>> Hi.

This is the lecture for Machiavelli’s, The Prince and before diving into
the text itself which is deceptive, I mean it’s very short but it turns out to be an
extremely dense book. The Prince is not his only book. His other most famous
book is the Discourses on Livy, which we might describe as a Republican book
as in its deliberately concerning itself with Republican government. In addition,
there are a number of comedies he’s written. The most famous plays he wrote
were the Mandragola and Clizia. There is a novel called Belphagor the Devil,
which is about the devil getting married. So he was a wide-ranging author
and thinker. Secondly, both of the books that he is most well-known for The
Prince and the Discourses on Livy claimed to result from his long experience
of the actions of great men and the reading of histories or what we might more
accurately call the true reading of histories paying close attention to what lies
under the surface. Thirdly, while the book is often seen as a scientific treatise
on politics, it ends with an exhortation to liberate Italy from the barbarians.
The point there would be that the book really has two dimensions. It’s not
a strictly scientific text. There is a theoretical dimension, but there’s also a
practical dimension just like the writings of Hobbs or Locke it’s concerned with
both the permanent features of political life and a specific set of contemporary
problems. And then fourth many of you who have studied philosophy have often
heard Rene Descartes called the Father of Modern Philosophy. I would suggest
that you really see its true origins here in Machiavelli. Machiavelli’s analysis
of chance or fortune and his rejection of Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and
Aquinas really are the bedrock for the modern project and this in a couple of
different ways. When you look at Chapter 15, you see a complete rejection of
the idealism of the ancients and the medievals. Politics become something that
really can’t be conceived of in the kind of moral idealist terms that you find
in Aristotle or Plato. Machiavelli is going to say that those who pay attention
to what human beings ought to do instead of focusing on what they actually
do are simply going to fall prey to human beings. So he wants to say that the
idealism of the ancients, the idealism of the of the medievals is really politically
dangerous, it’s politically harmful for the leader. Secondly I would suggest by
the time you get to the end of the book you’ve seen this analysis of fortune that
develops over the course of the book. I would say that’s the first crucial step
towards the Cartesian conquest of nature. This idea that human beings can
really bend the things that are not under their control to their control. You
see this in Machiavelli first. You see it made much more explicitly scientific in
Bacon and in Aristotle. When you look at Hobbs, the final chapter of the book
that I assigned you Chapter 46 you’re going to see Hobbs give a presentation of
what the new modern philosophy is. We can speak of the relief of man’s estate,
we can speak as Rene Descartes does of the conquest of nature, or we can speak
as Machiavelli does at the end of The Prince of the battering of fortune and
they’re really all synonyms I think. So early modern philosophy starting with
Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes people like this early modern philosophy is going
to really try to establish a new relationship between science and politics and this
is sometimes difficult for us to see because we live in a world that’s been really
shaped by that relationship. If you think back to Aristotle, you think back to

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Aquinas, you think back to Plato, the practical and the theoretical or we might
say the political and the scientific or the political and philosophic. All of these
were united into one. There weren’t different areas of inquiry for Plato. Plato
doesn’t have an area of inquiry called aesthetics and another area of inquiry
called ethics and another area of inquiry called politics. Rather as a Republic
makes clear these things are all completely tied together. So the practical and
the theoretical for ancient and medieval thinkers used to be united under the
aspect of the good. They were all disciplines or what we think of them as
disciplines. It would just be one discipline for the ancients and the medievals,
the philosophy. All philosophy aimed at knowledge of the good. The practical
was to be derived from theoretical. The important point to see with the moderns
is that they really are severing that link between a philosophic concern for the
good and these very kind of practical questions. So today we tend to think
that there are two forces at work in the origins of modernity; the practical
and theoretical. We might say Machiavelli, the practical, and Descartes, the
theoretical, but we see two forces because the early moderns separated science
from politics. The idea that there is a good that unifies both the scientific and
the political approach to the world is done away with. The unifying goo has
been removed, the linchpin that has been taken out. Now what about The
Prince as a whole? At first glance it appears to be really divided into two parts.
