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- [00:01]
Narrator/Host
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- [01:53]
Dr. Alexander Lee
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- [02:28]
Narrator/Host
From obscure beginnings to torture, exile and desperate reinvention. The biography of Renaissance diplomat and author Nicolo Machiavelli reads like political theatre at its most brutal. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Alexander Lee speaks to Danny Byrd about the man behind the myth. He presents Machiavelli as an everyman who loved his family and friends, sang poetry, drank, gambled and wrote by night, producing one of the most contentious books ever. The Prince, long condemned as a manual for tyrants. Might it instead be better to see it as a clear eyed guide to political survival in unstable times?
- [03:17]
Danny Byrd
To start us off, could you paint a picture of the world Machiavelli was born into? What was life like in Renaissance Florence?
- [03:23]
Dr. Alexander Lee
At the time, the world of 15th century Italy was marked by disorder and upheaval almost without end. When Machiavelli was born in 1469, Florence was notionally a republic under the de facto control of the Medici family. Nevertheless, it was marred by profound social conflicts. Social disorder, rivalry between the rich, the grandi, the, and the less well off Poppolo. At the same time, Italy itself was divided between a whole range of different states, of which Florence was just one. When Machiavelli was in his 20s, the Medici family got booted out of the city as a result of a French invasion of the peninsula. King Charles VIII of France was determined to claim the throne of the Kingdom of Naples in the south, and on his way through, ended up causing all manner of trouble, including in Florence. The Medici fled and they were replaced by what was notionally a kind of more popular republic under the influence of a religious firebrand called Girolamo Savonarola. He only lasted a few years before he was eventually burnt at the stake and dispensed with. However, the tensions remained, Florence was constantly fighting for its survival against a multiplicity of different enemies outside and struggling to contain social tensions within. So it was very much a febrile where nothing was certain.
- [04:51]
Danny Byrd
Do we know much about the circumstances of his early life, his background, what his family was like?
- [04:56]
Dr. Alexander Lee
Absolutely. Machiavelli's family was relatively middling, I'd say. They had a casa, a house just south of the River Arno, not far from what we now know as the Ponte Vecchio. It doesn't exist anymore, but we know exactly where it was. Machiavelli's father, Bernardo, was a notary. He had solid legal training. He was a very learned man. He was at a certain point commissioned to compose a topographical index to Livy's history of Rome, which sounds a bit arcane today, but actually is testimony to his learning. He was, however, somewhat on the fringes of social and, well, political life, at least. Although he knew most of the leading men and certainly most of the leading intellectuals in the city. Bernard never practiced law and never took any part in the political process, and that was because he was a public debtor. And in late 15th century Florence, if you didn't pay your taxes and you were found to be a public debtor, then that was terribly shameful and you couldn't participate in civic life as much as anybody else. So Machiavelli was born into an educated, modestly well off family, but one that was definitely far from the center of affairs. It was undoubtedly a happy family. He had memories of his mother singing songs to him. She wrote poems and kanzani and things like that. Of his schooling, we know relatively little. Some of his early teachers, private tutors, have been identified. We even have a Latin textbook that was written for him and one of his relatives. One thing that has recently been suggested is that Machiavelli, while a young schoolboy, may, and I must stress, may have been a victim of sexual abuse, given that one of his tutors was later found to be doing that with others. It's unclear whether he went to the university, the studio of Loden, but it certainly seems possible. He had a very good grounding in the Latin classics. He was able later in life to quote Virgil and other Latin poets and writers from memory, and he was anxious to join the top table, as it were, when the Medici was still kicking around. Machiavelli seems to have tried to join their circle by writing poems to one of them, and they're quite charming. Not brilliant poems, but they're quite charming poems. He never succeeds, however. So compared to many other men of his time, he's actually a bit unremarkable by the time he's in his early 20s. You look at his early life and you don't think, wow, this guy is going to make waves. Quite the opposite, in fact. As it turned out, however, that would prove to be something of an advantage when openings did appear.
- [07:40]
Danny Byrd
Could you go into a little bit more detail about what those openings were? For example, was there some sort of career path that he was pursuing?
