dante, machiavelli and rome

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Dante, Machiavelli, and Rome Author(s): Charles T. Davis Source: Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, No. 106 (1988), pp. 43-60Published by: Dante Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40166369Accessed: 03-05-2015 19:17 UTC

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Dante, Machiavelli, and Rome* CHARLES T. DAVIS

has been called the most political of great poets, and it is not only in the Monarchia and his letters but also in the Divine

Comedy that he lives up to this epithet. Machiavelli is surely the most political of playwrights, and some critics have tried to prove that even his plays have political dimensions. Both Dante and Machiavelli were great scorners of Florence and great admirers of Rome.

Is this enough justification for considering together a pair of Florentines

separated by two centuries? I doubt it. Although we all have every reason to be interested in these authors separately, the reader may well wonder why I should be asking that they be considered together. Are not their attitudes toward history, contemporary politics, and many other matters diametrically opposed?

Dante was a Christian reformer, and many have maintained that he was a reformer of so visionary a temper, particularly in his views on the

empire, as to be an anachronism in his own age. There seems to be little even of the conventional Christian in Machiavelli, and his merciless real- ism has often led readers to consider him very modern. Dante was a

moralist, evenhandedly quoting Aristotelian, Stoic, and Biblical max- ims. Machiavelli was also, in his way, a moralist, but his moralism was seldom pagan and practically never Christian. It was almost always uniquely his own. Both had strongly prophetic messages to deliver, but Dante stood forth firmly as God's prophet, while Machiavelli, with his bitter jokes and shocking paradoxes, often played the role of the devil's advocate. Dante thought divine providence, with fortune under its sway, guided history. Machiavelli usually presented fortune as man's great foe. Dante put those princes he considered guilty of cruelty and other vices

43



Dante Studies, cvi, 1988

in his Inferno and devised ingenious torments for them. Machiavelli

thought cruelty was sometimes politically necessary: it could be used, he said, both well and ill, and he exhorted princes to sin mightily when this was necessary for the survival or welfare of themselves and their

people. Indeed he believed that private vice was often public virtue and that private virtue was often public vice and led to political disaster. Dante condemned the blindness and destructiveness of strife within political communities. Machiavelli thought that struggle in a republic might be beneficial, as in the rivalry between the Roman plebs and patricians, which, he said, spread virtu through the populace. Such competition, properly controlled and directed by the government, might unleash

astonishing expansive energies. Dante viewed peace as the proper objective of the ruler; Machiavelli, war. In contemporary politics the remedies of Dante and Machiavelli for the salvation of Italy were exactly opposite. Dante urged the Italians to invite the emperor Henry vn in; Machiavelli urged them to throw the emperor Charles v out. While

Dante, grieving over Rome's widowhood, mourned that the emperor's absence in Germany and the pope's absence in Avignon had estranged both her husbands, or both her great luminaries or suns, one suspects that Machiavelli would have been happier if she had never possessed either. As for their own city, Dante thought that Florence was not sub- missive enough to the emperor; Machiavelli that she was not warlike

enough in resisting him. Dante thought she could enjoy true liberty only through yielding to him and obeying his Roman and imperial law. Machiavelli thought she could remain free only if she relied on her own forces and fought to maintain her independence with her own native militia.

These are certainly significant differences, and one might well think that the two men can only be juxtaposed, not fruitfully compared. Why, then, compare them? One cannot help, of course, being struck by certain striking similarities in their careers. Both were Florentines who took an active part in the political life of their city, serving in domestic offices and as ambassadors. Dante was on a number of important councils and

was a member of the priorate, the supreme magistracy of the city, in

1301. He was ambassador to S. Gimignano in 1300 and may have been

ambassador to the Pope in 1302. Machiavelli became head of the second

chancellery of the city in 1498 and served in this office for over fourteen

years. He went on embassies to the King of France, the Pope, and the

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Dante, Machiavelli, and Rome, Charles t. davis

Emperor. Both men took their political functions seriously. Dante advised

openly against supporting a papal war, and after his exile did not hesitate to write public letters advising and reproving not only hostile Florence but also an emperor on campaign and a group of cardinals in conclave. Machiavelli's whole life was politics, and on embassies he not

only analyzed the plans of other governments and made recommenda- tions for dealing with them, but he lectured his own government very vigorously and often rebuked it in the sharpest fashion for indecision in

foreign affairs. Certainly neither Dante nor Machiavelli was afraid to

speak his mind. When their governments were overthrown, both had to face the fact

of political failure, and both had to go into exile, Machiavelli only for a

relatively brief time and on his own country estate near San Casciano, Dante for life. Neither ever again enjoyed much political influence, though Dante wrote letters and undertook embassies for Italian princes, and Machiavelli eventually secured a modest post with the new government of his city. For both, the break with their early careers was bitter. Dante, condemned by his native city to be burned alive, sought hospi- tality at various Italian courts. As for Machiavelli, he was accused, apparently falsely, of participation in a conspiracy against the new government. He was arrested and interrogated, which involved being subjected to six drops of the rope (four were often enough to break a man), and he was then, for a short time, kept in prison. From there with remarkable coolness he sent a poem (indeed two poems) to the new head of state, describing, with a kind of black humor, his predicament; fettered, feeling on his shoulders the effects of the rope, sitting in fleas and stench, and hearing the noise of hammering on chains and the chants for those conspirators who (unwept by him) were about to be executed.1 Both Dante and Machiavelli had vivid experience of rejection by the Florentine patria they loved and tried to serve.