This is a point that Leo Strauss makes in thoughts on Machiavelli. He says, well,
there seems to be a section of the science or art of princely government and then
there seems to be a discussion on the limits of art or prudence or the relation of
the arts of governing to chance, but what Strauss wants to say is that there are
really four parts when you look more closely. Part 1, Chapters 1 through 11, is
going to be concerned with the various kinds of principalities that exist and the
highest theme in this section is going to be the new principality that’s gained by
both arms and virtue. This would be Chapter 6, which takes of Moses, Theseus,
Romulus, Cyrus it’s a really fascinating and obscure discussion. From Chapters
4 through 6 ancient examples are dominant. Chapters 8 through 11 are going
to be concerned with new princes in old states. Chapters 10 and 11 contain the
only modern examples and also the only non-Italian examples. Chapter 11 is
going to introduce ecclesiastical principalities as well, which were not mentioned
in Chapter 1. Now Part 2 according to Strauss is going to be concerned with
The Prince and the enemies of The Prince. This is going to be Chapters 12,
13, and 14, and he suggests that 12 and 13 indicate an assent from the worst
kind of arms to the best and there is also an assent from modern examples to
ancient ones. Ancient examples in Machiavelli seem to be better or higher than
the modern examples because they involve the instantiation of a new state or
a new regime rather than the seizing of an existing one. They are also going
to be the highest examples of the founding. And I might suggest on top of
this that the key to understanding what Machiavelli is doing is really going to
depend on grasping what it is he thinks is the crucial distinction between the
modern world and the ancient world. I’m not going to anything about that right
now, but I think it will start to come out over the course of the discussion. In
Part 3 Chapters 15 through 23, Strauss suggests that this subject this is really

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concerned with The Prince and his subjects or friends and starting with Chapter
15, you’re going to see an explicit break with the ancients, which you’re also
going to find in this section. This is going to be Chapter 22. You’re going to see
a kind of prefiguring of the idea of a commercial Republic, the kind of thing that
we see in John Locke, the kind of thing that we think of as the modern Republic.
There’s going to be a short, almost throwaway paragraph in Machiavelli that
presciently describes it. Part 4 he suggests is going to be Chapters 24 through
26 and this is concerned with prudence and chance. Chapter 25 deals with
the subject of prudence and chance most explicitly, and he points out 24 and 26
invoke contemporary Italian politics in their title. Now we can turn to the epistle
dedicatory. This would have been a standard feature of a lot of books written in
this time period. Machiavelli’s book is dedicated to Lorenzo and maybe the first
thing we should note about it is that Machiavelli does something a little strange
here. He begins by suggesting that what he’s doing is new. Just think about the
strength of that redundancy with which he opens the book usually in most cases
he writes. What Machiavelli does in The Prince is not what is usually done.
Those who seek favor he suggests provide what they, which is to say the low,
the ones who need favor, hold most dear, but Machiavelli isn’t going to quite
do this. As fealty he doesn’t offer treasure, but equipment and the Italian word
he uses has the connotation of military equipment. So he’s offering something
useful for statecraft. What equipment does he offer? He offers knowledge of the
deeds of great men, which he has learned from two sources, his experience of
contemporary political life of which he was a part and his continual study of and
reflection on the ancient things. He also does not claim to have knowledge of all
things or of the permanent things, but simply of the human things derived from
his own experience and his own reflection on the ancient world. There is a kind
of narrowing of scope here. I suggested earlier that when we look at the early
moderns we’re looking at the point where what used to be a unified whole the
inquiry into the good starts to be separated and you separate the scientific and
the philosophic on the one hand from the political on the other hand. We can
see this already in Machiavelli. His cope is narrow, his inquiry is a lower sort of
inquiry, he’s not concerned with the higher things such as the platonic good or
the nature of being, or the nature of God or the gods. And like I said in Chapter
15 you’re going to see Machiavelli present a turn away from the imagined ideals
of Plato or an Aristotle in favor of what we sometimes call the effectual truth.
Now there’s also an implication that’s being made here in the epistle dedicatory.
Lorenzo does not know the deeds of great men. Therefore, he is ignorant either of
those better than himself or of himself if Lorenzo is actually great which leads
us to ask the question, how could he be both great and ignorant of himself?
There’s going to be let’s call an insulting subtlety to this epistle dedicatory that
Machiavelli would not have put in here, this insulting subtext, if he thought that
Lorenzo was actually bright enough to pick up on this. So what does Machiavelli
say about the book itself? He says it is unworthy of the presence of Lorenzo’s
magnificence. You can take that in a number of ways. The book is not good
enough for Lorenzo or maybe Lorenzo is not good enough for the book. He says
that the book contains all that he knows and understands and he says that in

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order to know the people, to understand the people you have to be a Prince. In
order to understand the Prince you have to be one of the people. So there’s an
implication here. Lorenzo does not know himself and he does not know his own
nature. Machiavelli also claims that he has not employed the art of rhetoric.