- [07:47]
Dr. Alexander Lee
When Savonarola, the religious firebrand I mentioned earlier, fell from grace in Florence, there was a tremendous amount of upheaval, even though the structures of government didn't change all that much. There was a certain shift in personnel, particularly in the bureaucracy of Florence. And in 1498, Machiavelli was unexpectedly elected second chancellor. Now, what did the second chancellor do? Well, it was a civil service job, essentially. As second chancellor, he was responsible for maintaining relations between Florence and the little towns and cities in Tuscany that it ruled. It was quite a responsible post. And you might ask why did such a. Well, I don't exaggerate, but why does such a nobody suddenly get thrust into such a prominent role? And the answer was probably because he was a nobody, or at least somebody who wasn't tainted by any political associations. After the upheaval of the Medici's departure and four years under Savonarola's influence, Florentine politics was very polarized. It was important at that point to have somebody who was able, but not dazzlingly so, talented, but not remarkably so, but crucially not associated with one faction or another to perform such an important role. So he was elected to that and was then set on course for a career in political life. Now, again, as I said, he's not a politician. He's not an elected politician in the sense of someone who holds public office like he's not a magistrate, he's not taking executive decisions, he's very much on the kind of bureaucratic side of things, but he's very much in the swim. And not long after he enters into that post, he is also pushed into diplomatic roles, not as a full blown ambassador, but as an emissary who can go and negotiate to a certain point, gather information, et cetera, et cetera.
- [09:49]
Danny Byrd
Machiavelli's career took a rather dramatic turn when he was ultimately exiled from public life. How pivotal was that moment in shaping the thinker we know today?
- [09:58]
Dr. Alexander Lee
In his position as second chancellor and later secretary to a body known as the Dieici, which is responsible, like the Ministry of War, really. And as a diplomat, he becomes very quickly and very closely intertwined with the major political questions facing Florence. He goes on diplomatic missions to France, into the German lands to see the Emperor. He sees Catherina's Rearia Sforza, the so called Tigress of Foli. He negotiates with leading mercenaries, condottieri, as they're known. He founds the militia. He is writing texts that are policy papers advocating one position or another, and he's overseeing troops. He's very bound up in the political survival of this republic, perhaps more so than he should have been. In fact, don't forget he was a civil servant. So technically speaking, there were no regulations about this. Particularly speaking, he might have been wiser to have remained a little above the fray, having been elected because of his lack of affiliation. Originally, he, by 1509, 1510, 1511, is a very close ally of the kind of head of State, if you like. That's an office known as Gonfalonier Evita, occupied by a man called Ersoderini. And Machiavelli is very, very, very close to him indeed. Now that ultimately becomes a big problem. Even though Machiavelli is trusted with a lot of jobs and he thinks he's doing pretty well, the fact that he is so bound up with the Republic ends up being a crucial weakness when in late 1512, the Medici, with Spanish help, eventually end up fighting their way back into the city, booting Soderini out and taking over control of the city again on a de facto basis. At first, Machiavelli's left in office like most of the other bureaucrats in the city. But after a couple of months, during which he tries to show them that he is actually quite useful, he's kicked out of his job. And this is a big deal, you know, like all of us, he has a family, he has bills to pay, and he's just lost his major source of employment. It's a great weakness. He goes off to sort of sulk for a little while and he doesn't really have much else to do. No real other hope of employment, no other major source of income, apart from a meager income from his farm outside the city, Santandere and Bercosina. So unsurprisingly, after a little while, he starts hanging around in bars and shooting his mouth off. And this again, is the worst thing he could have done. In 1513, a conspiracy is uncovered called the Bosco di Capponi conspiracy against the Medici. The ringleaders are taken into custody and it turns out that they have drawn up a list of people who might be joining them in this conspiracy, might be at least sympathetic to it. And wouldn't you just know it, that Machiavelli's name is on that list. So he's dragged in, he's tortured, using a technique known as terpado, whereby his hands were bound behind his back and he was hoisted off the floor effectively until his shoulders dislocated. And he's then sort of left the moulder in a prison known as the Stinke. And while he's there, he, in typical fashion, he does try to wheedle his way out, remembering his youthful connections with one of the Medici, a guy called Giuliano de Medici, one of the younger ones, he writes a couple of poems that are humorous and self mocking. They start off in an heroic style, but they very quickly turn into an exercise in self mockery. You say you know I can't stand this. Please let me out. Go on, be a good fellow, etc. He is eventually released, but not because of any of his any ties with the Medici, simply because one of them gets elected post Pope and there's an amnesty. So what does Machiavelli do then? Well, really now he is effectively at rock bottom. He has no choice but to go out of Florence, after a little while, with his tail between his legs, to this little farms that he has in Santandre and Percocina and occupy himself. And he writes a very charming and revealing letter to one of his friends, Francesco Vettori, about his life there. And it's pretty much what you might imagine from a certain person like Machiavelli in such a situation. In the mornings he would go out and he would try and catch birds, he'd read poems, books of poetry by the river, etc. Then at lunchtime, he'd go out for a drink and he'd gamble and get into fights and he would become what he called a real gaglioffo, a real good for nothing. And then at nighttime, when the bar finally closed, he would go back home and as you said, he'd put on the clothes of court and palace in his study, take up his books and begin to write. Why did he begin to write? Because what else was he going to do? He needed to make a living. He needed to try and forge some kind of career for himself. His whole professional life was in ruins. Everything on which he'd based his career was gone. There was no republic. Well, there wasn't the Republic he had served, at least the way that the institutions were still there, the Medici were back in control. Better way to forge a path for himself in this most desperate of times than to prove to the Medici that he could be of some value. And how better to do that than by writing them a book of advice? A book that today we know as the Prince.
