Читать книгу A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic - Группа авторов - Страница 29

If virtue is no longer the end of a good human life, however, then why does a republic need to concern itself with virtue at all? This question is an urgent one, precisely because Machiavelli has lowered the stature of virtue as a source of natural human flourishing. The key is that he also elevates the reach of virtue as a source of efficacious power. Machiavelli’s virtù can do more in the world than the self-limiting Roman virtues; his virtuous republic is more sustainable and more achievable for a longer period of time than its historical predecessors; his best regime ought to have ‘infinite virtuous successions’ (D 1.20).⁸ Machiavelli’s newly fashioned Romans are more responsible for their own success than were the ancient Romans themselves; Rome’s traditional admirers gave excessive credit to Rome’s conventional virtues.

Virtue, as Machiavelli redefines it, is the understanding of necessity that allows us to exploit every human situation to our advantage. It is self-command or world-command, rather than self-control and resigned acceptance. The truth really does set us free, though not in the way that the Gospel of John suggested. Machiavelli’s peculiar history of Rome teaches both why his virtue must be perpetually cultivated over time, and how that virtue can redesign political ‘modes and orders’ with a view to keeping the city powerful.

To understand this aspect of Machiavellian virtù, one must consider that virtù in relation to fortune. Machiavelli encourages aspiring leaders to recognise that the world is not providential; no wise overseer, like the Platonic Demiurge or the Christian God, will make provision for human beings who refuse to take responsibility for themselves. Equally, in such a world, fortune is not only not a goddess, but also not an ally: men of virtù learn to acknowledge that the world offers us nothing more than constraints, surprises and necessities. In order to understand Machiavelli’s new construction of the relation of the virtuous republic to fortune in a world drained of providence, we turn to his treatment of three Livian heroes: Marcus Valerius Corv[in]us, the young hero of the Samnite wars (Liv. 7.26 ff.); Titus Manlius Torquatus, the famous filicide and enduring symbol of old Republican severity (Liv. 8.7 ff.); and Marcus Furius Camillus, the second founder of Rome (Liv. 7.1). These three figures reveal that Machiavelli’s Rome – more youthful, more ruthless and more prudent than that of Livy – both replaces and reshapes Livian virtue in a way that conforms to Machiavellian virtù. Machiavelli’s Republic makes possible an unprecedented resistance to, and even triumph over, the ‘goddess’ Fortuna.

In his presentation of the Roman military tribune Valerius Corvinus (Valerius Corvus in the accepted reading of Livian manuscript tradition), Machiavelli shows that the virtuous republic overcomes fortune and renews itself not, as in Livy, by filial piety, by devotion to the mos maiorum, or by respect for the gods, but rather through youthful desire, the perpetual bending and breaking of ancient orders, and faithless cunning on the part of its elites. The Romans succeeded because they gave new princes an ordinary way to acquire power without allowing them the time to turn that power into a hereditary state. Rome’s willingness to grant the consular authority to Valerius when he was merely 23 years old is related to its willingness to excuse the transgressions of innovative and bold commanders – such as Fabius Maximus Rullianus, who decided to march into the Ciminian forest against the Senate’s orders. Not the Republic’s adoration for old age but its indulgence of youthful vigour distinguished it from other governments. For this reason, Machiavelli writes, ‘Rome was the least ungrateful’ of the ancient republics; and for this reason, he suggests, it was able to maintain its vigour for so long in the midst of success (D 1.29.3). Machiavelli radicalises and greatly exaggerates that side of the Roman self-understanding that appreciated innovativeness at the expense of traditionalism. Since fortune continually varies, republics require daring leaders who will adapt the established institutions and practices to the needs of each moment (D 3.9.3).

In fact, while discussing Rome’s frequent experience of ‘new necessities’ to ‘create new orders’ – e.g. changing the term-limits of censors – Machiavelli openly criticises Livy (D 1.49.1). Rome achieved greatness by inflaming the ambition of its young men and by giving those young men a meaningful and attractive career path that did not involve outright criminality. In analysing these features of Rome’s political culture, Machiavelli transformed Livy’s stern virtues into innovative qualities that resisted the natural forces of fortune. To rely on inheritance, to trust in blood and age, to reject meritocracy in favour of nepotism – all these strategies rely unwisely on fortune. Since individuals of great ambition and talent are rare in any city, it was critical that the Roman Republic recruit its prospective leaders effectively and put them to good public use. Machiavelli’s best republic provides those who desire and deserve to rule, whatever their birth, the opportunity to acquire and so benefit themselves and others (P 9; D 1.16, 1.37).