Nevertheless, the book turns out to be full of rhetorical trickery. The most
obvious of which is his continual alternation between uses of these Italian second
person familiar and the formal second person. This is something that de Alvarez
continually draws your attention to. This is one of the reasons that de Alvarez
translation is superior to many alternative translations. This continual switch
on Machiavelli’s part is deliberate but many translations obscure it. Finally we
can say Machiavelli claims that the lack of ornamentation is meant to prevent the
book from being honored for anything other than the “variety” of the matter and
the weight of the theme. And again I would ask you to consider for yourselves
why would someone make such a claim at the beginning of the book? In other
words, given that it’s Machiavelli a guy who certainly deserves at least some of
his reputation, should we take his claim that this book is devoid of rhetorical
ornamentation at face value or not? Does he sincerely mean that he thinks it is
devoid of rhetorical ornamentation or is he trying to throw the unwary reader
off guard? And, if so, what is he intending in doing so? Finally, note that he
mentions in the last paragraph Lorenzo’s fortune and other unnamed qualities,
but not his virtues. With Machiavelli what he does not say it is often going to
be just as important as, and sometimes more important than, what he does say.
If Machiavelli is praising Lorenzo for his fortune but not for his other virtues,
he is suggesting that Lorenzo is not a natural Prince in the sense of being a
naturally ruling sort possessed of the appropriate excellences for a Prince but
instead he is a Prince by natural inheritance, which is to say fortune. It’s not
his own virtue that has gotten him where he is rather he has simply won the
lottery of birth. Furthermore, note that Machiavelli hopes Lorenzo is going to
come to know the greatness, which is fortune and other qualities promise. Not
what this means depends entirely on what Machiavelli’s assessment of Lorenzo
is. At this point we seem to know only that he thinks Lorenzo is incapable
of knowing himself due to his elevated station and that he occupies his present
station chiefly because of fortune. So the greatness which these qualities promise
could be almost anything and the statement itself turns out on reflection to be
a thinly veiled barb. And as I’ve suggested the subtle irony of the entire epistle
dedicatory gives us a sense of what Machiavelli’s assessment of Lorenzo might
be. If he really thought Lorenzo possessed subtlety and intellect, he might not
risk the thinly veiled and implied insults toward him that he engages in here.
Now turning to the text itself. Chapter 1 begins with Machiavelli making a
series of divisions. All states and dominions over men he says have been either
republics, which he’s going to deal with in the discourses or principates. All
principates have been either hereditary or new. All new principates have either
been wholly new, in other words you’ve got an original founding or they been
adjoined, which is to say that they are conquered or added. Those who have
been adjoined, conquered or added are either used to living free or used to
living under a Prince. They are either taken with one’s own arms or taken with

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the arms of others. And they are either taken by fortune or taken by virtue.
All of this leads us to expect exactly the subject matter we find in Chapters 2
through 7. Chapters 8 through 11 which concern things like achieving power
through criminality or the ecclesiastical principate these come as something of
a surprise. He’s not mentioned them in the beginning here. Now when you
get to 2, Chapter 2, he says that in maintaining hereditary states difficulties
are few provided that the modes and orders of one’s ancestors are retained.
One example that always occurs to me was the ancient Egyptian Akhenaton
who brought about innovations in religion and, therefore, died very, very young.
The natural Prince is simply going to be less offensive says Machiavelli as long as
he avoids extraordinary vice. Lastly he says that the antiquity of a dominion can
obscure the causes of innovation. There’s also a discussion of this in Plutarch’s
Life of Lycurgus. Plutarch suggests that the law as established by Lycurgus
for ancient Sparta was of such a character that innovation was possible when
necessary, but it wouldn’t look like innovation. Lastly, Machiavelli says that
the antiquity, sorry, I already mentioned this, he says antiquity of dominion
obscures the causes of innovation, yes, but he’s going to contradict this when
you get to Chapter 5 and you might compare this last point to Rousseau in
the second discourse. Machiavelli is going say that there are fewer difficulties
to be found in the maintenance of the hereditary principate as opposed to the
new principate because as long as the hereditary Prince maintains the regime of
his ancestors to which the people are accustomed, they won’t have any reason
to oppose him. This along with waiting for the opportune moment for action
is sufficient to maintain such a state. Now, of course, the question becomes
how would one recognize the opportune moment? The hereditary Prince has to
maintain the old forms and act only at the opportune moment. The recognition
along with the possibility of successful action, of course, is going to depend
on what Machiavelli is going to refer to as virtue and at this point I should
mention that what Machiavelli refers to as virtue is usually translated by other
translators in various ways. Sometimes they’ll say it’s strength, sometimes
means capacity, sometimes it means competence, sometimes it means virtue,
but one of the great things about the de Alvarez translation is that de Alvarez
doesn’t get in your way. Machiavelli uses the same word constantly, virtue.