- [15:33]
Danny Byrd
Perfect. And I'd like to come on to the Prince shortly. But before we get to that, you've painted a picture of Machiavelli there, where he comes across almost like an everyday kind of bloke. Essentially, you know, he's going into taverns, he's playing games, but then he's also writing poetry. He's writing. So he's obviously a very rounded person in many respects. And yet, for most people listening, he probably has this image as being somewhat cold, calculating, an advisor to rulers. How fair do you think that image of Machiavelli is?
- [16:06]
Dr. Alexander Lee
That can be answered in two Parts, really. Number one, the reality of Machiavelli. You're absolutely right in saying that he is quite an everyday kind of guy. There's no doubt that he had an absolutely brilliant mind, that he was very learned, et cetera. But I often like to think of Machiavelli as the sort of guy you would like to go and have a drink with. He was tremendously funny. He was very much beloved by his colleagues in the Chancellery in Florence. He was well known amongst them for regaling everyone now and again with improvised poems which he would sing to the accompaniment of an instrument. He did write very, very funny poems. He wrote a story about devils coming to see if it's TR that getting married is a bad thing. He wrote plays later in his life that are still performed today and are still genuinely, enormously funny. He's very human. He is married. He does have many affairs, but he's married. And he's a very, very devoted husband. Despite his infidelity. He loves his children. Some of his last letters that he writes, fleeing from an advancing army of mutinous landsknechts to his son, his young son at school, asking about his lessons. But, yeah, it's true that when we think about Machiavelli today, we often think about someone cold, calculating, cunning. Where does that come from? It's from the prince. It derives more from the way in which the prince has been received than anything else. And one can understand that to a certain extent. The prince is, as you suggested, and as I suggested as well, a work of advice. It seeks to set Machiavelli up as a counselor to princes. The da Medici aren't really princes in the true sense of the word, but they seek to be de facto rulers of Florence. And what does he argue? Well, he essentially asks the question, how does a prince who has gained his state through the aid of fortune and the arms of others, keep power? Keep hold of power. That's to say, how does somebody in the position of the Medici who's gained their city with another person's army and a bit of luck, stay in charge? And the answer he provides is, compared to what most political theorists of the day had said, pretty remarkable and in many ways shocking. Of course, the obvious thing that he says you need is a reliable army. And the one thing that most states relied upon at this time were mercenaries and mercenaries. As we have seen ourselves in recent years in Russia's campaign against Ukraine. Mercenaries are very, very unreliable. So he says, don't rely on mercenaries. Instead, you really want to have Your own citizen milit. You're composed of people, citizens who are willing to defend their homeland. So that's all fine, but then you need some way of keeping hold of the people, of making sure that they're going to support you. And this is tricky because when you look at states, it's hard to avoid the sense that fortune plays a very fickle game. And this is something with which I think we can all sympathize at the moment. Just as you think you've got everything sorted, fortune comes along and throws everything into confusion. Machiavelli used the rather misogynistic image of a capricious woman to explain this. He says, you know, she's going wild and crazy. So how do we deal with this? Most political theorists that day had said that it was best to be good, essentially to be virtuous in a Christian, stoic sense. That's to say body, the virtues of faith, hope, charity, prudent justice, blah, blah, blah. Be honest, be good, be kind, be merciful, and the people will follow you. Mahuli thinks that's all rubbish, just complete rubbish. And why does he think it's rubbish? He thinks it's rubbish because, well, for obvious reasons, actually, he says if fortune is going to change her attitude every other minute, it's pointless to limit your options by remaining fixed on a single predetermined course of action. Of course you're going to go wrong, you're going to come a cropper if you try and do the same thing no matter what, and affairs are changing around you. So instead you should embrace not the virtue in this sense, but what he calls virtu. And that's the quality of being a man, that's to say, being daring and bold and courageous and ready to seize any opportunity. More specifically, that means being ready to be something other than virtuous in the traditional sense as well. And in the prince, he goes through the