The Portable Machiavelli

by Niccolo Machiavelli

  CHAPTER XLI. ONE’S COUNTRY MUST BE DEFENDED, WHETHER WITH SHAME OR WITH GLORY, AND IT IS WELL DEFENDED IN ANY MANNER

  As was mentioned above, the consul and the Roman army were besieged by the Samnites, who had imposed upon the Romans the most disgraceful of conditions: namely, putting them under the yoke and sending them back to Rome disarmed. Because of this, the consuls were stunned and the army was desperate, when Lucius Lentulus, the Roman legate, announced that he did not believe any plan for saving their country should be rejected. Since the survival of Rome depended upon the survival of the army, he believed in saving it by any means, for one’s country is well defended by any means which defends it, whether by disgrace or glory. If that army were saved, Rome would have time to erase the disgrace, but if it were not saved, even if it died gloriously Rome and her freedom would be lost. And so his advice was followed. This thought deserves to be noted and put into practice by any citizen who has occasion to advise his country, for when the entire safety of one’s country is at stake, there should be no consideration of just or unjust, merciful or cruel, praiseworthy or disgraceful; on the contrary, putting aside every form of respect, that decision which will save her life and preserve her liberty must be followed completely. This course of action is imitated in word and deed by the French in order to defend the majesty of their king and the power of their kingdom, for no voice is heard more impatiently than the one which says: “This decision is disgraceful for the king,” for they say that their king cannot suffer shame in any of his decisions, whether they be made in good or adverse fortune, for, win or lose, it is a kingly affair.

  CHAPTER XLII. PROMISES EXACTED BY FORCE SHOULD NOT BE KEPT

  When the consuls returned to Rome with their army disarmed and the disgrace they had suffered, the first in the senate to say the peace made at Caudium should not be observed was the Consul Spurius Postumius, who said that he and the others who had made the peace, not the Roman people, were obligated to keep it, and that if the people wished to free themselves from any obligation they had only to surrender himself and the others who had made the agreement as prisoners into the hands of the Samnites. And he maintained this conclusion with such conviction that the senate was finally convinced; they sent him and the others to Samnium as prisoners, protesting to the Samnites that the peace was not valid. And Fortune was so favorable to Postumius in this instance that the Samnites decided not to keep him. After he had returned to Rome, he enjoyed more fame among the Romans as a result of having lost than Pontius ever did among the Samnites for having won. There are two things to note here. First, that glory can be acquired from any kind of action. For in victory it is acquired in the normal course of things; in defeat it may be won either by showing that such a defeat was not occasioned through your fault or by immediately doing some great deed that cancels the defeat. Second, it is not shameful to break promises you have been forced to make. Promises involving public matters that are made under duress are always broken without disgrace to anyone who breaks them when the force is removed. Various examples of this can be found in all the histories; we encounter them every day in our own times. And not only are forced promises never kept among princes when the force is removed, but all other promises are also broken when the causes for such promises are removed. Whether or not this is a praiseworthy thing, and whether or not similar methods ought to be observed by a prince, is discussed at length in my treatise, The Prince. I shall therefore, say nothing about this at the moment.

