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In the beginning of Ab urbe condita, Titus Livy writes that of the many claims by cities to have had a divine origin, none should seem more credible than that of Rome, so powerful is its empire and so great its glory (Liv. 1.pr.4–10; see Machiavelli, Discourses, 1.pr.2, 2.pr.1; see also Chapter 11). But Livy does not want that power or that glory to overawe his readers; instead, he instructs them to consider how the city’s greatness has brought it to a point of irredeemable vice; from the beginning, he compares the corrupt morals of the present to the healthy morals of the past. Rome’s republican goodness preceded its imperial greatness and made that greatness possible; now, Livy writes, Rome has lost the former in acquiring the latter. Livy’s history of Rome unfolds against the backdrop of a lasting historical question: will a people that ascends through virtue to power and glory inevitably become corrupt as a result, and so decline into either tyranny or obscurity? J.G.A. Pocock has proposed that this question is the decisive one for all serious Roman historians and he traces its origins back to Sallust and Polybius (Pocock 2003: 202–212; see also Chapter 8; Chapter 10). But the question is not just Sallustian or Polybian; it is not only a Roman question (Hdt. 1.5, 9.27, 9.122; Thuc. 2.17, 2.65, 4.65; Xen. Anab. 3.3.25–6; Xen. Hell. 5.3.27 ff.; Xen. Lac. 14; Xen. Cyr. 8.8). In this chapter, we will discuss how Livy’s greatest commentator, Niccolò Machiavelli, analysed and undermined Livy’s account of the relationship between virtue and empire.

Livy’s account is an extraordinarily powerful one. Historians, from Leonardo Bruni in the Renaissance, to Montesquieu and Rousseau in the French Enlightenment (see Chapter 4) and Theodor Mommsen in the nineteenth century (see Chapter 6), have often adopted, at least in part, Livy’s view that Roman power and freedom resulted from the modesty, discipline, austerity, patriotism, religiosity and respect for authority that supposedly defined early Republican culture (see Chapter 28). It is striking to observe how hollow and self-promoting this ancient Roman self-presentation now appears, particularly in a world where ‘virtue’ itself sounds at best quaint and at worst politically dangerous. Equally striking is the apparent vacuity of claims that Roman decline resulted from the corruption of the Romans’ traditional customs. The questions surrounding Roman virtue and ethical corruption, and indeed those surrounding the so-called virtuous republic altogether, now seem to reflect a misplaced anxiety over national character and a misguidedly nostalgic faith in the goodness of the past.

There is, in fact, a remarkable gap between our current understandings of the Romans and the Romans’ characteristically proud presentation of themselves. The chief basis of this gap is Rome’s self-proclaimed dedication to civic virtue, about which historians are understandably suspicious. We propose that we can best grasp the Roman legacy, in this cardinal respect, by engaging with Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Machiavelli 1996). This work, the most influential interpretation of Livy ever written, represents a decisive turning point in the interpretation of ancient Rome. Although Machiavelli acknowledged the Romans’ virtuous and nostalgic self-presentation, he sought to change the terms of the ancient discussions in unsettling ways.

Machiavelli wrote in the twilight of the Italian Renaissance, a time when Livy’s reputation was at its peak. The fifteenth-century Italian humanists, above all Leonardo Bruni, considered Livy’s history to be the supreme achievement of ancient historical writing. Livy’s work was celebrated both for its form – Bruni, for instance, self-consciously imitated Livy’s style throughout his History of the Florentine People – and for its substance – for there was no finer subject, in the eyes of most learned Italians, than the beginnings, the growth and the virtue of the finest republic (Wilcox 1969: 7, 17, 26, 35–38, 58–61, 106–111, 128–130; Ullman 1973: 55–79, 321–343: Fryde 1983: 8, 18, 55; Ianziti 2012: 14–16). Livy’s work stood alongside Aristotle’s Ethics and Cicero’s On Duties as the most influential ancient texts in that age (Hankins 2014: 102). In Renaissance Italy, the ancient Roman Republic was, with some modifications, the Livian republic. Livy’s history was ‘authoritative’ (Ianziti 2012: 31; cf. Briscoe 1971: 10).

As a result, Machiavelli’s decision to write a commentary on Livy’s first 10 books, that is, those books in which Livy recounts the rise of Rome from its mythical beginnings up to the middle of the Samnite Wars, conformed to the opinions and the conventions of his age. Machiavelli’s use of Livy, however, was arrestingly unconventional. If, as Gary Ianziti has argued, Bruni, despite his love of Livy, was the first Renaissance author to move ‘away from the traditional notion of sources as constituting authorities to be followed at all costs’, then Machiavelli took this practice to its highest level (Ianziti 2012: 88). Machiavelli presents Livy as both part of the solution and part of the problem for his broader political projects: Livy provides the material with which Machiavelli’s reader can discover the truth about Rome, about republicanism and about the nature of virtue, but Livy’s own understandings and teachings also pose serious obstacles to Machiavelli’s inquisitive project. Like most of his Renaissance contemporaries, Machiavelli obviously admired Livy, but he also held that Livy’s work concealed as much as it revealed about the true or well-ordered republic. For that reason, Machiavelli sought not only to excavate the truth about good republics, but also to teach his readers how to interpret the past and act in the present.