It may have different significations in a different context, but Machiavelli is
choosing this word deliberately and he is expecting you to be able to follow it
out and understand his new teaching on what virtue or virtue is. So Machiavelli
says the hereditary Prince maintains his state not on the basis of virtue alone but
also on the basis of fortune, the fortune of birth, just like we saw in the case of
Lorenzo. The holy new Prince of a holy new principate lacks the fortune which
the hereditary Prince relies upon. The holy new Prince must have the virtue
that allows him to recognize the opportune moment and to act successfully
and this virtue must continue in the maintenance of the state. This is not the
case with the hereditary Prince whose fortunate birth provides some degree of
security. Machiavelli cites the Duke of Ferrara who was able to resist both
the Venetians and Pope Julius simply because he was as he puts it ancient in
that dominion. As de Alvarez points out in his notes on Page 10, Machiavelli

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is speaking of two different Dukes of Ferrara. Machiavelli’s point is that the
dominion is already secure for the hereditary Prince so the brutal actions that
might be required to secure it are no longer necessary. The hard work of creating
and securing the state has already been done. The hereditary Prince merely has
to maintain it. Thus, Machiavelli notes that ordinary vice will be tolerated but
extraordinary vice will bring about the ruin of the hereditary Prince. As long
as he is able to avoid the extraordinary vices that will encourage hatred by the
people, they will have a natural predisposition of goodwill toward him. Finally,
Machiavelli notes that the combination of ancient origin and lengthy continuity
of the regime will obscure both the memories and the causes of innovations
because as he puts it, one change always leaves the two thing for the building
of another. One change always holds open the possibility of another chance
but the initial change was created without support. By two thing he’s referring
to the brick you’ll see on the sides of older buildings so that you can easily
join a new building onto them. The maintenance of the regime then comes to
light as requiring both innovation and the rejection of innovation or to put it
another way innovation and the obscuring of innovation. If it becomes apparent
to the people that the regime is changing, their loyalty or connection to it or
faith in it may be undermined. Nevertheless, circumstances may be such that
the regime must change. Therefore, those changes or innovations have to be
obscured, they have to be hidden. This question of hiding the necessary, hiding
the things that are necessary to be done is going to be a recurring one in The
Prince. Now in Chapter 3 the mix principate combines the old and the newly
conquered, but there is a natural difficulty he says here. People take up arms
against their current masters thinking that they’re going to benefit from a new
master. So there’s going to be a natural desire to innovate for the sake of
improving one’s own lot. This leads us, however, to deceive ourselves, for we
inevitably experience a change for the worse and the reason it’s a change for
the worse is that the new master must out of necessity, injure those whom he’s
conquered. The difficulty is based on the natural and ordinary necessity to
harm those you conquer. The great solution of this is going to be presented
with Ramiro d’Orco later in the book. Ramiro is sent into do all of the horrible
things that Cesare needs done in the Romagna and then Cesare is going to
publicly punish Ramiro for doing them. Therefore, Cesare gets all of the dirty
work done and gets to keep his own hands clean and, in fact, take the credit for
being the one who has liberated the people Romagna from the brutal Ramiro
d’Orco. Anyway countries that have rebelled Machiavelli says in Chapter 3
when they are reacquired or more easily held, again, because the rebellion gives
the ruler a pretense for applying what he calls strong medicine, which is to
say brutality in the elimination of malcontents. Rebellion allows the ruler to
consolidate power and eliminate problems and potential problems, and also we
should note what Machiavelli suggests later in Chapter 3 about the Romans.
They saw trouble before it was trouble and they were able to secure themselves
by striking in advance. For war, Machiavelli teaches, is never to be avoided.
It can only be deterred, I mean it can only be deferred to the advantage of
the enemy. Conquered states if annexed to states they were anciently a part

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of, Machiavelli says, or either of the same province and tongue or they’re not.
