising out of the
unformed mass, or from nothing. Hence, say they, spring all the rights of
men and of citizens.
Freedom, however, did not arise like a deus ex machina in England, but was, in
Otis’s view, rooted in the nation’s Dark Ages. “Liberty,” he continued, “was bet-
ter understood and more fully enjoyed by our ancestors before the coming in
of the first Norman Tyrants than ever after, till it was found necessary for the
salvation of the kingdom to combat the arbitrary and wicked proceedings of
the Stuarts.” In the same year, across the Atlantic Englishmen concurred that it
was that unspoiled form of liberty that had been “an essential part of the form
of government, that universally prevailed among the northern nations, and
4 Richard Bland, “An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies,” (1776) in American Politi-
cal Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, ed. Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz,
2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1983), 1:70.
310 Shalev
was transplanted hither with our Saxon ancestors.” Whether the constitution
had evolved to its recognisable form among the Germanic tribes before their
migration to Britain or only after the Anglo-Saxons had conquered the Britons
on the English isle seemed irrelevant. “[T]he present civil constitution of Eng-
land,” Otis concluded, derived “its original” from the Saxons. “This government,
like that from whence they [the Saxons] came, was founded upon principles
of the most perfect liberty.”5 What mattered was that the same unchanged and
seemingly timeless constitution that originated with the ancients had perse-
vered and preserved through numerous trials, by Normans and Stuarts among
others. Now the British Constitution faced another critical challenge in the
New World, which was merely another ring in the long chain of attempts at
despotic encroachment.
Thomas Jefferson was among the most famous expositors of the Anglo-
Saxons as American progenitors. His motives for evoking them in his Summary
View of the Rights of British America (1774) were different, however, from those
we have just reviewed. Jefferson did not wish to connect the ancient Britons
to a political constitution that originated in times immemorial. Indeed, Jef-
ferson did not interweave the Anglo-Saxons, British history and the colonies.
While earlier commentators typically pointed to the relationship between the
ancient Germanic political institutions (and the ideology that forged them)
and those of America (via Britain), Jefferson had a different purpose in mind.
The Saxons had, according to Jefferson, under a universal law of liberty, “in like
manner [as the Americans] left their native wilds and woods in the north of
Europe, had possessed themselves of the island of Britain […] and had estab-
lished there that system of laws which has so long been the glory and protec-
tion of that country.” Jefferson was pointing out the similarity of the historical
narrative between the peoples: the Americans, like their Germanic predeces-
sors, were not sent by their masters to claim a new land in a monarch’s name,
but were autonomous agents on a self-directed and independent endeavor. Jef-
ferson’s claim for colonial autonomy was derived from his firm view that “no
circumstance has occurred to distinguish materially” the British migration to
America from that of the Saxons. In both cases there was no “claim of supe-
riority or dependence” asserted over the two peoples by the mother country
from which they had migrated. Even “were such a claim made, it is believed
that his majesty’s subjects […] have too firm a feeling of the rights derived to
them from their ancestors, to bow down the sovereignty of their state before
5 James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston, 1764), 31, and Rob-
ert Lowth, A Sermon Preached Before the Honourable and Right Reverend Richard, Lord Bishop
of Durham […] at the Assizes Holden at Durham, August 15, 1764 (Newcastle, 1764), 7–8.
such visionary pretensions.”6 This notion of the Anglo-Saxons as a people ex-

erting its right to relinquish a (Germanic) home country and associate togeth-
er into a new free political society and independent state in a new (English)
land resonated in America during the decade of resistance and rebellion that
culminated in independence. Patriot Americans could readily recognise that
history, identify with it, and make use of it for political, ideological and legal
reasons.
After 1776, with independence confirmed and the colonies-turned-states’ fi-
nal separation from Britain, the Anglo-Saxons quickly lost their appeal. As long
as Americans were still citizens of the British Empire and felt kinship to and
an emotional bond with the English people, it made sense for them to describe
themselves as sharing revered common ancestors with their overseas compa-
triots. After the implosion of the political bond, however, the Anglo Saxons
were no longer politically or rhetorically useful for an independent union of
American states. Subsequently, powerful—and non-British—models emerged
for the new American republic. Indeed, in comparison with other usable pasts
that Americans conjured during the Founding Era, the extent of the identifica-
tion with the Anglo-Saxons was limited in its duration and scope. Nonetheless,
during the decade between the Stamp Act (1765) and independence (1776) the
free Anglo-Saxons and their consensual rule of law exerted a considerable and
widespread influence on revolutionary patriots. The most graphic evidence
of this was Thomas Jefferson’s proposal for the new nation’s Great Seal: the
Virginian recommended that the Seal should depict Hengist and Horsa, the
legendary Anglo-Saxon brothers who were believed to be the first to settle Brit-
ain. Thus, in 1776, the Saxons were still candidates to justify American indepen-
dence and to represent the aspirations of the new nation.
Roman Republicanism
The United States was founded as a republic (a res publica), with a legislature
named after Roman assemblies consisting of American congressmen and
senators, habitually represented toga-clad in white marble busts, meeting in
a Capitol built as a classical temple. This elaborate fashioning was a conscious
and deliberate effort to construct the new nation along the lines of the vener-
ated Roman Republic. Even though today much of the meaning of that classi-
cal cosmology is lost, for classically educated eighteenth-century Americans
the Roman Republic towered as a political model. It was Rome’s early history,
6 Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, etc. (Williamsburg, 1774).
312 Shalev
before it conquered an empire and lost its austere republican character, which
inspired virtue-based politics and captivated late eighteenth-century imagina-
tions. American leaders wished to establish the ethos of the United States, like
that of Rome, on the independent and arms-bearing citizen. They worked hard
to emulate revered Romans such as Brutus and Cato who had sacrificed their
lives in the name of freedom. They aspired to nothing more than to be seen as
self-effacing, “disinterested” republicans such as the mythic Cincinnatus. They
repeatedly depicted their political enemies as reincarnations of Julius Caesar,
attempting to destroy the republic.7
As the attraction to Anglo-Saxon history demonstrates, the radicalised
ideology that emerged with Britain’s attempts to tax the American colonies
unleashed the revolutionary necessity for, and fascination with, historical prec-
edents. If the Anglo-Saxons acted as an important stepping-stone in the col-
onies’ advance toward their intellectual separation from British history, the
depth and extent of the ideological uses of the Roman republic dwarfed the
references to the Goths. Soon enough an impressive and conscious effort to
fashion the new republic as Rome and its inhabitants as latter-day Romans
was in place. Following the tenets of civic humanism, an ideology that origi-
nated in the classical world and was subsequently revived by Italian humanists
and British Whigs, American patriots looked to antiquity for evaluating the
dangers that the British Empire posed to their virtue and to their collective
prospects. Consequently, they began fantasising about reviving the glory of
the republican ancients on their American shores. A prominent revolutionary
characteristically reflected: “I us’d to regret not being thrown into the world in
the glamorous third or fourth century [bc] of the Romans; but now I am thor-
oughly reconcil’d to my lot.”8
Numerous others similarly understood their experiences through the lens
of Roman annals. As a result, dormant historical sensibilities awakened and
enabled American revolutionaries to compare themselves to, and to imagine
themselves as, Roman heroes. Revolutionary author and salonist Mercy Otis
Warren (1728–1814) demonstrated the rhetorical potential of this kind of clas-
sical imagination. As the revolution in Boston unfolded, Warren wrote polemic
neo-Roman dramas in which she summoned Cassius, Brutus, and other Roman
protagonists to represent the leaders of revolutionary Boston. In a typical scene,
7 For the influence of the classics on the founding generation see Carl J. Richard, The Found-
ers and the Classics. Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass. and
London, 1994).
8 Charles Lee quoted in Richard, The Founders and the Classics, 84.
Cassius and Brutus, the revered heroes of the Roman republic, stood in a nar-
row Bostonian street, discussing the precarious state of liberty. Brutus, the
stern republican, censured the “insulting soldiers,” who “tread down our choic-
est rights.” Cassius, Brutus’s co-conspirator to free the republic of the menace
of the British Caesar, responded, “Oh! Brutus, our noble ancestors, who lived
for freedom, and for freedom died,” would have been proud to see the young
generation’s “generous bosoms flow with manly sentiment.” These young re-
publicans swore that they would not put their mythologised predecessors
to shame, but would react harshly against despotism. When other Romans,
Junius and Portius, joined their compatriots, a Roman revolution seemed im-
minent. The Roman republicans, in short, were about to lead an American Rev-
olution in Otis’s dramas that portrayed heroic Romans roaming the American
landscape.9 Another manifestation of this distinct classical imagination was
constituted by the actions of Joseph Warren, one of the revolution’s leaders
in Boston, who gave a speech in the Old South Church dressed in a Cicero-
nian toga.10 Such incidents in which revolutionaries “played Roman” conflated
and even merged Rome with the American present and revolutionary America
with classical Rome.
American neo-Romanism peaked during the constitutional debates of the
late 1780s. It was then, as the new nation was solidifying its governmental ar-
rangements and debating whether to adopt or reject the proposed constitu-
tion of 1787, that Americans could see themselves as republican Romans more
intensely than they ever had before or ever would in the future. Their unprec-
edented use of classical pseudonyms in the debate over the ratification of the
proposed federal constitution of 1787 stands witness to the remarkable sway of
the Roman past during the formation of the United States.
Pseudonymous essays appeared mostly in newspapers, but also in pam-
phlets and broadsides, and seem to have exercised “a vital influence on the
minds of the reading public.”11 Thousands of political essays and readers’ let-
ters proved vehicles of propaganda, and were meant not only to inform, but
also to persuade. Classical pseudonyms, and particularly Roman pseudonyms,
were a common rhetorical strategy in the early modern Anglophone world.
9 Mercy Otis Warren, The Adulateur and The Defeat, in Plays and Poems of Mercy Warren
Otis (Delmar, ny, 1980). These dramas take place in “Upper Servia,” an obvious reference
to revolutionary Massachusetts.
10 Eran Shalev, “Dr. Warren’s Ciceronian Toga,” Common-Place 7, no. 2 (2007): http://com
mon-place.org/book/dr-warrens-ciceronian-toga/ (accessed on 25 November, 2016).
11 Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution 1763–1783 (Chapel Hill, 1941),
225.
314 Shalev
The main reason for mobilising Roman antiquity to promote republican ideals
was that the ancients were held to embody and epitomise those ideals. Whigs
identified the Greco-Roman tradition with republicanism and civic virtue and
saw it as the origin of these concepts. Appeal to the ancients and to their po-
litical thought and history supplied much-needed trustworthiness, positioning
the emblems of the past as guardians, validating pamphlets and pamphleteers
by their mere presence. So common did this rhetorical tactic become that
the number of classical pseudonyms during the revolutionary era is virtually
countless.
The use of classical pseudonyms, and arguably American classicism more
generally, peaked during the ratification debates. The debates took place on
the local, state, regional, and national levels. Local and state debates were con-
ducted in town, city, and county meetings; in political and social clubs; in state
legislatures, and in ratification conventions. However, the national debates
were conducted almost entirely in newspapers, magazines, broadsides, and
pamphlets. Therefore, newspapers and their content are key sources for the
study of the public debate over the constitution. New York was a primary cen-
ter for the national debate over the ratification of the Constitution. It would
be instructive to understand the extent and depth of classical pseudonymity
through its newspapers. These were filled with essays overflowing with both
personal invectives and great originality, many of them published under clas-
sical pseudonyms.
Cato fired the opening salvo in what was to become an extraordinary quar-
rel among American ancients in the state of New York. His first letter published
on September 27, 1787, elicited a furious reply from Caesar after a mere five
days.12 The two antagonists of the late Roman republic, Marcus Porcius Uti-
censis Cato and Gaius Julius Caesar, were re-enacting their age-old battle. Cato
was admired as the Roman republic’s defender. His suicide in Utica, when his
cause was finally lost, symbolised the death of the republic. Julius Caesar, al-
though his generalship and his dynamic personality were acknowledged, was
remembered as the republic’s ambitious death-dealer. No one would likely as-
sume Caesar as a pseudonym, except to resuscitate an ancient battle, this time
in the battlefields of the New York Journal and the Daily Advertiser. We need not
be surprised that it was a Federalist promoting a strong national government
who chose Caesar as his alter ego, and not a republican seeking the diffusion
of central power.
12 Jacob Cooke identifies Cato as George Clinton and argues convincingly that Alexander
Hamilton was most likely not Caesar; Jacob E. Cooke, “Alexander Hamilton’s Authorship
of the Caesar Letters,” William and Mary Quarterly 17(1960): 78–85.
Caesar’s rhetoric was full of classical allusions: Cato, he cried, is “an ally of
Pompey, no doubt.” George Washington was “the American Fabius,” the Roman
general who defeated Hannibal by strategies of delay. Caesar ridiculed Cato as
“this prudent Censor” and “demagogue”; both epithets would suit a (deroga-
tive) description of the historical Cato. Caesar warned that “Cato, in his fu-
ture marches, will very probably be followed by Caesar,” undertaking to stalk
Cato as Julius Caesar hunted Marcus Procius Cato, eventually driving him to
suicide.13 Thus the symbolism of the discourse created by the classical pseud-
onyms unfolded. The two historical arch-enemies came to blows again, this
time in the arena of the American newspapers. They re-enacted the drama of
the first century bc, intensified by the fact that few readers knew or guessed
the writers’ true identities.14
In his rebuttal, Cato referred to “this Caesar,” alleging that he was the same
as “his tyrant name-sake” and claiming that Caesar objected to free delibera-
tion just as Julius Caesar did in Rome. Taking names seriously for the ideas
behind them, Cato identified the contemporary Caesar with the historical Cae-
sar by attributing tyrannical aspirations to him. Cato continued to refer to his
contemporaries through the medium of the ancients: “the American Fabius
[Washington], if we are to believe Caesar, is to command an army.”15 In refer-
ring to the historical Cato and Caesar and their contemporary namesakes, the
contenders were exploiting the metaphorical and symbolical possibilities of
the situation. A formal debate on the matter of Federalism was indeed in prog-
ress, but historical knowledge was necessary in order to capture the symbolism
embedded in these texts. The debate was conducted through Roman annals,
by bringing the contexts and actors of antiquity onto the American stage.
Curtius, assuming the name of the hero who, together with Helvidius Pris-
cus, was memorably condemned for treason under Nero, joined the ancient
choir on its Federalist side, citing Joseph Addison’s 1712 play Cato (perhaps in
order to retake Cato’s memory from the Anti-Federalists). Curtius then asked:
“But who is Cato,” referring to the American author, “whose elegant diction and
long spun argumentation would lead us to suspect him both the scholar and
13 “Caesar,” Daily Advertiser, October 1, 1787. Interestingly, Democritus, another Anti-

