Machiavelli, niccolò chief works others, vol 1

MACHIAVELLI



MACHIAVELLI
THE CHIEF WORKS AND OTHERS
TRANSLATED

BY

ALLAN GILBERT

VOLUME

ONE

Non in exercitu nee in robore ...
J

Duke University Press Durham and London

1989


© I9S8, I9 6I, I9 63, I965, I989 by Allan H. Gilbert

I999 printing
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 64-I6I92
Cloth 0-8223-°920-3
Paper 0-8223-0945-9

Cloth J-vol. set 0-822J-09IJ-0
Paper J-vol. set 0-8223-093I-9
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper 00


TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME ONE
PREFACE

vi;

The Translation
The Works Included
The Notes and Index

v;;;
;x

TEXTS USED IN TRANSLATING

x·I

A PROVISION FOR INFANTRY (a selection)

:1

THE PRINCE

5

A PASTORAL: THE IDEAL RULER
A DISCOURSE ON REMODELING THE GOVERNMENT OF
FLORENCE

97
101

ADVICE TO RAFFAELLO GIROLAMI WHEN HE WENT AS
AMBASSADOR TO THE EMPEROR
THE LEGATIONS (parts of dispatches dealing with Cesare Borgia)

120

ON THE METHOD OF DEALING WITH THE REBELLIOUS
PEOPLES OF THE VALDICHIANA (a selection)
A DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD USED BY DUKE
VALENTINO IN KILLING VITELLOZZO VITELLI,
OLIVEROTTO DA FERMO, AND OTHERS
[AT SINIGAGLIA]

AN EXHORTATION TO PENITENCE

170

DISCOURSES ON THE FIRST DECADE OF TITUS LIVIUS
BOOK I
BOOK 2
BOOK 3

VOLUME TWO
THE LIFE OF CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANI OF LUCCA
THE ART OF WAR

533
561


vi

Table of Contents

THE ACCOUNT OF A VISIT MADE TO FORTIFY FLORENCE:
A LETTER TO THE AMBASSADOR OF THE REPUBLIC IN
ROME
727
TERCETS ON AMBITION

735

TERCETS ON INGRATITUDE OR ENVY

740

TERCETS ON FORTUNE

745

THE [GOLDEN] ASS

750

MACHIAVELLI'S COMEDIES

773

MANDRAGOLA

n6

CLIZIA

822

ARTICLES FOR A PLEASURE COMPANY

865

BELFAGOR, THE DEVILWHO MARRIED

869

CARNIVAL SONGS (fivesongs)

878

FAMILIAR LETTERS (all given are complete)

883

A SONNET TO MESSER BERNARDO HIS FATHER

1012

TWO SONNETS TO GIULIANO, SON OF LORENZO
DE'MEDICI

1013

A THIRD SONNET TO GIULIANO

101 5

SERENADE

1016

VOLUME THREE

Page

5

THE HISTORY OF FLORENCE

102

THE NATURES OF FLORENTINE MEN

1436

WORDS TO BE SPOKEN ON THE LAW FOR APPROPRIAT,
ING MONEY

1439

FIRST DECENNALE, ten years of Florentine history. 1494;1504

1444

SECOND DECENNALE,jive years of Florentine history. 1504;1509.

1457

EPIGRAM, PIERO SODERINI

1463

EPIGRAM, ARGUS, on the release of Francis 1

146)

INDEX

1465


ILLUSTRA TIONS
frontispiece
Terra cotta bust

of Machiavelli by an unknown artist, in the Societa

Columbaria,

Florence. (Alinari photograph)
facing page

136

San Leo in 1957
facing pagt 546
Serravalle
following pacfe 726
Platts illustrating the ART

OF

W AR

facing pagt 876
The expulsion of the devil from one possessed
facing page 1114
Bags from which the names of Florentines who were to hold public office were drawn.