Also states that share a language in province and are unused to free life are
going to be easier to acquire and hold than those that have lived freely. Among
those that are unused to freedom all that is required is the extinction of the
line of their hereditary Prince. To give you a recent example, you can’t just
kill Saddam Hussein, you need to kill Uday and Qusay as well. Once that’s
done because of the unity and customs of tongue as long as you don’t alter
the way of life people are going to live quietly. So what Machiavelli is saying
is that when you are dealing with a people that have been tyrannized you kill
their tyrants, you kill their royalty but you keep their laws, taxes and social
arrangements the same and doing so in a very short time will overcome the
mixed character of the old and new principates. Yet another crucial point in
Chapter 3, the desire to acquire is both natural and ordinary. Human nature
is oriented toward acquisition. This is a crucial difference between Machiavelli
and the ancients. Aristotle famously says that all men by nature desire to know.
This is in the metaphysics. Machiavelli says all human beings by nature desire
to acquire, and he closes the chapter after going through the five errors of King
Louis by pointing out that in his own experience the French did not understand
politics or the things of the state. If they had, they would never have allowed
the church to come into greater power. In Chapter 4, Machiavelli begins by
noting that in light of the difficulties he described previously we might marvel
at the fact of Alexander the Great’s nearly complete mastery of Asia in only a
few years. Immediately, thereafter, he die. At this point Machiavelli suggests
it would have been reasonable that upon Alexander’s death the entire Empire
should have rebelled. Nonetheless he says Alexander’s successors were able to
hold it and the only difficulties they faced were rooted in their own ambitions.
He responds that all of the principates that we remember are governed in two
different modes, and this was he had not previously mentioned this sort of
distinction. It wasn’t promised in Chapter 1 but it’s going to turn out to be
especially important. One way of governing is governance by a Prince where all
others are his servants helping him govern, withholding their positions only by
his grace. There is only one Lord and all are his servants. The other way of
governing is by a Prince and barons who have their rank, not by the grace of the
Prince but by their own ancient blood. In other words, a Prince and a nobility
who have their own states and subjects who hold and those subjects hold the
barons and lords in natural affection. In this case, there’s a Prince, but there
are also many lords with their own jurisdiction. The first way is ultimately more
secure. The servants of the Prince will be obeyed by the people as ministers
and functionaries. They’re not going to be loved the way the barons might be
so there’s not going to be a question of divided loyalties. The two kingdoms
Machiavelli presents as emblematic of this are the kingdom of the Turk and
France and he says it’s easier to hold the kingdom of the Turk than it is to hold
that of France but it’s easier to seize the kingdom of France than that of the
Turk. In the kingdom of the Turk, Machiavelli says the people don’t have these
divided loyalties. You don’t have independent barons and lords and things like
that. Consequently, it’s going to be harder to take them, but once they’re taken

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is going to be easier to hold them. All being slaves he says and obliged to the
Sultan they’re going to be corrupted with more difficulty and even if they could
be corrupted as ministers rather than barons, the people wouldn’t owe them
affection or loyalty. They are of no value. The kingdom of the Turk is going
to be difficult to break he says, but once it’s been broken on the field of battle
all that’s going to remain is to extinguish the royal bloodline. The presence of
the nobility in France is going to make it much easier to conquer because the
nobility can be corrupted just as the Turkish minister can, but the nobility bring
with it a state and people who were loyal to them. Thus, a state like France is
going to be easier to conquer but it’s going to be more difficult to hold. The
noble are going to retain their power base or state from which they granted
you, the conqueror, aid. The fact is that the noble cannot be extinguished and
they can never be satisfied. Human nature tends and as we saw, right, human
nature tends in the direction of wanting to throw off a present master for the
sake of the future one. The noble may get rid of one Prince thinking that the
new Prince is going to be easier on them but that turns out not to be true.
The state is going to be lost then whenever the noble recognize the opportune
moment to act. Let’s see. So the only threat to retaining the kingdom after
Alexander’s death turns out to be the disorders that arise among his successors.
They provoke its dissolution, not the people. Regimes like that of the French
are not going to be so quiet. Thus, Spain, France and Greece he says all rebelled
against Roman rule as long as the memory of the many principates endured.
As long as they can remember their former independence, once those memories
were forgotten, however, they became secure territories, but there’s a problem
here that you’re going to have to just keep in mind it’s going to emerge over the
rest of the book and that problem is going to be memories of ancient liberty.
