MACHIAVELLI AS EDUCATOR

Unlike Plato, Machiavelli never mentions Homer in any of his works. He does, however, mention Achilles in two key passages on education in the Prince:¹ when explaining first the proper “exercise of the mind” for a prince and then what “it is necessary for a prince to know well” (P 14.60, 18.69).

¹ All English quotations from The Prince, with a few slight alterations, are from the translation by Harvey C. Mansfield (Machiavelli 1998), henceforth referred to as P. Citations are by chapter and page numbers from this edition. All references to the Letter to Vettori of December 10, 1513, are also to this edition of the Prince, which includes the letter at the end. All references to the Discourses are by book, chapter, and paragraph numbers to the translation by Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Machiavelli 1996a), henceforth referred to as D. I refer henceforth to the Dedicatory Letter in each book as DL. Italian citations are from the Piero Gallardo edition of both works (Machiavelli 1966).

² On the question of Machiavelli’s knowledge of Homer, see Geerken 1970, 47. According to John Geerken, though there is no specific, direct evidence that Machiavelli studied Homer’s poems, there is powerful circumstantial evidence: first, “[g]iven the status of that poet in contemporary Italian culture, it is difficult to believe that Machiavelli had little or no knowledge of the Iliad or Odyssey”; then, more specifically, Marcello Virgilio Adriani was “Machiavelli’s teacher and a noted commentator on the Iliad” and also was “First Secretary of the Republic when Machiavelli was Second Secretary (1498).” On Machiavelli’s relationship with Adriani, see Ridolfi 1963, 18-20.

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Like Homer and Plato, Machiavelli seeks to teach human beings by presenting models of human excellence to be imitated. In his clearest reference to himself as a teacher in the Prince, Machiavelli remarks of Cesare Borgia, who possessed “great virtue”: “for I do not know what better teachings [precetti] I could give to a new prince than the example of his actions” (P 7.27).³ And in his clearest reference to himself as a teacher in the Discourses, Machiavelli explains:

And truly if the virtue that then [in the times of the ancient Romans] used to reign and the vice that now reigns were not clearer than the sun, I would go on speaking with more restraint, fearing falling into this deception of which I accuse some. But since the thing is so manifest that everyone sees it, I will be spirited in saying manifestly that which I may understand of the former and of the latter times, so that the spirits of youths who may read these writings of mine can flee the latter and prepare themselves to imitate [imitar] the former at whatever time fortune may give them opportunity for it. For it is the duty of a good man to teach [insegnarlo] others the good that you could not work because of the malignity of the times and of fortune, so that when many are capable of it, someone of them more loved by heaven may be able to work it. (2 Pre.3)⁴

However, in sympathy with Homer, but in opposition to Plato, Machiavelli sought to present outstanding examples of the active life - the virtuous life of politics and war - as explicit models of human excellence to be imitated by the best natures rather than examples of the contemplative, philosophic life.⁵ In the Prince, he sets forth as “the

father’s friendship with Bartolomeao Scala, “one of the best known Florentine humanists of the second part of the fifteenth century,” see Felix Gilbert 1984, 322, 318-322, and 162-163.

³ At 7.27, Mansfield translates “precetti” as “teaching” rather than “teachings.” The other explicit references to teachers and teachings in the Prince are to God as the “teacher” (precettore) of Moses (6.23); to what learning “the nature of sites” “teaches” (insegna] the prince (14.59); to what was “taught” (insegnata] “covertly by ancient writers” (18.69); to Chiron as the “teacher” (precettore) of Achilles (18.69); to a “teaching” (precetto) of either ancient writers or Machiavelli (18.69); and to a “teaching” (precetto) of “our ancients and those who were esteemed wise,” which Machiavelli rejects (20.84).