  CHAPTER XLIII. THAT MEN BORN IN ANY GIVEN PROVINCE ALWAYS DISPLAY ALMOST THE SAME NATURE

  Prudent men often say, neither casually nor groundlessly, that anyone wishing to see what is to come should examine what has been, for all the affairs of the world in every age have had their counterparts in ancient times. This is because these affairs are carried on by men who have, and have always had, the same passions and, of necessity, the same results come from them. It is true that their actions are more effective at one time in this province than in another, and more in that than in this one, according to the kind of education from which those peoples have taken their way of living. Knowing future affairs is also facilitated by knowing past ones, especially when a nation has maintained the same customs for a long time—for example, being continuously greedy or fraudulent or having some other similar vice or virtue. And anyone who reads about the past affairs of our city of Florence and considers those which have occurred most recently will find the German and French people full of avarice, pride, ferocity, and treachery, for these four things, in different times, have all greatly harmed our city. As for treachery, everyone knows how many times Florence gave money to King Charles VIII, and how he promised to surrender the fortresses of Pisa to her but never did. In this, that king demonstrated his treachery and his great greed. But let us pass over recent matters. Everyone knows what happened in the war which the Florentine people waged against the Visconti, dukes of Milan. When Florence had no other remedy, she thought about bringing the emperor, with his prestige and armed forces, into Italy to attack Lombardy. The emperor promised to come with many men to wage this war against the Visconti and to defend Florence from their power if the Florentines would pay him one hundred thousand ducats when he assembled his armies and one hundred thousand ducats upon his arrival in Italy. The Florentines agreed to these terms and paid him the first amount, followed by the second. When he arrived at Verona, he turned back without doing anything, protesting that he stopped because the Florentines had not respected the agreements they had made with him. Thus, if Florence had not been constrained by necessity or conquered by passion, and if she had read about and recognized the ancient customs of the barbarians, never would she have been deceived by them at this or at any other time, for they have always acted the same way and have always employed the same means everywhere and with everyone. This is evident from what they did to the Tuscans in ancient times. The latter, being oppressed by the Romans and having been defeated by them many times and put to flight, agreed to give the Gauls, who lived in Italy on the other side of the Alps, a sum of money with the proviso that they would unite their armies with the Tuscan army and march against the Romans. The result was that once the Gauls had taken the money, they no longer wanted to take up arms on behalf of the Tuscans, declaring that they had received the money, not for waging war against their enemies, but for refraining from plundering the Tuscan countryside. And thus, as a result of the avarice and treachery of the Gauls, the Tuscan people were, at a single stroke, deprived of their money and the assistance they had hoped for. Thus, it is clear from this example of the ancient Tuscans and that of the Florentines that the French have always employed the same methods; and from this it can easily be inferred how much faith princes can put in them.

  CHAPTER XLIV. ONE OFTEN OBTAINS WITH IMPETUOSITY AND AUDACITY WHAT COULD NEVER BE OBTAINED BY ORDINARY MEANS

  [When one ruler wishes another ruler to do his bidding, he should not allow him time for deliberation; rather, he should act in such a way as to precipitate a swift decision. Pope Julius did this when he marched against Bologna, calling upon the Venetians to remain neutral and requesting assistance from France after he had begun his campaign. He thus left Venice and France little choice but to honor his requests.]

  CHAPTER XLV. WHETHER, IN BATTLES, IT IS BETTER TO SUSTAIN THE ENEMY’S ATTACK AND THEN TO COUNTERATTACK OR TO ATTACK HIM FIRST WITH FURY

  [Decius and Fabius, two Roman consuls, fought the armies of the Samnites and the Etruscans at approximately the same time but with different methods. Whereas Decius attacked first, Fabius allowed the enemy to attack and then counterattacked. Fabius was the more successful of the two, and his tactics are thus safer and more worthy of imitation.]

  CHAPTER XLVI. HOW IT HAPPENS THAT A FAMILY IN A CITY MAINTAINS THE SAME CUSTOMS FOR A PERIOD OF TIME

  [The characteristics which families exhibit differ not only from city to city but also within cities; some families produce men who are stem and determined, while others
living in the same city have different attributes. Since most families intermarry, such a phenomenon cannot be due to heredity; it is caused, instead, by the different ways in which the families educate their children. A man’s conduct is influenced by what is valued or despised by his family during his childhood.]

  CHAPTER XLVII. THAT A GOOD CITIZEN OUGHT TO FORGET PRIVATE INJURIES FOR THE LOVE OF HIS NATIVE CITY

  [The example of Fabius, who, as consul, named his enemy, Papirius Cursor, dictator in order to save Rome in the war with the Samnites, is one that should be followed by all good citizens, who should put aside private injuries in order to protect their native city.]

  CHAPTER XLVIII. WHENEVER ONE OBSERVES AN ENEMY COMMITTING A GROSS ERROR, ONE SHOULD ASSUME THAT THERE IS A TRICK BENEATH IT

  [A commander should never accept an obvious mistake by his enemy without questioning it, for it is not likely that the enemy lacks caution in this manner. But men are so avid for victory that they allow themselves to be blinded to the possibility of treachery.]

