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5 MOTIVATION AT WORK
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
This is the first of two chapters on motivation, behavior, and performance. This chapter
addresses internal and process theories of motivation, beginning with individual needs theories.
Next, it presents Herzberg's two-factor theory, and then concludes with discussions of two
individual-environment process theories of motivation, including equity theory and expectancy
theory.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
1 Define motivation and articulate different views of how individuals are motivated at work.
Motivation is the process of arousing and sustaining goal-directed behavior. Motivation theories
may be broadly classified into internal, process, and external theories. A comprehensive
approach to understanding motivation, behavior, and performance must consider three elements
of the work situation—the individual, the job, and the work environment—and how these
elements interact.
3 Discuss how the needs for achievement, power, and affiliation influence an individual’s
behavior in the workplace.
David McClelland identified three learned or acquired needs, called manifest needs. The
need for achievement encompasses excellence, competition, challenging goals, persistence,
and overcoming difficulties. The need for power includes the desire to influence others, the
urge to change people or events, and the wish to make a difference in life. The need for
affiliation means an urge to establish and maintain warm, close, intimate relationships with
others.
KEY TERMS
motivation 75
psychoanalysis 76
self-interest 76
Theory X 78
POWERPOINT GUIDE
Introduction
Slide 1 – Learning Outcomes
LO1 Define motivation and articulate different views of how individuals are motivated at
work.
LO2 Explain Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and its two main modifications.
LO3 Discuss how the needs for achievement, power, and affiliation influence an individual’s
behavior in the workplace.
Slide 25 – New Ideas: Eustress, Strength, Slide 27 – Beyond the Book: Does
Hope Motivation Work?
Slide 26 – New Ideas: Positive Energy and
Full Engagement
Slide 29 – Social Exchange & Equity Slide 32 – Equity and Inequity at Work
Theory Slide 33 – Strategies for Resolution of
Slide 30 – Individual-Organizational Inequity
Exchange Slide 34-36 – New Perspectives on Equity
Slide 31 – Adam’s Theory of Inequity Theory
The workforce is increasingly diverse. Knowledge of motivation theories can help managers
use a variety of techniques for motivating employees with a wide range of needs, interests,
and abilities.
2. What are the five categories of motivational needs described by Maslow? Give an
example of how each can be satisfied.
3. What are the Theory X and Theory Y assumptions about people at work? How do they
relate to the hierarchy of needs?
Theory X is a skeptical, negative view of individuals and their relationship to tasks and work.
Theory Y views individuals as highly motivated and responsible for their actions. Theory X
individuals would be concerned with the lower three levels of Maslow's needs, and Theory Y
individuals are concerned with the higher-order needs.
McClelland identifies needs for achievement, power, and affiliation. These needs are
learned. Individuals and cultures differ in their levels of these needs.
5. How do hygiene and motivational factors differ? What are the implications of the two-
factor theory for managers?
Hygiene factors are factors such as supervision, work policies, and working conditions.
Hygiene factors can prevent dissatisfaction, but do not lead to satisfaction. Motivational
factors include a sense of achievement, recognition, and responsibility. Motivational factors
may lead to satisfaction. Managers need to realize that both contribute to workers' attitudes
toward the job.
6. What are two new ideas in motivation that managers are using?
The first of two new ideas in motivation being used by managers focuses on eustress,
strength, and hope. This perspective focuses on individuals’ interpretations of events. The
second centers on positive energy and full engagement. In this view, the manager’s task is to
help individuals learn to manage their energy so that they can experience periodic renewal
and recovery and thus build positive energy and capacity for work.
This is similar to the research question that asks what motivates supervisors versus what
motivates employees. Most of us think our motives are superior and deeper than the rest of
the organizational members. No one wants to be merely normal or average. Most of us may
share lower level needs, but there may be differences in the higher level needs.
2. At what level in Maslow's hierarchy of needs are you living? Are you basically satisfied
at this level?