Federalist writing under a classical pseudonym, mocked Caesar on December 14, 1787: “I
will not (like the boyish Caesar) promise to follow you,” perhaps alluding to Hamilton, the
suspected “boyish” Caesar. “Democritus,” New York Journal, December 14, 1787.
14 Jack Rakove, Original Meanings. Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New
York, 1997), 156.
15 “Cato,” New York Journal, October 11, 1787.
316 Shalev
the sophist?” Curtius concluded: “the virtuous [historical] Cato is forgotten!”16

Only a week had passed when Brutus spoke for the first time. The Roman B rutus
stood for patriotism and virtuous disinterestedness. He, even more than Cas-
sius, was considered as a man who dared commit regicide for the sake of his
beloved republic, ridding it, he hoped, of Julius Caesar’s tyranny. The American
Brutus agitated fiercely against the constitution, unsurprisingly aligning him-
self with his historical ally Cato: “The Grecian republics were of small extent;
so also was that of the Romans. [When their size extended] their governments
were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical
that ever existed.”17 Brutus joined Cato in opposition against their nemesis:
“Where was there a braver army than under Jul. Caesar? [sic] […] That army
was commanded generally by the best citizens of Rome […] yet that army
enslaved their country.”18 Anti-Federalists were thus issuing the warning that
their political adversaries would take their tyrannical Roman role seriously.
In his fifth letter, published a month later, Cato presaged, “great power con-
nected with ambition, luxury, and flattery, will as readily produce a Caesar,
Caligula, Nero or Domitian in America, as the same causes did in the Roman
empire.”19 Cato, witness to the fall of one republic, was issuing a warning that
the fate of his ancient patria was imminent in America with the return of ty-
rants to the American shores. Hailing Brutus’s writing, he also appealed to the
Cato-Brutus historical alliance. During the first month of 1788, Brutus again
confronted the (historical) Caesar, accusing him of being the man who trans-
formed Rome “from a free republic […] into that most absolute despotism.”20
Brutus identified with his namesake’s rage which led him to regicide, by acting-
out his Brutus role, attacking the real life enemies of his assumed character. Yet
a new, vituperative contender emerged: Mark Anthony, who assaulted Brutus,
contending that his “patriotism is pretension; his zeal is suspicious” and that
he had “sacrificed the truth.” Mark Anthony played up his rebuttal by quot-
ing the immortal monologue of Shakespeare’s Anthony, in which he lamented
Caesar and ironically denigrated Brutus: “For Brutus is an honourable man;
so are they all, all honourable men.”21 The great drama of the last days of the
Roman republic was unfolding week by week in the New York newspapers,
staged by American actors.
16 “Curtius,” New York Daily Advertiser, October 18, 1787.

17 “Brutus,” New York Journal, October 18, 1787.
18 “Brutus,” New York Journal, January 10, 1788.
19 “Cato,” New York Journal, November 22, 1787.
20 “Brutus,” New York Journal, January 24, 1788.
21 “Mark Anthony,” Independent Chronicle, January 10, 1788.
The case of the multiple addresses by Publius, published in New York dur-
ing the winter of 1787–8, exemplifies the quintessential connection in such
texts between the pseudonym, the words it signed, and the classical history
it suggested, allegorised, and metaphorised. Publius Valerius, who established
the Roman Republic after the last king of Rome had been expelled in 509 bce,
was the pseudonym adopted by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John
Jay in a series of essays supporting the proposed constitution in 1787–88. The
three adopted Publius, as a nom de plume commemorating the Roman’s act of
banishing a king and founding a great republic, for their own founding mission.
The eighty-five letters they signed under that name were collectively named
The Federalist Papers, and became the most famous and revered product of the
whole prolific debate. Those papers also testify to the common contemporary
habit of addressing moderns in a Roman guise.
By 1788 Americans on both sides of the debate, while adopting numerous
Roman pseudonyms, were nonetheless also beginning to question the rel-
evance of Roman history to their situation. Federalists increasingly doubted
the relevance of Roman antiquity as a meaningful precedent, because they be-
lieved that “the path we are pursuing is new, and has never before been trodden
by man.”22 Anti-Federalists started to question the usefulness of the Roman
example for different reasons. Agrippa, for example, believed that Carthage,
not Rome, had set the appropriate model for America to follow. “Carthage, the
great commercial republic of antiquity, though resembling Rome in the form
of its government and her rival for power, retained her freedom longer than
Rome, and was never disturbed by sedition during the long period of her du-
ration.” This, Agrippa argued, was “a striking proof that […] the spirit of com-
merce is the great bond of union among citizens.” He concluded that “our great
object therefore ought to be to encourage this [Carthaginian] spirit.”23 The fear
of a strong executive, and the perceived incompatibility between an extended
territory and a republican form of government, the mainstay of Anti-Federalist
argumentation, added force to the misgivings contemporaries had regarding
Rome as a potential historical example for the American federation.24 Further-
more, while questioning the relevance of the Roman exemplum, both sides in
the debate looked back to the ancient Greek leagues for precedents, for m aking
22 “Americanus,” Daily Advertiser, December 5, 1787.

23 “Agrippa,” Massachusetts Gazette, January 15, 1788.
24 For a comprehensive essay on Anti-Federalism see Herbert J. Storing, What the Anti-
Federalists Were For. The Political Thought of the Opponents of the Constitution (Chicago
and London, 1981).
318 Shalev
sense of their present, and for scoring rhetorical points.25 The size of those an-
cient confederations, their purpose, and conduct all seemed appropriate to the
American situation.26
Late eighteenth-century Americans’ imagery commonly derived from the
early history of the Roman Republic, a time when, so they thought, the ideal of
the armed, self-effacing, staunchly independent, and virtuous citizen reigned.
Nevertheless, the attempt to emulate and repeat such a history was challeng-
ing, to say the least: many of the Romans that Americans most revered and
frequently alluded to, such as Cato the Younger and Cicero, lived to see the
demise of the Republic and the rise of the Principate with their own bewil-
dered eyes (before perishing at the hand of the Republic’s destroyers). It is no
surprise that the demise of Roman liberty had plagued observers ever since
the empire’s fall. Many of them saw that although Rome had built an empire,
it had been unable to retain its republican integrity in the process.27 Hence,
following the peak of American classicism during the constitutional debates,
Americans slowly but surely lost interest in republican Rome. With the advent
of the market revolution and the rapid democratisation of American politics,
aristocratic Rome became less appealing, whereas other classical models, such
as democratic Athens, gained in relevance. Nevertheless, Rome influenced the
political culture and moral economy of the United States during its formative
years to an extent that today is hard to imagine.
The Hebrew Constitution
Another historical model, arguably the most enduring and influential of them
all, served to further entrench the emerging if embryonic American collective
sentiment. Scholars have recently begun to appreciate the extent to which
Europe, for a century and a half after the Protestant Reformation “between
Bodin and Locke, with Machiavelli as a significant predecessor,” experienced
the efflorescence of political Hebraism, that is the analysis of the Hebrew
republic in political context.28 A full century after Locke, and following the
25 See, for example, Federalist no. 18.

