Discourses on Livy

, by Machiavelli, Niccolo; Mansfield, Harvey C.; Tarcov, Nathan

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ISBN: 9780226500362 | 0226500365
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 1/28/1998

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Discourses on Livyis the founding document of modern republicanism, and Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov have provided the definitive English translation of this classic work. Faithful to the original Italian text, properly attentive to Machiavelli's idiom and subtlety of thought, it is eminently readable. With a substantial introduction, extensive explanatory notes, a glossary of key words, and an annotated index, the Discoursesreveals Machiavelli's radical vision of a new science of politics, a vision of "new modes and orders" that continue to shape the modern ethos. "[Machiavelli] found in Livy the means to inspire scholars for five centuries. Within the Discourses, often hidden and sometimes unintended by their author, lie the seeds of modern political thought. . . . [Mansfield and Tarcov's] translation is careful and idiomatic."Peter Stothard, The Times"Translated with painstaking accuracybut also great readability."Weekly Standard"A model of contemporary scholarship and a brave effort at Machiavelli translation that allows the great Florentine to speak in his own voice."Choice

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

xvii

Suggested Readings

xlv

A Note on the Translation

xlix

Translators' Acknowledgments

liii

Dedicatory Letter

(2)

First Book

Preface

(2)

What Have Been Universally the Beginnings of Any City Whatever, and What Was That of Rome

(3)

Of How Many Species Are Republics, and Which Was the Roman Republic

(5)

What Accidents Made the Tribunes of the Plebs Be Created in Rome, Which Made the Republic More Perfect

(1)

That the Disunion of the Plebs and the Roman Senate Made That Republic Free and Powerful

(1)

Where the Guard of Freedom May Be Settled More Securely, in the People or in the Great; and Which Has Greater Cause for Tumult, He Who Wishes to Acquire or He Who Wishes to Maintain

(3)

Whether a State Could Have Been Ordered in Rome That Would Have Taken Away the Enmities between the People and the Senate

(3)

How Far Accusations May Be Necessary in a Republic to Maintain It in Freedom

(3)

As Much As Accusations Are Useful to Republics, So Much Are Calumnies Pernicious

(2)

That It Is Necessary to Be Alone If One Wishes to Order a Republic Anew or to Reform It Altogether outside Its Ancient Orders

(3)

As Much As the Founders of a Republic and of a Kingdom Are Praiseworthy, So Much Those of a Tyranny Are Worthy of Reproach

(3)

Of the Religion of the Romans

(2)

Of How Much Importance It Is to Take Account of Religion, and How Italy, for Lacking It by Means of the Roman Church, Has Been Ruined

(3)

How the Romans Made Religion Serve to Reorder the City and to Carry Out Their Enterprises and to Stop Tumults

(2)

The Romans Interpreted the Auspices according to Necessity, and with Prudence Made a Show of Observing Religion When Forced Not to Observe It; and If Anyone Rashly Disdained It, They Punished Him

(2)

The Samnites, as an Extreme Remedy for the Things Afflicting Them, Had Recourse to Religion

(1)

A People Used to Living under a Prince Maintains Its Freedom with Difficulty, If by Some Accident It Becomes Free

(3)

Having Come to Freedom, a Corrupt People Can with the Greatest Difficulty Maintain Itself Free

(2)

In What Mode a Free State, If There Is One, Can Be Maintained in Corrupt Cities; or, If There Is Not, in What Mode to Order It

(3)

After an Excellent Prince a Weak Prince Can Maintain Himself, but after a Weak One No Kingdom Can Be Maintained by Another Weak One

(2)

Two Virtuous Princes in Succession Produce Great Effects; and That Well-Ordered Republics Have of Necessity Virtuous Successions, and So Their Acquisitions and Increases Are Great

(1)

How Much Blame That Prince and That Republic Merit That Lack Their Own Arms

(2)

What Is to Be Noted in the Case of the Three Roman Horatii and the Three Alban Curiatii

(1)

That One Should Not Put All One's Fortune in Danger, and Not All One's Forces; and Because of This, the Guarding of Passes Is Often Harmful

(2)

Well-Ordered Republics Institute Rewards and Punishments for Their Citizens and Never Counterbalance One with the Other

(1)

He Who Wishes to Reform an Antiquated State in a Free City May Retain at Least the Shadow of Its Ancient Modes

(1)

A New Prince Should Make Everything New in a City or Province Taken by Him

(1)

Very Rarely Do Men Know How to Be Altogether Wicked or Altogether Good

(1)