⁴ The other explicit references to teachers and teachings in the Discourses are to what “the verdicts given by ancient jurists” “teach” (insegnano) “our present jurists” (1 Pr.2); to a “teaching” (precetto) that princes already “know for themselves” that Machiavelli gives them (1.30.1); to what an infantryman “can be taught” (puossi insegnarlι) (2.18.2); what the words attributed by Livy to Valerius Corvinus “teach” (iκsegκaκo) (3.38.1); and what hunting “teaches” (c^^,iκsegκa) (3.39.1).

⁵ Geerken 1970 and Ball 1984 go so far as to argue that Machiavelli sought to revive Homeric virtue in particular.

greatest examples” the founders of new political orders - Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus:

For since men almost always walk on paths beaten by others and proceed in their actions by imitation [imitazioni], unable either to stay on the paths of others altogether or to attain the virtue of those whom you imitate [imiti], a prudent man should always enter upon the paths beaten by great men, and imitate those who have been most excellent, so that if his own virtue does not reach that far, it is at least in the odor of it. (6.22)

On each of the other occasions in the Prince that Machiavelli specifically calls on his readers to “imitate” individuals, he calls on them to take as their models active human beings who excelled in politics and war rather than contemplative philosophers: Cesare Borgia (twice - 7.29, 7.32);^[513] the ancient example of Agathocles and the modern example of Liverotto (8.34); Alexander the Great who imitated Achilles, Julius Caesar who imitated Alexander, and Scipio Africanus^[514] who imitated Cyrus (14.60); and Severus (twice) (19.78,19.82).

Similarly, Machiavelli virtually opens the Discourses with the lament that, in his times, “the most virtuous works the histories show us, which have been done by ancient kingdoms and republics, by kings, captains, citizens, legislators, and others who have labored for their fatherland, are rather admired” or even shunned “than imitated” and consequently “no sign of that ancient virtue remains with us” (1 Pr.2). And at various moments throughout the Discourses Machiavelli urges his readers to “imitate” the laws of the ancient Egyptians (1.1.4); Venice and Sparta (1.5.3); Nelematus, Darius, and the Aetolians in their mode of conspiring (3.6.7); and especially Rome (1.5.3):¹⁰ the virtue of the ancient Romans (2 Pr.3); Rome’s mode of expanding (2.4.2); “the ancient orders” as exem­plified by the Roman army (2.16.2); the judgment of Camillus and the Roman Senate (2.23.2-3); such “rare and virtuous examples” as “Horatius Coclus, Scaevola, Fabricius, the two Decii, [and] Regulus Attilius” (3.1.3); the mode used by Camillus in eliminating envy and ordering the defense of Rome (3.30.1-2); the mode “wisely used” by Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus “to make his army confident” (3.33.2); the policy “wisely” taken by Marius to prepare his army for battle against a ferocious enemy (3.37.4); and the mode used by Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus of proceeding against an enemy by “reserving his thrust to the last” (3.45).¹¹ In teaching the best natures - “those who for their infinite good parts deserve to be” princes (DL) - to regard those who excel in politics and war as the greatest and most virtuous human beings and to imitate them, Machiavelli rejects the Platonic education that emphatically urges the best natures to admire and to imitate the contem­plative, apolitical philosopher Socrates in favor of the Homeric education that presents the warrior and leader Achilles as the most visible model of human excellence.¹² Indeed, in the Prince, Machiavelli calls on princes even to “the exercise of the mind” by imitating a glorious political man of the past such as Achilles: “[T]hey should do as some excellent man has

like themselves,” see Tarcov 2017, 44-45.

¹⁰ Robert Black identifies “ [t]he spirit of the Discourses” with “its emphasis on the imitation of Rome” (2013, 236).

¹¹ For Machiavelli’s call to “wish to imitate” Timoleon of Corinth and Aratus of Sicyon, see 3.5.1.

¹² In the words of Vickie Sullivan (1996, 11), “Machiavelli shuns philosophy in the name of politics.” Zuckert comments that “Machiavelli’s political philosophy” is “explicitly practical and engaged rather than merely theoretical and contemplative” (2017, 21; see also 24, 34).

done in the past who found someone to imitate who had been praised and glorified before him, whose exploits and actions he always kept beside himself, as they say Alexander the Great imitated Achilles; Caesar, Alexander; Scipio, Cyrus” (14.60; see also 18.69).