26 Richard, The Founders and the Classics, 75–77.
27 J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Volume Three. The First Decline and Fall (Cam-
bridge, 2003).
28 Fania Oz-Salzberger, “The Political Thought of John Locke and the Significance of Po-
litical Hebraism,” Hebraic Political Studies 1 (2006): 568–592, 569. The most provoca-
tive addition to the growing literature on political Hebraism is Eric Nelson, The Hebrew
decline in European political interest in the Bible, revolutionary America ex-

perienced a similar and prolonged Mosaic moment.29 For many decades af-
ter the Revolution, numerous Americans saw themselves as a reincarnation
of the biblical Israelites and the newly independent United States of America
as a biblical Hebrew state, or as contemporaries put is, a “second Israel.” The
Puritans were the first who grafted the Exodus and notions of “chosenness”
onto their Atlantic crossing and settlement in America, and thus established a
lasting connection between the Israelites and the American people.30 As the
rebellion against the British Empire gained steam, Americans reinvigorated
the interpretation of their experiences along the lines of Hebrew history: both
were a chosen and righteous people, slaves to “Egyptians,” subjects of a fero-
cious king, and were eventually led out of the house of bondage by the hand
of a mighty God. Even the least religious minds of the era did not escape the
Bible’s political allure: here again images proposed for the Great Seal serve as
an indicator of the Zeitgeist. Both Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin suggested
Biblical images of the children of Israel crossing the sea, and led by the pillar
of fire in the desert, for America’s official seal. Along the same lines, America’s
first epic poem, Timothy Dwight’s 1782 “The Conquest of Canaan,” was a clear
allegory: America was biblical Israel led to the promised land by a modern-day
Joshua, general Washington.31
The biblical history of ancient Israel provided early Americans with a his-
torical precedent for their experiment in federal republicanism and led many
Americans to view their young republic, then and thereafter, as a chosen na-
tion of latter-day Israelites. Exodus was one among many biblical tropes for the
construction of America’s Israelite identity. Americans also justified the nov-
el constitutional arrangements of their young republic through the “Mosaic
constitution,” the hallowed political model of biblical Israel.32 That biblical
Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cam-
bridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2011).
29 For Reformation uses of the Bible as a political text see L.W. Gough, The Social Contract:
A Critical Study of its Development (Oxford, 1957) and John Kincaid and Daniel J. Elazar,
eds., The Covenant Connection (Grenshaw, 1987).
30 For an analysis of the concept of “chosenness” in Israel and America see: Todd Gitlin and
Liel Leibovitz, The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeal of Divine Election (New
York, 2010).
31 Timothy Dwight, The Conquest of Canaan: A Poem (Hartford, ct, 1788).
32 Eran Shalev, “A Perfect Republic: The Mosaic Constitution in Revolutionary New England,”
New England Quarterly 82 (2009): 235–263. For useful examinations of the d ifferences be-
tween New Englanders and ministers from southern- and mid-colonies-turned-states,
see Melvin B. Endy Jr., “Just War, Holy War and Millennialism in Revolutionary A merica,”
320 Shalev
constitution provided contemporary Americans with a divinely sanctioned

archetype of a federation of tribes, which had been commonly understood in
Europe since the seventeenth century as a “republic.”33 In their attempt to rec-
oncile the contradictory commitments of the Bible and modern public poli-
tics, revolutionary-age Americans portrayed the United States’ Constitution
as following a biblical constitutional configuration: a federation of state-like
tribes led by a president-like judge. The American confederacy of 1776 and the
Federal Constitution that was ratified in 1788 could thus be seen as following
the ancient constitutional arrangement of God’s chosen people.
Revolution, the construction of state governments, and later of a federal
constitution, necessitated new legitimising sources and justifications for the
novel republican situation. Taking the lead of New England pastors, revo-
lutionaries attempted to make sense of and to reconcile the experimental
constitutional arrangements of the young United States and the hallowed po-
litical models introduced through the history of the biblical Jewish republic.
Thomas Paine was among the first to appeal to the Mosaic Constitution in his
rabidly anti-monarchical and era-defining pamphlet Common Sense (1776).
Nathan Pearl-Rosenthal has illuminated how Paine used biblical texts to make
a powerful case against the legitimacy of monarchy.34 Even in the context of
attacking monarchy, which was not meant to provide a detailed constitutional
program for the British North American colonies, Paine made clear in a pass-
ing remark that he believed that the Hebrew polity was a republic: the Israel-
ites had no kings and “it was held sinful to acknowledge any”; also, their form
of government was “a kind of republic administered by a judge and the elders
of the tribes.”35 After independence, Americans would fully elaborate on the
republican nature of the ancient Hebrew form of government and its corre-
lations with its American counterpart. These articulations would form a dis-
tinct American tradition of equating the American and “Mosaic” constitutions,
which would subside only in the wake of the Civil War.
William and Mary Quarterly 41 (1985): 3–25; Mark Valeri, “The New Divinity and the
American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 46 (1989): 741–769, esp. 765 and Keith
L. Griffin, Revolution and Religion: American Revolutionary War and the Reformed Clergy
(New York, 1994).
33 Daniel J. Elazar, “Deuteronomy as Israel’s Ancient Constitution: Some Preliminary Reflec-
tions,” Jewish Political Studies Review 4 (1992): 3–39.
34 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, “The ‘Divine Rights of Republics’: Hebraic Republicanism and the
Debate Over Kingless Government in Revolutionary America,” William and Mary Quar-
terly 66 (2009): 535–564.
35 Thomas Paine, Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, etc. (Philadelphia,
1776), 10.
The reverend Samuel Cooper (1725–1783) was among the first to fully ex-
plain the affinities of the Israelite and the embryonic American g overnmental
systems. In a sermon preached in 1780 in front of both of Massachusetts’s
Houses, Cooper detailed what he and many of his contemporaries regarded
as striking similarities in the circumstances of the “antient Israelites” and the
American people: the two chosen nations rose from oppression and emerged
“from the house of bondage”; they both were pursued through the sea and were
led into the wilderness as a refuge from tyranny and as a preparation for the
enjoyment of civil and religious rights. As in sermons from earlier phases of
the revolution, Cooper continued to attack manifestations of despotic power,
which was “guided and inflamed by […] lusts of the human heart.”36 But now,
on the occasion of the commencement of Massachusetts’s constitution, the
preacher expanded on the political structure of the biblical Hebrew nation.
Cooper opened his sermon with the prophecy in Jeremiah 30, 20–21: “Their
Congregation shall be established before me: and their Nobles shall be of them-
selves, and their Governor shall proceed from the midst of them.” This proph-
ecy seemed to Cooper “to have been made for ourselves,” but also to embody
the biblical spirit of “that essential civil blessing” of the Mosaic constitution:
it seemed to confirm the ideal characteristics of a commonwealth, led by a
natural, non-hereditary aristocracy bred from its midst.37 In concurrence with
Samuel Langdon and others, Cooper pointed out that Israel was a well-ordered
nation with a balanced constitution, but also a “free republic, over which God
himself, in peculiar favour to that people, was pleased to preside.” Cooper at-
tempted to explain that paradox through Israel’s “charter from heaven,” which
seemed to declare that the Jewish people themselves, not God, would manage
their polity. He did not understand ancient Israel as a theocracy in the form of
a republic, but as a true republic with divine characteristics.38
As was the case in other contemporary depictions, Cooper portrayed the
Hebrew polity as consisting of three parts: a chief magistrate called a judge,
a council of seventy chosen men—the Sanhedrin (occasionally spelled
Sanhedrim)—and the general assemblies of the people. This neat division
into the prevailing concepts of contemporary political theory of “the one,” “the
36 Samuel Cooper, A Sermon Preached before his Excellency John Hancock Esq, etc. October 25,
1780. Being the Day of the Commencement of the Constitution, and Inauguration of the New
Government (Boston, 1780), 2–3.
37 Ibidem, 1. The King James Bible’s translation is misleading: the fact that what should have
been translated as “Greaters” was translated as “Nobles,” reflected the political sensibili-
ties of early seventeenth-century England, not the original Hebrew.
38 Cooper, A Sermon, 8.
322 Shalev
few,” and “the many” was not to be found so explicitly in the Bible. Cooper,
like others, had to search the scriptures for clear constitutional notions. His
findings were remarkable. Cooper inferred, for example, that the Israelite
assemblies were of a more “essential and permanent” nature than the chief
magistracy, the judgeship. The Sanhedrin “remained with but little suspension,
through all the vicissitudes they experienced, till after the commencement of
the Christian aera,” while the assemblies of the people “were frequently held
by divine appointment, and considered as the fountain of civil power.” Those
powers were exercised through decrees and other channels that they judged
“most conducive to their own security, order, and happiness.” The chief magis-
tracy, the judgeship, on the other hand, was of a more occasional nature. Such
understanding of the Hebrews’ political system was somewhat anachronistic,
interpreting it as driven by modern notions of popular sovereignty. Conse-
quently, Cooper insisted, even the Mosaic law that God himself delivered to
Moses on Mt. Sinai was not imposed on the Israelites against their will. That
legal code was “laid open before the whole congregation of Israel; they freely
adopted it, and it became their law […] by their own voluntary and express
consent.”39 To illustrate this interpretation, Cooper cited the renewal of the
covenant of the Hebrew tribes in Shechem under Joshua’s leadership, whereby
they voluntarily re-established their acceptance of their godly constitution. In
this voluntary act of confirmation of their governing laws and statutes “the
Hebrew nation, lately redeemed from tyranny, had now a civil and religious
constitution of their own choice.” Such an account underlay federal theology
and notions of covenant, but was especially illuminating in the context of re-
publican thought.40 Biblical covenant ideas and civic humanism thus merged
into a novel amalgam of Hebraic republicanism, which was particularly in-
strumental in articulating a historical meaning and lineage for an emerging
American constitutionalism. Cooper concluded that the biblical history of the
children of Israel pointed to the kind of government that “infinite wisdom and
goodness would establish among mankind.”41 Such a government would be a
republic, perfectly balanced and divinely ordained.
Eight years later, again in Massachusetts, as the Commonwealth braced it-
self to vote for the ratification of the Federal Constitution, Samuel Langdon
(1723–1797) provided a remarkably rich analysis of the Hebrew constitution
39 Ibidem, 8; Dan Foster concurred, stating that “God did not see it fit to assume to himself
the regency and supreme civil government of Israel without their consent and election of
him.” Dan Foster, A Short Essay on Civil Government (Hartford, 1775), 18.
40 Cooper, A Sermon, 11.
41 Ibidem, 14.
and its relevance to the United States’ proposed system of governance. As