After their exile, both resorted to writing as their main employment. They shared the consciousness of being prophets in the wilderness. They condemned the present, particularly the temporal ambitions of the papacy and its effect on Italy, and they idealized the past, particularly the past dominated by the grandeur and success that was Rome. They were both fervent prophets and brilliant rhetoricians with a keen sense of the audi- ences to which they directed their works. They wrote so well that their

teachings were seized on and often distorted by later politicians. They

45




were idealized as foretellers of Italian unity by naive nationalists and other propagandists, and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were

regarded as kindred spirits by many Italians and many foreigners. Are these striking but rather external likenesses sufficient to justify a

comparison of the thought of the two men? Probably not. It can, how-

ever, be shown, I think, that the similarities extended also to aspects of their political messages, and that Machiavelli not only knew some of Dante's works2 but may have been influenced by them in fundamental as well as superficial ways.

Machiavelli quotes at least once from Dante's ConvitHo (though he thinks this quotation comes from the Monarchia) and a number of times from the Comedy, including all three cantiche. The quotations are evi-

dently from memory, for, though usually very close, they are seldom exact. At the same time, Machiavelli's reading of Dante was clearly a

continuing thing. In the famous letter of 10 December 1513 to his friend Francesco Vettori he describes how he passes his day during his exile and says that every morning, after spending some time supervising the

cutting of his timber, he goes to his aviary with a book in his pocket, "either Dante or Petrarch, or one of the minor poets, Tibullus, Ovid, and the like. I read of their amorous passions and their loves, recall

mine, and enjoy myself for a time in this sort of reflection."3 The Vita Nuova would seem much better adapted for "this sort of reflection" than the Comedy, but since the former work had not been published by 1513, Machiavelli must, unless he had a manuscript of it, be alluding to the latter.

Machiavelli also knew Dante's De vulgari eloquentia, if, as his son

maintained, he wrote the famous Dialogo concerning the Florentine lan-

guage. It is traditionally dated 1514-15 but was probably composed some- time after 1524. There has been some recent, cogent questioning of his

authorship, as well as of the traditional date.4 The author of the work is

very critical of Dante, pointing out that the poet attacked the speech of

Florence but used it, instead of the sort of refined vernacular praised in

the De vulgari eloquentia, for the Comedy, and claiming that Dante even included in the great poem some most unsuitable, indeed obscene, Florentine expressions. The author of the Dialogo accounts for this con- tradiction between theory and practice on the ground of Dante's hatred

for Florence. He says that Dante attacked Florence on every level, includ-

ing even the language that he himself used, though he was "an excellent

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Dante, Machiavelli, and Rome, charles t. davis

man for genius, learning and judgment except where he had to talk about his patria" If he could come back to life, he would want to die

again, "since fortune, to make him a liar and to cover up his false cal-

umny with her [Florence's] glory, has continually made her prosperous and famous throughout the world and brought her at present to a most

happy and tranquil state."5 It seems strange to find the author of the

Mandragola playing the prude and deploring allegedly improper expressions in the Comedy, and doubly strange to find Machiavelli eulogizing the glory and the happy state of Florence, for in general he sadly con- trasts the failures of Florence with the successes of Rome, and nowhere else does he criticize Dante.

Borrowings from the Commedia are found in poems, in letters, and in the Discourses on Livy. For example, one such use occurs in the famous letter already referred to about his daily schedule in exile. Machiavelli describes how after spending the afternoon drinking and gambling in the local inn he goes home and changes his dusty clothes for courtly garments and "enters the ancient courts of ancient men" (evidently through reading the classical historians). Then he writes down what they tell him "because Dante says that 'it does not produce knowledge when we hear but do not remember'."6

In two important passages of the Discourses on Livy he also quotes Dante. Asserting (i, 53) that a people often desires its own ruin through being deceived by a false image of good, he repeats, as has been

mentioned, Dante's remark in the Convivio that a people will often shout death to its own life and life to its own death.7 The quotation in Discourses

i, xi, is particularly significant. Discussing the role that the Roman reli-

gion played in the state, Machiavelli observes that when a republic lacks

piety its capacity for such feeling must be focused through a charismatic

lawgiver. The right leader will not find this difficult. Did not even the

misguided Savonarola succeed in persuading sophisticated Florence that he spoke with God? But such a temporary wave of reverence is not

enough to ensure the republic's survival, because the lawgiver will soon die. He must so legislate that the constitution he establishes will endure, for his successor will probably be of much less worth than he. As Dante

said, hereditary virtue can not be counted on, for "rarely does human

probity descend [Dante actually says ascend] through the branches."8

Apart from quotations of Dante in Machiavelli, and real or apocry- phal discussions of Dante's works, there are also many echoes of the