Machiavelli offers three reasons for urging his readers to model them­selves on the politically active rather than the apolitically contemplative. In the first place, an education that glorifies “active men” more than “humble and contemplative” men renders the world strong, whereas an education that glorifies the humble and contemplative over the active has rendered “the world weak” (D 2.2.2). According to Machiavelli, “the ancient” education and religion made human beings admire and strive to become “captains of armies and princes of republics” and cherish “the honor of the world,” “greatness of spirit,” and “strength of body” as “the highest good”; inspired them to become “lovers of freedom” and to defend their freedom ferociously “in their actions”; and consequently led them to establish many, vigorous free societies, namely, republics (2.2.2). In this way, the ancients made the world strong - vital, healthy, and expressive of natural human energy - since “in republics there is greater life, greater hatred, more desire for revenge; the memory of ancient liberty does not and cannot let them rest” (P 5.21; see also Art of War 2.293).

Homer and Machiavelli on Education and Human Excellence 199 divine” (Republic 500b8-dι) and more than “any other life despises political offices” (521b1-2); who lauds the philosopher Socrates for accepting his execution happily, “easily,” and gently rather than striving to resist it or escape it (Phaedo 58e3-6, 63a7-9,116cι-8,118a15-17; see also Gorgias 472dι-481b5); and who promulgates the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, especially in the Phaedo and also in the Republic (608d3-621d3). Moreover, in the Prince, Machiavelli seems to link Plato with Christianity by suggesting that both focus the attention of those who follow them on imaginary “republics and principalities that have never been known to exist in truth” (P 15.61).^[518] If Machiavelli does not expli­citly anticipate Nietzsche in claiming that Christianity is Platonism for the people,^[519] he does suggest that Plato’s followers allied with and strengthened Christianity.^[520] By turning the best human beings away from the politics and toward the apolitical life of contemplating the divine Forms and believing in the Immortality of the Soul, Platonism joins Christianity in weakening the worldly love of freedom and therewith the cause of freedom in the world, thereby rendering republicanism virtually extinct and disarming humans in the face of the “criminal men” who always threaten them (D 2.2.2).

A defender of Plato might argue that the political life is inevitably a realm of injustice and ignorance and that one who leads the philosophic life may, by eschewing political activity and adopting a guise of respect­able piety, withdraw into a fulfilling life of private contemplation, keeping quiet, and minding one’s own business, like one who has escaped from the darkness of a cave into the light of the sun or “like one in a storm” who “stands aside under a wall.”^[521] However, in his second argument for modeling oneself on outstanding political rather than contemplative human beings, Machiavelli argues that political life is inescapable. Just as it is impossible for a political community to withdraw from the

competition and strife of international politics - “since all things of men are in motion and cannot stay steady, they must either rise or fall” (D 1.6.4) - it is impossible for an individual to withdraw from the competition and strife of domestic politics. As Machiavelli explains,

[n]or is it enough to say: “I do not care for anything; I do not desire either honors or useful things; I wish to live quietly and without quarrel!” For these excuses are heard and not accepted; nor can men who have quality choose to abstain even when they choose it truly and without any ambition because it is not believed of them; so if they wish to abstain, they are not allowed by others to abstain. (D 3.2)