the title of his sermon indicates, Langdon believed that the republic of the
Israelites provided “an example to the American States.” Moreover, not only
America could benefit from the example of “every thing excellent in their con-
stitution of government.” Rather, although the Israelites had “the advantage of
applying to the oracle of the living God,” the Mosaic constitution still provided
a civic law and could thus “be considered as a pattern to the world in all ages.”
The Israelites were the first nation to establish government by law: other na-
tions traditionally saw kings ruling with “their will […] as a law,” or the rule of
“the capricious humour of the multitude,” or “senators and judges […] left to
act according to their best discretion.” The first to balance the one, the few and
the many, the Hebrews were also the first to establish the rule of law. For these
reasons, Langdon believed that Israel provided a better example than the one
offered by the revered classical states, thus reversing the common wisdom of
eighteenth-century political discourse. Although Lycurgus had provided the
Spartans with a code of laws, that system was six centuries younger than that
of Moses, “imperfect,” and in some instances even “absurd.” Six centuries after
the Spartans, the laws of the Roman Empire, even at the height of its glory
when its complex and effective legislation was “carried to great perfection,”
were “far from being worthy to be compared with the laws of Israel.” Langdon
went on to charge Great Britain’s laws with “tediousness, voluminous bulk,
intricacy, barbarous language, and uncertain operation of many of them as
to equity.” The laws of Israel antedate these and other exemplary systems by
centuries and millennia (an especially important attribute in a culture still sat-
urated with the legalistic language of “usage”), but were also inherently supe-
rior, politically and morally, to any judicial code, ancient or modern.42 Yet the
Israelite republic offered America much more than a superb and time-proven
legal code; ancient Israel, which according to a modern student was a “tribal
federation in which the tribal leadership play[ed] a vital role,” provided a mod-
el federal constitution, which was especially instructive to Americans about to
adopt an innovative governing system.43 Langdon proposed to “look over [the
Israelites’] constitution and laws, enquire into their practice, and observe how
42 J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. A Study of English Historical
Thought in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1967), 30–55.
43 Daniel J. Elazar, “The Book of Judges: The Israelite Tribal Federation and Its Discontents”:
http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles/judges.htm (accessed on 25 November, 2016).
324 Shalev
their prosperity and fame depended on their strict observance of the divine
commands both as to their government and religion.”44
Appropriately, issues of state formation were the focus of Langdon’s ser-
mon, delivered at the moment of American political and legal reorganisation.
Langdon noted that, when fleeing from the Egyptians into the wilderness, the
Israelites were merely an unruly multitude “without any other order than what
had been kept up” during their captivity. Yet the fleeing Hebrew multitude was
“suddenly collected into a body under the conduct of Moses.” Like the Ameri-
cans declaring independence from their oppressors, the Israelites were trans-
formed in a short space of time after they had passed the Red Sea “into such
civil and military order […] [and] adapted to their circumstances in the wil-
derness while destitute of property.” This martial order was further enforced
by able men being chosen out of the tribes, and made “captains and rulers of
thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens: and these commanded them as military
officers, and acted as judges in matters of common controversy.” The Israelites’
rapid progress “from abject slavery, ignorance, and almost total want of order,
to a national establishment […] from a mere mob to a regulated nation,” im-
pressive, perhaps even miraculous as it was, was only half the tale. So was the
history of the American Revolution before the adoption of the Constitution.45
A people mobilised for war, as were both the Israelite tribes in the wilder-
ness and the revolutionary American states, did not satisfy the civil require-
ments of society. Langdon recounted how God commanded Moses to bring
seventy men, “chosen from among the elders and officers, and [to] present
them at the tabernacle,” so that they might share the burden of government
with him. Thus, the American preacher concluded, a “senate” was constituted,
“as necessary for the future government of the nation.” Langdon purposely
conflated the American (or rather Latin) and Hebrew nomenclatures, “sen-
ate” with “Sanhedrin.” Yet his conflations were conceptual too. Conceding that
changes had taken place over the centuries in political theory and practice (in
biblical times, he pointed out, “the people in all republics were entirely unac-
quainted with the way of appointing delegates to act for them, which is a very
excellent modern improvement in the management of republics”), he went on
to underscore the similarities in the procedure of the election of the Hebrew
“senate” and the way in which modern assemblies were elected: even if they
did not actually elect their representatives Langdon declared, “doubtless the
[Hebrew] people were consulted as to the choice of this senate.” The preacher
44 Samuel Langdon, The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States, etc.
( Exeter, 1788), 7, 6, 15, 16, 7.
45 Ibidem, 8, 15.
indeed believed that they had a voice in public affairs “from time to time,”
when the “whole congregation [was] […] called together on all important
occasions.” The conclusion of this constitutional exegesis was predictable: the
Hebrew government was “a proper republic.”46
That biblical commonwealth, however, was not a simple republic, but a fed-
eracy. “Every tribe,” Langdon pointed out, “had elders and a prince […] with
which Moses did not interfere.” These tribal leaders had an acknowledged
right to meet and consult together and “with the consent of the congregation
do whatever was necessary to preserve good order, and promote the common
interest of the tribe.” In short, in Langdon’s interpretation the tribes resem-
bled the American states under the Constitution: they were autonomous and
semi-sovereign entities. As in the United States, the local governments of the
Israelites’ tribes were structurally “very similar to the general government.”
Each had “a president and senate” at its head, while the whole of the Hebrew
people “assembled and gave their voice in all great matters.” The arrangement
of the Hebrew courts, too, resembled the American federal solution. The civil
government of the Israelites included, after the settlement in Canaan, courts
“appointed in every walled city” in which elders “most distinguished for wis-
dom and integrity were to be made judges, ready always to sit and decide
the common controversies within their respective jurisdictions.” The people
of the separate tribes could appoint “officers as they might think necessary for
the more effectual execution of justice.” As in the proposed American Consti-
tution, from the provincial Israelite courts “an appeal was allowed in weighty
causes to higher courts appointed over the whole tribe, and in very great and
difficult cases to the supreme authority of the general senate and chief mag-
istrate.” This Hebraic hierarchy of courts supposedly mirrored the complex
and layered judiciary branch of the proposed American Constitution. The He-
brew Republic, in short, provided a blueprint of the United States’ federation.
Its constitution was “concise and plain, and easily applicable to almost every
controversy.” It offered a laudable governmental structure, which was more-
over God-given. On the eve of the adoption of the American Constitution, the
Hebrew political structure could be seen as a historical example of the division
and balance of powers in the magisterial, legislative and judicial spheres, and
between periphery and centre, that reflected the expectations (or at least the
Federalists’ expectations) of the proposed Constitution of the United States.
The “perfect republic” could indeed be both faultless and republican not be-
cause it was God-given; rather, because it was God-given, it was “founded on
46 Ibidem, 8–9.
326 Shalev
the plain immutable principles of reason, justice, and social virtue,” which per-
fected it to the utmost.47
Analyses of and references to the affinities between biblical Israel’s form
of government and America’s “Mosaic” constitution remained a staple of po-
litical discourse. Unlike the relevance of the Anglo-Saxons, which evaporated
with independence, and the sway of the Roman example, which lost its at-
tractiveness once the American republic was established and was on course,
these biblical notions persisted deep into the nineteenth century, both on l ocal
and national stages. Enoch Wines’s 640-page study on the Mosaic constitution,
Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews (1853) was a remarkable
testament to the tenacity of this discursive mode. Throughout his exhaustive
tome, Wines articulated—in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century!—the
view that the Hebrew Republic, like America, was “a confederacy in which
each of the Israelitish tribes formed a separate state, having a local legislature
and a distinct administration of justice.” As in the United States, “the power of
the several [Israelite] states was sovereign within the limits of their reserved
rights. Still, there was both a real and a vigorous government.” Hence, as with
the American federation
the Hebrew tribes were, in some respects, independent sovereignties,

while, in other respects, their individual sovereignty was merged in the
broader and higher sovereignty of the commonwealth of Israel. They
were independent republics, having each a local government, which was
sovereign in the exercise of its reserved rights; yet they all united together
and formed one great republic, with a general government, which was
sovereign in the highest sense.48
Wines was convinced that Israel’s constitution had “a similitude to our own,
which will strike every reader.” By the 1850s, he could analyse Israel with the
hindsight of decades of deliberations and crises regarding the proper sphere
and sovereignty of the states vis-à-vis the federal government. He thus com-
pared the United States to a biblical federation that he believed worked ex-
ceptionally well: “all the tribes together formed a sort of federative republic, in
which no thing could be done or resolved without the general consent of their
respective representatives, and in which each individual tribe had a constitu-
tion formed upon the model of the national constitution.” Indeed, so similar
did America and Israel seem that Wines concluded that “the nation might
47 Ibidem, 9–11.
48 E.C. Wines, Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews (New York, 1853), 520–521.
have been styled the united tribes, provinces, or states of Israel.”49 This view
of American federalism as reflecting and being modeled upon the H ebrew
Republic, an outlook that survived until the era of the Civil War, was thus not
a fleeting or temporary perspective, but rather a significant and persistent in-
terpretive mode of American politics. What may have begun as an expedient
revolutionary-era measure had by the nineteenth century developed into a
full-blown ideological justification well-suited to the age of Manifest Destiny
and the maturation of the belief in America as a second Israel. Such typologi-
cal reading of American and Hebrew federalism contributed to the allevia-
tion of Americans’ persistent anxieties regarding the viability of their political
experiment, by allowing them to understand it as a godly project. Americans
were thus thought able to escape Roman-bred civic corruption and the decline
of virtue that had plagued past republics.
Conclusion
Early Americans conducted a modern, path-breaking experiment in republi-

canism. At the same time, however, they were deeply attracted to and reliant
upon the past to make sense of their accomplishments. To legitimize, encour-
age, and make sense of their radical political actions they turned to millen-
nia old narratives: as tensions with the mother country brewed after 1765 they
chose an Anglo and Monarchical model to reflect their needs. The Saxons
suited the early phase of the Revolution as they provided a valiant model of
autonomy and political self-sufficiency while maintaining the colonists’ still
prized Englishness and reverence of the Crown. However, in the wake of politi-
cal escalation and Independence, the classical model of the Roman republic
(and to a lesser extent other classical alternatives) brushed aside the Saxons.
The advent of a full-blown American republicanism stemmed from and neces-
sitated a usable past that would mirror and enhance the stern Whiggism that
emerged in the early United States. Hence, Americans no longer strove for a
Saxon-like America but rather wanted to become a Rome Reborn on western
shores. For a good while this neo-Roman paradigm was arguably the most im-
portant component of the forming American political tradition. However, by
the early nineteenth century a new biblical model replaced the Roman. The
waves of evangelical fervor sweeping through cities and countryside deter-
mined that the United States was no longer to be a Second Rome but rather a
New Israel. This unique American theo-politics would spawn and embolden
49 Ibidem, 521, 532, 490.

328 Shalev
critical categories such as “the American mission” and Manifest destiny, and
would thus outlive the other models of the revolutionary era. In doing so it is
still an active ingredient of American national sentiment.
In light of this complex web of competing appeals to the past we cannot
properly understand the political choices and claims made by founding-
generation Americans unless we realize the crucial role that history played
in forming their political worldviews. Without a full grasp of the nature and
scope of their attraction to history, and the importance of a historical frame for
their political actions, we cannot fully appreciate how revolutionaries decided
to make the break with Britain, how they justified that rupture, and how they
constructed their new, independent states and eventually the federal union.
History provided early Americans with meaning and a sense of direction as
they conducted their novel experiment in government. As they erected their
political edifice, they were compelled to understand and represent their ac-
tions in terms of historical analogy, and explore the deep relationship of his-
tory, revolution and state building in the eighteenth century and after.
This dependence on history may have limited the scope of the political
ideas that contemporaries came up with, steering them away from certain
courses of action and swaying them toward others. History, however, as Han-
nah Arendt realised half a century ago, gave Americans the courage to rebel.
It also provided patriots and state-builders with a spectacular range of images
and narratives through which to comprehend their own situation, and thus
enriched their ability to imagine solutions to the many quandaries they were
confronting. It is crucial then that we understand the modes through which
they utilised history, and realise the processes through which they made re-
vered past societies meaningful to their unprecedented political endeavours.
Did revolutionary Americans have it in their power, in the words of Thomas
Paine, to begin the world anew? Perhaps so, but they had to depend on worlds
bygone to communicate, indeed to make sense of their national undertaking.
The historical lenses through which contemporaries envisioned their republic
enabled them to contemplate what they wished it to be, and facilitated their
expectations for its future. The United States was founded in the Western
Hemisphere, physically removed from the stages upon which the histories they
looked back to unfolded. Contemporaries were compelled to compensate that
perceived deficiency by weaving their newly founded nation into dignifying
and meaning-bestowing historical narratives and comparisons. Recognising its
reliance on history vastly expands our appreciation of the origins and nature
of the republic’s founding, and thus provides us with a richer understanding of
the American experience.
Index
Aargau 265, 271 Aristotle, Aristotelianism 3, 11, 28, 48–49, 53,