For What Cause the Romans Were Less Ungrateful toward Their Citizens Than the Athenians

(1)

Which Is More Ungrateful, a People or a Prince

(3)

Which Modes a Prince or a Republic Should Use So As to Avoid the Vice of Ingratitude; and Which a Captain or a Citizen Should Use So As Not to Be Crushed by It

(1)

That the Roman Captains Were Never Extraordinarily Punished for an Error Committed; nor Were They Ever Punished When Harm Resulted to the Republic through Their Ignorance or through Bad Policies Adopted by Them

(2)

A Republic or a Prince Should Not Defer Benefiting Men in Their Necessities

(1)

When an Inconvenience Has Growth Either in a State or against a State, the More Salutary Policy Is to Temporize with It Rather Than to Strike at It

(2)

The Dictatorial Authority Did Good, and Not Harm, to the Roman Republic; and That the Authorities Citizens Take for Themselves, Not Those Given Them by Free Votes, Are Pernicious to Civil Life

(3)

The Cause Why the Creation of the Decemvirate in Rome Was Hurtful to the Freedom of That Republic, Notwithstanding That It Was Created by Public and Free Votes

(1)

Citizens Who Have Had Greater Honors Should Not Disdain Lesser Ones

(1)

What Scandals the Agrarian Law Gave Birth to in Rome; and That to Make a Law in a Republic That Looks Very Far Back and Is against an Ancient Custom of the City Is Most Scandalous

(3)

Weak Republics Are Hardly Resolute and Do Not Know How to Decide; and If They Ever Take Up Any Policy, It Arises More from Necessity Than from Choice

(2)

In Diverse Peoples the Same Accidents May Often Be Seen

(2)

The Creation of the Decemvirate in Rome, and What Is to Be Noted in It; Where It Is Considered, among Many Other Things, How through Such an Accident One Can Either Save or Crush a Republic

(5)

To Leap from Humility to Pride, from Mercy to Cruelty, without Due Degrees Is Something Imprudent and Useless

(1)

How Easily Men Can Be Corrupted

(1)

Those Who Engage in Combat for Their Own Glory Are Good and Faithful Soldiers

(1)

A Multitude without a Head Is Useless; and That One Should Not First Threaten and Then Request Authority

(1)

Nonobservance of a Law That Has Been Made, and Especially by Its Author, Is a Thing That Sets a Bad Example; and to Freshen New Injuries Every Day in a City Is Most Harmful to Whoever Governs It

(2)

Men Ascend from One Ambition to Another; First One Seeks Not to Be Offended, and Then One Offends Others

(1)

However Deceived in Generalities, Men Are Not Deceived in Particulars

(3)

He Who Wishes That a Magistracy Not Be Given to Someone Vile or Someone Wicked Should Have It Asked for Either by Someone Too Vile and Too Wicked or by Someone Too Noble and Too Good

(1)

If Those Cities That Have had a Free Beginning, Such as Rome, Have Difficulty in Finding Laws That Will Maintain Them, Those That Have Had One Immediately Servile Have Almost an Impossibility

100

(2)

One Council or One Magistrate Should Not Be Able to Stop the Actions of Cities

102

(1)

A Republic or a Prince Should Make a Show of Doing through Liberality What Necessity Constrains Him to Do

103

(1)

To Repress the Insolence of One Individual Who Rises Up in a Powerful Republic, There Is No More Secure and Less Scandalous Mode Than to Anticipate the Ways by Which He Comes to That Power

103

(2)

Many Times the People Desires Its Own Ruin, Deceived by a False Appearance of Good; and That Great Hopes and Mighty Promises Easily Move It

105

(3)

How Much Authority a Grave Man May Have to Check an Excited Multitude

108

(1)

How Easily Things May Be Conducted in Those Cities in Which the Multitude Is Not Corrupt; and That Where There Is Equality, a Principality Cannot Be Made, and Where There Is Not, a Republic Cannot Be Made

109

(4)

Before Great Accidents Occur in a City or in a Province, Signs Come That Forecast Them, or Men Who Predict Them

113

(1)

The Plebs Together Is Mighty, by Itself Weak

114

(1)

The Multitude Is Wiser and More Constant Than a Prince

115

(4)

Which Confederation or Other League Can Be More Trusted, That Made with a Republic or That Made with a Prince

119

(2)

That the Consulate and Any Other Magistracy Whatever in Rome Was Given without Respect to Age

121

(4)

Second Book

Preface

123

(2)