One of the difficulties with this question is that we typically move up and down the scale in
different phases of our lives, or different surroundings. Students may not grasp this readily.
3. Assume you are leaving your current job to look for employment elsewhere. What will
you look for that you do not have now? If you do not have a job, assume you will be
looking for one soon. What are the most important factors you will seek?
This should relate to where students are on their needs hierarchy. Encourage students to use
the terminology of motivational factors that they learned in this chapter. Students may also
use equity theory and expectancy theory concepts to explain what they seek in a job.
4. If you were being inequitably paid in your job, which strategy do you think would be the
most helpful to you in resolving the inequity? What tactics would you consider using?
Adams's Theory of Inequity is a logical approach to this problem. The resolution of inequity
strategy could be to alter the input, to leave the organization, to alter the comparison other's
input, or any of the ways of restoring equity. Students can also compare themselves in terms
of equity sensitivity, benevolence, or entitlement.
5. Do you believe you can do a better job of working or studying than you are currently
doing? Do you think you would get more pay and benefits or better grades if you did a
The first portion of the question relates to tangible, self-motivated goals. Most students will
answer yes to being able to do a better job. Occasionally students are so overloaded that they
have assessed the obligations in their lives (work, school, and family) and determined that
they will have to balance their efforts. The underlying theme is whether all of their current
motivation rests in predicable, tangible, outcomes.
6. What important experiences have contributed to your moral and ethical development?
Are you working to further your own moral maturity at this time?
This is a difficult, but thought-provoking question, to answer in class. This question is better
for a homework review question, and is an excellent question for an essay exam. Students
can assess their own level of moral maturity.
7. Prepare a memo describing the two employees you work with who most closely operate
according to Theory X and Theory Y assumptions about human nature. Be as specific
and detailed in your description as you can, using quotes and/or observational examples.
Students who are not in a work setting could describe other students with whom they have
worked closely (e.g., in group projects). During discussion of these memos, it would be
interesting to also discuss how managers in each of the work settings dealt with each of these
employees.
8. Develop an oral presentation about the most current management practices in employee
motivation. Find out what at least four different companies are doing in this area. Be
prepared to compare these practices with the theory and research in the chapter.
This is an excellent opportunity for students to learn about motivational programs that are
actually being used by companies. During class discussion encourage students to evaluate
the effectiveness of these programs based on the theories and research from the chapter.
9. Interview a manager and prepare a memo summarizing the relative importance she or he
places on the needs for achievement, power, and affiliation. Include (a) whether these
needs have changed over time and (b) what job aspects satisfy these needs.
In class, students can compare the perspectives of the different managers they interviewed.
Encourage the students to see if a pattern emerges among the managers regarding the
importance of these needs. Discuss why students think there is or is not a pattern.
Jim’s options are to retain Bill and try to find a way to motivate him, or fire Bill due to his
substandard performance.
Consequential—If Jim can find a way to motivate Bill, the result will be that Bill returns to
his formerly excellent performance. Bill will keep his job and the company will benefit from
his contribution. If Jim fires Bill, Bill will be out of work and the company will have to find
someone to replace him, which could mean a costly search and substantial training at worst,
or a series of internal changes at best.
Rule-based—Jim’s obligation is to do what is best for the company, whether that means
finding a way to motivate Bill again or firing him. This view of ethics is somewhat irrelevant
in this particular situation because it doesn’t drive the decision.
Character—Jim has always valued Bill as an employee and likes him as a person. He seems
to be the kind of manager who tries to do everything he can to help his employees succeed.
Retaining Bill and trying again to find a way to motivate him would be consistent with these
traits, while firing him would contradict these traits.
Jim should retain Bill and try again to find a way to motivate him, or at least find out if
Bill’s change in performance has something to do with the departure of his youngest son
for college. Although Jim has to be careful about prying into Bill’s home situation, he
already knows about the youngest son’s departure and Jim and Bill are likely to be friends
who discuss personal issues anyway. This course of action allows Jim to act in an ethical
manner based on both the consequential and character views of ethics.