47




Comedy, both comic and serious, in Machiavelli's poems. In his Asino, or Ass, although it contains some serious reminiscences of Dantesque sententiae, the comic mood predominates. There, he pictures himself as lost in a deserted place, a dark wood, and rescued, not by a Virgil sent

by Beatrice, as Dante was in the Comedy, but by a beautiful lady employed as a shepherdess by Circe. The shepherdess does not reprove the wanderer for his sins, as Beatrice reproves Dante in the Earthly Paradise, but says his troubles are not his fault but Fortune's. She then comforts him by giving him food and wine and taking him to bed. She

plays a Virgilian role as well in showing him the infernal regions peo- pled by men turned into beasts by Circe, but they turn out to be not so infernal after all. Even the pig that the wanderer meets, covered though he is with mud and filth, would not wish to be a man again. The pig enjoys his closeness to Nature and is capable of a contentment that involves no crime and no anxiety. Man, on the other hand, is afflicted, according to the pig, with ambition, licentiousness, and avarice, as well as the fear of what other members of his species might do to him. It could only benefit him to become a beast.9

Such quotations and allusions give only a partial picture, I think, of the links between Dante and Machiavelli. I believe we find affinities on a much deeper level, that of their views of human nature and of politics. Here, too, Machiavelli echoes Dante's language and seems to reflect his attitude. The most spectacular examples of his use of Dante are perhaps found not in his prose political works but in his poems, his Capitoli or

Chapters, particularly the one dealing with ambition. It reflects very vividly Machiavelli's bitterness over the French and Spanish invasions that were devastating Italy in the early part of the sixteenth century.

Just as Dante thought cupidity, or violent desire for power and wealth, had poisoned the world, so Machiavelli found the causes of its misery in

cupidity's constituent parts, ambition and avarice. These two furies, Machiavelli says, coming on earth when Adam and his sons were living quietly together after the expulsion from Eden, caused Cain to murder his brother. "Oh human spirit," Machiavelli exclaims, "insatiable, arro-

gant, sly, and variable, and above all else malignant, iniquitous, impetu- ous, and savage, because through your ambitious will the first violent death was caused in the world, and the first grass made bloody!" Machiavelli here seems to pass lightly over the effects of the sin of Adam and Eve, perhaps in order to harmonize better the Old Testament myth

48




with the Stoic one of a serene age of innocence destroyed by ambition. In Biblical and medieval tradition Cain was the natural choice for the sower of the "evil seed" that Machiavelli asserts is now mature. He says it flourishes in the world of politics, brings the King of France repeatedly to wretched Italy, and has broken up the states of the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and Venice. The reason? "Every man hopes to rise

higher by crushing now that one, now this one, than through whatever virtue of his own. . . To this our natural instinct leads us, through its own movement and passion, if law or greater force does not restrain us."10 This quotation reminds one of the sixteenth canto of Dante's

Purgatorio, and of various other outbursts in the Comedy,11 where Dante refers to the cupidity of the Papacy (which repelled Machiavelli as well), to the cupidity of France, and to the consequently wretched condition of Italy. Machiavelli's outburst also makes us think of an eloquent passage in Convivo iv, iv, in which Dante speaks of the effects of ambition.

"Then, since the human spirit does not remain quiet within territorial

limits, but always desires glory through acquisition, as we see from experience, disputes and wars naturally arise between kingdom and kingdom." Whether or not there is any direct influence here between Dante and Machiavelli, there is certainly a basic resemblance in their views of

politics and of man. This is not to say that Machiavelli necessarily believes, like Dante, in

Adam's primal fault, certainly not to say that Machiavelli and Augustine, or Machiavelli and Luther, are brothers under the skin. At the same time Machiavelli lacks pagan as well as Christian piety, despite his admiration for the way Roman official religion reinforced the state. He is much more pessimistic about politics and morality than, for example, the ancient writers he sometimes quotes.12 He is also more pessimistic than Renaissance thinkers like Castiglione, whose Courtier was for a long time much more influential than the Prince, and who seems to have been much attracted by the view that evil was the result of ignorance and that education could produce virtue. Machiavelli, probably not a Chris-

tian, does seem to inherit a Christian pessimism in regard to the state of

unregenerate man (though without expressing any hope for his regen- eration and redemption), and he describes man's moral situation and its

political results in terms very similar to those of Dante. Both Dante and Machiavelli, moreover, think that the major earthly

remedy for man's concupiscence is external restraint in the shape of

49




good laws and institutions. For Machiavelli, however, such restraints can only work within a particular state. He does not share Dante's hope of a universal remedy, a peace imposed by a universal ruler. In the political jungle, Machiavelli thinks, one can only try to be a predator, like

France, rather than a victim, like Italy. He explains this view in the

capitolo on ambition:

But if you wish to know the reason why one people commands and the other weeps [cf, Inferno VII, 82], while everywhere the sovereign is Ambition;

why France continues as victor; on the other hand why all Italy is shattered by a stormy sea of troubles;

and why upon these lands has come the affliction of that wicked seed which Ambition and Avarice bring to fruit,

I say that if with Ambition are joined a valiant heart, a well-armed vigor, then for himself a man seldom fears evil.