attributes that are often associated with a good prince, that's to say, honesty, if necessary. You need to lie, obviously. That makes sense. Generosity, you know, it's nice to be generous, but that's stupid as well, because if you're a prince and you spend all your money on being generous, then at a certain point you're going to run out of cash and you're going to have to impose pretty hefty taxes, and nobody likes that. But the key one is mercy. And this is where I think Machiavelli's reputation really comes from. Mercy is a lovely thing. Machiavelli's in no doubt about that. But he says it's also quite dangerous. You should rather be ready to be cruel, he says. Now, of course, there's a danger here. If you're too cruel, you end up being hated, and you should really avoid that. There's a famous episode or passage in the Prince where Machiavelli considers specifically the question of whether it is better to be loved or feared. And he says, well, it's nice to be loved. Of course, everyone likes to be loved. Who doesn't? But love is fickle. You can't be sure that someone who loves you today is going to love you tomorrow. Fear is a far stronger and more reliable motivator of people. As long as you don't make yourself hated, you'll be fine. So when the Prince appeared, it circulated initially in manuscript. It didn't appear in print until long after Machiavelli's death. And to be fair, when it did start circulating, it received a very kind of mixed reaction. The Medici didn't respond to it quite as well as he'd hoped. When he eventually does dedicate it to one of the Medici, Lorenzo the Younger de Medici. According to one account, Lorenzo is more interested in his dogs than Machiavelli's book. However, later, when it's picked up by later thinkers, it is viewed frequently in quite a negative way. You have some people, like Cardinal Reginald Pole, who was a close associate of Bloody Mary May the First of England, described it as a tremendously amoral book. I think he even said that it was kind of book that was written by Satan or something. I forget these exact words. He doesn't want to say that political figures, princes, should always be a model. He's not saying that the best prince is someone who lies as a matter of habit or is parsimonious from compulsion or is mean and cruel, kicks puppies in the face. That's not what he's saying at all. In actual fact, what he's saying is that a prince should just be ready to break with virtue traditional senses of virtue, if necessary. He shouldn't constrain himself. He should be open to these possibilities. Of course, he says, you know, if you can be seen as being, you know, good and nice and kind, that's great. In fact, if you can actually be those things and stay safe, that's okay, but don't let it blind you to the reality. And certainly we should also be a little bit careful about presuming that he really was breaking the mold here. Though it's true that most earlier systems of political thought had stressed that a good ruler was a virtuous ruler. There was plenty of precedent for this kind of argument in piecemeal form at least. You know, there was already Immaculately himself would see an instance where the Florentine government had accepted that states, in order to preserve their security, should dispense with the normal dictates of morality that constrain individuals. When he was very new in political office, Florence had executed a general who had failed to take the lost port city of Pisa without any firm evidence that he'd done anything wrong. But they decided to execute this General Palavitelli anyway, pour encore les autres, to encourage the others because, you know, states can't take risks, and even if he was innocent, it's better to kill him and keep the others in line. And so we find other echoes running through earlier systems of thought as well, in Roman law and in some other sources as well. So returning to a question, is it fair to view Machiavelli as this sort of prince of darkness? Well, not really. If we're interested in him from a biographical perspective, it's absolutely not true, nor is it really fair as a representation of what he actually thought. It is, however, interesting to consider, as I said, why he got this reputation and to use that as a kind of framework for looking at his most famous work
- [24:58]
Narrator/Host
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- [26:50]
Dr. Alexander Lee
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- [27:10]
Narrator/Host
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- [27:15]
Dr. Alexander Lee
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- [27:20]
Danny Byrd
I wonder as well, Alex, whether you, looking beyond Machiavelli himself, whether you'd be comfortable talking about why the Prince has had this enormous sort of outsized and controversial legacy throughout history, ever since it was published. Like, why do you think it is still such an enduring text to this day?