This challenge provides an opportunity to discuss the implications for work behavior in
organizations due to different orientations toward the Protestant ethic. Also, discuss the
different approaches to managing and motivating that might be needed for an employee with
a pro-Protestant ethic score and an employee with a non-Protestant ethic score. The student
portion of the activity is on the review card in the student edition of ORGB and on a handout
at the end of this chapter guide.
-interesting work
-full appreciation of work done
-a feeling of being in on things
-job security
-good wages
-promotion and growth in the organization
-good working conditions
-personal loyalty to employees
-tactful discipline
-sympathetic help with personal problems
Supervisors’ rankings of the same factors follow, from most valuable to least valuable.
-good wages
-job security
-promotion and growth in the organization
-good working conditions
-interesting work
-personal loyalty to employees
-tactful discipline
-full appreciation of work done
-sympathetic help with personal problems
Comparing these results to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Herzberg’s two-factor theory of
motivation suggests that organizations in the United States more effectively satisfy workers’
basic needs than they satisfy ego needs or self-fulfillment needs. Discuss with students why they
think this is the case.
SOURCE: “Crossed Wires on Employee Motivation.” Training and Development, 49 (1995): 59-60.
Paying a child $200 to go one month without watching TV? That’s the kind of extreme action
some parents will take to get their children to cooperate. Bribery? Maybe. Whether called bribery
or motivation, the practice of linking monetary incentives with desired behavior has existed for
years. Evidence shows providing financial incentives works to change employee behavior. Can
similar financial incentives change student behavior?
That’s the question Harvard economist Roland Fryer, Jr., set out to answer using a series
of experiments in underperforming inner-city elementary schools across the country. Why inner-
city schools? According to Fryer, “the average black 17-year-old reads at the same level as the
average white 13-year-old.” Something had to be done to bridge that gap. Fryer conducted the
experiments at elementary schools in four cities: Chicago, Dallas, Washington, and New York.
He used various incentives. For example, in New York City, fourth graders could earn
a maximum of $25 for good test scores; seventh-graders, 50 dollars. Students in Chicago were
paid $50 for each A, $35 for each B, and $20 for each C with a maximum possible “salary” of
$2,000 per year. Similar pay-for-performance schemes were tested in Washington and Dallas.
Using mostly private funds, Fryer paid 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million to boost their
performance.
As with any experiment, researchers often do not get the results they expect, and Fryer’s
was the same. The “treatment” had no effect on student performance in one of the cities where he
expected the most success. In two of the other cities, his experiment yielded mixed results. Yet in
another city, the results exceeded his expectations. Students who were paid all year performed
better on standardized tests than those who were unpaid. Fryer’s plan did not come without its
detractors. While some school officials were willing to try anything new to motivate students to
learn, others strongly believed students should learn for learning’s sake and not for cash. The fact
that Fryer’s test subjects were students in predominately minority schools hurt the case. One
think-tank scholar called the plan racist.
1. How is using extrinsic measures to motivate students any different from using intrinsic
measures if the outcome is the same?
The difference is that even if the outcomes are the same, the outcomes resulting from
extrinsic measures tend to be short lived, while the outcomes resulting from intrinsic
measures tend to last much longer. With intrinsic measures, the outcome is more meaningful
Fryer’s strategy could be interpreted as racist, and some will interpret it that way. However,
his strategy may have been as simple and innocent as selecting schools based on their current
performance levels and the range over which they could potentially improve. The fact that
most of the schools he chose for this reason were predominantly minority schools may be
coincidental rather than the result of a racist motivation.
SOURCES: A. Ripley, “Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?” Time (April 8, 2010); N.C. Strauss, “Fryer
Hopes to Institute Pay for Performance Plan,” The Harvard Crimson (June 29, 2007).
EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES
5.1 WHAT DO YOU NEED FROM WORK?
This exercise encourages students to think broadly about what they desire from a work
experience. During Step 2 of this exercise (sharing of group results with the class) encourage
discussion across groups regarding similarities and differences in ratings that might have
occurred. In particular, have students consider why differences in ratings exist (i.e., because
of differences in length of work experience, type of work experience, etc.). Discussion could
also center on organizations’ effectiveness at meeting these needs (and why they are or are
not effective). The student portion and steps for the activity are on a handout at the end of
this chapter guide.
II. Joyce's sales are instrumental to incentive bonus; therefore, there is high valence for
Joyce.
A. This approach is useful only if you need to build effort to performance expectancy.
B. She knows this already.
C. Goal is high valence, not necessarily the answer.
D. Best answer. Use if problem-solving or ability is the issue. Looks like a "know-how"
problem.
E. Apparently, she doesn't know how to improve.
Very few students select E because they believe we are always to DO SOMETHING.
Many students pick up on the issues of the U.S. in another country. The key to this
answer is that none of the previous choices, A-D provide anything in motivation theory
that has not already been provided. This is wasted effort to duplicate the same
approaches.
The case is related to multiple motivational concepts. Internal needs reflect the reasons for
which the employees chose to remain employed with AIG during the process of winding down
the Financial Products business. External incentives reflect the retention bonus payments. In
addition, needs theories of motivation can be invoked to provide perspective on what seem to be
important motivational factors for the Financial Products employees. Equity theory and the
individual/organizational exchange (or social exchange) relationship are highly relevant to the
case⎯and, arguably, provide the best explanation of the behavioral dynamics described in the
case. Both perspectives help in explaining and understanding employees’ reactions to being
asked to return part of their bonuses in the wake of the outrage expressed by the public and the
federal government. Expectancy theory also can be applied to the case facts by examining the
impact of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence on the motivation of the Financial Products
employees.
Because the employees of the Financial Products unit were actually being asked to work
themselves out of a job by helping to wind down the business, AIG had to engender the
commitment and loyalty of those same employees. In addition to these key behaviors, AIG
needed the employees to exercise business acumen and shrewdness to realize the best
possible price in selling off the assets of the Financial Products unit.
2. Which needs seem to be important to the employees of AIG’s Financial Products unit?
There are few celebrated men about whom more has been written
than Galileo.
The mere enumeration of the works of which he is the subject would
fill many pages: nevertheless an important mistake relative to one of
the principal events of his life has been so generally accepted and
believed, that it may be said to have passed almost into a proverb,
and many historians and scientific writers have carelessly adopted
and propagated the error.
Between the years 1570 and 1670 Italy had fallen into a state of
torpor. The Italians, including even the magnates of the land, had
lost all dignity and self-respect, and lay cringing and prostrate at the
feet of papal authority. During this period of mental depression
Galileo came into the world. Although endowed with a capacious and
liberal mind, he was wanting in strength of character, the great failing
of his countrymen and of the age in which he lived. Never was he
known to exclaim “E pur si muove!” Never did he display the heroic
firmness that is falsely attributed to him. Greatly in advance of his
epoch in science, he still belonged to it in all its shortcomings and
defects. He yielded, he hesitated, he drew back before opposition,
and was sometimes induced to deny his own doctrines through
timidity or in the hope of disarming his enemies, and of escaping
from the storm and the whirlwind he had raised around him.
The whole of his correspondence proves the weakness of his
character. In Italy, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the
most dangerous accusations that could be brought against any man
were deism and infidelity. To doubt was punished with death. Galileo
was so imprudent as to address a long letter to Castelli, in which he
sought to reconcile the words of scripture with the rotation of the
earth as discovered by Copernicus. Copernicus had proved the fact
previous to Galileo, but he had used the wise precaution to give his
opinion only as an hypothesis, and in his work on the motion of the
heavenly bodies, dedicated to Pope Paul III., he avoided wounding
any susceptibilities, taking especial care to separate theology from
science.