Which Was More the Cause of the Empire the Romans Acquired, Virtue or Fortune

125

(4)

What Peoples the Romans Had to Combat, and That They Obstinately Defended Their Freedom

129

(4)

Rome Became a Great City through Ruining the Surrounding Cities and Easily Admitting Foreigners to Its Honors

133

(2)

Republics Have Taken Three Modes of Expanding

135

(3)

That the Variation of Sects and Languages, Together with the Accident of Floods or Plague, Eliminates the Memories of Things

138

(2)

How the Romans Proceeded in Making War

140

(2)

How Much Land the Romans Gave Per Colonist

142

(1)

The Cause Why Peoples Leave Their Ancestral Places and Inundate the Country of Others

143

(3)

What Causes Commonly Make Wars Arise among Powers

146

(1)

Money Is Not the Sinew of War, As It Is according to the Common Opinion

147

(3)

It Is Not a Prudent Policy to Make a Friendship with a Prince Who Has More Reputation Than Force

150

(1)

Whether, When Fearing to Be Assaulted, It Is Better to Bring On or Await War

151

(4)

That One Comes from Base to Great Fortune More through Fraud Than through Force

155

(1)

Often Men Deceive Themselves Believing That through Humility They Will Conquer Pride

156

(1)

Weak States Will Always Be Ambiguous in Their Resolutions; and Slow Decisions Are Always Hurtful

157

(3)

How Much the Soldiers of Our Times Do Not Conform to the Ancient Orders

160

(3)

How Much Artillery Should Be Esteemed by Armies in the Present Times; and Whether the Opinion Universally Held of It Is True

163

(5)

How by the Authority of the Romans and by the Example of the Ancient Military Infantry Should Be Esteemed More Than Horse

168

(4)

That Acquisitions by Republics That Are Not Well Ordered and That Do Not Proceed According to Roman Virtue Are for Their Ruin, Not Their Exaltation

172

(3)

What Danger That Prince or Republic Runs That Avails Itself of Auxiliary or Mercenary Military

175

(2)

The First Praetor the Romans Sent Anyplace Was to Capua, Four Hundred Years after They Began to Make War

177

(2)

How False the Opinions of Men Often Are in Judging Great Things

179

(2)

How Much the Romans, in Judging Subjects for Some Accidents That Necessitated Such Judgment, Fled from the Middle Way

181

(3)

Fortresses Are Generally Much More Harmful Than Useful

184

(6)

To Assault a Disunited City So As to Seize It by Means of Its Disunion Is a Contradictory Policy

190

(1)

Vilification and Abuse Generate Hatred against Those Who Use Them, without Any Utility to Them

191

(2)

For Prudent Princes and Republics It Should Be Enough to Conquer, for Most Often When It Is Not Enough, One Loses

193

(2)

How Dangerous It Is for a Republic or a Prince Not to Avenge an Injury Done against the Public or against a Private Person

195

(2)

Fortune Blinds the Spirits of Men When It Does Not Wish Them to Oppose Its Plans

197

(2)

Truly Powerful Republics and Princes Buy Friendships Not with Money but with Virtue and the Reputation of Strength

199

(3)

How Dangerous It Is to Believe the Banished

202

(1)

In How Many Modes the Romans Seized Towns

203

(3)

How the Romans Gave Free Commissions to Their Captains of Armies

206

(3)

Third Book

If One Wishes a Sect or a Republic to Live Long, It Is Necessary to Draw It Back Often toward Its Beginning

209

(4)

That It Is a Very Wise Thing to Simulate Craziness at the Right Time

213

(1)

That It Is Necessary to Kill the Sons of Brutus If One Wishes to Maintain a Newly Acquired Freedom

214

(1)

A Prince Does Not Live Secure in a Principality While Those Who Have Been Despoiled of It Are Living

215

(1)

What Makes a King Who Is Heir to a Kingdom Lose It

216

(2)

Of Conspiracies

218

(18)

Whence It Arises That Changes from Freedom to Servitude and from Servitude to Freedom Are Some of Them without Blood, Some of Them Full of It

236

(1)

Whoever Wishes to Alter a Republic Should Consider Its Subject

237

(2)

How One Must Vary with the Times if One Wishes Always to Have Good Fortune

239

(2)

That a Captain Cannot Flee Battle When the Adversary Wishes Him to Engage in It in Any Mode

241

(3)

That Whoever Has to Deal with Very Many, Even Though He Is Inferior, Wins If Only He Can Sustain the First Thrusts