But if such ambitious youth are necessary for the health and well-being of a republic, they are also dangerous (D 1.33, 1.52, 3.28; P 3; Liv. 2.3, 3.37, 3.61, 4.14). Machiavellian virtù is as threatening as it is productive. The well-ordered republic both encourages and checks its virtuous youth; wise republican orders cultivate mutual suspicion, rotation in office and perpetual vigilance among the elite.

In Discourses 1.30, Machiavelli notes that one of the reasons the Romans had ‘so many virtuous men’ from both the ‘nobles and the ignobles’ was that they were perpetually at war (D 1.30.2). This observation is Machiavelli’s reformulated version of the traditional Roman praise of metus hostilis – the fear of the enemy that keeps citizens loyal, patriotic and stern. A second reason for the superiority of republics is that ‘since they [the Roman elite] were very many they guarded one another’. Instead of relying on concordia or civic trust, the Romans embraced conflict, pitting ambition against ambition. Hence, when Machiavelli praises Rome for being the least ungrateful republic, he also praises Cato the Elder for causing Scipio Africanus, one of the other two individuals named alongside Valerius for their youthful rise in Discourses 1.60, to go into exile (D 1.29.3).⁹

Machiavelli takes his argument about checking elites to its limit when he proposes that the Romans maintained their virtue through extraordinary, violent sacrifices. These sacrifices were of two types: in one case, a member of the Roman elite would sacrifice himself for the common good; in the second case, a member of the elite would punish another who had gone too far beyond the bounds of the ancient orders. Machiavelli zealously supports both actions, but he suggests that the latter is more prudent – i.e. more in accordance with virtù (D 1.14.1, 3.1.2–4, 3.45.1). In bringing to light and celebrating the punitive dimensions of prudence, Machiavelli radicalises the harshest side of traditional Roman virtue.

The greatest example of a punishing virtue that checks but does not crush innovative virtù is the infamous deed of Manlius Torquatus, who killed his own son for disobedience, after Manlius junior had victoriously engaged the enemy against his father’s orders. Livy first alludes to this stupefying act early in his history. After noting that some tell a similar story of Aulus Postumius, Livy writes that ‘one is loath to believe this story, and the diversity of opinion allows one to reject it’, for it is a ‘sad memory (tristem memoriam)’ to have to recount such a thing (Liv. 4.28.5–6). Accordingly, when he reaches the story of Manlius, Livy describes the positive effect of the deed only tentatively. He puts the praise of this act not in his own words but in the mouth of Manlius; in his own voice we hear of how atrocious the act was and how terrible it seemed to the soldiers.

Rarely is Machiavelli’s distance from Livy more obvious. Where Livy barely confesses the positive effect Manlius’s filicide had on discipline, Machiavelli joyously and openly commends that act and predicts that a republic filled with such ‘excessive virtue’ would perpetually ‘return its orders toward their beginning and into its ancient virtue’; such a republic may even become ‘perpetual’ (D 3.22.3; Liv. 8.7–8; cf. McCormick 2008: 394–396, 403–407 and Sullivan 1996: 85–95, 157–168, 169–711).

Torquatus’s commitment to the common good – Livy has him choose explicitly between respect for the consulate and love of his son – is, in Machiavelli, most glorious in its violent extremity. On the basis of this example, Machiavelli recommends that every decade or so the sound republic should sacrifice a few of its talented young men, the very individuals most likely to be another Valerius, or Scipio, or Caesar. If a republic is to survive for a long time, then there is ‘no remedy more powerful, nor more valid, more secure, and more necessary, than to kill the sons of Brutus’ (D 1.16.4; note D 3.3.1; P 7). It is even best, as the examples of Torquatus and Brutus themselves attest, that the father himself should do the killing. On the one hand, Machiavelli praises sons with little respect for traditional authority; on the other hand, he suggests that those same sons must suffer fearful necessities to prevent them from destroying or corrupting the city. Only the greatest founders have the prudence to know how to balance these conflicting needs.

Machiavelli’s alterations, his exaggerations and his minimisations, of the youthful virtue of Valerius and the radicalised virtus of Torquatus, suggest the larger changes he makes in explaining how Rome virtuously attained and effectively maintained power. Among his reasons for admiring well-ordered republics, Machiavelli mentions that the republic’s diverse human types allow it to adapt to changing circumstances:

Hence it arises that a republic has greater life and has good fortune longer than a principality, for it can accommodate itself better than one prince to the diversity of times through the diversity of citizens that are in it. For a man who is accustomed to proceed in one mode never changes, as was said; and it must be of necessity that when the times change not in conformity with his mode, he is ruined. (D 3.9.2)¹⁰

Adaptation to evolving times and powers leads us back to the question of the perpetual republic. Are growth and decline counterbalancing elements of an inevitable cycle? Or can Machiavellian virtù evade the seemingly inexorable links between the two? In Chapter 25 of The Prince, Machiavelli argues that because fortune varies, cities and individuals should ideally vary with her. Republics prove to be the regime type most successful at achieving this goal, precisely because of the diverse leadership that they make possible. The occasional Manlian execution stands opposed to, but is also the precondition of, continual Valerian striving. The caution of Fabius Maximus, although unpopular, enables Scipio’s brilliance to shine, until it is later cut off by Cato’s sternness.