Aaron 251 55–56, 59–60, 88, 102, 105, 114, 218–219,
Absolutism 1, 6, 12, 167, 172, 178, 189, 246, 287, 296, 303
281–282, 298, 316 Ark of the Covenant 229–230
Achaean League 14, 16, 107, 109–130 Arminianism, see: Remonstrantism
Adams, John 200 Asia 78, 80, 91, 93
Addison, Joseph 146, 315 Athens 11, 13–14, 16–18, 75–76, 78, 80, 84, 86,
Agathocles 298 88, 91, 94–107, 110, 129–156, 173–174, 194,
Alamannia, Alemani 264, 270–271 195–213, 288, 293–294, 303, 318
Alciato, Andrea 10 Atlantic Ocean 1, 5, 13–14, 190, 195, 309, 319
Aldrovandi, Ulisse 223 Augustine 40, 51–53, 55, 57, 65–66, 68, 70,
Alexander the Great 52, 117 73, 76, 79, 157, 302
Alkmaar 161, 163 Augustus 11, 50, 259
Alps 264–265, 272, 284
Alsace 263–265, 267, 272 Babylonian captivity 244–245
American Republic, United States of Bailyn, Bernard 2
America 1–3, 5, 13, 14, 19, 61, 63, 86, 189, Balanced government, balanced
197, 259, 306–328 constitution 160, 192, 196, 198,
American Revolution 2, 61, 86, 189, 197, 306, 321–323, 325
312–313, 319–321, 324, 327–328 Balcus 266
Ampolo, Carmine 89, 95 Baldis de Ubaldis 59
Amsterdam 122, 164, 242 Balthasar, Johann Carl 260
Amyot, Jacques 159, 165 Baltic Sea 304
Anderson, Benedict 306 Barbarians, barbarism 14, 77, 94, 144, 149,
Angiviller, Comte d’ 175–176, 179 193, 267, 269, 271, 281, 287
Anglo-Saxon(s) 307–312, 326–327 Barker, William 90
Anjou dynasty 286 Baron, Hans 1, 2, 4, 15, 27–31, 48, 59, 133, 259
Anti-Federalists 315–317 Barthélémy, abbé 208
Anti-model 71, 74, 81, 85, 237, 250, 257–258 Bartolus of Sassoferrato 48, 59
Antiquarianism 10, 72, 88–89, 98, 114, Basel 95, 102, 264
216–217, 236, 302 Batavian Revolution 192–193, 197–199, 201,
Appenzell Innerrhoden 260 205, 213
Aquinas, Thomas 49, 224 Batavians, Batavian myth 75–81
Archita 300 Battle of Bibracte 266
Archon 199 Battle of Rocroi 120
Arendt, Hannah 259, 328 Bavaria 273
Areopagus 210 Bebel, Heinrich 262
Arias Montano, Benedict 18 Bell, Andrew 132
Aristides 174 Bellarmine, Robert 229
Aristocracy 103–104, 110, 119, 125, 136, 170, Bembo, Pietro 68
171, 174, 178, 196, 198–199, 218, 232, 275, Ben-Tov, Asaph 92
277, 279, 283, 286–289, 292, 295–296, Berkel, Abraham van 242–243, 245
298–299, 303–304, 318, 321 Berlin, Isaiah 3
Aristophanes 210–211 Bern 265, 271, 284
330 Index
Berry, Helen 139 Caligula 316

Bertram, Corneille Bonaventure 18, 215, Calvin, John 219–221, 224
217–224, 232–233 Calvinism, Calvinist 18, 97–98, 113–114, 123,
Beza, Théodore 217–219, 221 180, 216–219, 221–223, 225, 235–239, 241,
Bible, biblical 9, 19, 132, 157, 214, 216–219, 245, 248, 250–253, 256–257, 270
221, 228, 230, 232–233, 234–236, 240, Campos Boralevi, Lea 235
242–243, 247, 250–251, 256, 258, Canaan 240, 319, 325
319–322, 324–327 Canini, Angelo 217
Birggöuw 265 Cannae 297
Bland, Richard 309 Canton, cantons 260, 262, 265, 267, 278, 284
Boccaccio 275 Capellen tot den Pol, Joan Derk
Boccalini, Trajano 16, 64, 81–84 van der 192, 197
Bodin, Jean 11, 12, 60, 88, 102, 119, 134, 318 Capitol, American 311
Bodmer, Johann Jacob 18, 280–284 Capitoline Hill 111, 260
Bologna 96–97, 217, 223–224, 227, 289 Carew, Sir George 299
Bonstetten, Albrecht von 266 Carneades 40, 43, 52, 56
Boston 312–313 Cartesianism 240–242
Botero, Giovanni 103 Carthage 13, 33, 62, 110, 317
Boucher, François 170 Casaubon, Isaac 90
Bourbon, House of 120 Cassius 282, 312–313, 316
Boxhorn, Marcus Zuerius 16, 111, 113–121, Castiglione, Baldassare 300
124–125, 129–130 Catholicism, Catholic 71, 151–152, 224, 227,
Brand, Sebastian 262 229, 232, 238, 240–241, 260, 268, 271
Brenet, Nicolas 179 Cato Censorius, Marcus Porcius 51, 298
Britain, British 86–87, 109, 138, 154, 306–307, Cato Uticensis, Marcus Porcius 175, 260,
309–313, 319–320, 323, 328 298, 312, 314–317
Brotherhood 17, 183 Cattaneo, Alberto 267
Bruchsal 273 Châlons-sur-Marne 205
Brun, Rudolph 279–280 Charilaus 165, 184
Bruni, Leonardo 1, 15, 21, 27–34, 36, 38–39, Charity 169, 255
59, 275 Charles V 271
Brutus, Lucius Iunius 14, 18, 106, 259, 262, Choiseul, Duc de 178
275–284 Choisy, Château de 167, 169–170
Brutus, Marcus Iunius 27, 275–276, 279, Christianity, Christian 5, 27, 65–66, 74, 95,
281–283, 312–313, 316 101, 105, 140, 143, 160, 167, 172, 197, 220,
Bruyère, Jean de la 17, 138–140, 148–153 222, 224, 226–228, 231, 236, 240–241,
Buis, Paul 112–113 244–245, 247–250, 255–258, 268,
Bullinger, Heinrich 276–278, 283–284 283, 322
Burgersdijk, Franco 114, 123 Chronology 92–94
Burgundy, Burgundia 271–273 Church-state relationship 17, 113, 218,
Burke, Peter 25 235, 248
Busken Huet, Conrad 234 Cicero 4, 11, 15, 26, 30, 40–43, 45, 52–62, 77,
Butler, Samuel 155 275, 292, 296, 298, 300–301, 303, 313, 318
Byzantine studies 92–93, 98 Cincinnatus 312
Citizen, citizenship 3, 67, 170, 171, 179, 182,
Caesar, Julius 11, 12, 27, 50, 56, 263–267, 269, 192, 194–197, 201, 206, 209, 213, 253,
272, 275–276, 279, 282–283, 288, 312–316 256–257, 273, 277, 282, 284, 288, 290,
Cahors 217 293, 295–297, 299–300, 302–303, 307,
Calcagus 65, 73, 78, 82 309, 311–312, 316–318
Index 331
Civic humanism 2–3, 27–28, 30–31, 59, 133, Cooke, Thomas 153

189, 259, 312, 322 Cooper, Samuel 321–322
Civil religion 256 Copernicanism 247
Civil war 73, 76 Corday, Charlotte 165
Civil War, American 320, 327 Coriolanus 260
Civility 15–17, 148, 150 Corneille 259
Classical republicanism 1–19, 27–28, 32, 40, Corruption 42, 60, 78, 151–152, 155
60, 62, 85, 155, 157–158, 171, 174, 186–189, Cosidine, John 98
192, 195–197, 199, 206, 212, 259, 303, 305 Council of Four Hundred, Athenian 209
Classicism 158, 164, 314, 318 Council of Trent 228
Cleisthenes 97, 210 Counterreformation 71, 217
Cleon 210–211 Court, Johan and Pieter de la 18, 84, 109–110,
Cochin, Charles 167–171, 176, 187 202, 236–237, 240, 242, 246–247,
Cocles 301 249–250, 256–258
Cocquius, Gisbertus 245–246 Cozzi, Gaetano 99
Cola di Rienzo 48 Cracow 299
Coleman, Janet 26 Cragius, Nicolaus 16, 94, 100–102, 104–105
Collegium Insulanum 279 Cromwell, Oliver 63, 129, 136
Colmerus, Clemens 94–95, 102–103 Crusius, Martin 93
Cologne 289 Cunaeus, Petrus 12, 113–114, 216, 232,
Colonialism, colonization 19, 27, 76, 79–81, 235–236
85, 91, 93, 307–312, 320, 327 Curtius 301
Comité du Salut Public 184
Commerce, commercial 15, 16, 63, 70–71, Dacier, André 165, 173
73–74, 78–81, 85, 127–128, 136, 148, 150, Dacier, Anne 165, 173
174, 187, 190, 200, 202–203, 209, 317 Dante 48, 275
Commines, Philippe de 125 David 221, 231
Common good, general good 79–80, 118, 182, David, Jacques-Louis 158, 175, 180,
186, 286, 303, 196, 286, 303 184–187, 283
Commonwealthmen 308 Davis, Charles Till 48
Concord 16, 69–71, 74, 79–80, 83, 85, Decalogue 220
113–114, 118 Decemvirate (Rome) 44–45
Confederation, confederate 1, 8, 12, 14–16, Decius 301
18, 84, 109–130, 259–263, 265–272, 276, Decline 29, 33, 42, 51, 65, 69, 73, 78–80,
278, 284, 294, 318, 320, 326 82–83, 104, 106, 113, 117–118, 136, 191, 195,
Conservative, conservatism 17, 174, 193–194, 198, 200, 203, 243, 254, 264, 302, 327
200, 213 Demagogues 196, 198–199, 204, 207,
Constance 264, 271 210–211, 315
Constant, Benjamin 55 Demarteau, Gilles 171
Constantinople 92–93 Democracy, popular government 14, 17,
Constitution, constitutionalism 13–15, 17, 18, 46n12, 86, 96–97, 103, 106–107, 110,
19, 40–61, 95–96, 101–102, 106, 113, 136, 116, 157, 159, 173–174, 189–213, 219, 221,
163, 176, 192, 203–204, 209, 218, 244, 252–253, 278, 284, 322
253, 259–260, 278–279, 281, 284–287, Demosthenes 195
289, 293–294, 296, 303, 305, 308–310, Denmark Sound 304
313–314, 316–326 Denmark 14, 100
Consuls, consulate (Rome) 50–51 Descartes, René 124
Contarini, Gasparo 12, 67–68 Despot, despotism 40, 49, 53–54, 277, 281,
Conti, Vittorio 106 310, 313, 316, 321
332 Index
Dictator (Rome) 45–46, 50, 56 Ethics: see Morals, morality