244

(2)

That a Prudent Captain Ought to Impose Every Necessity to Engage in Combat on His Soldiers and Take It Away from Those of Enemies

246

(3)

Which Is More to Be Trusted, a Good Captain Who Has a Weak Army or a Good Army That Has a Weak Captain

249

(2)

What Effects New Inventions That Appear in the Middle of the Fight and New Voices That Are Heard May Produce

251

(2)

That One Individual and Not Many Should Be Put over an Army; and That Several Commanders Hurt

253

(1)

That in Difficult Times One Goes to Find True Virtue; and in Easy Times Not Virtuous Men but Those with Riches or Kinship Have More Favor

254

(3)

That One Individual Should Not Be Offended and Then That Same One Sent to an Administration and Governance of Importance

257

(1)

Nothing Is More Worthy of a Captain Than to Foretell the Policies of the Enemy

258

(2)

Whether to Rule a Multitude Compliance Is More Necessary Than Punishment

260

(1)

One Example of Humanity Was Able to Do More with the Falisci Than Any Roman Force

261

(1)

Whence It Arises That with a Different Mode of Proceeding Hannibal Produced Those Same Effects in Italy as Scipio Did in Spain

262

(2)

That the Hardness of Manlius Torquatus and the Kindness of Valerius Corvinus Acquired for Each the Same Glory

264

(4)

For What Cause Camillus Was Expelled from Rome

268

(1)

The Prolongation of Commands Made Rome Servile

269

(2)

Of the Poverty of Cincinnatus and of Many Roman Citizens

271

(1)

How a State Is Ruined Because of Women

272

(2)

How One Has to Unite a Divided City; and How That Opinion Is Not True That to Hold Cities One Needs to Hold Them Divided

274

(2)

That One Should Be Mindful of the Works of Citizens Because Many Times underneath a Merciful Work a Beginning of Tyranny Is Concealed

276

(1)

That the Sins of Peoples Arise from Princes

277

(1)

For One Citizen Who Wishes to Do Any Good Work in His Republic by His Authority, It Is Necessary First to Eliminate Envy; and How, on Seeing the Enemy, One Has to Order the Defense of a City

278

(3)

Strong Republics and Excellent Men Retain the Same Spirit and Their Same Dignity in Every Fortune

281

(3)

What Modes Some Have Held to for Disturbing a Peace

284

(1)

If One Wishes to Win a Battle, It Is Necessary to Make the Army Confident Both among Themselves and in the Captain

285

(2)

What Fame or Word or Opinion Makes the People Begin to Favor a Citizen; and Whether It Distributes Magistracies with Greater Prudence Than a Prince

287

(3)

What Dangers Are Borne in Making Oneself Head in Counseling a Thing; and the More It Has of the Extraordinary, the Greater Are the Dangers Incurred in It

290

(2)

The Causes Why the French Have Been and Are Still Judged in Fights at the Beginning As More Than Men and Later As Less Than Women

292

(2)

Whether Small Battles Are Necessary before the Main Battle; and If One Wishes to Avoid Them, What One Ought to Do to Know a New Enemy

294

(2)

How a Captain in Whom His Army Can Have Confidence Ought to Be Made

296

(1)

That a Captain Ought to Be a Knower of Sites

297

(2)

That to Use Fraud in Managing War Is a Glorious Thing

299

(1)

That the Fatherland Ought to Be Defended, Whether with Ignominy or with Glory; and It Is Well Defended in Any Mode Whatever

300

(1)

That Promises Made Through Force Ought Not to Be Observed

301

(1)

That Men Who Are Born in One Province Observe Almost the Same Nature for All Times

302

(2)

One Often Obtains with Impetuosity and Audacity What One Would Never Have Obtained through Ordinary Modes

304

(1)

What the Better Policy Is in Battles, to Resist the Thrust of Enemies and, Having Resisted It, to Charge Them; or Indeed to Assault Them with Fury from the First

305

(1)

Whence It Arises That One Family in One City Keeps the Same Customs for a Time

306

(1)

That a Good Citizen Ought to Forget Private Injuries for Love of His Fatherland

307

(1)

When One Sees a Great Error Made by an Enemy, One Ought to Believe That There Is a Deception Underneath

307

(1)

A Republic Has Need of New Acts of Foresight Every Day If One Wishes to Maintain It Free; and for What Merits Quintus Fabius Was Called Maximus

308

(3)

Glossary

311

(38)

Index of Proper Names

349

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Discourses on Livy

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials