Читать книгу Harvey Wallbangers and Tam O'Shanters - Martin Hannan - Страница 45

Let there be no mistake, ‘machiavellian’ is one eponym which entirely fits the person whose name it bears.

Apologists have often tried to make out that Niccolo di Bernardi dei Machiavelli (1469–1527) was not as bad as he is painted, but you only have to read The Prince to see what a thoroughgoing advocate of chicanery he really was.

His political philosophy advocated rule by a not-so-benign dictator whose dictum should always be ‘it is much safer to be feared than loved’. For Machiavelli, expediency was everything, and scruples were to be retained only as far as it assisted the maintenance of a ruler’s good image. Cruelty was to be a prince’s stock in trade, though pragmatism demanded that the ruler try to avoid losing the respect of his courtiers in particular. He once wrote that ‘force and prudence’ were the qualities of good government. Genuine compassion? True mercy? They were for weak fools.

Considering him to be a writer and philosopher of note, Machiavelli’s supporters say The Prince was a satire aimed at upsetting Florence’s ruler, Lorenzo di Piero de Medici, grandson of Lorenzo ‘Il Magnifico’ de Medici. If so, why was the book written in 1513 not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli’s death and thirteen years after Lorenzo died from syphilis?

In his other works, such as The Discourses and The Art of War – his own favourite book – Machiavelli gave enough hints that he really did advocate a cynical approach to governance. In The Prince, he brought his undoubted talents as a playwright, poet and civil servant – he had been secretary of the chancery of the Florentine Republic – to bear on the question posed since the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, namely what was the best form of government for a city State.

The key point to know is that, before he wrote the book, Machiavelli was tortured by the Medici for his support for the Republic against the family. Given his self-acknowledged cunning, it is thus far more likely that he wrote The Prince and dedicated it to Lorenzo to get back into the ruler’s good books, which appears to have happened as Machiavelli was allowed to retire to his estate and write his books, which included his eight-volume Florentine Histories – paid for by the patronage of the Medici family who took his advice on many matters.

To go from rebelliously opposing the Medici to being their employee and counsellor – that was truly machiavellian.

What is also undoubtedly true of Machiavelli is the impact his thought had, both while he lived and ever since. His books were widely read by kings and politicians, and he was reviled and praised by commentators in his own lifetime. By the end of the 16th century, his name had become a byword for trickery – Schmidt’s Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary notes three usages in the Bard’s plays, particularly the line ‘Am I a Machiavel?’ in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Since then, every dictator from the Emperor Napoleon to Benito Mussolini has admitted to being influenced by Machiavelli.

There is proof in stone of the esteem in which Machiavelli was held, at least in his native Florence, and of the fact that ‘machiavellian’ had become a famous term in its own right. If you visit the Franciscan Basilica of Santa Croce (Holy Cross) in Florence, you will see that it is the Florentine equivalent of Westminster Abbey in that its monuments honour great people of the city. Not far from the monuments dedicated to Galileo, Michelangelo and locally born Florence Nightingale is the splendid monument to ‘Nickolaus Machiavelli’, erected in the 18th century. The splendid male figure in marble is not the man himself, but the allegorical figure of Diplomacy, for which he was also remembered.

The monument bears the Latin inscription ‘Tanto Nomini Nullum Par Elogium’, which roughly translates as ‘no eulogy would be enough for such a name’.

The inscription recognises that the eponym ‘machiavellian’ had long ago passed into the language. You get the feeling that Machiavelli himself would have liked that.