Didacticism 170 Etruscans 33, 280
Diderot, Denis 168, 170, 178 Etterlin, Petermann 268–269
Diogenes the Cynic 290 Eugen, Lord 263
Directoire 171 Eugenics 180
Discipline 17, 72, 159–160, 167, 173, 186 Euripides 298
Domitian 316 Europe, European 2, 10, 12–13, 15–16, 25, 52,
Donation of Constantine 227 62, 66, 72, 74, 81–83, 85, 89–91, 109–110,
Dunkelgrün, Theodor 236 120, 130, 133, 141–142, 144, 157–158, 187,
Dunton, John 131–133, 139–141, 143, 155 190, 193, 229, 233, 235, 258, 260, 272, 281,
Dutch Republic, United Provinces of the 285–287, 298, 307, 310, 318–320
Netherlands 1, 5, 8, 10, 12, 14–17, 63–64, Eutropius, Flavius 49–50
71–85, 95, 97–100, 105–107, 109–130, 135, Everdingen, Caesar van 161, 163
157, 161–165, 187, 189–213, 216–217, Excommunication 221, 226
232–233, 234–258, 260–261, 278 Exodus 214, 319
Duty, duties 53, 102, 198, 220, 223, 240–241,
248, 255, 280, 284, 302 Fabius Cunctator 315
Dwight, Timothy 319 Fabri, Felix 264, 284
Federalism 15, 84, 109–130, 313–315, 317,
East Frisians 269 319–320, 322, 325–328
Education 100, 103, 131, 142–143, 163, 166, Federalist Papers, The 61, 317
173–174, 208–209, 225, 245, 288–289 Felici, Lucia 102
Egalitarianism: see Equality Fénelon, François 12, 178
Egypt, Egyptians 149, 252, 319, 324 Ferguson, Adam 208
Eleazar 229–231 Fink, Zera 2, 133
Eli 247 Flavius Josephus 243
Elzevier 12, 93, 106, 135 Florence 1, 3–5, 8, 14–16, 20–39, 63,
Emilio, Paolo 267 66–67, 85
Emmius, Ubbo 12, 16, 93, 95, 105–107, 202 France 1, 14, 17, 63, 86, 95–96, 120–121,
Emperor 33, 41, 46–48, 50, 56–59, 170, 137–140, 143–144, 151–152, 154–155, 157,
196, 217, 222, 225–226, 240, 260, 262, 158, 165–188, 231, 272, 278, 295
268–269, 271, 275, 298 Francia, Franci 264, 267, 273
Empire 14, 16, 43, 62–85, 110, 203, 306, 309, Frankenthal 218
311–312, 318 Franklin, Benjamin 319
England, English Commonwealth 1–3, 5, 14, Frederick iii of the Palatinate 221
17, 63, 85, 86–87, 122, 131–156, 216–217, Free cities, German and Swiss 6, 260, 262
232–233, 242, 259, 304, 307–311, 327 Free speech 77, 148, 150
Enlightenment 2, 12, 17, 18, 86–87, 108, 167, Freedom: see Liberty
189–191, 193–194, 197, 259, 279–280, 284 French Revolution 63, 86, 158, 167, 171, 174,
Epaminondas 164, 288 176, 180, 184–185, 189, 197, 206, 210
Ephors 13, 160, 166, 292, 294 Friedrich, Carl 54
Equality 15, 18, 103–104, 107, 113, 148, 151, 156, Frijhoff, Willem 234
157, 160, 163, 172, 174, 186, 198, 252–253, Fugger, Johann Jakob 92
281–282, 284, 299 Fukuyama, Francis 306
Equites 303 Füssli, Johann Heinrich 282
Erasmus, Desiderius 66, 74, 266
Erastus, Thomas 216–217, 221–222, 232 Galerius 298
Estienne, Henri 89–90 Gallia 268–271, 273
Index 333
Gaul, Gauls 267, 269–270 Habsburg, House of 12, 14, 18, 66, 74, 81, 84,
Gay, Peter 190 94, 120, 217, 262, 268, 271, 279
Gdańsk 95, 102, 105, 304 Hadrian 259
Geneva 18, 180, 183–184, 187, 217–219, 221, Haitsma Mulier, Eco 84, 99
270–271, 284 Hallé, Noël 176
Gentili, Alberico 60 Hamilton, Alexander 317
Geography 91, 93, 102 Hammond, Brean 141
Gerbel, Nicolaus 91 Hannibal 297, 315
Germania, Germani 264–267, 270, 273 Hansa 262
Germany, German 6, 14, 21, 23–24, 95, Harrington, James 60, 62–64, 84, 136, 216,
105, 112, 181, 208, 260, 262, 264–267, 232, 236, 258
269–270, 272–273, 295, 307–308, Hebrew Republic, Jewish Common-
310–311 wealth 9–12, 14, 17–19, 96, 112, 130,
Giannoti, Donato 12, 68 214–258, 318–327
Gibbon, Edward 88–89, 208 Hedonism 171, 172
Gilbert, Felix 34, 37, 39 Heidelberg 289
Gildon, Charles 132, 141–146 Heinsius, Daniel 99, 114, 130n72
Gillies, John 86–87 Helen 178
Girondins 184 Helot(s) 104, 297
Glarean, Heinrich 266–267, 276, 284 Helvetia, Helvetians 259, 261–266, 269–273,
Glarus 270 275, 284
God 47, 51, 82, 105, 130, 220, 222, 224, Helvetische Gesellschaft 280
226–227, 229–230, 234, 239–256, Helvétius, Claude 172–173
258, 268, 271, 277–278, 283, 287–288, Helvidius Priscus 315
301–302, 304, 319–325, 327 Hengist 311
Goltzius, Hubertus 93–94 Henry vi, Holy Roman Emperor 225
Gool, Johannes van 164, 165 Herodotus 90
Gordon, Thomas 60 Heyne, Christian Gottlob 210
Górnicky, Lukasz 300 Hirzel, Salomon 280–282, 284
Goślicki, Wawrzyniec 287, 292, 294 Historicism 8, 15, 20–39, 157
Goth(s), Gothic 273, 309, 312 Hoare, Lord 179
Gōttingen 208, 210 Hobbes, Thomas 133, 148, 237, 242–246,
Graswinckel, Dirck 246 251–252
Grebel, Felix 282–283 Hobsbawm, E.J. 306
Greek republics (see also: Athens, Sparta) 9, Hoekstra, Kinch 90
10, 12, 16, 17, 86–213, 215, 225, 227, 259, Holland , see also: Dutch Republic 83, 109,
278, 285–289, 295–296, 301–304, 314, 113–114, 122–123, 125–126, 128–129, 161,
316–317 163, 193, 235, 246, 261
Gregory xiii, Pope 231 Holstein 273
Grisons 272 Holy Roman Empire 63, 223, 226–227,
Gronovius, Jacobus 88 260–262, 265, 267, 271, 273,
Grote, George 86–88 285, 295
Grotius, Hugo 10, 16, 17, 60, 64, 75–82, Homer 195, 298
84–85, 98, 111–114, 124, 207–210, 216, 232, Homosexuality 160, 182
235–236, 241, 258 Horsa 311
Grüningen 282 Hotman, François 217–218
Guicciardini, Francesco 15, 21, 28, 36–39 Hove, Frederick Hendrik van 144
Gundelfingen, Heinrich von 262–263 Huguenots 195, 217
334 Index
Humanism, humanist 10, 18, 20, 24–39, 56, Königsberg 289

59, 65–68, 71–81, 115, 125, 130, 209, 236, Koryciński, Mikolaj 302
262–269, 273, 275, 284–285, 312 Korytno 302
Huppert, George 25–26 Koselleck, Reinhart 9, 25–26
Kristeller, Paul Oskar 59
Ianziti, Gary 30–31
Imperialism, see: empire La Font de Saint Yenne, Ėtienne 158
Ingolstadt 289 Lagrenée, Jean-Jacques 178
Isidore of Seville 50 Lagrenée, Louis 176–178, 180, 187
Israel, Israelites 214, 224, 229–230, 234–240, Lairesse, Gérard de 164
244–247, 249–250, 252, 257, 307, Lake Constance 270–271
319–327 Lake Geneva 267, 271
Israel, Jonathan 5, 237 Langdon, Samuel 321–325
Italy, see also: Florence, Venice 5, 14, 18, 20, Latini, Brunetto 48
32, 36, 39, 67, 90–91, 93, 217, 225–227, Latvia 304
259–260, 266, 273, 287 Lausanne 218
Lavater, Johann Caspar 282–283
Jacobins 158, 167, 174, 184 Law, laws 25, 42, 44, 46–48, 51–59, 76–77,
Jagiellonian dynasty 286 83, 88, 91, 95–98, 100–101, 103–104, 106,
Jay, John 317 112–113, 115–116, 119, 126, 128, 134, 163,
Jefferson, Thomas 310–311, 319 166, 171, 173–174, 194, 204, 206, 209, 217,
Jellinek, Georg 284 220–225, 240, 246–248, 251–257, 260,
Jeremiah 321 277, 281–282, 284–285, 289, 295–296,
Jesuit, Jesuits 229, 297 298–299, 303, 307–308, 310–311, 322–323
Jesus 241, 256 Law, natural 43, 52, 54–55, 57, 59–60, 116
Jews, Jewish: see Hebrew Law, rule of 201, 208, 295, 307, 311, 323
John xii, Pope 226 Lazius, Wolfgang 93–94
John, Apostle 241 Le Motteux, Pierre-Antoine 142–143
Jordan river 229–230 Learning 16, 138, 140–144
Josaphat 221 Legislator, lawgiver 14, 41, 54, 58, 97, 117, 158,
Josephus, Flavius 243–244, 246, 252 160, 163, 167, 174, 251, 253, 255, 325–326
Joshua 18, 227–231, 319, 322 Leiden 95, 97, 99, 110, 113–114, 123, 195, 235
Junius 313 Leipzig 289
Jura 267, 272 Leonidas 184–186
Jurisdiction 14, 18, 214, 217, 219, 221–222, 231, Leponcii 265
233, 249, 255, 277, 325 Lepontii 264
Justice 14, 51, 77, 79, 91, 97, 113, 169, 170, 195, Leuci 265
204, 208, 210, 223, 249, 255, 278, 283, Levites 225, 230, 254
295, 325–326 Lex de imperio Vespasiani 48, 57
Justin 298 Lex regia 15, 40, 47–48, 56–59
Justinian 225 Liberalism 86
Liberty 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 14–19, 33, 40, 42, 55,
Keckermann, Bartholomeus 16, 102–103, 304 64–65, 71, 76–77, 83–86, 96, 99, 101,
Kelley, Donald 25–26 103, 106–107, 123, 134–136, 148–152,
King, kingdom: see Monarchy 156, 160, 173, 186, 189, 192, 194–195,
Klein, Lawrence 146, 149 199, 201, 204–210, 213, 247, 255–256,
Kockengen 245 260–263, 268–269, 271, 276–279,
Koerbagh, Adriaen 18, 235–237, 242, 281–284, 286–287, 290–297, 303,
250–252, 257–258 307–310, 312–313, 316–318, 321
Index 335
Licinius 298 Medici, Alessandro de’ 275

