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Few stories of the beginnings of cities are as famous as the Romans’ account of their eponymous founder Romulus (see Chapter 34). While Livy praises some of Romulus’s actions and grudgingly concedes that all of the Roman king’s unsavoury deeds were necessary for Roman freedom, he does not seem to admire Romulus’s fratricide, faithlessness, rapacity, duplicity and conspicuous lack of remorse over the death of Titus Tatius (Liv. 1.8, 1.14–16, 2.1).² Perhaps the king’s acts can be excused by the necessity of establishing a city destined for extraordinary virtue, freedom and greatness; perhaps his behaviour was an expression of the gods’ will. Still, Livy’s Romulus did not intend to found a virtuous imperial Republic; his acts could be justified, if at all, only by pointing to their unintended consequences. Romulus helped to make the Romans ferocious and warlike, Livy asserts, and founded the order of the Senate (see Chapter 15); but he could never become a model for imitation. To admit that even the greatest cities have had troubled beginnings does not mean that one must praise those beginnings.

Machiavelli’s treatment of Romulus is, by traditional standards, thoroughly irreverent, but a serious purpose underlies his wry account. For the murders of his brother and Titus Tatius, Machiavelli writes, Romulus deserves excuse, because ‘what he did was for the common good and not for his own ambition’, a motive conspicuously absent from Livy (D 1.9.2).³ Against our expectations, Machiavelli transforms Romulus into a man of traditional civic virtue, who is committed to the common good to the detriment of his own interests – a decent man compelled to choose among undesirable options by the harshness of political life. It may be tempting, then, to say that Machiavelli aims to console those who wish to do good but hesitate to undertake necessary and distasteful acts, that he has written a manual of raison d’état for those with qualms about ‘dirty hands’ and untoward calculations. Such a sanguine interpretation, however, can hardly account for all of Machiavelli’s clever touches. So far from lamenting or regretting the deeds of Romulus, Machiavelli delights in retelling the murderous details of Romulus’s career in defiance of conventional norms. In fact, he says, another ‘most excellent man’ who formed ‘laws for the purpose of the common good’ killed ‘infinite men’ in his founding, and Machiavelli praises him, too (D 1.9.3, 3.30.1; P 6). Livy grasps the idea of tough necessity but refuses to embrace murder and injustice as appropriate political tools, whereas Machiavelli uses the excuse of patriotism to help remediate our ethical qualms. Machiavelli’s Romulus becomes an ideal worthy of imitation because he subordinates all ethics to the fundamental (if harsh and occasionally inhumane) principle of ancient republican politics: dedication to the common good. In the Livian account, Rome’s eventual prosperity partially justifies the objectionable injustices of its beginning; by mordantly implying that his murderous Romulus intended to work for the common good all along, Machiavelli both makes his Romulus more virtuous than Livy’s and teases Livy’s naïve readers for depending on such noble excuses.

Romulus is, in fact, a case study in Machiavelli’s selective reinterpretation and frequently disturbing appropriation of the ancient Roman past and the characters of Livy’s history. Transforming King Romulus into a Machiavellian prince represents the beginning of Machiavelli’s reworking of the primary texts, a reworking in which he treats revered ancient writers, above all Livy, as malleable sources of material rather than as ethical or political authorities. For, according to Machiavelli, Romulus’s crimes were a part of that king’s far-sighted vision. Machiavelli’s Romulus prudently intends to found the Republic. At first, Machiavelli’s retelling may seem to ennoble Romulus. Machiavelli explicitly claims that Romulus established the Senate – an order ‘more conformable to a civil and free way of life than to an absolute and tyrannical one’ – out of devotion to the common good rather than to his own ends (D 1.9.2; cf. D 1.25, 1.34, 1.40, 2.23.1, 2.24.2–4). Yet no sooner has Machiavelli said this than he indicates that Romulus was, fundamentally, nothing more than intelligently selfish in founding Rome as he did. Machiavelli suggests that it was in fact an immense virtù that led Romulus to understand that his true interests – eternal glory and posthumous rule – lay in establishing a republic rather than a principality, and likewise to see that by such a foundation he could colour his self-interest with the excuse of devotion to the public good. Virtù, in Machiavelli’s account, is prior to any traditional Roman virtue.