Galileo went even further in a second letter, in which he not only
attempted to reconcile his principles of astronomy with scripture, but
he endeavoured to make the words of scripture subservient to the
axioms he laid down. Some powerful friends tried to bring him to a
sense of his indiscretion. Cardinal Bellarmini sent him a written
remonstrance, urging him to confine himself to mathematics and
astronomy, and to avoid the field of theology.
Monsignor Dini, the friend of Galileo, wrote to him thus, 2nd May
1615: “Theologians allow mathematical discussion, but only when
the subject is treated as a simple hypothesis, which is alleged to
have been the case with Copernicus. The same liberty will be
accorded to you if you keep clear of theology.” Cardinal Barberini,
also on terms of friendship with Galileo, sent word to him by
Ciampoli on the 28th February of the same year, “that he was not to
pass the physical and mathematical limits of the question, because
the theologians maintain that it appertains to them alone to elucidate
scripture.” They all advised him openly and explicitly to refrain from
quoting the bible, and his pertinacity might have excited admiration
had it been based on firmness of character, but his timidity and
innumerable self-contradictions when directly accused of heresy
gave the lie to his apparent determination and adhesion to his
principles. When Cardinal Maffeo Barberini was elected pope, under
the name of Urbanus, Galileo, who had long been on terms of
friendship with him, went to Rome to offer his congratulations, and
soon after published his celebrated work: Dialogo intorno ai due
massimi sistemi del mondo.
Unfortunately, instead of limiting himself to astronomy in this work,
he enters again upon questions of theology utterly irrelevant to the
main subject; but, strangely enough, in the preface to the Dialogo he
has the weakness to disguise his real opinions. “I come,” says he, “to
defend the system of Ptolemy. As the friend of the cardinals who
have condemned the doctrines of Copernicus, I highly approve their
decision; a most excellent decision; a most salutary decision. They
who have murmured against it, have been to blame. If I take up my
pen it is out of excess of catholic zeal; this it is that moves me to
reappear before the public after many years of silence.”
The reader cannot but feel compassion in observing so much feeble-
mindedness, unworthy of so great a genius. It may be said in his
excuse that the counsels of his best friends forced him to play the
miserable part with which he has been reproached, that of servile
submission and the abandonment of his convictions. While
expressing the liveliest interest in his works, his principal patron, the
ambassador of Tuscany, thus advises him in letters of the 16th
February and 9th April 1633: “Submit yourself to whatever may be
demanded of you, as the only means of appeasing the rancour of
him who in the excess of his anger has made this persecution a
personal affair. Never mind your convictions, do not defend them, but
conform to all that your enemies may assert on the question of the
earth’s movement.”
Galileo was ordered to Rome to explain himself before the tribunal of
the Inquisition. After remaining a month in the palace of the
ambassador of Tuscany, he was removed to the palace of the
Inquisition, but so far from being imprisoned there, he himself
informs one of his friends that he has the use of three spacious
apartments, and the services of his own servant, and that he can
roam at pleasure through the whole building. On the 12th April 1633
Galileo underwent his first examination. He declares that in his
dialogue upon the systems of the world, he neither maintains nor
defends the opinion of the mobility of the earth and the immobility of
the sun; that he even demonstrates the contrary opinion, shewing
that the arguments of Copernicus are without weight, and are
inconclusive. On his second examination, on the 30th April, he says
plainly: “I do not actually entertain the opinion of the movement of
the earth and the immobility of the sun; I will add to my Dialogo two
or three colloquies, and I promise to take up one by one the
arguments in favour of the assertions which you condemn, and to
refute them unanswerably.”
Certainly the humiliation this great man underwent was profound. He
had carried submission so far as to renounce the strongest
convictions of the man of science. His persecutors were culpable
and cruel, but our business here is only to examine carefully and
truthfully the two following propositions: Was Galileo thrown into the
dungeons of the Inquisition? and Was he subjected to torture?