Philosophers and their followers cannot, then, withdraw from the quar­rels inherent in political life since such strife is the natural condition of human beings.^[522] Indeed, Machiavelli stresses the degree to which Plato and his followers took part in politics and did so unsuccessfully. The only time he mentions Plato’s name in either the Prince or the Discourses, in his chapter “Of Conspiracies” in the Discourses, Machiavelli observes that two “disciples of Plato” conspired against two tyrants, killed only one of them, and were themselves killed by the surviving tyrant (D 3.6.16). Machiavelli also observes that Dion, the well-known compan­ion and follower of Plato, was brought low by a conspiracy (3.6.20).^[523] Finally, Machiavelli notes the political folly of the philosopher Cicero - a student at Plato’s Academy and follower of Plato - who inadvertently strengthened his enemies and destroyed his allies (1.51.3; see 1.56, 2.5.1).^[524] Plato’s followers fail at politics because they are ill prepared for the combat that politics inevitably entails. By seeking guidance from a teacher who glorifies the contemplative over the active life, they increase the likelihood that they will suffer the fate of Socrates. The Platonic education renders not only the political world as a whole weak but its pupils individually weak. As Machiavelli suggests in his clearest implicit reference to Plato, Plato fixes his students’ attention on imaginary regimes and imaginary ways of life, and thereby disarms them and leads them “to come to ruin among so many who are not good” (P 15.61-62).

Machiavelli’s argument here also seems in sympathy with Homer who, as Machiavelli notes, teaches the importance of knowing how to fight openly and ferociously like a lion - who can “frighten the wolves” - and cautiously and deceptively like a fox - who can “recognize snares” (P 18.69-70). As both his poems show, Homer too is mindful that politics and war are in some sense inescapable. For the deadly conflicts that Homer presents range from the Trojan plain, where the Achaian host ultimately destroys the Trojan warriors and their families, to the house­holds of Odysseus and Agamemnon, where treacherous and cunning Achaians conspire to destroy the returning Achaian warriors.^[525] As we have seen, Homer highlights as well the degree to which the retiring, seemingly apolitical singers are vulnerable to the overbearing and power­ful men who surround them.^[526]

Thirdly, Machiavelli argues, by calling on its followers to withdraw from politics into a private contemplative life, the Platonic education also harms its followers theoretically. For by stressing the imaginary character of Plato’s teaching, Machiavelli stresses its false character. In the Prince as in the Discourses, Machiavelli consistently contrasts what is imaginary with what is true and links what is imaginary with what is false: “ [I]t has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it” (P 15.61); “And many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or know to exist in truth” (P 15.61); “All of which arises from his [the French king’s] having disarmed his people and from that king and the others named before having wished rather to enjoy the present utility of being able to plunder their peoples, and to escape an imagined rather than a true danger” (D 2.30.2); “And since the greater part of the men who are led to similar enterprises are inexpert in the site of the country and the places where they are brought, they become confused, cowardly, and embroiled from every least and fortuitous accident, and every false imagination is able to make them turn about” (D 2.32.1); “Such an execution can be inter­rupted by a false imagination.... These false imaginations are to be considered” (D 3.6.16). By turning his followers away from the sobering and clarifying experiences of political life and encouraging them to with­draw into a purportedly independent life of contemplation, Plato diverts them from the path of wisdom and truth.^[527] He causes them to believe in a false, imaginary world and to misunderstand human nature and the human condition.^[528] Machiavelli, then, offers a philosophic critique of Plato’s philosophic education. The separation of philosophy and politics effected by Plato is not only harmful to politics; it is also harmful to philosophy.

Like Homer, Machiavelli does not offer an explicit portrait of himself as a philosopher in his two principal works, the works that, by his own account, contain “as much as I know” (D DL; P DL 3). Machiavelli does not offer himself explicitly as a model of human excellence.^[529] But, much more clearly than Homer, Machiavelli does indicate that he is a philoso­pher. Machiavelli remarks, albeit in passing, that “it is good to reason about everything” (D 1.18.1; see also 1.58.1). He ponders the philosoph­ical question of the eternity of the world and agrees with the “philoso­phers” that the world is eternal (D 2.5.1; see also D 1 Pre). Machiavelli reveals himself to be an observer and student of “[all] worldly things” (D 1.38.3, 3.1.1, 3.43.1; P 25.98, 10.44); “all human things” (D 1.6.3); “states” and “all other things in nature” (P 7.26); and the “nature of men” (D 1.29.1). Machiavelli also shares certain conclusions of his philo­sophic study: “all things of men are in motion” (D 1.6.4); “Nature has created men so that they desire all but cannot have all” (D 1.37.1); “all our actions imitate nature” (D 2.3).^[530] Machiavelli reveals himself to be a student of history as well, not only of Livy, but of “all the histories,” apparently including the Bible, all of which he has read “judiciously” (D 2.5.2, 1.23.4, 3.30.1). Machiavelli explicitly reveals himself to be a