  CHAPTER XLIX. IF A REPUBLIC IS TO BE KEPT FREE, IT REQUIRES NEW ACTS OF FORESIGHT EVERY DAY; AND, FOR WHAT GOOD QUALITIES QUINTUS FABIUS WAS CALLED MAXIMUS

  As I have already said many times, emergencies requiring a physician inevitably arise every day in a great city, and the more important these incidents are, the more useful it is to find the wisest physician. And if ever such emergencies arose in a city, they did so in Rome—both strange and unforeseen ones; as, for example, the one in which it seemed that all Roman women had conspired to murder their husbands: many were found to have poisoned their husbands and many had already prepared the poison for doing so. The conspiracy of the Bacchanals, discovered during the Macedonian War, was another example involving thousands of men and women. If it had not been uncovered, or if the Romans had not been accustomed to punishing great numbers of wrongdoers, the city would have been in great danger. For, if the greatness of that republic and the power of her actions were not evident in other countless ways, they certainly were evident from the quality of the punishments she imposed on those who went astray. She never hesitated to put to death an entire legion or an entire city at one time, nor to banish eight or ten thousand men with penalties so unusual that they could not be carried out by one man, let alone by so many of them. This was the case with those soldiers who had fought so unsuccessfully at Cannae: they were banished to Sicily and were required to take up lodgings outside the cities and to eat while standing.

  But of all her other punishments, the most terrible was the decimation of an army, in which one out of every ten men in that army was put to death by lot. Nor could one find a more terrifying punishment in chastising a multitude than this one: for when a large group does wrong and the instigator is not evident, all cannot be punished, for there are too many. To punish a part of them and leave another part unpunished would wrong those who were punished, and the unpunished would retain the courage to do wrong at another time. But in killing by lot a tenth part of them—when all of them deserve it—he who is punished suffers his fate and he who is not punished lives in fear that the next time it may be his turn and is thus careful not to go astray.

  And so, the poisoners and the Bacchanals were punished according to the nature of their sins. Although these sicknesses produce evil effects in a republic, they are not fatal, for there is almost always time to cure them; but in those sicknesses which concern the state, there is no time, and unless they are cured by a prudent man, they bring the city to ruin. In Rome, as a result of the generosity the Romans practiced in granting citizenship to foreigners, so many new children were born that they soon possessed such a proportion of the vote that the government began to change, moving away from the policies and the men it was accustomed to. When the censor Quintus Fabius saw this, he put all these new families, the cause of this disorder, into four tribes; thus, reduced to such a small area, they were no longer able to infect all of Rome. This matter was well understood by Fabius, and he provided a suitable remedy for it without changing the government; it was so acceptable to that civic body that he deserved to be called “Maximus.”

  A FABLE: BELFAGOR, THE DEVIL WHO TOOK A WIFE

  EDITORS’ NOTE

  The popularity of the novella form, a literary genre similar to the short story, began with the appearance of Boccaccio’s Decameron in the fourteenth century. Following this model, a number of Renaissance writers in Italy, France, England, and Spain (Anton Francesco Grazzini, Matteo Bandello, Marguerite de Navarre, Cervantes, and others) made the novella the most popular fictional genre of the age. In general, each of these writers employed a frame story to open the collection of stories, which described how, as a result of some special event (a plague in Boccaccio’s work; a festival, carnival, or storm in other novellas), a number of narrators gathered to tell stories in order to pass the time. Thus, most of these works combined the opening frame with many different tales, on a variety of topics, told by a number of different narrators. Part of the charm of this genre was due to the urbane and witty commentaries on the various stories that the frame characters provided However, a few novellas existed as individual, autonomous stories with no frame or companion pieces. One of these single stories was Luigi da Porto’s tale of Romeo and Juliet, which eventually made its way to England and Shakespeare through a number of translations and versions. Another such masterpiece was Machiavelli’s Belfagor, the only novella of his we have preserved It is the equal of any other single story that Renaissance Europe produced. Moreover, from an anecdote which Bandello recounts in his own collection of such tales (I, xl), it seems clear that Machiavelli enjoyed a reputation as a skillful storyteller among his close friends and associates. Scholars date the composition of this novella between 1515 and 1520; it was first published in the 1549 edition of Machiavelli’s complete works.