When through her own nature a country lives unbridled, and then, by acci- dent, is organized and established under good laws,

Ambition uses against foreign peoples that violence which neither the law nor the king permits her to use at home

(wherefore home-born trouble almost always ceases); yet she is sure to keep disturbing the sheepfolds of others, wherever that violence of hers has planted its banner.

In an opposite way, that land is servile, exposed to every harm, to every injury, in which the people are ambitious and cowardly.13

Similar sentiments are also expressed in the Prince and the Discourses; for example in Discourses i, xxxvii, Machiavelli says that if men do not have to fight from necessity, they will fight from ambition, "which is so

strong in human breasts that however high they climb it never leaves them." Machiavelli is not complacent about this human condition; the old legend of him as cold-blooded Nick the schemer could not be wider of the mark. It is true that for him political exigency overrules all else. Certain of his aphorisms are famous for their brutality, sometimes inten-

sified by his bitter wit. For example, the founder of a city should act

alone, and so Romulus [the Roman Cain] was right to kill his brother.14 A new ruler should get rid of all likely enemies as soon as he comes to

power, for danger will be removed at one fell swoop and then the Prince

can rule mildly and the memory of his initial cruelty will fade.15 It is

better to spare an enemy's property than his life, for his sons will forgive the loss of a father sooner than that of an inheritance.16 A conquered

50




city should either be coddled or destroyed.17 A prince should try to be both feared and loved, but it is better to be feared, as long as the fear does not turn to hate.18 Machiavelli tells with evident relish of seeing the corpse of the harsh administrator used by Cesare Borgia to pacify the Romagna left in two pieces in the public square by his master in order to placate the people.19 In his poem on ambition, however, Machiavelli portrays in harrowing detail and apparently with genuine pity the consequences of ambitious war. "Wherever you turn your eyes," he says, "you see the earth filled with tears and blood, and the air with

screams, sobs, and sighs."20 But since this is the universal situation, one must make the best of it, and through courage and decision try to see to it that the screams and sighs are not one's own. Even so, Fortune (which Machiavelli here and in the capitolo of that name seems to equate with

ambition, or rather with that inevitable uncertainty of human affairs

arising from the welter of competing ambitions) can only about half the time be expected to be susceptible to an individual's courage, energy, and capacity for quick and appropriate decision, in other words his virtu.

When virtu takes center stage, consideration of many traditional virtues tends to fade away. Machiavelli, for example, speaks little of such favorite Dantesque objects of eulogy as justice and poverty. In the Allocuzione fatta ad un magistrate he does, it is true, quote what he calls Dante's "golden verses" about that imperial paragon Trajan and his salvation through being surpassingly just.21 And Machiavelli, like Dante,

applauds Roman republican scorn of money,22 with which he seems, at least in part, to have agreed. He also eulogizes some of the Roman heroes also praised by Dante for their devotion to the common good. In general, however, even in the Discourses on Livy, it is Roman virtu, or skill and energy in implementing that universal if regrettable human instinct called ambition, that is most often admired. Ambition is natural: "The desire to acquire is truly a very natural and normal thing, and when men who can acquire do so, they will always be praised or [at least] not

blamed, but when they cannot and still want to at all costs, this is the error and the blame."23 The instrument of successful ambition, Machia- velli observes, must often be force. It would be wrong to say that he idealizes force; he simply regards it as frequently necessary, and he admires those who employ it with vigor and intelligent timeliness, as did ancient Romans and some modern princes like Cesare Borgia.

51




The approaches to Roman history of Dante and Machiavelli are thus

quite different in emphasis, one emphasizing providence, the other ambition. On the importance of force, however, they are in basic accord. Both respect its verdict in history. It is true that Dante's respect for it is not so explicit as Machiavelli's. How could it be, since Dante in the Monarchic renounced the view (probably encountered by him in Augus- tine's City of God) which he says he himself, "understanding only super- ficially," once shared: that the Roman imperium was obtained "only by the violence of arms"?24 His contemporary, the Augustinian theologian Engelbert of Admont, who wrote a treatise De ortu etprogressu etfine . . .

