Machiavelli's political trials and "the free way of life"

Political Theory

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 385-411

  McCormick, John P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

Liberty; Machiavelli; Political trials; Popular government; Republicanism

Indexed keywords

EID: 34547500675     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: 15527476     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591707302195     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. See M. I. Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern (New Brunswick, NJ, 1985);
2. John Dunn, Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy (London, 2005);
3. and Josiah Ober and Charles W. Hedrick, eds., Demokratia: Conversations on Democracies, Ancient and Modern (Princeton, 2006).
4. See Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford, 1999).
5. See Machiavelli, "A Discourse on Remodeling the Government of Florence" [1519-20], in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, vol. I, trans. & ed. A. Gilbert (Duke, 1958) 101-115, here 113; henceforth DR.
6. See Francesco Guicciardini, "Discorso di Logrogno (On Bringing Order to Popular Government)" [1512], trans. A. Moulakis (Lanham, 1998) 122;
7. and Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections, trans. M. Domandi (Philadelphia, 1965) 85, 130.
8. On the continuities between Guicciardini's political thought and modern constitutionalism, see John P. McCormick, "Machiavelli against Republicanism.: On the Cambridge School's 'Guicciardinian Moments,'" Political Theory 31, no. 5 (October 2003) 615-643;
9. and McCormick, "Contain the Wealthy and Patrol the Magistrates: Restoring Elite Accountability to Popular Government," American Political Science Review 100, no. 2 (May 2006) 147-163.
10. Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy [c. 1513-19], trans. H. C. Mansfield, Jr. and N. Tarcov (Chicago, 1997);
11. hereafter cited with book and chapter numbers in parentheses. I also refer to Machiavelli, The Prince [1513], trans. H. C. Mansfield, Jr. (Chicago, 1998);
12. hereafter cited as P. All Italian references correspond with Machiavelli, Opere I, C. Vivanti, ed. (Torino, 1997) 195-525 and 117-92.
13. See Livy, The Early History of Rome, trans. A. de Selincourt (New York, 1988).
14. See Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford, 1999) 147-62.
15. For extensive discussions of Coriolanus in the context of republican, politics and Machiavelli's political theory, see J. Pattick Coby, Machiavelli's Romans: Liberty and Greatness in the Discourses on Livy (Lanham, MD, 1999) 25-26, 33,
16. and Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge, 2004) 49-86.
17. Machiavelli explains how even Venice, an aristocracy, avails itself of relatively large bodies to "hold powerful men in check" (I.49). Venice was, of course, the republican paragon for ottimati in Machiavelli's audience: see Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. II: Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge, 2002) 126-30, 138-39, 148;
18. Felix Gilbert, "The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought," in Nicolai Rubinstein, Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence (Evanston, IL, 1968) 442-62;
19. and Gilbert, "Bernardo Rucellai and the Orti Oricellari: A Study on the Origin of Modern Political Thought" in his History: Choice and Commitment (Cambridge, MA, 1977) 215-46.
20. See Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. C. Grayson (Chicago, 1963) 99.
21. Machiavelli was denounced on various occasions as the descendant of a bastard, for failing to pay debts and taxes, and for committing sodomy with a mistress. See Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (Princeton, 1989) 140,
22. and Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, 112, 286n. 18 and 20.
23. The ottimati charged that Machiavelli was unworthy of the office and insisted that his young noble friend, Francesco Vettori, be appointed and sent along instead. See Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, 99-101,
24. and John M. Najemy, "The Controversy Surrounding Machiavelli's Service to the Republic," in Machiavelli and Republicanism, eds. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge, 1990) 102-117, here 108-112.
25. Cf. also, Robert Black, "Machiavelli, Servant of the Florentine Republic," in Machiavelli and Republicanism, 71-99.
26. See, e.g., Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections, 76, 123, 125.
27. On Machiavelli's rhetorical strategies for persuading or manipulating a princely or patrician audience, see, respectively, Mary G. Dietz, "Trapping the Prince: Machiavelli and the Politics of Deception" American Political Science Review 80, no. 3 (1986) 777-99;
28. and John P. McCormick, "Tempering the Grandi's Appetite to Oppress: The Dedication and Intention of Machiavelli's Discourses," in V. Kahn, et. al., eds., Politics and the Passions, 1500-1789 (Princeton, 2006) 7-29.