Homer and Machiavelli on Education and Human Excellence 203 philosopher - that is, one whose ruling passion is for wisdom and who pursues wisdom through reason - in his private letter to his friend Francesco Vettori of December 10, 1513:^[531]

When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions;^[532] and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them. (Machiavelli 1998, 109-110)

Machiavelli portrays himself here as one who is nourished, enlightened, and enraptured by his philosophic conversation with the great thinkers of the past, a conversation yielding “capital” and “reflections [cogitazioni]” that may be found in the Prince (no).^{[533] [534] But, like Homer, Machiavelli never offers more than a glimpse of such a life in his two principal works.}

In the Prince and Discourses, Machiavelli not only hides his philosoph­ical life but almost entirely hides the very names of philosophers, referring by name only once to Plato and Aristotle each and never to Socrates (D 3.6.16, 3.26.2). To the extent that he explicitly presents a portrait of himself - and he does so, above all, in the Prince³° - it is, on the surface, exclusively as a political man. Machiavelli appears as one who seeks to acquire favor with the sitting prince of Florence, the duke of Urbino, “the Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici” (P DL 3); who, while on a diplomatic mission to France, converses about politics and war with the cardinal of

Rouen, a minister of King Louis XII of France (P 3.16); and who, while on a diplomatic mission to Rome, listens to Cesare Borgia’s analysis of his own political predicament (P 7.32). And at first glance Machiavelli pre­sents his wisdom - “ all that I have learned and understood in so many years and with so many hardships and dangers for myself” (see also P 7.35) - as wholly focused on the active political life - “the knowledge of the actions of great men” (P ED 3-4).^[535]

Machiavelli was indeed a political man, one who had a distinguished political career. First, spanning 14 years, Machiavelli served as the active, even “ubiquitous,” Secretary of the Republic of Florence, in which he played “a major role as a negotiator, go-between, and intelligence gath­erer.”^[536] Later, after suffering dismissal, torture, and exile, Machiavelli, during the last six years of his life, acquired a position as a diplomat and adviser to the Medicis in Florence and Rome. During what proved to be the penultimate year of his life, the Florentine Pope Clement sent Machiavelli to help organize the defenses of Florence against the invading troops of Emperor Charles V.^[537] At one point during the politically eventful last months of his life, Machiavelli wrote to Vettori, “I love my country more than my soul [amo la patria mia piu dell’anima].”^[538] Throughout his adult life, Machiavelli was evidently engaged in the active life of politics, in large measure, body and soul.^[539] But, as his writings and, most vividly, his letter to Vettori of December 10, 1513, indicate, Machiavelli was also a philosopher.

Indeed, Machiavelli’s political activity may have, in his view, helped him to live the philosophic life more consistently than if he had only led an apolitical life. For the very account he offers, in the Letter to Vettori of December 10, 1513, of the four hours he spends studying the books of the great thinkers of the past indicates a potential theoretical danger in such private theoretical activity: Machiavelli reports that he, it would seem, imagines himself in “the ancient courts of ancient men”; and he also reports that “I forget every pain [or worry - affanno], I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them” (Machiavelli 1998, 110). On the one hand, Machiavelli here offers a singularly charming and inspiring account of one whose mind is wholly engrossed in the philosophic study of, and in philosophic conversation with, other great minds, “who in their humanity reply to me.” But on the other hand, his account suggests that one who philosophizes in this way risks losing himself in his imagination - Machiavelli is not in an ancient court but outside of Florence, the city where he was recently imprisoned and tortured by his enemies - and risks losing sight of the truth that it is reasonable, in some measure, to worry about and to fear one’s own poverty - as he acknowledges on the next page of the letter: “I cannot remain as I am for a long time without becoming despised because of poverty” (111) - and especially one’s own death, not least because poverty and death may prevent one from continuing to live one’s philo­sophic life. The very beauty of the philosophic activity Machiavelli describes may point to the danger of overlooking - forgetting - the less than beautiful truths of our all-too-human vulnerability to evils such as poverty, the pain of torture, and death that a wholly private philosopher may be tempted to forget.