- [27:34]
Dr. Alexander Lee
It's a text which has been interpreted in a wide variety of fashions throughout history. As Isaac said, he has been viewed as a devilish figure who has been advocating for autocracy and tyranny. But at the same time he's also been taken as almost a satirical writer who has in fact held up a mirror to the realities of princely power, and as such, maybe in the Prince provided justification for those of a more republican bent. Certainly it was the case that Maxeline Robespierre in the French Revolution held him up as the father of the Revolution, rightly or wrongly. I don't say others still saw him as establishing a more kind of realistic view of politics, as someone who was interested in really the technology of power, if I can put it like that, the techniques that were necessary to govern, to exercise authority over a fractious and febrile people. I don't say that any one of these interpretations is right. Certainly it is the case, however, that Machiavelli was unusually able to appreciate the reality of political life. Now this too has been exaggerated greatly by many scholars over the years. Machiavelli was not the first person to look at the world around him as a guide to political life. Even if you go back to Aristotle, for example, Aristotle collects constitutions from ancient Greece as a way of understanding the underlying rules of human political behavior, understanding how societies work. Even in Machiavelli's own day, there was Another thinker called Patrizi in Siena, who was similarly advocating quite a, you know, a realistic view of politics, looking at how things really were rather than how one would like them to be, rather than idealized view. But where Machiavelli is different, I think at least, is that he is interested in a way that nobody else was, to my mind, before that point in change. In the Prince, there is a key passage halfway through in which he kind of sets out his project. He pauses his discussion to explain what he's doing with politics. Unlike a lot of other thinkers who have really looked at things as they would like them to be, I am going to look at the effectual cause of things, the verita effectuale delle cause. And this phrase has caused a great deal of discussion over the years, and a huge amount of ink has been spilt over it. However, what it appears to pick up on is an idea borrowed from Aristotle, namely that Aristotle said, there were many causes of things. I won't go through them all, but one was particularly important. That was the efficient cause. And the efficient cause was the process which precipitated a change in the status of something. And for Machiavelli, that's crucially important. If you are going to be a stable political ruler, you need to be aware of why things change and of the dynamics that underpin the shifts in the sands of human society. That's why he's so interested in looking at the relationship between the grandi and the popular, for example, why he's so interested in fortune, why he is so interested in instability more than anything else. And that, I think, does mark him out as unusual. So I think that he has had a capacity to be many things for many people. But his true importance lies in this sensitivity for change, for a dynamic politics, if you like. And that resonates even today. If you look around us at the current situation in the Middle east, in Ukraine, things change from day to day. And it's only by the sensitivity to that intense instability that we can begin to calibrate our political reactions appropriately.
- [31:11]
Danny Byrd
And of course, some people may be surprised to discover a very different side to Machiavelli in the Discourses on Livy. What do you think that text reveals about his political ideals?
- [31:20]
Dr. Alexander Lee
Ah, well, the Discourses are a wonderful text that's completely different from the Prince, at least in its style. A bit of context first. After Machiavelli wrote the Prince and failed to secure a position with the Medici off the back of it, he kicked around a little bit and then joined A discussion group essentially in a garden in Florence known as the Ortieri, the Rucellai Gardens. And it was the home to quite a dynamic group of thinkers, poets, political figures, dramatists, even some people who favoured extraordinary reforms to the Italian language. It was a very exciting place. Machioli was one of the older ones, however, and in this context he wrote the Discorsi. The Discorsi Sopra Prima Deca Tito Livio, the Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy. Now, ostensibly, this book is intended to just describe what you need to know in order to understand Livy's history of Rome. It's notionally a commentary of sorts, and there were plenty of those at the time. But in reality, interwoven between all the historical discussions is a much more searching political analysis. Machiavelli is really thinking about republics here, and the question he seeks to answer is, how did Rome as a republic become great? And the answer, turns out, is very simple. It became great because it was free. So in other words, you know, a free republic becomes great. A bold point to make in and of itself in a city under the Medici yoke. So how does city keep itself free? Maculi's argument is quite contorted, but we can simplify it without too much difficulty. He says, well, obviously it has to be founded in the right kind of way, in a nice place with good laws and good people and blah, blah, blah. Most of all, it needs Vertu, this thing called Vertu that he discussed in the Prince. That means being willing to do anything to defend the republic, to keep it free from tyranny, to keep it free from external domination, even if that means, you know, robbing, murder, all well and good so far. Well, then, Machiavelli asks himself, isn't it the case, though, that people aren't always virtuous? And