At first glance, at least, Machiavelli’s Discourses presents a history of the urbs aeterna similar to the Livian original. In it we find a city that begins in necessity, rises through virtue, becomes corrupt in its greatness and then alternates between manifest tyranny and criminal licence as it declines into ruin.¹ At a distance, Machiavelli and Livy’s respective portraits bear a striking resemblance, but upon closer inspection we find that Machiavelli has retouched every part of the Livian text in ways that have shaped all subsequent discourse on ancient Rome. To understand the seismic shifts that Machiavelli brought about, we must first ask whether and how Machiavelli transmuted traditional Livian virtue into the novel virtù of the Machiavellian republic.

By following Machiavelli’s use of Livian examples in his presentation of Rome’s origins, growth and decline, we see that Machiavelli deliberately invents a novel and distinctive conception of virtù that helped marginalise and even obscure Livy’s celebration of Roman virtue. Machiavellian virtù is psychological, intellectual and physical strength – a general capacity to achieve one’s ends, whatever they may be, often through behaviour that would be considered ruthless or unethical by traditional standards. It may be that both traditional virtues and Machiavellian virtù were essential to the growth of the Roman Empire. For Machiavelli, however, the latter is the true core of the best regime: a politically astute and militarily powerful expansionist republic. In this way, Machiavelli offers his work as a correction of Livy and as a vision of the hitherto unimagined opportunities and possibilities latent in republican politics. By radicalising certain aspects of Livy’s presentation of Roman virtue, Machiavelli reorients its relationship to nature, fortune and tradition. In doing so, he all but stands Livy’s virtue on its head. Rather than being reverent, devoted, traditional, obedient, self-sacrificing and nobly committed to the common good, true virtue, for Machiavelli, is youthful, dangerous, innovative, treacherous, self-interested and above all hostile to Fortune (Liv. 1.18, 1.26, 2.13, 3.26, 4.14, 5.27, 7.10, 8.36, 9.4, 10.24; Rossi 2004: 377 n. 42). Moreover, instead of being prized for its intrinsic worth or nobility, Machiavellian virtù is purely instrumental, desirable because it is the only reliable way to acquire security, prosperity and glory in this world. Virtù both lowers human excellence by making it instrumental and raises its profile by pitting it as a successful rival to fortune (P 15, 25; D 2.30.5, 3.9.1, 3.36.1–2, 3.43.1).

Are we all Machiavellians now? It would be hard to find a Roman historian nowadays who explains the city’s success with reference to traditional virtue rather than material power and efficient political causation. Even so, Machiavelli occupies a position at the crossroads of current discussions of political virtue, freedom and power. On the one hand, he has frequently been interpreted as an admirer of ancient Roman freedom and virtue, and hence as the author of modern ‘republicanism’, a term of theory that pinpoints specific ideals such as political independence, freedom from arbitrary control and an active civic life (Honohan 2002: Chapter 2; Pettit 1997: 4–7, 19, 28–31; 2012: ‘Introduction’; Skinner 1978; 1990; Viroli 1998; Pocock 2003). Did Machiavelli take a promising theory of engaged citizenship derived from ancient Rome, Aristotle and Cicero and channel it into the modern world, where it might prove attractive even to citizens of the contemporary liberal-democratic nation state (see Chapter 22)? On the other hand, ever since his writings first became public, Machiavelli has been construed as a malign force, a manipulative deceiver, a guide to all that is unholy, untrustworthy and selfish – hardly the attributes that respectable republican theorists would want to cultivate among their citizens. Is Machiavellian modernity, then, hostile to ancient virtue precisely because of the Florentine’s concentration on utilitarian success and unconstrained projections of power (Strauss [1958] 1978; Hulliung 1983; Sullivan 1996; Mansfield 1979)? It is impossible to establish Machiavelli’s influence on the interpretation of the Roman Republic without also keeping these charged theoretical dilemmas in mind.

However that may be, we can best grasp the dimensions of Machiavelli’s project by examining his transformations of Livy. In doing so, we follow the work of those scholars who have taken Machiavelli’s relationship to Livy most seriously: among them Mark Hulliung, Victoria Kahn, Ronald T. Ridley, Leo Strauss and J.H. Whitfield (Hulliung 1983: 130 ff., 165 ff.; Kahn 2013: 98 ff., 215 n. 19; Ridley 1987: 327; Strauss [1958] 1978: 110; Whitfield 1971: 78–79, 90). While it is certain that Machiavelli was also engaged with ancient philosophy and with the humanist, Savonarolan and scholastic currents of his own day, it is to the ancient historians that Machiavelli explicitly turned in his efforts to elaborate his vision of the best regime. Accordingly, it is first of all to this tradition that we should turn when analysing Machiavelli’s Roman Republic. By transforming what we praise and what we blame when we think of Rome as the quintessentially virtuous Republic, and by reinterpreting Livy according to his novel conception of virtù, Machiavelli reveals the unusual theoretical ambitions of his own project, which go far beyond historical reconstruction.