PREFACE

The Translation

The first duty of a translator ;s to bring over into his own tongue what
his author says. But this statement is deceptively simple. Shall the
rendering be free or close! At its worst, free means a hasty paraphrase,
often perversion or absolute error. At its best, freedom exacts such famil~
iarity with the language of the text that its lesser shades of meaning appear
in English as idiomatic as is the original Italian. Close may be taken to
indicate a word"for"word transfer that is no language, obscuring sense and
obliterating distinction. Or close may imply such sympathy with the
great work that its significance and even its individual qualities come out in the
substituted language. The best free version and the best close version
have in common a demand for labor such that on a word or a sentence the
translator may multiply the time that went into its original setting down.
To difend either free or close rendering, not seldom an attempt to justify
slight effort, obscures the translator's prime duty: to do the best he can for
his author, whether freely or closely.
Desiring to put bifore a twentieth"century audience precisely what was
penned more than four centuries earlier, the worker is now and then obliged
to ask: Can this be what Machiavelli wrote! He may curb his doubts,
contenting himself ·with what is printed in an accepted text; or he may
allow himself to attempt textual investigation. The ideal translatorfirst edits
the best critical text; I regret that I have not carried on such double labor.
Yet I have seen enough to conclude that, heavy as is our debt to Mazzoni
and Casella for their text of the literary and historical works (1929)'
their labors are not final. In some cases I have chosen to follow the first
printed editions. Now and then-and this has been more often in works not
edited by Mazzoni and Casella-I have translated what seems to be the
meaning, always with a note of warning.
The hope to naturalize in his own idiom the stylistie qualities and the

spirit of agreat work is the translator's will" 0'"the~wisp. So seldom does

it happen, that the man who believes he has accomplished it is likely to be a
victim of self~delusion. Yet one is still in duty bound to strive for some
shadow of the original effect. But since a translator can attain no more
than a shadow, a reader's competence in aforeign language can be set low-


Preface
x
indeed, fiery low-before he is well advised to read only versions in his own
tongue. As commentaries such versions have their place. But we can
suppose them equivalent to their prototypes only when we imagine that
translators are stylists with the power of the geniuses they interpret, and as~
sume that the English and Italian languages are alike in their resources.
To expect from a translation the effect of an original is to demand an English
PRINCE written by Machiavelli himself. My English PRINCE and
MANDRAGOLA cannot satisfy such a demand.
Machiavelli subtly exploited the possibilities, including the colloquial
qualities, of Florentine speech; such is his command of word order that
through inversion he can get emphasis without appearing to use resources
not at the command of any normal speaker. Some of his effective devices,
such as the verb at the beginning of the sentence, can seldom be carried into
English; non~idiomatic English hardly renders idiomatic Italian. I hope
readers will forgive something to my effort to secure Machiavellian em~
phasis. Since most translators of THE PRINCE and the other works
make little effort-to my ear-to bring over into their own tongue the qual~
ities of Machiavelli's style, an effort to do so deserves some lenience.
If a reader is to grasp the qualities depending on union of language and
content, to appreciate the greatness diffused through every part of a great
work and supported continually by such details as the word order, he must
turn to the original. In a lifetime of translating, I have learned by ex~

perience what poor things translations are; yet I have learned also how
much-like many humble things-they are needed. If a translator is entitled
to a crown, its jewels are readers who by his effort have been persuaded,
or driven, to read the great originals in the languages of their conception.
The Works Included
The present edition includes all of the works on which depends the fame
of Machiavelli, and a considerable number of the secondary writings. To
attempt completeness would be of little value to most readers of translations.
For example, the DISCOURSE ABOUT OUR LANGUAGE, even if the
translator were convinced that Machiavelli wrote it, is so concerned with the
Italian of Florence that it is of slight value to one who does not know the
language. Passages ofgeneral application that might be assigned to Niccolo
are weaker expressions of what appears in other works, such as the sugges~
tions on the nature of comedy, given more fully, clearly, and characteris~
tically in the Address to the Reader preceding CLIZIA. Other pieces


Preface

xi

sometimes printed in Italian were evidently never brought to a state approved
for publication, such as pages for Books Nine and later of the HISTORY OF
FLORENCE. Parts of this material are clearly only notes and sketches.
There are also notes collected from reading, probably without special inl!
tention, such as the SENTENZE DIVERSE or VARIOUS MAXIMS.
Other notes depend largely on conversation and observation; they could be
shown to government officials in need of briefing, for example tht SUMMARY
OF THE AFFAIRS OF THE CITY OF LUCCA and ON THE NATURE
OF THE GAULS. The latter bears as well on topics in the DISCOURSES.