Rome proved effective in overcoming fortune to the extent that it cultivated both types of leaders. In the first chapter of Discourses Book 2, in fact, Machiavelli blames Livy along with Plutarch for failing to understand correctly virtue and the limits of human possibility. The ancient historians erred because they did not attribute enough of Rome’s rise to her true virtue; how could they have done otherwise, when they did not know the nature of virtue itself? For Livy, the Romans’ reverence for their fathers and their obedience to the ancient customs were good in themselves and in the eyes of the gods, especially Fortune, who aids the virtuous.¹¹ Machiavellian virtù, on the other hand, is radically opposed to Fortune and to any resignation to inevitable decline or decay. Rome demonstrates that the virtuous, well-ordered, self-reliant republic is the best regime because Rome, more than any other city, shows how much virtue can do in the world if good orders and new princes renew it over time. Since Fortune is always changing, and since human beings become lazy and wicked by nature when they are not subject to necessity, the virtuous republic must have both orders that give opportunities to young elites, and rival elites who keep the youth in line through occasional, spectacular punishments (Mansfield 1979: 301–303; Fischer 2005).

If the healthy republic excels in part because it pits talented citizens against one another, however, then its greatness, as well as its vulnerability, becomes most apparent when it relies on an even rarer citizen type: the most excellent individual, the refounder (P 6; D 1.49, 3.30). The best republican prince combines the youthful boldness of Valerius and Scipio Africanus with the caution and severity of Manlius Torquatus and Fabius Maximus. Such a prince is ‘the same in every fortune’ and hence ‘fortune does not have power over him’ because he understands when he has to be one way and when he has to be the other, according to necessity (D 3.9.1). It is his understanding of ‘worldly things’ derived from continual practice in arms that shows him the ‘true path’ to the true ends of republican life; he works for the common good as Romulus ought to have done because he sees how much he can achieve his own ambition through the common good, properly understood; he, like Brutus, goes beyond all the old modes and orders while retaining the shadows of the ancient traditions, and then resets them in his own image so that his power and authority last far beyond his death; he is, in sum, Camillus, the ‘most prudent of all the Roman captains’ of the Republic, and the central character of both Livy’s first Decade and Machiavelli’s Third Book (D 3.12.3).

In Livy, Camillus is the exemplar of Roman virtue. He is stern in discipline, honest in dealing, devoted to the Republic, reverent toward the gods, brilliant in war, just in his treatment of both friends and enemies and (all in all) prudent, brave, patient, moderate, loyal and pious (Liv. 5.26–27, 5.37, 5.43, 5.49, 6.12, 6.28).¹² For these many reasons Camillus is deservedly loved by Fortune, who, Livy says, misled the Romans into banishing him, violating the ius gentium and making a whole host of other errors that nearly destroyed the city so that he might have the opportunity to show his brilliance. For Machiavelli, prudence was Camillus’s singular virtue: it allowed him to conquer Fortune and, after liberating his fatherland from the barbarians, to make ‘all Roman citizens yield to him without its appearing to them that reputation or rank were taken away’ (D 1.8.1).

In Camillus, above all, we see that it is not Valerian vigour or Manlian severity but flexible prudence – taken to an almost inhuman degree – that most closely approximates Machiavelli’s virtù. Camillus is the central figure in a critical chapter of the Discourses entitled ‘How One Must Vary with the Times if One Wishes Always to have Good Fortune’ (D 3.9). Camillus’s greatness came not from his moderation or his mercy or piety, but rather from his understanding of how to acquire the most power and glory for himself by using those qualities and others according to necessity. Camillus’s traditional virtue cloaks his virtù.

The prudent openness of Rome’s orders and the severity of her martial education allowed that well-ordered Republic to renew its citizens’ virtù continually, through an endless succession of virtuous princes in the moulds of Valerius, Manlius and Camillus. Even if Rome could not be literally perpetual, then it could have lasted even longer if it had found a Camillus rather than a Caesar when it badly needed to reorder itself (D 1.2, 1.10, 1.17–18, 1.20, 2.18–19, 3.16, 3.17). Machiavelli’s Romans still relied on Fortune, but far less than Livy’s; they rose not because Fortune loved them, as their historians believed, but because they were her greatest enemy.