imperii Romani, tried to meet the problem in a Ciceronian fashion by attributing many of those conquests to causes other than aggression, call-

ing them the result of defensive wars, submissions gained through diplo- macy, and bequests from friendly rulers.25 Dante does repeat in Monarchic

ii, v, Cicero's affirmation in the De officiis about the establishment of a Roman patrocinium, or benevolent guardianship, over the world, His main

concern, however, seems to be to legitimize (perhaps the proper word is

"sacralize") the conquests providentially, picturing the Romans as a chosen people whose trumphs were willed by God.26 Unlike the many medieval writers who said that such rule had been transferred from people to

people, from the Assyrians to the Persians to the Greeks and, finally, to

the Romans, Dante declares that only the Romans were able to seize the crown of imperium, which means world dominion. In the second book of the Monarchic, Dante sets out several reasons for believing that the

conquests leading to that domination over the world were just. In the first place, he says, they were just because of the hereditary

nobility of the Roman people, drawn from ancestors in all parts of the

earth. Second, they were just because Roman history was marked by miracles, indicating the special approval of God. Third, they were just because they fulfilled the principal end of law, being motivated not by cupidinous lust for domination but by zeal for the common good. Fourth

they were just because the Romans were ideally suited for the task of

ruling. Fifth, they were just because the Romans alone of all peoples had

won the race to rule the whole world, a clear proof of God's favor. Sixth,

they were just because whatever is acquired by duel is acquired by right, and the Romans submitted themselves to God's judgment through duels with the other leading powers of the world. Since they won every duel, their conquests must have been ordained by God. Seventh, they were

52




just because Christ approved them through his birth under Augustus and his death under Tiberius, whose universal jurisdiction made the

penalty imposed on Christ the legitimate means of our redemption. In this medley of arguments, the third and the sixth seem to suggest

some concern with secular legality. Dante says that whoever wills the

good of the respublica wills the end of right. Since the Romans repressed greed in favor of universal peace and liberty, they sacrificed their own

advantage for the good of the human race. Their unselfish intentions can be inferred from their historical actions and can be confirmed by Cicero's

testimony. Dante quotes from De officiis n, 8, where Cicero said that so long as the Romans were beneficent and not oppressive, and so long as they waged war only to protect their allies or their empire, then the end of wars was usually marked by clemency, and the Senate was a refuge for

kings, peoples, and nations, and allies were loyally protected; therefore the Romans could be said to have established not so much an imperium as a patrocinium over the world. Cicero, however, immediately followed this assertion by saying that their beneficence was beginning to fade even before Sulla's time, and that since his triumph it had been aban- doned altogether. No oppression of allies could seem evil since atrocities were being committed against citizens as well. Destroyed by such crimes the res publica no longer existed. Dante omits this passage, appending instead a catalogue of Roman republican heroes who sacrificed themselves for their country. Dante says nothing about their treatment of allies and

replaces the point of Cicero's argument with a collection of patriotic exempla celebrating individuals. Although Dante ends his discussion with a neat syllogism affirming that he has proved that the Roman people proceeded dejure in acquiring their imperium, it is obvious that he is not much interested in the language of logic, but rather of demonstrative (not even of deliberative) rhetoric, in this case commemorative eulogy. The link between his heroes and the exercise of Roman patrocinium is unclear.

Dante's sixth argument is more original and probably more important for understanding his political views. It attempts to show that the means (wars) by which the Romans triumphed were legal in themselves

independently of their result, not merely justified by their end (the common good). For this purpose Dante seems to invoke the legal device of trial by battle, a widely used medieval judicial process, but one on the

way to obsolescence, already discredited to a considerable extent by clerical and juristic criticisms. He transforms it and makes it the symbol

53




and justification of a historical process. His duel is not the same as the medieval ordeal of trial by battle between individuals, supervised by the

temporal and spiritual authorities: it is a duel of peoples, supervised by God. The notion behind it is similar to that behind the ordeal, but with a very significant difference: the ordeal was a legal institution to which at least one of the opponents had to submit whether he wanted to or not; it was believed that God would condemn the guilty to defeat and reward the innocent with victory. Dante's war-duels, however, had to be entered into freely; he asserts that battles can be duels only if, after all other remedies have been tried, they are undertaken by free consent of the participating opponents and if these opponents are moved neither

by hate nor love but solely by "zeal for justice." Therefore God's judgment is invoked, but instead of concern with guilt or innocence there is

only eagerness on both sides to elicit his verdict and so to know his will. It is interesting that Dante believes that the nature of such a duel was

clearly understood by "gentiles" like the Greek general Pyrrhus as well as by that chosen people the Romans. Did not Pyrrhus, Dante asked, refuse the gold the Romans offered for their prisoners and then free them anyway? Pyrrhus said, "Let us gamble for our lives with the sword and not with gold; let us test through virtue what Fortune brings and whether Hera wants you or me to rule."