A valuable opportunity has been lost of clearing up the doubts which
surround the trial of Galileo. In 1809 all the original documents
relating to this suit were transmitted from Rome to Paris with the
papal archives, and it was intended to publish the whole in the form
of a volume consisting of seven or eight hundred pages. Delambre,
the historian of modern astronomy, while sending several extracts
from these deeds to Venturi, one of Galileo’s biographers, attributes
the oblivion into which this intention was suffered to fall, entirely to
political motives. Delambre informs us, moreover, that in 1820 the
original deeds were no longer forthcoming. Monsignor Morrini, who
had been commissioned to claim from the French government
whatever appertained to the Holy See, endeavoured in vain to obtain
the papers relating to the trial of Galileo. At length the manuscript
was restored to Gregory XVI., it was not known how, or by whom,
and it was deposited by Pius IX., in 1848, in the archives of the
Vatican; since which date no full details have been published. It is
now, however, positively affirmed that Galileo was never thrown into
the dungeons of the Inquisition.
After the second examination to which Galileo was subjected,
Cardinal Barberini suffered him to return to his apartments at the
embassy of the grand Duke of Tuscany, where the ambassador
Nicolini, his family and household, continued to treat him with much
affectionate consideration.
He was again summoned before the Inquisition on the 10th May and
on the 21st June, when he repeated that he held as true and
indisputable the opinion of Ptolemy, that is to say the immobility of
the earth and the mobility of the sun. This was the close of the trial.
The next day, Wednesday, 22nd June, 1633, he was brought before
the cardinals and prelates of the congregation to hear his sentence
and to make his recantation.
It was in the church of the convent of St. Minerva that Galileo Galilei,
aged seventy years, pronounced on his knees a form of recantation.
It has been said that Galileo, on rising from his knees, murmured
these words: “E pure si muove!” No doubt this protestation of truth
against falsehood may at this cruel crisis have rushed from his heart
to his lips, but it must be remembered that if these words had
actually been heard, his relapse would have infallibly led him to the
stake.
Monsieur Biot, in a learned and conscientious biographical notice,
has clearly pointed out, that Galileo was not subjected to torture
during any part of his trial anterior to the 22nd June 1633. M. Libri, in
his Histoire des sciences mathématiques en Italie, is of opinion that
as Galileo was subjected to a rigorous examination, according to the
wording of the sentence, it might be logically inferred that torture had
really been inflicted on him.
But Monsignor Marini has fully proved that the rigorous examination
was an enquiry which did not necessarily include torture. M.
Philarète Chasles, in his Essay on Galileo (the best compendium
that we have on the life, labours, and persecutions of the learned
Italian astronomer), shews that the popular story, or rather fable, of
the persecution of Galileo, accepted by the vulgar, is based upon a
false document, a letter forged by the Duc Caetani and his librarian,
and addressed to Reineri, and which Tiraboschi, a dupe to the fraud,
inserted in his Histoire littéraire d’Italie. This letter was taken as an
authority, and M. Libri, in his remarkable work “Histoire des sciences
mathématiques en Italie,” cites it in support of his opinion. But this
apocryphal letter is rejected by Nelli, Reumont, and all accurate
critics. If Galileo was really subjected to torture, how can we account
for the circumstance that during his life-time no rumour of it was
current?—that his pupils, his partisans, his numerous defenders,
knew nothing of it in France, in Holland, or in Germany?
A few days after his recantation, Galileo Galilei returned to Sienna to
his friend the Archbishop Piccolomini, in whose palace the Pope
desired him to remain. The following letter was written soon after his
arrival at Sienna: “At the entreaty of the ambassador Nicolini, the
Pope has granted me permission to reside in the palace and the
garden of the Medici on the Trinità, and instead of a prison the
archiepiscopal palace has been assigned to me as a home, in which
I have already spent fifteen days, congratulating myself on the
ineffable kindness of the Archbishop.”