Reading backwards in time, however, Machiavelli’s ascription of extraordinary foresight to Romulus seems questionable. If we return to Livy with Machiavelli in mind, we are forced to wonder whether Romulus was rather a bad founder of a kingdom than a wise founder of a republic: intending to found a monarchy, he made a consultative body so powerful that its members murdered him and then deified him in order to excuse their act before the people (Liv. 1.16). The Livian Romulus was neither the man of traditional Roman virtue nor the man of virtù that Machiavelli invented. Why then did Machiavelli fraudulently portray him as both?

The most plausible answer is that Machiavelli reshaped Livy’s account in order to teach a series of non-Livian lessons to his audience – young, potentially virtuous readers who lack political authority (D Dedicatory, 2.pr.3, 3.5.1). Through his remoulding of Livy’s text, Machiavelli resurrects traditional Roman civic virtue, such as we find throughout the ancient historiographical tradition and especially in Livy, but he indicates that that old virtue is insufficient without a brilliant, youthful virtù to support it.⁴ In particular, Discourses 1.9 on Romulus and the founding of Rome teaches good men how to act badly for good reasons (to commit founding injustices in order to serve the common good) and bad men how to found something good for selfish reasons (to order a republic out of interest in their own power and authority, narrowly construed). By illustrating the ways in which traditional virtue and virtù are intertwined in political practice, Machiavelli points to a striking coincidence of interest between the prince and the people when it comes to the glory of the one and the well-being of the other (Liv. 24.4–5, 21; P 6, 8; D Dedicatory, 1.55.5, 1.58.1, 2.2.1, 2.15.2, 2.30.1–2, 3.6.2). The traditional Roman commitment to the common good helps to excuse the ruthlessness of virtù – a quality that often leads to strategies, decisions and actions that ‘a prudent individual knows’ but that ‘do not have in themselves evident reasons with which one can persuade others’ (D 1.11.3). Through his masterful reworking of these themes, Machiavelli teaches the potentially excellent individual not to reject all ambition in favour of traditional Roman moderation, but rather to use certain traditional virtues both as effective ‘cover’ and as instrumental means for the prudent fulfilment of worldly ambition without reliance on fortune or the arms of others (P 15; D 3.42; Sullivan 1996: 124).

In Machiavelli’s presentation, Rome required men of virtù to found, and even to re-found, its orders in order to keep the city healthy and powerful. Through the efforts of bold, chameleon-like leaders, Rome remained virtuous and powerful for longer than any other republic of which we have memory, largely overcoming the supposedly natural tendency for human things to decline just when they attain the pinnacle of success (D 1.6.4, 1.37.1, 2.pr.2, 3.1).⁵ Machiavelli, as we have noted, was by no means the first to consider the rise and fall of republics in terms of the success and then the corruption of virtue, but in changing what virtue entails, he has changed the entire narrative. From the perspective of the most excellent individual, the founding prince, a republic maintains his glory and his authority for longer than any other regime; the well-ordered republic most successfully overcomes the problem of political succession – that is, the tendency of leaders’ sons to become lazy, indulgent, unwisely cruel, cowardly and unfamiliar with the struggles of their forefathers. The most virtuous founding is the one that best secures virtuous successors – individuals of great virtue and, even more importantly, those of great virtù – and only a republic can secure such a succession. Against modern princes and famous wise men who ‘enjoy the benefit of time’ rather than ‘the benefit of their virtue and prudence’, Machiavelli teaches all truly ‘wise princes’ to take the prudent, acquisitive and relentless ancient Roman Republic as a model, both in their conquests and in their foundings (P 3; cf. D 2.18–19).