Conflicting books, and a wide field of readings

Machiavelli’s views of civic virtue and of the preferred regime, the essay says, look confused even across his own books. In The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, conflicting remarks on those themes sit side by side, and have long fed argument about where he really stood. He trusts the rule of a people who hold a sound civic virtue, yet also defends the authoritative rule of a prince as a check on the people’s lightness and fickleness. He writes that only a republic guarantees freedom and checks corruption, and also that monarchy is the regime that offers social stability and efficiency.

Estimates of his true intention, the notes list, run wide: that he came close to monarchy; that he supports a republic; that he tried a compromise between the two; that he held an inconsistent position and moved between them without scruple; or that he was indifferent to a preference of regime and set out general principles of political order. Republican readings also split: a traditional republican who called for a restoration of ancient Roman politics; a modern republican rooted in the humanism of Renaissance Florence; or a third kind of republican, apart from those two.

Such a spread of views may come, the writer says, from later scholars drawing too much implication from a few of his remarks, or from a genuine ambiguity and conflict in the books themselves. The essay then turns to the character of the modern political philosophy he is said to have opened, and to the saying “fortune obeys virtue.”

Fortune obeys virtue, and two great wars

Machiavelli analyses the political and moral faults of ancient Rome as they were, without softening. That non-chauvinist attitude — cold and scientific, in the notes’ words — appears very clearly in The Prince, and likewise in the Discourses. The cause and meaning of Rome’s prosperity are discussed in book 2 of the Discourses. From that discussion the writer takes the impression that a variable of ability, or of achievement, of the kind later used as a measure of modernization, already appears in Machiavelli.

The problem, as the notes set it, is the question of virtue and fortune that he mentions between chapters 6 and 7 of The Prince. He values virtue above fortune. The same theme appears in the Discourses; the great difference is that The Prince discusses the virtue of particular men — Romulus, Moses, Cyrus, Theseus and Hieron in chapter 6, and Cesare Borgia in chapter 7 — while the Discourses treat the virtue of the state.

He and Livy, the essay says, look with different eyes at the cause of ancient Rome’s prosperity as a world empire. Machiavelli resists the tendency to combine the political and military virtue of Rome with a sacred fortune, the presence of Rome’s gods; if the flourishing is reduced to a sacred element, he thinks, there is room for the virtue of the Romans to be weakened. He unifies achievement under virtue, in the sense of ability. He also rejects the claim that, in matters of war, Rome avoided the risk or the burden of fighting two great wars at once merely because fortune was good, and overcame the enemy’s challenge for that reason. The cause, he holds, was only the virtue of the Romans, or a prudent ability to foresee a future inconvenience.

A 1982 edition of Livy, and a people stronger than a prince

In The Prince, chapter 9, Machiavelli recognizes the power of the people, and holds that a political leader should draw the people to him — a spirit the notes call a modern republican one. He keeps the same view, they say, in book 1 of the Discourses, and criticizes severely a habit of looking down on the people and making light of them.

Livy, in a 1982 edition the notes cite, writes in Book 6, chapter 7 of The History of Rome that no being is more vain and unstable than the people: they think vain thoughts, are inconstant, and cannot be consistently predicted in their actions, so that it is not desirable to trust them. In Book 24, chapter 25 — the notes write “Book of Rome,” plainly a slip for the same History — he is said to hold that the people rule arrogantly when they have political power and submit abjectly when they do not. That 1982 is a cited edition year, not Livy’s own date, and is left as such.

Against this, Machiavelli argues that the people are a more substantial and stable being than a prince. The people as individuals may be weak politically, morally and intellectually, and may make many mistakes, but the same problem appears in those who hold the place of a prince; as a whole, the people are more trustworthy than a prince in moral capacity, and seldom make intellectual mistakes in judgment or in choosing officials. Looking down on the people, he claims, was a general fault of earlier writers: Aristotle and Plato among the classical philosophers of Greece, Tacitus among the historians of ancient Rome, Cicero among its philosophers — and Livy himself, the essay adds, falls into the same error. The same Korean essay, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A student essay on conflicting views of civic virtue and of the preferred regime in The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, with a wide field of later readings.
2. The saying “fortune obeys virtue,” the virtue of particular men in chapters 6 and 7 of The Prince, the virtue of the state in the Discourses, and a rejection of luck as the cause of Rome’s avoiding two great wars at once.
3. A 1982 edition of Livy, left as a cited year, and Machiavelli’s answer that the people as a whole are more stable and more trustworthy than a prince.

Last updated: 14 November 2026