Dante found this quotation from Ennius in chapter 12 of the first book of Cicero's De officiis. There Cicero had devoted considerable space to considerations about just grounds and motivations for war and just treatment of the vanquished. Like Machiavelli, who also used this work, and unlike Engelbert of Admont, Dante did not seem much interested in such rules, or in the collective ideal of human justice they implied. For him right was equivalent to God's will, and Dante seems to have

thought that on the historical level God's will was revealed primarily through military victory. Like Machiavelli, he was much concerned with the interplay between Fortune (which he usually identified with providence) and virtue, here used by him in a "Machiavellian" sense to sig- nify force and valor certified by success. (Cicero defined virtue in De

officiis ii, 5, in quite different terms.) For Dante, the result of this inter-

play between fortune and virtue was not uncertain, as it was for Machiavelli; Dante's God gave extra virtue to the people he had already selected to be the instrument of his will and the object of his rewards. Dante said that opponents in a duel must be moved by zeal for justice,

54




but this had little to do with observing impartial principles of law. It was only zeal to uncover God's will through the clash of valorous rivals, both having what Machiavelli would call virtu. But the result of the clashes they engaged in was predetermined. Because God willed the

triumph of the Romans, they were bound to be the victors in all their duels, and all their wars were necessarily just.27

This conception is nowhere to be found in De officiis, though it may have had some distant connection with the distinction that Cicero made there (i, 12) between the savagery of wars for survival and the more civilized nature of wars for glory. At first sight more similar, but actu-

ally even more alien to Dante, are the medieval Christian adaptations of ancient ideas of a just war. His duel is totally different from the Old

Testament-crusading concept that God commanded his people to wage certain wars against certain unbelievers, the Amalekites, for example, or the Moslems. It is different as well from Augustine's view that wars

may be won by either the comparatively just or the wicked, but defeat is

always a punishment for sin. It must also be distinguished from the

primitive view, put forward in the very influential pseudo-Augustinian work Gravi depugna (fifth century) that God favors those whose cause is

just, and punishes those whose cause is not, for Dante is talking about a

particular kind of war entered into in a voluntary and upright fashion

by both sides to discover God's will. No doubt more important in the forming of Dante's theory was his

reading of the Aeneid's account of the war between the Trojans and the Latins, where Virgil, in spite of the fact that the Trojans are destined by divine fate to prevail, treats the Latins sympathetically. Dante reflects this attitude in Inferno i, 106-108, where he has Virgil speak of warriors on both sides as dying for "umile Italia" and in Monarchia n, ix, where he

quotes Virgil and Livy as affirming that the duels between Aeneas and Turnus, and between the champions of the Romans and the Albans, were designed to determine the will of God.

As for medieval parallels to Dante's idea, the most obvious ones are found in the many medieval historical and literary sources that describe battles allegedly arranged with the consent of both sides in order to find a way out of an impasse by appealing to God's judgment. Kurt-Georg Cram provides an interesting examination of this topic in his book Judicium Belli, Zum Rechtscharakter des Krieges im deutschen Mittelalter, and

says that such appeals are characteristic of the early and high middle

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ages, when God was really thought to make such decisions (for exam-

ple, in accounts of the battle of Fontenoy in 841, when warring brothers were supposed to have sought God's judgment). Cram maintains, however, that in the later middle ages, primarily as a result of French, Dutch and Brabantine influence, there was a secularizing, first literary and then actual, of this concept of war as a duel. Now not God but Fortune or Mars was thought to rule over it. There was also a strong tendency among German writers to justify imperial authority simply by appealing to the right of conquest. Cram regards Dante's theory, "this powerful romantic synthesis of war, duel, and God's just judgment," as an anachronism harking back to earlier medieval times.28

This verdict may be too hasty. It is true that Dante takes a Virgilian view of the Romans' success as due to God's special providence, to their divine election to achieve the bravium of empire, but for him that providence is revealed in the success itself, and does not show, at least in

regard to particular conflicts, the greater objective justice of the Roman

position. Both the Romans and their enemies are supposed to have "zeal for justice." This means that they want to settle an otherwise insoluble

question by finding out what the verdict of God, or of what Ennius calls Fortune or Hera, may be on the success of their arms. It seems evident that Dante, in expounding his grand design of history, is here

using, in addition to the historical ideas of Virgil, and also of Ennius and Cicero, theories derived from contemporary chivalric usage. He is not

seriously interested, as earlier medieval participants in indicia belli were

supposed to have been, in the justice of a particular cause in a particular battle or campaign. In effect, Dante equates justice with worldly success, which he regards in turn as the unveiling of God's providential plan.

That Dante was aware that this sanctification of success (strangely different from his glorification of the unsuccessful emperor Henry vn in Paradiso xxx) might seem somewhat scandalous is indicated by his insist- ence on rigorous, but ultimately irrelevant, requirements for the valid- ity of his "duels." Since the motives of both sides are the same, they cancel each other out. Although he made a strenuous effort to turn the conquests of the Romans into legal appeals to God's judgment, he evi-

dently thought that it was the conquests themselves that revealed that

judgment. His pleasure in meditating on such conquests is nowhere better demonstrated than in Paradiso vi with its vivid description of the swift and devastating descents of the imperial eagle against its enemies.