  It is written, in the old chronicles of Florentine history, how a most holy man, whose life was well known to those who lived at that time, prayed with religious fervor and saw that, among the countless number of miserable souls who die outside God’s grace and go to Hell, all (or the greatest portion of them) complained that it was only because of their wives that they had been brought to such misery. Whereupon Minos and Rhadamanthos, along with all the other judges of Hell, were very perplexed. They were not able to believe that these accusations against the fairer sex were true, but the complaints increased daily. So they made an appropriate report to Pluto, who decided to make a thorough investigation of the matter with the help of all the princes of Hell, and to take whatever action might be deemed best in order to discover the falsity or truth of this question. Having called them all to a council, Pluto spoke in this manner:

  “My very dear friends, since by heavenly decree and unchangeable destiny I am the owner of this kingdom, I cannot be obliged to submit to any earthly or heavenly judgment; nevertheless, because the ultimate proof of prudence in those who hold great power is to submit themselves to the rule of law and to value the opinions of others, I have decided to ask your advice on how to act in a matter that could bring shame to our rule. Since the souls of all the men who come into our kingdom say that their wives were the cause, and since this seems impossible to us, I am afraid that if we accept their explanations we might very well be accused of being too credulous, yet if we do not we might be accused of not being stem enough and, hence, poor friends of justice. Now, since one is the vice of the frivolous and the other that of the unjust, and since we wish to avoid being accused of either, we have—being unable to find the means—called you together so that you may aid us with your advice in order that this realm, which has always lived free from scandal in the past, may continue to do so in the future.”

  Each of the princes believed the matter to be of the utmost importance and worthy of much consideration; all concluded that it was necessary to get to the bottom of the issue, but none could agree on how it should be done. While some felt that one, and others that several, of their number should be sent into the world in hum
an shape to discover the truth in person, many others felt it could be done without so much fuss by forcing a number of souls to reveal the truth under various kinds of torture. Since the majority was of the opinion to send someone back to earth, that course of action was adopted. Unable to find anyone who would undertake this task of his own free will, they decided that lots should be drawn. The lot fell upon Belfagor, an archdevil, formerly an archangel before his fall from Heaven. Although Belfagor was reluctant to carry out this task, he was nevertheless compelled by the authority of Pluto to follow the council’s instructions and agreed to heed those conditions which they had solemnly decided upon among themselves. They were: that a hundred thousand ducats would be disbursed immediately to whoever was chosen for the mission; with this money he was to go into the world and, disguised in the body of a man, he was to take a wife and to live with her for ten years; then he was to pretend to die and return to his superiors in order to report on the burdens and discomforts of marriage based on his experience. It was further agreed that during this period he was to be subject to all the inconveniences and evils that men suffer, including poverty, imprisonment, disease, and every other kind of misfortune that men experience—unless he could avoid all this by means of his own wit or trickery.

  So, Belfagor accepted the conditions and the money and entered the world. Accompanied by his retinue of servants and horsemen, he entered Florence with a flourish. He chose to live in this city above all others because he felt it was the most likely place to live for anyone who was fond of usury. He took the name Roderigo of Castile and rented a house in the Ognissanti district; and in order not to reveal his true identity, he said that he had left Spain as a child and had gone to Syria, and that he had made a fortune in Aleppo, whence he had departed for Italy in order to take a wife in a place that was more civilized, more urbane, and more in keeping with his own character. Roderigo was a very handsome man and looked about thirty years old. Having demonstrated in only a few days how rich he was, and having given evidence of his humanity and liberality, many noble Florentines with a number of daughters (but little money) offered them to him. From among all these Roderigo chose a very beautiful girl named Onesta, the daughter of Amerigo Donati, who had three other daughters of marriageable age as well as three sons. And although Amerigo came from a very noble family and was highly respected in Florence, in proportion to the size of his family and his nobility, he was nevertheless very poor.