29. Machiavelli also notes how the senate appointed Cincinnatus dictator to crush Spurius Maelius for gaining political preeminence by privately distributing grain among the plebs (III.1, III.28). Indeed, the conventional interpretation of the dictatorship understands the magistracy as the senate's last resort in cowing the plebeians since the dictator is appointed without consultation of the tribunes or the popular assemblies. See, e.g., Otto Kirchheimer, Politics, Law and Social Change (New York, 1969) 42. However, at important junctures in Machiavelli's Discourses, the dictatorship operates neither independently of popular will, as the Menenius case discussed below will demonstrate, nor without popular accountability, as his example of Manlius Imperiosus confirms. The tribunes indicted Imperiosus for mistreating the plebeians while dictator and Machiavelli emphasize the people's role as ultimate arbiter of the ensuing controversy (III.34).
30. See Livy, The Early History of Rome, Book 2, chaps. 34-39.
31. See, e.g., Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders: A. Study of the Discourses on Livy (Ithaca, 1979) 53-62;
32. Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue (Chicago, 1996) 29, 241-46, 253-54.
33. See also Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL, 1958) 112-13, 169, 206.
34. See Guicciardini, The History of Florence [c. 1508], trans. M. Domandi (New York, 1970) 103-06; hereafter HF.
35. On Machiavelli's much more sympathetic depictions of Valori outside of the Discourses, see Mark Jurdjevic, "Machiavelli's Sketches of Francesco Valori and the Reconstruction of Florentine History," Journal of the History of Ideas 63, no. 2 (April 2002) 185-206.
36. I need to make two clarifying points at this juncture: (1) Just because Machiavelli argues that popular judgment is inherently ordinary and that leaders can avoid extraordinary measures by availing themselves of it when dealing with patrician rivals, this does not mean that Machiavelli rules out "extraordinary" measures, especially in "corrupt" republics (I.17-18). I'm. merely suggesting that ordinary ones are preferable, that is, less likely to establish inconvenient precedents or encourage reprisals down the road. (2) As I've remarked, the Machiavellian imperative to enlist the people in political punishment doesn't mean, that prominent citizens must desperately fear incessant indictment, conviction, or execution by the combined efforts of the people and populist magistrates - the Florentine example of Bernardo del Nero and the Roman example of the tribune-initiated moratorium on patrician prosecutions exemplify this. Liberty abides in the space between Machiavelli's examples of Brutus's sons and the popular impulse to punish all of the grandi after overthrowing the Decemvirate. Machiavelli distinguishes between the ways of freedom and tyranny in this regard, even if he does not provide precise guidelines on exactly how to distinguish the two. One may infer that republican freedom requires grandi who are generally wary of political punishment but only intermittently terrified by it (see III.1).
37. See Ridolfi, Life of Machiavelli, 99.
38. Mansfield accepts the nobles' response that the people and the dictator were acting "extraordinarily," but it is not clear on what grounds. See Mansfield, Jr., Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders, 48. If he means the use of the dictatorship itself, Machiavelli later identifies the office as an ordinary institution that addresses extraordinary circumstances (I.34). If he means that the people had no legal authority to change the focus of Menenius's investigation, this is technically true, but "the people" in the sense of the populus Romanus, theoretically, have the authority to do whatever they want. Moreover, Mansfield speculates that the plebeian, dictator is seeking the consulship for himself but Machiavelli's readers would likely know that dictators almost always previously served as consuls.
39. See Kaplan, Dictatorships and 'Ultimate'Decrees in the Early Roman Republic, 2;
40. and Richard E. Mitchell, Patricians and Plebeians: The Origin of the Roman State (Ithaca, 1990) 137.
41. According to Livy, Cincinnatus used his dictatorial authority to oversee a trial where his son was exonerated of abusing plebeians, resulting in the banishment of the individual who purportedly gave false testimony against him. See Livy, The Early History of Rome, Book 3, chap. 29. Menenius likewise might have used the dictatorship to settle a personal score emerging from class conflict.
42. See Livy, The Early History of Rome, Book 9, chap. 26.
43. Livy identifies the master of horse in this instance as Marcus Folius (or Foslius). A name that closely approximates Machiavelli's invention here is Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, about whom a few facts are noteworthy: a great military strategist, he was also the only ex-consul to serve as tribune of the plebs; an. ally of the Gracchi, with a reputation for immorality - especially among the nobles - he helped the brothers administer their pro-plebeian land reforms, and in that capacity, was murdered along with Gaius Gracchus by senators in 121 BCE. See Livy, "Periochae to Book 60" (www.livius.org/li-ln/livy/ periochae/periochae00.html); Appian, The Civil Wars, trans. J. Carter (London, 1996) I.18;
44. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, eds. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (Oxford, 2003) 614;
45. Plutarch, "Gaius Gracchus," in Makers of Rome, trans. I. Scott-Kilvert (London, 1965) 184-92.
46. On the possibility that Machiavelli surreptitiously supports anti-patrician Agrarian reforms in Rome, despite apparent statements to the contrary, see Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, 75-86.