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Dante, like Machiavelli, was an admirer of quick and decisive action, as is shown by his letter to the emperor-elect Henry vn urging him not to

spend more time reducing cities in the Po valley but to move swiftly south and strike at the heart of the evil rebellion against him, at Dante's own city of Florence, which the poet did not hesitate to threaten with the most complete devastation and ruin.29 Moreover, it should be remem- bered that the Monarchia is not a mirror of princes listing the personal virtues that the emperor should possess. The only reason Dante gives as to why his universal emperor will not be motivated by cupidity is that he

already has authority over everything, and so can want nothing more.30 There are thus a number of reasons for believing that Dante, as well as

Machiavelli, was convinced of the importance of force in political affairs, even though he tried to some extent to disguise it. It is odd that he could not sympathize with the lively consciousness of that exigency possessed by his own city (Machiavelli would say that Florence later unfortunately lost that sense), but then Dante thought Rome and the emperor were the only rightful exercisers of sovereign power and authority.

The lesson that success legitimated rule was taught even more clearly by Machiavelli. He, unlike Dante, had no squeamishness about acknowl-

edging the political role of force. Although sometimes his descriptions of the dealings of Fortune with Rome seem to hint at the old providential view of the Roman conquests, he did not invoke God's will or Rome's sense of duty toward mankind, or dwell very much on the pious commonplaces of ancient authors about the altruistic justice of Roman rule. He did not try to sanctify the savage give-and-take of battles between Rome and other nations. His Romans might sometimes seek the common good at home, but in foreign affairs they were as self-

serving as everyone else. When Machiavelli entered their ancient courts

by reading their historians, he did not take on faith traditional verdicts about the motivations of Roman actions. Instead he used the evidence

provided by those actions to question the Romans about their purposes and methods. He also tried to analyze, at least in a rudimentary way, the

functioning of their governmental institutions. From this scrutiny emerged a picture of a people that imposed its will on other peoples through an astute mixture of force and fraud and of terror and clem-

ency. In regard to Roman government Machiavelli proposed a very interesting thesis, saying that the political arrangements of the Romans were uniquely good because they provided not only space for internal

57




ambitions and rivalries but also the means by which these rivalries could be kept in proper bounds. Competition between the patricians and plebs diffused virtu widely through the populace. For a long time the government was able to keep this competition political, not military, and chan- nel the energy it generated into external, not internal, wars. In Florence, on the other hand, aristocrats were excluded from the government and so their virtu was lost to the state. Florence was divided, but not by a natural competition between patricians and plebs taking place under a

strong and balanced government. She was lacerated by the struggles of

artificially created factions. The result was a republic with the aspiration to rule an empire, but without the necessary vitality.

The instability of its constitution produced insecurity in its foreign policies. Whereas the leaders of republican Rome possessed the same characteristics that Machiavelli wanted to inculcate in his prince and took decisions with speed and energy as well as prudence, Florence, he

thought, always wanted to delay committing itself, not realizing that time could work against as well as for it. Therefore Fortune, who like a woman prefers youth, impetuosity, and decision, smiled on Rome but not on Florence.31

Both our authors seem to be obsessed with ancient Rome and the noble past. Actually, however, they are obsessed with modern Florence and Italy, and with finding remedies for the problems of a tormented

present. The remedies they propose are not the same, but both recog- nize the significance of force in politics. Machiavelli gives the Florentines the identical advice that Dante gives the emperor, urging them to imi- tate their Roman predecessors through more prompt and decisive action. Dante's Romans manifest their divine election by their single-minded and successful pursuit of power. Machiavelli's Romans demonstrate their

mastery of Fortune by the same means, exhibiting the same kind of virtu. Both Machiavelli and Dante contrast this Roman virtu with con-

temporary Italian decadence, and connect such decadence with ecclesi- astical avarice and interference. Though their prescriptions for survival are very different, and their underlying philosophies diverge in obvious

ways, their views on the moral and political situation of Italy and on man's ambitious nature are more similar than one might think.

Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana

58




NOTES

* An earlier and briefer version of this paper was given as an Andrew W. Mellon lecture at Tulane University in the autumn of 1987 and was printed privately by the Tulane Graduate School in 1988.

1. Machiavelli, A Giuliano di Lorenzo de} Medici, in Tutte le opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Firenze: Sansoni, 1971), pp. 1003-1004.

2. See Cecil Grayson, "Machiavelli and Dante," in Renaissance. Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (Dekalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois Univer-

sity Press, 1971), pp. 361-384. 3. Machiavelli, Opere, ed. cit., p. 1159. Machiavelli quotes Par. v, 41-42, in this same letter,

and Par. vi, 134-135, and Purg. xx, 86, in letters to Guicciardini of 19 and 21 December 1325. He quotes Purg. x, 73-93, in the Allocuzione fatta ad un magistrato, Opere, ed. cit., pp. 36-37, and

Purg. vii, 121-122, in Discorsi I, xi. He quotes Inf. IV, 16-18, in a letter of 9 April 1513 to Francesco Vettori, and Inf. xxxm, 80, in the prologue to the Mandragola. He misattributes a

quotation from Convivio I, xi, to the Monarchia in Discourses I, liii. There are also many echoes from the Comedy in his poems.