Such writings shade insensibly into the reports and letters Machiavelli
wrote as Florentine secretary, in some of which he is hardly more than
penman. Among this varied material, I have tried to select what seemed
most interesting and most nearly completed by its author.
In making such a selection, and still more in dealing with the best known
of his writings, one meets difficulties rising from Machiavelli's slight interest
in printing his works. The first DECENNALE, MANDRAGOLA, and
THE ART OF WAR were published during his lifetime. Study of the
text of MANDRAGOLA suggests that if he read proof at all, he did it
carelessly. Of the major writings left unprinted, we must always ask:
Did he leave a manuscript that he considered entirely ready for the printer?
What changes did his grandson and others concerned in publication make in
the manuscript versions? About the text of any work not published by its
author, uncertainty is not to be avoided.
Among the pieces seldom or never translated that I offer, I have been
generous with those in verse, and with others of literary quality. The
world over, Machiavelli has been known as historian and political thinker;
indeed, he himself said he had a passion for politics. But he was also a
poet, as is proclaimed by MANDRAGOLA, still sometimes passed over in
silence even by learned and devoted students of the political writings, though
when it is mentioned it is accepted as perhaps the first, certainly one of the
greatest, of Italian comedies. Anyone who reads Machiavelli should have
at hand the Secretary's literary works, and not merely because they present
a side of the man little known, but because they react powerfully on our
judgments of his historical and political compositions.
Notes and Index
The notes are not primarily factual, being intended to suggest something


xii

Prtjace

about Machiavelli, such as his method of using Livy's HISTORY, or to
explain d!fficulties in reading.
The index has been especially designed to supply cross rtjerences, so
that all passages in which Machiavelli deals with any topic can easily be
brought together. I have omitted factual matters of secondary importance in
order to devote more space to the presentation of Machiavelli's thought.


TEXTS USED IN TRANSLATING

TUTTE

LE OPERE STORICHE

MACHIAVELLI,

E

LETTERARIE DI

NICCOLO

a cura ai Guiao Mazzoni t Mario Casella,

Firenzt 1929.
ai Niccolo Machiavelli, a cura ai Francesco Flora e
ai Carlo Cordie, 1959, 1960 (to be completed).

LE OPERE DI NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, per cura ai P. Fanfani e
ai L. Passtrini e ai G. Milanesi, Firenze 1873"77 (incomplete).
OPERE DI NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, Italia 1813.
OPERE MINORI DI NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, con note ai F. L.
Polidori, Firenze 1852.
IL PRINCIPE DI NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, Firenze (Giunta) 1532.
IL PRINCIPE DI NICCOLb MACHIAVELLI, Rome (Blaao) 1532.
DISCORSI DI NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, Firenze (Giunta) 1531.

TUTTE LE OPERE

LIBRO DELLA ARTE DELLA GUERRA DI NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI,

Firenze (Giunta) 1524.
[Firenze l] [1524 l].
a cura ai S. Debenedetti, Strasburgo (Bibliotheca

COMEDIA DI CALLIMACO &, DI LUCRETIA,
MANDRAGOLA,

Romanica).
MACHIAVELLI, ISTORIE FlORENTINE, per cura ai
Plinio Carli, Firenze 1927.
Niccolo Machiavelli, LETTERE FAMILIARI pubblicate per cura ai
Eaoa,tlo Lisio, Firenze 1883.
Niccolo Machiavelli, LETTERE FAMILIARI, a cura ai Gerolamo
Lazzeri, Milano 1923.
Machiavelli, LETTERE, [a cura ai Giuseppe Lisca], Pirenze 1929.
Niccolo Machiavelli, LETTERE, a cura ai Franco Gaeta, Milano 1961 .
O,este Tommas;n;, LA VITA E GLI SCRITTI DI NICCOLO MACHI"

AVELLI, vol. 2, parte 2, Appenaict, Roma 1911 •
Pasquale Villari, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI ••• illustrati CDn nUD"i
document;, Milano 1912;1914.

NICCOLO



VOLUME ONE



A PR.OVISION FOR. INFANTR. Y
[A selection from the Preamble]
[Dated 6 December 1506.
This document indicates the partial acceptance by Florence ofMachiavelli's
idea, prominent in THE PRINCE and THE ART OF WAR, that a country
should be difended by her own citizens. Though justice is the foundation of
Machiavellian theory, he seldom, as here, speaks directly on it.]
Whereas it has been observed by the Magnificent and Exalted
Signors that all republics which in times past have preserved and
increased themselves have always had as their chief basis two things,
to wit, justice and arms, in order to restrain and to govern their
subjects, and in order to defend themselves from their enemies; and
whereas they have observed that your republic is well founded on
good and holy laws, and organized for the administration ofjustice,
and that she lacks only to be well provided with arms; and since
through long experience, indeed with great expense and danger, she
has learned how little hope it is possible to place in foreign and hired
arms, because when they are numerous and of high repute:'they are

either unendurable or suspected, and if they are few and without
reputation, they are of no use, these signors judge~it well that she
should be armed with her own weapons and with her own men.