Moreover, as Machiavelli reports in his Letter to Vettori, even in his daily routine he confines his study of ancient books to four hours; he spends the rest of his day, for example, conversing with passersby who afford him the opportunity to “learn various things” and to “note the various tastes and different fancies of men,” an opportunity perhaps also afforded to him by his card games at the local inn (Machiavelli 1998, 109). Furthermore and more importantly, Machiavelli recounts in his letter that he spends a part of the day not only reading books by Dante, Petrarch, Tibullus, and Ovid^[540] and about “their amorous passions and their loves” but also remembering his own experiences of amorous passion and love and “thinking “ about them: “I read of their amorous passions and their loves; I remember my own and enjoy myself for a while in this thinking [leggo quelle loro amorose passioni, e quelli loro amori ricordomi de’ mia: godomi un pezzo in questo pensiero]” (109). Machiavelli’s activity of thinking of the great poets’ writings about love - and thereby forming his own theoretical understanding of love - is enhanced and deepened by his own lived experiences of love and his reflections thereon. Similarly, Machiavelli engages in political activity in part to supplement his study of ancient works of political philosophy and his own theoretical understanding of politics and human nature with reflections on his own direct, lived experience of the politics of his time - for example, his experience of the variety of human types who participate in politics; his experience of the stakes in political struggle for all con­cerned; and his experience of the political passions, such as the love of country and also the love of glory, that political life naturally engages and arouses.^[541] As Machiavelli emphasizes in his Dedicatory Letter to the Prince, his wisdom - his “knowledge of the actions of great men” - has not only been acquired by “a continuous reading of ancient” books in his study, but also by “a long experience of modern things,” that is, by his own experience in the political life of his age. He, therefore, by his own account, could not have acquired his wisdom without having lived the political life, the often dangerous political life, that he did. Accordingly, he refers to his wisdom as “all that I have learned and understood in so many years and with so many hardships and dangers for myself [tutto quello che io in tanti anni e con tanti mia disagi e pericolic ho conos- ciuto]” (P DL 3-4; see 8.35).^[542]

By testing oneself in the always dangerous arena of politics, one can also acquire valuable knowledge of one’s own character and nature. After the Florentine republic, which Machiavelli had served for 14 years as Secretary, was overthrown by the Medici and Machiavelli was dismissed, arrested on the charge of conspiring against the Medici, and tortured, he wrote to Vettori: “I should like you to get this pleasure from these pains

Homer and Machiavelli on Education and Human Excellence 207 [or worries - questi miei affanii] of mine, that I have borne them so straightforwardly that I am proud of myself for it and consider myself more of a man than I believed I was [che io stesso me ne voglio bene, e parmi essere da piu che non credeti]” (Machiavelli 1996b, 18 March, 1513, 222). The pains and worries - the affani - of political life, that private contemplation may incline one to “forget,” can provide one with important and even vital self-awareness and self-knowledge.^[543] It may be precisely because he views political activity as a theoretically helpful and even necessary supplement to private study and contemplation that the only time Machiavelli uses the word “philosopher” in either the Prince or the Discourses is to describe the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and that he mentions Xenophon, the philosopher who was also a superlative states­man, in both works so much more frequently (eight times) than he mentions Plato and Aristotle (once each).^[544]