In the next chapter, Machiavelli is going to say that men will forget the loss of
their fathers or their patrimony sooner than they forget that memory of ancient
and lost liberty. The memory of lost liberty presents a greater danger than
the remnant of royal blood. Republics will destroy you if you try to conquer
them in a way that monarchies won’t. Machiavelli on the subject of royal blood
simply says that the blood, with the blood of their Lords extinguished, the
people became Holy Roman and would not recognize non-Romans. How is such
a thing accomplished? We might think in light of his earlier discussions that this
is going to be accomplished through colonies, but that’s going to be modified
too in the next chapter when he’s going to advise something different. We can
also note that Greece was always a problem for Rome. They may have been
able to extinguish the memories of ancestral freedom elsewhere in the Roman
Empire, but they never managed to do it in Greek, in Greece. The glories of
Athens and Sparta will never be forgotten. In Chapter 5, he says there are
three modes of administering cities. You can ruin them, you can go to live there
as the Turk does or you can let the city live under its own laws while paying
tribute having it governed by a friendly oligarchy. This is what the Spartans
did to Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and he’s going to give you
a comparison of Rome and Sparta and there are a few points to take away from
this one of which I’ve already made. Republics must be utterly destroyed he

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says or they’re going to destroy you. If you conquer a Republic, you have to
destroy it. Secondly, he says that the rule of law is humane, but it is somehow
limited, and he says the ancient modes and orders of a free city are always going
to be a cause for rebellion. Cities that are used to being ruled by Princes in
the sense of the Sultan, however, are going to be slavish in character. They’re
use to obedience and they consequently can’t rule themselves any more than
they can come to agreement about choosing a new ruler. Now in Chapter 6,
there is as I said at the start of this lecture, there is an enormous amount going
on in Chapter 6. One of the key questions is how should we think about the
linking of Moses, Cyrus, Romulus and Theseus? I’m going to try to go into
this extensively. Secondly, this chapter introduces the armed profit was to be
ordinary, reasonable and natural. This chapter is also the first to make virtue
thematic and that’s going to prove to be significant. This chapter also takes up
the most ancient foundings, which has the most. I’m sorry I had to pause it
so I could get at some comments I’ve written up on this chapter. This chapter
is very suggestive and it raises a great many questions, possibly more than it
actually answers. Machiavelli begins by saying that no one should marvel, which
is to say no one should wonder or be astounded if he talks about fantastic deeds.
De Alvarez suggests that this means no one should take seriously the mythical
story surrounding these foundings. Politics doesn’t deal with the miraculous
and wonderful. It deals with the ordinary. This is also the introduction of the
idea of the founder of a state as a prophet and you’re going to have to give some
thought to exactly what Machiavelli means by that. It’s clear what might be
meant if we call Moses a prophet. Judaism and Christianity or Jerusalem and
Rome both rest on a foundation established by Moses, or if you prefer, by God
working through Moses. It’s much less clear in the case of the other men named
Romulus, Cyrus and Theseus. We might also mention at this point that two
of these are biblical and two of them are not biblical. The biblical are Moses
and Cyrus. The nonbiblical are Romulus and Theseus. Cyrus is presented as
being animated by the Lord in some sense. So what does Machiavelli say? He
says the armed profit is ordinary, reasonable and natural. Machiavelli claims at
the start that men always walk in the same paths. If you look at the discourses
on Livy in the very beginning, he announced that he’s trying to do something
new, he suggests the same thing here in The Prince as well. Machiavelli talks
about the dangers that are involved with creating new modes and orders. This
chapter is also the first to make virtue, whatever that turns out to be, thematic.
Human beings are always going to imitate he says, but they can’t live up to
the virtue of those whom they imitate. So he counsels that the prudent person
should imitate only the most excellent men and if your virtue doesn’t reach the
level of the excellent man’s virtue at least you’re going to have the odor of it.
