Five-minute digest
Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius
Summary
The Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius are Niccolò Machiavelli's long commentary on the first ten books of Livy's history of Rome, which run from the founding of the city to the Samnite wars of the early third century BC. Machiavelli wrote them in the years after 1513, when he had been dismissed from the service of the Florentine Republic, and discussed them with young friends in the Rucellai gardens in Florence; he dedicated them to two of those friends, Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai, explaining that he had chosen men who deserved to be princes rather than men who were. They were printed only in 1531, four years after his death. In the preface Machiavelli complains that his contemporaries admire ancient statues and imitate ancient law and medicine, yet neglect the political example of ancient republics, and he announces that he is entering on an untrodden path. Book I, in sixty chapters, concerns the internal order of Rome. Machiavelli sets out the cycle of six forms of government, three good and three corrupt, and praises Rome's mixed constitution of consuls, senate and tribunes. He makes the startling argument that the tumults between nobles and commons made Rome free, since laws favourable to freedom arose from that conflict. He holds that a founder must act alone, so that Romulus is excused for killing Remus; that Numa's religion did more for Rome than Romulus's arms; that the papacy has kept Italy irreligious and divided; that corruption makes freedom almost impossible to restore; and, in chapter LVIII, that a people is wiser and more constant than a prince. Book II, in thirty-three chapters, treats Rome's expansion: the balance of virtue and fortune in its empire, its policy of taking allies and citizens, its method of war, the uselessness of mercenaries, money and fortresses compared with good soldiers, and the reasons ancient peoples loved liberty more than his own, which he partly traces to the way Christianity had been interpreted as counselling suffering rather than action. Book III, in forty-nine chapters, turns to what individual citizens did for Rome. It opens with the principle that republics and religious bodies must often be brought back to their beginnings, by laws or by the example of great men, as Saint Francis and Saint Dominic renewed the Church. It then examines conspiracies at great length, the sons of Brutus, the need to change one's methods with the times, generals such as Fabius, Camillus, Manlius Torquatus and Valerius Corvinus, and the duty to defend one's country by any means. Throughout, Machiavelli sets Roman examples beside Florentine and Italian events of his own lifetime, from Savonarola to Pope Julius II and Cesare Borgia. The library text is Ninian Hill Thomson's complete English translation of 1883.
Top Lessons
Conflict that preserves liberty
Machiavelli argues in Book I, ch. IV, that the quarrels between the Roman nobles and commons, which others blamed for disorder, produced the laws that kept Rome free. A republic, on this view, needs institutions that give each side a lawful outlet.
Religion and the life of a state
Book I, ch. XI–XV, treats religion as the strongest support of good laws and military discipline, and Machiavelli warns that contempt for worship is the surest sign of a state's decay. His view of religion's political uses has been read in very different ways, from sincere concern for piety to purely civil calculation.
Return to first beginnings
Book III opens with the principle that all institutions decay unless renewed by a return to their original excellence, through laws, through dramatic punishments or through the example of good men. Machiavelli's examples include Saint Francis and Saint Dominic.
The people and the prince
Against the historians' common saying that nothing is more fickle than the multitude, chapter LVIII of Book I argues that a people governed by laws is more prudent and constant than a prince. The chapter is central to readings of Machiavelli as a republican.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“all men are bad, and will always, when they have free field, give loose to their evil inclinations”
“it is in this conflict that all laws favourable to freedom have their origin”
Frequently cited
“For although the act condemn the doer, the end may justify him; and when, as in the case of Romulus, the end is good, it will always excuse the means;”
“since we can have no surer sign of the decay of a province than to see Divine worship held therein in contempt.”
“Nor is it without reason that the voice of the people has been likened to the voice of God;”
“this assuredly results from the baseness of those who have interpreted our religion to accord with indolence and ease rather than with valour.”
“Now the way to renew them is, as I have said, to bring them back to their beginnings”
“for when the entire safety of our country is at stake, no consideration of what is just or unjust, merciful or cruel, praiseworthy or shameful, must intervene.”
Medical Lens
Medicine appears in the Discourses as a model of how to learn from antiquity. In the preface to Book I Machiavelli observes that the healing art of his day is only the recorded experience of the ancient physicians, and asks why politics does not likewise build on ancient example; this reflects the Renaissance medicine of Galenic and Hippocratic authorities. In Book III, ch. I, he cites a medical maxim (given in Latin in the footnote) that something is added to the body daily which sooner or later needs cure, as the analogy for the periodic renewal of states. Plague and famine appear as causes of the loss of historical memory (Book II, ch. V) and as occasions of Roman crisis (Book I, ch. XIII and XXXVIII). These are analogies and historical notices, not medical discussions.
- Book I, Preface
The healing art described as the recorded experience of the old physicians, set as a model for imitating ancient political practice.
- Book III, ch. I
The physicians' maxim that the body daily gathers something needing treatment, applied to the decay and renewal of republics.
- Book II, ch. V
Plague, famine and flood as heaven-sent causes that destroy populations and the memory of the past.
- Book I, ch. XXXVIII
A pestilence at Rome tempts the Aequians and Volscians to attack, and the Senate's response is examined.