THE PRINCE


List of Chapters
[DEDICATION]

10

I

THE VARIOUS TYPES OF PRINCEDOM AND HOW THEY ARE
GAINED 11

2.

HEREDITARY PRINCEDOMS

3 MIXED PRINCEDOMS

11

12

4 WHY DARIUS' KINGDOM THAT ALEXANDER CONQUERED

DID NOT REVOLT FROM HIS SUCCESSORS AFTER HIS
DEATH 20
S HOW STATES OR PRINCIPALITIES ARE TO BE MANAGED

THAT, BEFORE THEY WERE CONQUERED, LIVED UNDER
THEIR OWN LAWS 23
6

NEW PRINCEDOMS GAINED THROUGH A MAN'S OWN AR,
MIES AND ABILITY 24

7 NEW PRINCEDOMS GAINED WITH OTHER MEN'S FORCES

AND THROUGH FORTUNE

27

8 MEN WHO GAIN A PRINCEDOM THROUGH WICKED

DEEDS
9

3S

THE ((CIVIL PRINCEDOM'"

39

10

HOW THE MILITARY POWER OF ANY PRINCEDOM IS TO BE
ESTIMATED 42

II

ECCLESIASTICAL PRINCEDOMS

12

VARIOUS KINDS OF ARMY; MERCENARY SOLDIERS

13

AUXILIARY AND MIXED ARMIES; SUBJECTS AND CITIZENS
AS SOLDIERS 51

44

14 A PRINCE'S DUTY ABOUT MILITARY AFFAIRS

46

55

IS THOSE THINGS FOR WHICH MEN AND ESPECIALLY PRINCES

ARE PRAISED OR CENSURED
16

LIBERALITY AND STINGINESS

57

S9

17 CRUELTY AND MERCY: IS IT BETTER TO BE LOVED THAN

FEARED, OR THE REVERSEl

61

18

HOW PRINCES SHOULD KEEP THEIR PROMISES

64

19

A PRINCE MUST AVOID BEING DESPISED AND HATED

20

WHETHER FORTRESSES AND MANY THINGS THAT PRINCES
DO EVERY DAY ARE USEFUL OR HARMFUL 77

67

List of Chapters

7

21

HOW A PRINCE CONDUCTS HIMSELF IN ORDER TO GAIN A
HIGH REPUTATION 8J

22.

A PRINCE'S CONFIDENTIAL OFFICERS 85

23

HOW FLATTERERS CAN BE AVOIDED

86

24 WHY THE PRINCES OF ITALY HAVE LOST THEIR STATES

88

25 FORTUNE'S POWER IN HUMAN AFFAIRS AND HOW SHE CAN
BE FORESTALLED 89
26

AN EXHORTATION TO GRASP ITALY AND SET HER FREE
FROM THE BARBARIANS 91

[In a letter of 10 December 1513, Machiavelli says that he had written a
little work on princedoms, and that he was still enlarging and revising it.
This process of improvement may have gone onfor years. Yet in 1513 THE
PRINCE, or the part he had then written, was so nearly finished that he was
showing it to one of his friends and considering the wisdom ofpresenting it to
Giuliano de'Medici. On Machiavelli's death in 1527 it was still unprinted,
appearing only in 1532.
The work falls into several sections. Chapters 1-11 deal with various
types of princedom, emphasizing the new prince. In Chapters 12-14, the
independent but related topic of warfare is treated, with the dominating belief
that a wise ruler relies on an army of citizens rather than of mercenaries.
With Chapter 15 Machiavelli abandons his tractate on princedoms to
write nine chapters based on a type of book familiar in his age, the treatise of
advice to princes, or de regimine principum. This is the section of THE
PRINCE that has roused most opposition. The usual work of the sort was
highly moral, exhorting the prince to exemplify all the Christian virtues.
Paradoxically, Machiavelli, though asserting the reality of those virtues, de~
clares that aprince who blindly attempts to put them into practice, especially
in foreign relations, will ruin himself.
With Chapter 24 begins the last section of the work, making practical
application to Italy. First the errors of Italian princes are exposed. The
twenty1fth chapter, on Fortune, though having wide and general application,
follows a statement in the preceding chapter that Italian princes should not
charge their sufferings to Fortune; Machiavelli, though allowing that goddess
enormous power, asserts the effectiveness of human industry and capacity;
man is not wholly subject to his environment. In the last chapter Niccolo
reveals his prime reason for the whole work; however much he delighted in
observing politics, the practical value ofstatesmanship for liberating Italy from
foreign tyranny and from domestic bad government seldom left his mind. The

only hope for Italian unity he saw in a wise and strong prince. Patriotism led
him to find that delivering prince among the Medici and, in the language of
Biblical metaphor, to declare that God had opened the way for that Italian
courage in which Petrarch expressed his confidence. This delivering prince of
necessity possesses all the abilities detailed through the preceding chapters; his
figure dominates the little work.