You have to aim high and hit low. So, Machiavelli suggests that the difficulty
of maintaining the holy new principate is linked to the degree of virtue of the
person who is going to hold it. Who’s going to hold it? This is the founder of
the principate. When a private man becomes a Prince, he says, it’s the result of
either great fortune or great virtue. Both fortune and virtue can obviate a great
many obstacles, but the one who relies more on virtue and less on fortune is

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more secure. Later on in the book he says that one of the great mistakes is to fall
thinking someone will be around to pick you up. That’s to rely on fortune. The
lack of another state he says is also beneficial because it forces the Prince to only
adopt the mode of the Turk, but this is simply to say that the circumstances of
the holy new Prince are more conducive to the establishment and maintenance
of a new principate. Now, of course, the question you might ask is what about
Moses? Moses is the founder of new modes and orders, but he doesn’t live to
see the establishment of Israel. He dies outside of the Promised Land. There
may be all sorts of reasons for that. So what does Machiavelli do next? He lists
four people who become Princes through their virtue. Moses, Cyrus, Romulus
and Theseus. Did Moses become Prince through his virtue. You have to think
this through for yourself. So virtue comes to life here as the capacity to perform
a kind of given function. The Prince’s virtue is his ability to rule. So what’s
the point he’s making here? Well, the first point we can take away from this is
that both virtue and occasion are necessary. If there is no occasion, then there’s
no possibility for great deeds. And then there’s some curious things going on
here that need to be thought through. If you look at the bottom of 33, the
implication seems to be that all of these people are worthy to speak with God.
If the foundings of any of these examples are dubious, then so was the founding
of Moses. Would Israel then become just another kingdom? Either that or is
God the true founder and not Moses? And if that’s the case, then Moses is
not fit to be in the company of these others, but Machiavelli has already called
Moses excellent and spoken of him as having become Prince by virtue rather
than fortune. So you have to ask yourself if the reliance on the Lord is really just
reliance on fortune and what such a suggestion would imply about Moses. Then
Machiavelli mentioned Savonarola this is on Pages 34 and 35. Christianity he
suggests, disarms, and Savonarola fails because he lacks arms. Machiavelli wants
to say the unarmed prophet always fails, but there is, of course, an example of
an unarmed prophet who conquered and that will be Christ. So we would have
to think through what it really means to be unarmed. Perhaps there is a sense in
which Machiavelli would say Christ is armed. This chapter is the central division
of the first division of the book. It takes up what is most ancient and what is
least ordinary, and he says Moses, Cyrus, Romulus and Theseus came to their
positions by virtue rather than fortune. This is at the top of 33. Machiavelli
immediately drops Moses from the discussion, however, saying Moses was a mere
executor of divine will who should be admired because of the grace that made
him worthy to speak with God. No mention is made at that point of his virtue.
Machiavelli then claims that fortune provided these people with nothing other
than the occasion which gave them a matter of people that they could impose
order or form upon. They had something in front of them that they could
organize. He concludes the paragraph with the claim that without occasion,
without this opportune moment, their virtue would have come to nothing and
without virtue the occasion would’ve been in vain. You need to have both. The
last full paragraph we can note omits God, occasion or fortune made them happy
and their virtue allowed them to recognize their fortune and their fatherland
benefited from it. If we take this account and we apply it to Moses, then that

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suggests that Moses recognized the opportunity before him, he had the virtue to
take advantage of it and his fatherland benefited from this. God on this account
would be unnecessary. The alternative perhaps suggested by Chapter 25 would
be that God, fortune and chance are somehow all synonyms or that fortune and
chance replace God. You’ll notice he does this in the first paragraph of Chapter
25, or that the conquest of nature, which is the conquest of fortune or chance
as much as possible, is in some sense the conquest of God however we might
understand that. So we have to ask if God, is the ecclesiastical principate of
the church perhaps is the tyrant that Machiavelli wants to seek to liberate us
from. De Alvarez points out that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus and Theseus founded
kingdoms and not Republics, but two of those orders which happened also to
be cities, Rome and Athens, did become Republics. If Rome and Athens have
something in common, then perhaps Machiavelli is also suggesting that Israel
and Persia may in some respect have something in common or be the same and
Machiavelli does suggest that Moses and Cyrus are not discrepant from one
another. Yet when we consider Cyrus and the others in their actions and their
orders, Machiavelli says that they’re not discrepant from Moses, but this is to
say that in their deeds and orderings they were like Moses and the deeds and
orderings of Moses were like theirs, which is to make it explicit than to say that
the deeds of Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus and Moses are all somehow alike. But
Moses spoke to God, if only to his back. Cyrus was inspired by God as 1 through
8 the Lord inspired King Cyrus of Persia to allow for and aid in the rebuilding
of the temple and the restoration of the Jews to Israel. Since the condition
for the rebuilding of the temple is the establishment of the Persian Empire by
Cyrus, this too must have been inspired by the Lord. So you look at Isaiah 45,
1 through 3 thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus whom he has taken by
his right hand to subdue nations before him and strip the loins of kings to force
gateways before him that their gates be closed no more, I will go before you
leveling the heights. I will shatter the bronze gateway and smash the iron bars.
