Machiavelli and the Gracchi: Prudence, violence and redistribution

Global Crime

Volumn 10, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 298-305

  McCormick, John P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

Ciompi revolt; Gracchi; Liberty; Machiavelli; Redistribution; Roman republic; Violence

Indexed keywords

EID: 70449125869     PISSN: 17440572     EISSN: 17440580     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/17440570903248155     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. Machiavelli, Discorsi, composed circa 1513-19, C. Vivanti, ed. (Turin, 1997); hereafter cited in the main text with book and chapter numbers in parentheses. I rely on the following translations, emended where noted: Discourses on Livy, trans. H.C. Mansfield, Jr. and N. Tarcov (Chicago, 1997) and The Sweetness of Power, trans. J.B. Atkinson and D. Sices (Dekalb, IL, 2002).
2. Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe (De Principatipus), composed circa 1513 and published in 1532, ed. G. Inglese (Turin, 1995), abbreviated as 'P', cited with chapter numbers within the text. Consult the Eng-lish translations of The Prince by H.C. Mansfield, Jr. (Chicago, 1998), and W.J. Connell (Boston, 2005).
3. On the ambiguity of Machiavelli's pronouncements on Roman agrarian reform, see Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 75-86.
4. On the necessity of reading the Discourses through the eyes of its young aristocratic dedicatees, Cosimo Rucellai and Zanobi Buondelmonti, see John P. McCormick, 'Tempering the Grandi's Appetite to Oppress: The Dedication and Intention of Machiavelli's Discourses', in Politics and the Passions, 1500-1789, eds. Victoria Kahn et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 7-29.
5. See Gene Brucker, 'The Ciompi Revolt', in Florentine Studies, ed. Nicolai Rubinstein (London, 1968)
6. John Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280-1400 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1982).
7. See James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civic Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 75-178.
8. Nelson establishes Cicero as the paradigmatic Roman (as opposed to Greek) republican on the basis of his criticisms of both the Agrarian Laws and the Gracchi. See Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, 57-9.
9. See Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, trans. L. Banfield and H.C. Mansfield (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), III.12-22, pp. 121-36.
10. See Livy, History of Rome, Books 1-10, vols. I-IV, trans. B.O. Foster (Cambridge, MA: Loeb, 1919-26), e.g., IV.49, 51, VI.5, 35; cf. also, Plutarch's Lives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), X.145-241.
11. See Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL, 1958), 134, 169, 250.
12. See de Grazia's discussion of Machiavelli's reflections on his own poverty and its role in his unsuccessful political career and personal misfortunes: see Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 358.
13. A formidable proponent of this view is Miguel E. Vatter, Between Form and Event: Machiavelli's Theory of Political Freedom (London, 2000), 197, 229, 231, no. 30.