that's absolutely true. Unfortunately, if you look particularly at Rome's early history and look at any society, really, you find that very quickly, any given form of government quickly corrupts as people themselves corrupt. Monarchy collapses into tyranny and then it gets overthrown, and then you have a kind of aristocracy, like in Rome, and that collapses into an oligarchy, and it goes on. So how do you deal with this? Well, Machiavelli says, fine. What you should have is a mixed constitution, have, you know, a monarchical element, an aristocratic element and a popular element. Fine. And that seems okay. But again, the problem is you can't rely on that to contain the tensions that exist within a society, within any society. Even within our own, there are always going to be tensions between the haves and the have nots, the rich and the not so rich, the popolo and the grandi. And yeah, there are things you can, you can sort of do to anticipate that, but it's always going to be there. Now, Machiavelli doesn't think this is necessarily a problem. In actual fact, he thinks it could be a bonus and that that caused a lot of ruckus amongst his friends when this argument appeared. And he said, well, you can understand very easily if you look at say Sparta or contemporary Venice, 15th century Venice or 16th century Venice and ancient Sparta both had no social conflict at all. They were both completely harmonious. Venice, you know, had almost no social upheaval in its entire history. I mean, there are little exceptions that Sparta too. What's the problem here? Why isn't harmony good? Macculi says, well, okay, they were peaceful, but they weren't great. Sparta didn't have an empire. Venice, okay, had a couple of, a couple of colonies overseas, but it's not what you'd call real empire compared to Rome. So that's a problem. You need tension, Machiavelli says, to keep a people free and great. That's because in Venice and Sparta it was the nobles who had the weapons and the military might and the people didn't. But the nobles, being quite self interested, didn't want to risk anything, so they weren't going to go out. So if you have tension, the people arm themselves to keep the nobles in check and are ready to go and fight other people. So great problem is, thereafter this tension is going to bubble over and there are things you can do to try and keep it in check. So you can have libel, slander laws and watchdogs, essentially Tribunician watchdogs. But even Machiavelli is alert to the fact that these social tensions are likely to run out of control. So what are the solutions? And the solutions are quite simple. You have limited economic inequalities. You make sure the gap between rich and poor isn't so great. You can use law to teach people to be virtuous instead of virtu. More interestingly, he says you can use religion. And by religion he doesn't mean contemporary Catholicism, which he views as wet and too politically involved. Because the Pope at this point was not just a spiritual leader, but also a temporal ruler of a large state in central Italy. But rather, he says, you need religion to be more like the Romans had vicious, bloody, filled with sacrifices that inspire you to go out and go conquer, conquer other peoples, etc. So there are things you can do. But even Machiavelli knows this isn't really going to work in the long run. Even Machiavelli has to recognize that a republic's liberty will only last if every so often it has somebody to come along every 10 years or so, somebody uniquely charismatic who can steer it back on course, who can correct its faults, who can overcome the corruption and restore its virtu, its liberty, etc. Florence's problem was that it had never had someone like this, no one to save it from these constant upheavals. Now you can ask the question of whether any society has had these charismatic figures as regularly as he was like. But a more interesting question in relation to what you initially asked me is how much does this differ from the prince? And as tends to be, it's very different. You know, one's a better prince, want a better republic, couldn't be more different. But actually there are two or three points that need to be made. Number one, in Machiavelli's day, there wasn't such a clear cut distinction between constitutional forms, as though Machiavelli himself made use of Aristotle's distinction between the three good types of constitution and the three bad types of constitution. In practice in Renaissance Italy there was a great deal of continuity between even princely states and republics. Republics sometimes had monarchical heads of state, like in Venice. Venice had the Doge, Genoa had a Doge as well, even Florence had for a time a Gonfalonieri Avita. And princely states had popular elements as well. So the difference isn't that great. Secondly, many of the principles underlying Machiavelli's argument are very similar. You know, you would already have noticed we have the same idea of vertu underlying them both this kind of fiery desire to seize opportunities and do whatever is necessary to achieve a particular goal. So too, you know, you do have this sense of leadership, leadership accomplishing something. And many of the leaders he mentions hark back very clearly and perhaps deliberately to his earlier discussion of the relative merits of love and fear. So I don't want to give you a definite answer to this question, nor do I want to oversimplify what is a very complicated and long running academic debate. But there are certainly continuities between the two texts.
- [39:19]
Danny Byrd
I do think we need to go back a little bit and just talk about Machiavelli's personal life, because we have discussed now his ideas at length. How important were Machiavelli's personal networks, his friends, his patrons, his correspondents, in sustaining him during his years in exile.