On the 1st December the Pope issued a decree by which Galileo
received permission to occupy his villa d’Arcetri, which had been in
his possession since 1631. This villa, where Milton visited him, and
where Galileo died, on the 8th January 1642, at nearly seventy-eight
years of age, is situated on a declivity of one of the hills that overlook
Florence. An inscription still perpetuates the memory of its illustrious
proprietor. It was here, under arrest, and pending the good will and
pleasure of the Pope, that Galileo expiated his imaginary crime. On
the 28th July 1640 he wrote to Deodati: “My definitive prison is this
little villa, situated a mile from Florence. I am forbidden to receive the
visits of my friends, or to invite them to come and converse with me.
My life is very tranquil. I often go to the neighbouring convent of San
Matteo, where two of my daughters are nuns. I love them both
dearly, especially the elder, who unites extraordinary intellectual
powers to much goodness of heart.”
The growing infirmities of age now began to tell upon Galileo. His
weary eyes refused to serve him, and he became completely blind.
He was tended in his solitude by his two daughters from the convent.
One of them was taken from him by death, but she was replaced by
other affectionate relatives, who endeavoured to amuse and console
the lonely captive. His letters breathe a poetical melancholy, a quiet
irony, an overwhelming humility and an overpowering sense of
weariness.
Those who wish to form a just idea of this great and persecuted
man, of his true character, his labours, his foibles, and his lack of
moral courage, should read the Beiträge zur italienischen
Geschichte, by Alfred von Reumont, envoy of his Majesty the King of
Prussia at Florence. He has classified the correspondence of Galileo
and that of his friends, and has completed the labours and
researches of Fabroni, Nelli, Venturi, Libri, Marini, Biot, &c. Dr. Max
Parchoppe has also very recently sifted and weighed in a
remarkable manner, all the evidence relating to the life of Galileo.
We will conclude by mentioning a circumstance very little known and
with which the public have only recently become acquainted through
an unpublished letter of Galileo dated in the second year of his
retreat. It exhibits this illustrious scholar in a new light, as an amateur
of good wine and good cheer. “I desire,” he says, “that you should
take the advice of the most experienced judges, and procure for me
with all diligence and with all imaginable care, a provision of forty
bottles, or two cases of liqueurs of various kinds and of the most
exquisite quality. You need not consider the expense: I am so
moderate in all other sensual indulgences that I may allow myself
some scope in favour of Bacchus without fear of giving offence to
Venus or to Ceres. You will, I think, easily find wines of Scillo and of
Carini (Scylla and Charybdis if you prefer to call them so)—Greek
wines from the country of my master, Archimedes the Syracusian;
Claret wines, &c. When you send me the cases, be so good as to
enclose the account, which I will pay scrupulously and quickly, &c.
From my prison of Arcetri, 4th March.” “Con ogni diligenza e col
consiglio et intervento dei piu purgati gusti, voglio restar serviti di
farmi provisione di 40 fiaschi, cioè di due casse di liquori varii
esquisiti che costi si ritrovino, non curando punto di rispiarme
dispesa, perche rispiarmo tanto in tutti gl’altri gusti corporali che
posso lasciarmi andare a qualche cosa a richiesta di Bacco, senza
offesa delle sue compagne Venere e Cerere. Costi non debbon
mancare Scillo e Carini (onde voglio dire Scilla e Caribdi) nè meno la
patria del mio maestro Archimede Siracusano, i Grecchi, e Claretti,
&c. Havranno, come spero, comodo di farmegli capitare col ritorno
delle casse della dispensa, ed io prontamente sodisfaro tutta la
spesa, &c.
Dalla mia carcere d’Arcetri, 4 di Marzo.
Galileo Galiᵉⁱ.”
It is worthy of remark that he designates his pretty villa at Arcetri as
his prison; probably because he was forbidden to extend his walks
beyond the convent of San Matteo.