Lipsius, Justus 11–12, 64, 71–82, 84 Medici, Lorenzino de’ 275–276
Lithuania: see Poland-Lithuania Meerman, Johan 17, 205–212
Livonia 304 Melanchton, Philip 93, 95
Livy 11, 34, 118n32, 127n64, 275–276, 297, 303 Menelaos 178
Locke, John 60, 318 Mercier, Jean 217
Lodenstein, Jodocus van 235, 238 Meursius, Johannes 16, 91, 95, 97–100, 105
Lord’s Supper 241 Michelangelo 276
Louis xiv 163, 167 Middle Ages, medieval thought 4, 10, 26,
Louis xv 169, 170, 178 28–29, 48–49, 96, 223, 260, 264, 267,
Louis xvi 175–176 269–270, 275
Louvain 71 Milan 266
Louvre museum 171 Millot, Claude 202
Lucan 117 Mitford, William 86–87, 95
Lucerne 260, 263 Mithridates, king of Pontus 64, 73, 78
Lucretia 260, 276–278 Mixed regime, mixed constitution 13, 41, 69,
Lutheranism 93, 95, 100 166, 191–192, 196, 199, 201–202, 209, 218,
Luxury 51, 65, 76–80, 104, 117–118, 130n72, 151, 232, 292–293
170, 173–175, 187, 277, 281, 302, 316 Model, models 1, 7, 10–21 24, 27–28, 33–34,
Luzac, Elie 17, 19, 200–205, 208–209, 212 38, 41–42, 57, 60, 62, 64, 66, 70–72,
Luzac, Johan 17, 195–200, 202, 205, 209, 212 74–75, 84, 89, 102, 104, 110–111, 113–114,
Lycophron 98 129–130, 133, 136–140, 142–144, 149–151,
Lycurgus 11, 14, 17, 97, 106–107, 159–164, 153, 155–156, 160, 166–167, 171, 182, 187,
166–167, 170–172, 178, 185, 187, 287, 202, 204, 213–214, 216–218, 222, 229,
291–292, 323 231–235, 237, 250–251, 253, 257–260,
278, 285, 292, 294, 308, 311, 317–320, 323,
Mably, abbé de 12, 167, 173–177, 187 326–328
Macedonians 159, 173 Modernity 17, 24, 39, 190, 307
Machiavelli, Niccolò 1, 2, 11, 14, 15, 21, 28, Molino, Domenico 99
33–39, 55, 62–63, 66, 70, 74, 76, 83–84, Momigliano, Arnaldo 87–89
88, 102, 136, 318 Monarchy 6, 7, 12, 41, 45–46, 49, 52–55,
Madison, James 14, 317 73–74, 78, 81, 83, 86–87, 97, 101–102,
Magna Carta 309 116, 124, 151, 160, 164, 166, 167, 168, 170,
Magnanimity 169 172, 184, 187, 189, 191, 195–196, 201–206,
Manifest Destiny 327–328 208–209, 212, 218, 221, 232, 239, 242,
Manuel, Frank 214 244–247, 252–253, 260, 278, 280–282,
Marat, Jean-Paul 166 286, 292–296, 298, 306, 308–310, 317,
Marcus Antonius 316 319–320, 327
Marcus Curtius 260 Monsiau, Nicolas 176
Marigny, Marquis de 168, 176 Montaigne 160
Mark, Saint 261 Montano, Benedict Arias 216–217, 227–233
Marmontel, Jean-François 169 Montesquieu, Baron de (Charles-Louis de
Marsilius of Padua 48, 56, 59 Secondat) 19, 61, 166, 190, 196, 200, 281
Masius, Andreas 229 Morals, morality 13, 15, 17, 19–20, 30–32, 38,
Massachusetts 309, 321–322 42–43, 54, 72, 76, 131, 147, 157, 159–161,
Materialism 172 166, 168, 172–173, 178–179, 181, 183, 191,
Mathon de la Cour, Charles 171 194, 197, 211, 219–220, 224, 255–258,
Maximilian 263 281–282, 284–285, 290, 296, 323
Maximinus 298 More, Thomas 10
336 Index
Morély, Jean 221 Orzechowski, Stanislaw 287

Mosaic Law 18, 19, 220, 222, 224, 230, 250, Otis, James 309–310
319–323, 326 Otto I 226
Moses, Mosaic 163, 214–215, 219, 222, 225, Ottoman Empire, Ottomans 66, 74, 93, 285
229, 231, 244–246, 251–253, 255–256, Ottonian age 226–227
319, 323–326
Mount Taygetus 181 Pace, Giulio 85
Moyle, Walter 146 Padua 96–97, 102, 289, 304
Mucius Scaevola 260, 301 Paedaretus 303
Münster 114, 116, 118, 120 Pagnini, Sante 222–223
Münster, Sebastian 272 Pagus Helvetius 265
Myconius, Oswald 266 Pagus Leopontinus 265
Pagus Tigurinus 264–265
Napoleon 184–185 Pagus Verbigenus 264
Nation, nation-state 18–19, 22–23, 32, 50, Paine, Thomas 306, 320, 328
64, 70, 82, 86, 91, 113, 116, 127, 137, 142, Palatinate 218, 221
149–150, 152–155, 186, 210, 215, 252–253, Palemon 304
267–271, 275, 284, 286, 288, 291–292, Paleotti, Gabriele 224
294, 301, 303, 306–307, 309, 311, 313, 319, Palmer, R.R. 189
321–324, 326, 328 Paprocki, Bartosz 302
Nedham, Marchamont 60, 135 Paris 17, 178, 180–181, 217
Neerlands Israel 234, 236–238, 250, 252, 257 Parliament, parliamentary 134, 151, 286, 289,
Nelson, Eric 14, 133, 216–217, 232, 236, 258 294–295, 299, 308
Neoclassicism 176–177, 180, 280 Paruta, Paolo 16, 64, 68–72, 74, 77, 79, 82–83
Neo-Roman theory of liberty 4, 7, 15, 41, Passions 35, 172, 174, 205, 282
133, 189 Patricians, Roman 107, 299
Nero 315–316 Patriot, patriotism 51, 104, 206, 254, 280, 307,
Neumagen, Peter von 265 309, 311–312, 316, 328
Neuman, Kalman 216–217 Patriots, Dutch 191–193, 195, 197, 201, 212–213
Neville, Henry 146 Pausanias 90
New England 320 Pauw, Cornelis de 208
New Testament 165, 228 Peace of Westphalia 114–121, 260, 278–279
New York 314, 317 Pearl-Rosenthal, Nathan 320
Nichols, Thomas 90 Perez de Ayala, Martin 228
Nietzsche, Friedrich 157 Pericles 104, 106–107, 210
Nike 260 Persians 185
Nobility: see Aristocracy Peter, Apostle 241
Nominalism 22–23 Petrarch 275
Norman Conquest 307 Philip ii 229, 231
Norman(s) 308–310 Philology 28, 98, 105
Numa Pompilius 293 Philopoemen 288
Numismatics 94 Phocion 168, 173–175
Physiocracy 179
Oberhasli 262 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio 264–265, 267
Ochlocracy 210 Piety 140, 220, 238, 254–255
Old Testament 215, 234–237, 257 Pisa 33
Oligarchy 30, 199, 277 Pisistratus 98, 103, 106
Oporinus, Johannes 92 Pius V, Pope 231
Orators 205, 289 Plato 42, 102, 287, 291, 296–298, 300, 303
Index 337
Plebeians, Roman 107, 299 Ravenna 226

Pliny 179, 266 Reason of state 54, 249–250, 258
Plutarch 11, 88, 90, 112, 157–188, 275, 282 Reason 103, 147, 174, 222, 250–253, 255–256,
Plutus 277 288, 297, 326
Pocock, J.G.A. 3–6, 11, 14, 15, 28–29, 60, 63, Red Sea 324
84–85, 133, 189, 259 Reformation 289, 318
Poitiers 217 Regulus 301
Poland-Lithuania 6, 15, 18, 95, 102–105, Rej, Mikolaj 298
285–305 Remigius of Florence 48–49
Politeness 14, 16, 133, 139, 141–156 Remonstrant, Remonstrantism 97, 113–114,
Polybius 11, 49, 69–72, 74, 77, 112, 218–219, 216, 241
292, 297, 303 Remus 260
Pompadour, Madame de 168 Renaissance 1–3, 8, 11, 14–15, 19–61, 63, 67,
Pompey 315 85, 88, 157, 190, 259, 276
Pomponius 15, 40–41, 43–48, 56–57, Representation, representative 192, 204,
60–61, 266 207, 213, 324
Pope, Papacy; see also: Rome, papal 18, 84, Republic of Letters 223
97, 217, 226–227, 231, 260, 262–263, Republicanism passim
269, 275 Resistance, right of 116, 218, 294
Porsenna 280 Respublica Christiana 226–227
Portius 313 Restoration, French 185
Postel, Guillaume 16, 94–96, 100, 107 Rhetoric, rhetorical 10, 30–31, 34, 110,
Poussin, Nicolas 164, 168, 174–175 130, 138, 141, 149–151, 205, 285, 289,
Poyet, Guillaume 96 312–315, 318
Privilege, privileges 105, 170, 260, 263, 268, Rhine river 264–265, 267, 269–272
278, 286 Rhone river 267, 272
Prix de Rome 180 Rich, Barnabe 90
Property 55, 118, 136, 174, 207–208, 246, Right, rights 3, 6, 40, 44–47, 50–51, 53, 55, 62,
281, 324 81, 113, 119, 125, 148, 192, 202, 204, 206,
Protestantism, protestant 95, 238, 268, 271, 218, 241–243, 246, 248–253, 255–256,
289, 318 277, 281, 283, 286, 293–295, 298,
Providence, providential 54, 235, 240, 253 308–311, 313, 321, 325–326
Prudence 20, 35, 43, 54, 125–126, 198, 250, Roaldes, François 217, 219, 222
297, 315 Roberts, Jennifer Tolbert 211
Prussia 273 Robespierre, Maximilien 185, 188
Pseudonyms, classical 313–315, 317 Rococo 168, 178
Ptolemy of Lucca 15, 40–41, 48–56, 59, 61, Rogers, Daniel T. 6
266, 272 Roland, Madame 165
Publius Libon 304 Rollin, Charles 166–167, 172, 176
Publius Valerius 317 Roman Empire, Principate 27, 40, 44–50,
Puritans 319 52, 56–59, 66, 69, 71, 151–152, 157, 196,
207, 209, 215, 225, 227, 259, 268–269,
Querelle des anciens et des modernes 12, 288–289, 296, 302, 307, 316, 318, 323,
137–138, 140, 190 326–327
Quintus Ennius 302 Roman law 25, 40, 43–48, 57–58
Roman Republic 9–12, 14–19, 20–85, 95–96,
Ramé, Pierre 221 104, 107, 110, 120, 129–130, 136, 142, 144,
Ramus, Petrus 102 149–150, 156, 157, 175, 196, 201, 207, 209,
Ranke, Leopold von 23 215, 219, 225, 227, 259–261, 276–282,
338 Index
Roman Republic (cont.) Senate, senator 46–47, 97, 99, 103–104, 106,