- [39:33]
Dr. Alexander Lee
Throughout Machiavelli's life, his personal relations play an extremely important role in keeping him going, both when he is in office and when he is out. Take his diplomatic missions. Diplomacy in 16th century Italy was a difficult enterprise. When he was sent to negotiate with King of France, for example, he did that several times. First thing he has to do is he has to get there, and that means riding, for the most part, he has to ride from Florence all the way up through Italy and then find the king wherever the hell he might be on horseback. That takes weeks. That's problematic for lots of practical reasons, if only in. If you can imagine getting information back and forth to Florence when it's traveling also by horseback, it's a very slow and confusing business. But it also places a heavy burden on a person's practical, you know, the everyday fabric of life. Very often, Machiavelli, on his diplomatic missions, found himself short of money, found himself worrying about his wife, found himself unable to deal with issues back home, pressing issues sometimes. And for that he had to rely on his friends. Several of these were friends really genuinely for life. One of them, who was there from beginning to end, really, or beginning of his time in the church at least, was a guy called Biagio Buonaccorsi. And Biagio was quite a funny fellow, really. But he left behind many letters to Machiavelli in which he is talking about lending him, arranging for money to be transferred and handing a bit of cash to his wife. And on occasions, you know, Biancio upbraids Machiavelli for being a bit rude or a bit presumptuous or. Or not conducting himself properly. But more often, it's a very tender relationship. Biagio tells Machiavelli, when a son is born and what that boy looks like, he says he looks just like you. One would say that he's like, one would say, Leonardo, done a portrait of you, et cetera. Later, when he is out of office and in the wilderness, as it were, friendships equally sustain him. Francesco Vittori, who is a prominent Florentine in Rome, writes a very large number of letters to Machiavelli. At first, one gets the strong impression, impression that these are intended simply to lift Machiavelli's spirit, to draw him out of himself and get him talking about the things he always used to care about. But as time goes on, one finds that there's a much closer collaboration going and Mettori's relying on Machiavelli's advice a little bit. And Machiavelli is kind of hoping that Vettori will be able to use his influence to get him a job and so on. There are plenty of others as well, some humble, some very prominent. One of the more well known ones was a guy called Francesco Guicciardini. Now, Guicciardini was. Well, today he's better known as an historian, historian of Italy, historian of Florence. But at the time he was a governor of a region under papal control in northern Italy. And it was in that capacity that Machiavelli encountered him. And Guicciardini is a good, good friend to Machiavelli. On the one hand, Machiavelli is the one doing favors for Guicciardini. He goes and inspects a farm of Guicciardin, writes a very funny letter in which he pretends he speaks in the voice of the farm. They exchange a lot of jokes and use their letters to play tricks on other people, including a group of Franciscans at one point. But Guicciardini also does help Machiavelli quite significantly. He arranges or helps him to get his plays performed, etc, etc. So friendship is, to my mind, at least, one of the great constants of Machiavelli's life. And indeed, it's impossible fully to understand the ins and outs, the ups and downs of Machiavelli's life without looking at his friends.
- [43:11]
Danny Byrd
Looking now towards the end of Machiavelli's life, what were those years like? And do you think he ever achieved a sense of rehabilitation?
- [43:18]
Dr. Alexander Lee
I've always felt that the tragedy of Machiavelli is that he was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. After he was booted out of office in 1513, he lost his job. In 1513. He spent, as we have seen, a long time trying to get back in with Americi. A long, long time. Unfortunately, when he eventually did, managed to wheedle his way back into their good graces and got. He was commissioned to write a history of Florence for them. He prepared a number of constitutional proposals for them. For the reform of Florence, he undertook a few very minor diplomatic missions. It was almost too late. Italy was extremely, extremely unstable throughout his life. And in the last few years of his life, the Medici regime was crumbling. Indeed, in the last few months of his life, it eventually collapses completely. The Medici are booted out and another popular republic is established. In positions of prominence are some of the friends he had made in the Rucellai Gardens, where he wrote the Discorsi. But by this time Machiavelli is too old, too tainted by association with the Medici, this time to be trusted with anything, and perhaps too sick. He runs back home from. He's engaged with armies in the field at this point, and he runs back home to escape an advancing army, writing, as I said earlier, to his son on the way, hoping for something to await him at home. But there's nothing, there's no hope. And he dies, I think, a disappointed man.