4. First by Grayson, art. cit. For the subsequent controversy see S. Bertelli, "Egemonia linguistica come egemonia culturale e politica nella Firenze cosmiana," Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, xxxvm (1976), 249-283, esp. 282-283; Ornella Castellani Polidori, Niccold Machiavelli e il "Dialogo intorno alia nostra linguan (Firenze: Olschki, 1978); Mario Martelli, Una

giarda fiorentina: il "Dialogo della lingua" attribuito a Niccold Machiavelli (Roma: Salerno Editore, 1978); Cecil Grayson, "Questione aperta: Ancora sul Dialogo intorno alia nostra lingua^ in Studi e problemi di critica testuale xxix (1979), 113-124; Carlo Dionisotti, "Machiavelli e la lingua fiorentina," in Machiavellerie (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 267-364; Cecil Grayson, "Per Vincenzo Oreadini (e altri)," in Studi e problemi di critica testuale, xxxm (1986), pp. 13-26.

5. Discorso o dialogo intorno alia nostra lingua, Opere, ed. cit., p. 925. 6. Opere, ed. cit., p. 1160, quoting Par, v, 41-42. 7. Discourses I, xi, liii, quoting Convivio I, xi. 8. Discourses I, XI, quoting Purg. vn, 121-122. On Machiavelli and Savonarola (and their admi-

ration for Moses, the model of a lawgiver-politician for both) see Alison Brown, "Savonarola, Machiavelli and Moses," in Florence and Italy. Renaissance Studies in Honour ofNicolai Rubinstein, ed. P. Denley and C. Elam (London: Committee for Medieval Studies, Westfield College, University of London, 1988), pp. 57-72.

9. UAsino, Opere, ed. cit., pp. 954-976. 10. DeWAmbizione, Opere, ed. cit., pp. 984-985. The last clause of the quotation reads, "se

legge o maggior forza non ci aflfrena." Cf. Purg. xvi, 79: "maggior forza" and Purg. xvi, 94: "Onde convenne legge per fren porre." Gennaro Sasso in his fundamental Niccold Machiavelli, new ed. (Bologna: II Mulino, 1980), p. 403, says that Machiavelli believes that men must break the laws of ethics to survive not because "man is, in himself, wicked and corrupt, but because this is his historical condition." But if Machiavelli believes that man has always (or at least since Cain) been infected by the evil seed and followed his own natural ambition, it seems evident that his nature has created his historical condition (la fortune, c'est les autres), and that Sasso's distinction is artificial.

n. See, for example, Purg. xx and Par. xxvn. 12. This point has been made forcefully by, among others, Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 35-41. For a learned discussion and somewhat different view of this subject see Marcia L. Colish, "Cicero's De Ojficiis and Machiavelli's Prince,1* in Sixteenth-Century Journal, IX (1978), 81-93.

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13. I quote from Allan Gilbert's translation, Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1965), Vol. II, pp. 736-737. It should be noted that the contrast between successfully and unsuccessfully ambitious lands contains Machiavelli's judgment on France and Italy.

14. Discourses, l, ix. 15. The Prince, c. viii. 16. Ibid., c. xviii. 17. Ibid., c. v; Discourses n, xxiii. 18. The Prince, c. xvii. 19. Ibid., c. vii. 20. DelVAmbizione, Opere, ed. cit., p. 986. 21. Allocuzione, Opere, ed. cit., pp. 36-37. 22. Discourses 1 1. xxx. 23. The Prince, c. iii. 24. Monarchia 1 1, i. 25. Engelbert of Admont, Liber de ortu, progressu et fine regnorum et precipue regni seu imperii

Romani, in Maxima bibliotheca veterum patrum et antiquorum scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, ed. M. de La Bigne (Lyons, 1677) Vol. xxv, pp. 362-378. On the subject of how Cicero's (and St.

Augustine's) ideas about the just war were developed in the middle ages see Frederick Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

26. Convivo iv, v. 27. Monarchia n, ix. The footnotes to this chapter in the edition of G. Vinay (Firenze: Sansoni,

1950), pp. 166-177 are particularly helpful. The quotation from Ennius is in Cicero, De offidis I, xii, 38.

28. In the series Beiheftezum ArchivfUr Kulturgeschichte. Heft 5. Munster/Kdln: Bahlau, 1955, esp. pp. 87-108.

29. See Epistolae VI and vn, ed. and trans, by Paget Toynbee (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920). Epistolae VI contains the same figure of the imperial eagle descending on its enemies as Paradiso vi. In this letter Dante uses it to prophesy a future destruction of Florence that never material- ized. It is interesting that Machiavelli in the capitolo, Di Fortuna, Opere, ed. cit. pp. 976-979, esp. 979, uses the same figure for Fortune, which he pictures as falling like an eagle on its prey.

30. Monarchia I, ix. 31. The Prince, c. iii, xxv; Discourses I, ii-v, xxxviii, xlix; II, xxiii, xxx; and the Istorie fiorentine,

esp. Proemio and hi, i (Opere, ed. cit., pp. 632-633, 690-691).

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