284–289, 291–296, 301–304, 307, 134, 136, 209–210, 257, 260, 292, 304, 311,
311–318, 326–327 323–325
Rome, papal 14, 15, 18, 36, 48, 56, 176, 178, Sentimentalism 17, 177, 183
180–181, 226–227, 231, 289 Serfdom 18, 286, 296–297
Romulus 11, 260, 292–293 Severus, Sulpicius 228
Rosenthal, Michael 235 Seyssel, Claude de 90
Rous, Francis 134, 151 Shaftesbury, Third Earl of (Anthony Ashley
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 12, 17, 157, Cooper) 17, 146–156
160, 165, 167, 172, 176, 179, 181, 183, Shakespeare, William 282, 316
187, 283 Shechem 322
Roustan, Antoine 283 Sheridan, Thomas 154
Ruf, Jacob 276 Sicily 93, 298
Russia 214, 285 Siena 67
Rütli 269, 271 Sienicius, Nicolaus 94–95, 102, 104–105
Sigonio, Carlo 11, 16, 18, 94–97, 100, 102–103,
Sachs, Hans 278 106–107, 216–217, 222–227, 232–233
Saint Bartolomew’s Day massacre 218 Simonetta, Bonifacio 267
Saint-Just, Louis Antoine 185 Sinai, Mount 322
Saint-Ours, Jean Pierre 17, 180–184, 187 Sister Republics 1
Salamonio, Mario 15, 40–41, 56–61 Skinner, Quentin 4, 15, 133, 189, 259
Sallust 11, 51, 55, 64–65, 70, 73, 76–79, 85, Slavery 4, 77, 101, 160, 167, 191, 206–207, 247,
117–118, 121, 127, 303 252, 296, 316, 319, 324
Salomon 231, 291 Slaves: see Slavery
Salon, Paris art exhibition 17, 167, 168, 169, Social contract 60, 134
170, 175–176, 178–180, 187 Socinianism 241
Samuel 245–246 Socrates 175, 197–198, 298
Sanhedrin 225, 241, 246, 321–322, 324 Solon 11, 14, 88, 97–98, 103, 107, 136, 171,
Sarmatia 287, 303 174, 198–199, 202–204, 209–210, 287,
Sarpi, Paolo 85, 99 291–292
Savoy 271, 273 Somogitia 304
Savoy, House of 271 Sophianos, Nicolaus 91
Saxon(s) 308–311 Sovereignty, sovereign 18, 40, 44–47, 57–59,
Scaliger, Joseph 75, 98 63, 119–120, 125, 134, 194, 202, 204–205,
Schama, Simon 234 207, 236, 240, 242–247, 255, 257,
Schiffman, Zachary 26 260–261, 278–279, 284, 308–310, 322,
Schiller, Friedrich 269 325–326
Schmalkaldic War 271 Spain 14, 18, 81, 84, 116–117, 120–121, 217, 231,
Schoock, Martinus 16, 111, 113, 123–130 239, 278
Schradin, Nikolaus 263 Sparta 11, 13, 14, 16–18, 62, 78, 86, 91, 94, 97,
Schwyz 260, 262–263, 266, 268–269 100–107, 110, 112–113, 129, 136, 149–151,
Scipio 260, 278 156, 157–188, 219, 259, 292, 294, 297,
Scotland 86–87 303–304, 323
Scriverius, Petrus 114 Spiegel, Laurens Pieter van de 193–194
Sejm 294 Spinoza, Baruch 18, 235–237, 242, 249–258
Selden, John 216, 232, 236, 258 Spon, Jacob 138
Self-interest 37, 60, 79, 123, 172, 277 Stadholders, Stadholderate 113, 122–123,
Self-preservation 43, 246 125–126, 129–130, 191, 237, 242
Self-sacrifice 169, 173, 279, 301, 312 Stamp Act 309, 311
Index 339
States General, Dutch 238 Thurgau 271

Staufer dynasty 264 Tiberius 280
Steele, Richard 146 Tigurini 270
Steffens, Lincoln 214 Tischbein, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm 283
Stoa, stoicism 42–43, 73, 101, 171, 174–175 Titus 280–281
Stourhead, Wiltshire 179 Tolerance, toleration 15, 18, 197, 216, 232,
Strabo 90, 112, 266, 269 235–237, 241, 249–250, 256, 258
Strasbourg 265 Toulouse 217
Struever, Nancy 30 Trenchard, John 60, 146
Stuart, House of 308–310 Tribune of the people (Rome) 13, 41, 50, 294
Stumpf, Johannes 272–273, 284 Troy 267
Suetonius 275 Trybunal Koronny 295
Suevia 272 Tschiffeli, Johann Rudolf 284
Sulla 33 Tschudi, Aegidius 18, 268–272, 275, 284
Sundgau 265 Tübingen 289
Svitenses 264–266 Türst, Conrad 265
Swabia, Swabians, Svevi 264, 270, 273 Tyranny, tyrant 76, 82, 94, 99, 103, 106, 134,
Swabian War 262–264, 270 141, 146, 152, 195–196, 209, 276, 281–283,
Swedes 262, 269 293, 308–309, 315–316, 321–322
Swiss Central Plateau 272
Swiss Confederation: see Swiss Republic Űechtland 271
Swiss Republic, Eidgenossenschaft 1, 5, 8, 12, Ulm 264
14, 18, 95, 112, 180, 259–284 Unterwalden 268–269
Swytherus 262, 267 Uri 268–269
Sydney, Algernon 308 Urim 229
Syme, Ronald 41–42 Utopianism 10, 14, 174
Sympathy 17, 97, 157, 176, 183 Utrecht 109, 122–123, 125, 245, 247
Szlachta 286, 289–291, 296, 298–299
Vaenius, Otto 163, 167
Tacitus 11, 12, 41–42, 64, 73, 75, 78, 82, 85, 90, Valais 271–272
99, 266, 303 Valerius Maximus 275
Talbert, Richard 159 Varrus 298
Tarquinia 280 Vaud 270–271
Tarquinius Superbus 56, 276–277, 280–281 Velde, Abraham van de 235, 238, 240–242
Tell, Wilhelm 261, 269, 271, 276, 278 Velthuysen, Lambertus van 18, 235, 237, 242,
Temple, William 109 247–249, 256–258
Terror, French revolutionary 185, 187 Venice 1, 12, 14, 16, 18, 62–64, 67–71, 74,
Teutonia 264 77, 81–85, 95–97, 99–100, 103–14, 112,
Theatre 14, 18, 137, 158, 177, 277 260–261, 291, 304
Thebes 164 Venturi, Franco 2
Themistocles 278 Vien, Joseph-Marie 180
Theocracy, theocratic 14, 18, 47, 216, 232, Vienna 289
243–244, 250, 252–255, 257–258, 321 Virginia 309, 311
Theocritus 98 Virtue 2–4, 6, 14–16, 18–19, 29, 32, 34–35,
Theology, theologians 56, 114, 123, 132, 217, 38, 40, 51–52, 55, 60–61, 65, 69–70, 72,
219, 221, 224–225, 236–242, 247–248, 74–75, 80, 83, 85–86, 97, 102, 139, 146,
250–251, 253, 289, 290, 304, 322 150, 166, 170, 173–174, 179, 183, 190–192,
Theseus 202–203, 294 194–197, 199, 204, 213, 254, 257, 277–278,
Thucydides 90, 99, 127 280–282, 284–285, 287, 290, 294,
340 Index
Virtue (cont.) Wildavsky, Aron 214

296–298, 300–303, 312, 314, 316, 318, William iii, Dutch Stadholder 126, 129, 163,
326–327 237, 242
Visual arts 158–188, 260–261, 278–280, Wimpfeling, Jakob 262–263, 265, 267
283–284 Wines, Enoch 19, 326
Vita activa 300 Winkelried, Arnold von 278
Vita contemplativa 300 Witchcraft 179
Voetius, Gisbertus 123, 237–238, 242, 245, Witsius, Hermannus 235, 238–241, 248
247, 250 Witt, Johan de 123, 125, 129, 163, 242, 246
Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 172, 281–283 Witt, Ronald 27
Vossius, Gerardus 114 Wittenberg 289
Vreede, Pieter 192 Wolf, Hieronymus 92
Wood, Gordon 2, 190
Wagenaar, Jacobus 242 Württemberg 273
Walch, Sebastian 279
Walpole, Robert 308 Xenophon 88, 90, 106
Walraven, Isaac 164, 165, 185 Xylander, William 90
Walzer, Michael 214
Warren, Joseph 313 Zamoyski, Jan 304
Warren, Mercy Otis 312–313 Zbaraski, Jerzy 299
Warszewicki, Krzysztof 297 Zeeland 83, 191
Washington, George 1, 315, 319 Ziskind, Jonathan 218–219
Westminster 308 Zurich 262, 264–265, 270, 276–284
Weststeijn, Arthur 202 Zwinger, Theodore 94–95, 102
Wheler, George 138 Zwingli, Ulrich 276, 278
Whig(s) 307–308, 312, 314, 327

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Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination

Almut-Barbara Renger (Freie Universität Berlin)

Kyriakos Demetriou (University of Cyprus)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/srca

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Introduction: Classical Republicanism and Ancient

1 Renaissance Historicism and the Model of Rome in Florentine

2 The Roman Republic as a Constitutional Order in the Italian

3 Commonwealths for Preservation and Increase: Ancient Rome in Venice

4 Early Modern Greek Histories and Republican Political Thought 86

5 A Classical Confederacy: The Example of the Achaean League in the

6 From Failed Republic to Polite Polis: Ancient Athens in Seventeenth-

7 Painting Plutarch: Images of Sparta in the Dutch Republic and

8 Against Democracy: Dutch Eighteenth-Century Critics of Ancient and

9 The Hebrew Republic in Sixteenth-Century Political Debate: The

10 The Hebrew Republic in Dutch Political Thought, c. 1650–1675 234

11 The Helvetians as Ancestors and Brutus as a Model: The Classical Past

12 Classical Models in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania 285

13 America’s Antiquities: The Ancient Past in the Creation of the

6.1 Frontispiece to Charles Gildon, The History of the Athenian Society

political thought. His book manuscript The Citizenship E­ xperiment. Contesting

Wyger Velema and Arthur Weststeijn

The Making of Classical Republicanism: Syntheses

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004351387_002

Scholarship on early modern republicanism had now clearly reached

that Quentin Skinner published his Foundations of Modern Political Thought.10

­republicanism” to the world of the early modern republics suggests a consider-

of early modern republicanism was growing “fainter and more confused.”20

Early Modern Uses of the Ancient Republican Past

20 Rogers, “Republicanism,” 37.

k­ nowledge was shaped and organized by establishing parallels, which could

politics and morals on a continuous confrontation with the classics.43 Athens,

Approach and Content

This volume surveys these processes of inspiration and imagination from a

43 Chantal Grell, Le Dix-huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France 1680–1789, 2 vols. (Oxford,

individual ancient lawgivers such as Solon and Lycurgus. Particularly strong in

Poland-Lithuania. Thus, the volume continues and deepens the transnational

­particular use of the Hebrew model already originated in antiquarian stud-

examples could be used together in the creation of an entirely new state, is

Renaissance Historicism and the Model of Rome in

Ancient Rome was a central point of reference for historians in Renaissance

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004351387_003

This, in a nutshell, is the problem to be discussed in this first chapter.

The Concept of Historicism

The term “historicism” is primarily used to denote a form of historical con-

Before turning to the scholarly discussion on the problem of Renaissance

5 Beiser, German Historicist Tradition, 5–6.

­status for their discipline by characterising it as strictly empirical and objec-

The Debate on Renaissance Historicism

According to a rather widespread interpretation, Renaissance h ­ istorical

past, an attitude summarised in the Ciceronian dictum historia magistra vitae.

of anachronism into a general theory of historical relativity. At the same time,

Leonardo Bruni is the central figure in Baron’s narrative. On the basis of

­political time.”21 In comparison with their medieval predecessors, Renaissance

Bruni, Machiavelli, Guicciardini

23 Berthold L. Ullman, “Leonardo Bruni and Humanistic Historiography,” Medievalia et

the use of abstract philosophical principles.25 An element that the rhetorical

This passage is a very straightforward rhetorical praise of Roman moral and

a comprehensive history of Florence (Istorie fiorentine), and his Discorsi sopra

32 Maurizio Viroli, Machiavelli (Oxford, 1998), 97–107.

Prudent men are in the habit of saying—and not by chance or without

political thought. His book manuscript The Citizenship E xperiment. Contesting

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republicanism” to the world of the early modern republics suggests a consider-

k nowledge was shaped and organized by establishing parallels, which could

particular use of the Hebrew model already originated in antiquarian stud-

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status for their discipline by characterising it as strictly empirical and objec-

According to a rather widespread interpretation, Renaissance h istorical

political time.”21 In comparison with their medieval predecessors, Renaissance

uicciardini’s importance in the history of historical writing has been widely

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o rigin of the right of the Emperor to legislate seems to lie in a delegation of

Ptolemy’s work is not only its revolutionary, unabashed p ro-republican (and

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critical) adherent who made a large impact throughout sixteenth-century

Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620

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elanchthon) interested in the Greek church by 1600, “the Ottoman conquest