- [44:57]
Danny Byrd
We are obviously very familiar with this concept of Machiavellianism today because of the writing, the Prince, for example, etc. Are there any modern politicians or real world examples that you think could be pointed to as being Machiavellian in their approach? And if so, who are they?
- [45:12]
Dr. Alexander Lee
I always remember in relation to this question an old professor of mine who liked to point out that the very best example of Machiavellianism is the film the Usual Suspects, and particularly the character Kaiser Serzim, because the essence of being a Machiavellian leader is that no one knows you're being Machiavellian until it's too late. Now, that, of course, colors our assessment of contemporary politicians. Would we know if any of them were being truly Machiavellian? If they were Machiavellian, their intentions would be obscure to us. We wouldn't know they were lying. We wouldn't know they were being wicked. I think it's a slightly difficult question to answer. Very frequently one finds people in public life being described as Machiavellian, only for them to be exactly the opposite. Dominic Cummings, when he was in number 10 with Boris Johnson, was frequently described as Machiavellian, whereas in reality, I don't doubt his ability. Of course, he was very definitely not Machiavellian. His rapid fall from grace is testimony to that. And I think in answering this question one should be a little bit wary, because there's always a tendency to look to those figures whom we don't like. Because Machiavellian is such a pejorative term, and because we think automatically of those possibly apocryphal stories of Stalin and Napoleon, reading the Prince and keeping them on their bedside tables, et cetera, one looks to wicked people. But in a sense, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. It skews our interpretation. There are many people who are very able to adapt themselves to changing circumstances and seize opportunities wherever they lie, even in the face of very wicked fortune, and still are very good people. I kind of think it's time to Reclaim the moniker Machiavellian and cloak it in a more positive meaning.
- [46:58]
Danny Byrd
Stepping back from the myths, what do you think is the biggest misconception about Machiavelli as a person, as opposed to the legend that's grown up around his name?
- [47:05]
Dr. Alexander Lee
I think that the biggest misconception about Machiavelli is that he was as cunning as his writing suggest. We read the Prince, we read the Discorsi, we read even the kind of minor, the minor works, which in some ways are even more revealing. And one gets the impression that he was this kind of political Savoy, that he always knew what was coming next, he was two steps ahead of everything, that he was the ultimate counselor either to princes or republics. And let me Dick was very talented, but as I said earlier, he made a lot of mistakes in his life. He did not effectively anticipate or negotiate the Medici's return to power in 1512. He didn't really think through the implications of his. His rehabilitation with the Medici in the years that followed. And he was not able to capitalize as a result on his friendships with people who dominated the final republic. So he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Similarly, even when he was in office, during his time with second chancellor, he frequently misjudged things. As a young diplomat, one of his first missions was to see Katharina Riario Sforza, the so called Tigress of Fortli. And okay, he was a bit wet behind the ears at this point, but she's in a very difficult situation and she has to watch what she says, so she tries to drop some very subtle hints so he will pick up on her meaning and he just doesn't, just doesn't get it. And so she has to send her secretary round or one of her visuals over here too, to see him a bit later to say no, what she's really trying to say is this, I'll draw you a picture. And then frequently when he goes away on missions, he writes beautiful, very engaging, often quite, quite astute and witty. Missives back to Florence. But certainly in the early 1500s, you do find even his closest friends writing back to him saying, tone it down, tone it down, come on, we don't need all this. Just stick to the facts, we'll do the interpretation. Thanks very much, John. So he makes a lot of mistakes. I think the biggest misconception is have one that we have already touched on very slightly, that's to say the idea that he is in some ways lacking in humanity. He isn't. And by way of illustration, that I think I might perhaps point very briefly to an affair he had in late middle age, before he really gets back in with Medici, with a woman called Barbara Salutati. She is kind of actress, she's much younger than him and they have this slightly torrid affair. He writes a series of poems to her which reflect a very, very high degree of self awareness. A degree of self mockery, sure, but also a vulnerability as well. He writes one in which he is sort of frightened that she's going to abandon him because he's old, maybe a bit impotent. Maybe she'll just like a younger man. And reading these poems, you just think he's a human being. He has a sense of humor, he loves, he falls short, he makes mistakes. Yeah, he's very, very brilliant. But he is brilliantly every day.
- [50:17]
Narrator/Host
That was Dr. Alexander Lee speaking to Danny Bird. Alexander is a research fellow at the University of Warwick, a specialist in the cultural and political history of the Renaissance in Italy. He has written several books on Machiavelli and the Renaissance. His latest book is the First Ghetto Venice and the Jews out, now published by Picador.