You might also compare this to Locke on the appeal to heaven in the second
treatise on government. So Romulus and Theseus don’t have any connection to
God, Moses and Cyrus are both described as having a conversation with God.
So we have to ask how Romulus, Theseus, how are these people, like Moses? All
of the four major examples in this chapter create empires. Moses and Cyrus with
the alleged aid of the Lord, Romulus and Theseus without his aid. Romulus and
Theseus found kingdoms that become Republics and achieve their greatness as
Republic, Democratic Athens, Republican Rome, while Cyrus forms the tyranny
that Machiavelli referred to in Chapter 4 as the kingdom of Darius easily ruled
because it’s slavish in character and Moses founds Israel, which is to say, he
establishes the modes and orders that gave rise to the ecclesiastical principate
or the church. Neither Moses nor Cyrus found Republics nor do they found
regimes that give rise to republics. The Republic is one extreme in the rule of
one human being is the other. Now Josephus in his book the Antiquities credits
God for stirring up the spirit of Cyrus to proclaim himself as the fulfillment of
Israelite prophecy. De Alvarez mentions this in his excellent commentary on
The Prince the Machiavellian Enterprise. This would mean that both Cyrus

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and Moses are like in that they both have God as their preceptor and they
establish order in accordance with God. So we would then have to ask what
is the status of Israel and Persia? Israel always claimed to be a regime for a
chosen people. Persia, on the other hand tried to claim dominion over all the
earth. De Alvarez suggests that Cyrus does not speak to God face-to-face, but
if we think of the text of Exodus, neither does Moses when Moses asked God,
can I see your face? God tells him no. God keeps his back turned to Moses.
Nevertheless, Moses can be said to have had more direct communication with
God than Cyrus. Yet Machiavelli presents them as being of peace with Romulus
and Theseus and presents all of them as having achieved what they achieved
through the combination of fortune and virtue, which is the capacity to recognize
and take advantage of fortune. Now you have to ask yourself is Machiavelli
silently and unobtrusively replacing God with fortune? New princes he goes
on to say acquire with difficulty, but they hold with ease. The difficulty stems
from the necessity of imposing new modes and orders. Nothing he says is more
difficult and more dangerous than this because one must necessarily offend those
who have profited by the old modes and orders. So the question then that we
might ask ourselves is whether the would be innovator depends on himself or on
others. Put another way, the question is whether the one who aims to establish
new modes and orders relies on his own virtue or upon fortune whether he has to
beg or pray, or is truly able to force his new modes and orders onto the people.
Those who depend on fortune, on others and must always come, he says, and
must beg must always come to nothing. They’re going to be ruined. Those
who rely on themselves and on force he says will rarely be in danger. Armed
profits conquer, unarmed prophets fail. What does this mean? Does he mean
this literally? What are we to understand by modes and orders? To understand
this entire section we really need to answer that and the modes and orders
seem to be the political arrangements of the principate. They somehow include
the character of the people which the attentive reader has already noticed is
shaped by the regime for Machiavelli just like what he says about monarchical
and Republican role in the previous chapter. Machiavelli goes on to say that
the people are fickle. They can easily be persuaded, but the maintenance of
their persuasion requires something more, it requires force. Savonarola, he is
suggesting fails because he lacks force. He couldn’t force the people to believe
once again in his new modes and orders. Moses ,Cyrus, Theseus and Romulus
however, all have the capacity to force belief; Savonarola does not. So we’d
have to think about the differences between them here. We might also think
about the American founding era. Many sermons in the prerevolutionary era
emphasize the overlap between religious and political virtue. The contrasting
view would be someone like St. Augustine who suggested the Christian ought
to endure the worst regime provided it doesn’t interfere with the exercise of his
faith. This is an Augustine city of God. De Alvarez claims that the turn to
the armed profit on Machiavelli’s part is really just an emphasizing the need
to rule imperfect men. The unarmed prophet, the founder of new modes and
orders with a strictly otherworldly direction, presumes that human nature has
changed or can change. And at this point I’ll stop talking about Chapter 6. I’ll

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pause it again and we can move on a little bit further. This is as I’ve said this
is an extremely dense book. I’m not going to touch on every chapter. I’m really
just going to touch on a few of the more important ones.

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