The Nature of the Prince

9

This deliverer, it is true, does not always appear in thefirst eleven chapters,
which bear marks of Machiavelli's attempt to write the scientific treatise his
temperament and his hopes could not permit. The eleventh chapter, on the
princedoms of the Church, is a vestige of the original plan for surveying
princely states of all sorts; it is connected with the deliverer only in that the
Medici family held the papacy, that the ecclesiastical state was important in
Italy, and that its rt41ers, like others, had their share in determining Italy's
fate. Something of the sort can be said of other topics scattered through the
work. On observing these digressions and fresh starts, we can think THE
PRINCE badly planned and inconsequent; we may even grant indulgence to
the hasty readers who have felt in the concluding chapter a spirit not justified
by what precedes. But as we look further, we judge that as THE PRINCE
breaks the strict bounds ofthe treatise, it takes on the qualities ofthe unfettered,
conversation"like or letter"like familiar essay. The topics ofsorrow for Italy,
desire for her liberation from foreign king and native tyrant, the power OJ
Fortune, the possibility that effort, courage, and wisdom can overcome the
vicissitudes of life, the need for adaptation to immediate environment, courage
to abandon traditional formulas, the new rather than the securely established

prince-all these recur to give, if not unity, relationship between the parts.
Dominant is the figure of the prince perfect in goodness, in active energy,
in prudence, rulingfor the common good of all the people of Italy. With such
qualities, the prince transcends all human sovereigns, though some of them
furnished hints from which to derive the qualities of the ideal ruler. Cesare
Borgia showed some of the practical capacity essential for the liberation of the
peninsula, though he fell short in prudence, even in courage-and much more
in desire for universal happiness. Machiavelli's perfect prince is to be found
only in the realm of the imagination. He is the Agamemnon of medieval
interpreters of the ILIAD, the Emperor of Dante's COMEDY and MON;'
ARCHY, the Godfrey of JERUSALEM DELIVERED, Spenser's King
Arthur, ((perfected in the politic virtues." Niccolo's delivering ruler is the
poet's dream of a monarch who masters the world's harsh realities. Had he
remained a mere practical man, Machiavelli would have looked with despair
on Italian ills as beyond cure. But from exact yet imaginative observing of
good and had, he gained material for the poet's vision. Whatever else THE
PRINCE may be, it isfirst ofall apoem, apoem oftrust that human goodness,
strength and wisdom, personified in an ideal ruler, can afford man such measure
of happiness as follows from good government.]


THE PR.INCE
Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent
Lorenzo de'Medici
ALMOST ALWAYS THOSE WHO WISH TO GAIN A

prince's favor come into his presence with such of their possessions
as they hold dearest or in which they see him take most pleasure.
Hence many times princes receive as gifts horses, weapons, cloth of
gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments befitting their greatness.

Wishing, then, for my part to come before Your Magnificence with
some proof that I am your loyal subject, I have found among my
treasures nothing I hold dearer or value so high as my understanding
of great men's actions, gained in my lengthy experience with recent
matters and my continual reading on ancient ones. My observa~
tions-which with close attention I have for a long time thought over
and considered, and recently have collected in a little volume-I
send to Your Magnificence. And though I judge this work un~
worthy to come into your presence, yet I fully trust that in your
kindness you will accept it, considering that I cannot make you a
greater gift than to give you t~e means for learning, in a very short
time, everything that I, in so many years and with so many troubles
and perils, have discerned and comprehended.
This work of mine I have not adorned or loaded down with
swelling phrases or with bombastic and magnificent words or any
kind of meretricious charm or extrinsic ornament, with which many
writers dress up their products, because I desire either that nothing
shall beautify it, or that merely its unusual matter and the weight of
its subject shall make it pleasing.
No one, I hope, will think that a man oflow and humble station
is overconfident when he dares to discuss and direct the conduct ot
princes, because, just as those who draw maps ofcountries put them~
selves low down on the plain to observe the nature of mountains and
ofplaces high above, and to observe that oflow places put themselves
high up on mountain tops, so likewise, in order to discern clearly the
I

1. In the first sentence, the prince is singular)' in this one, plural. Such shifts occur many
times in this work.