Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power (Eminent Lives)
Ross King
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0061768928
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Part of the acclaimed Eminent Lives series, Machiavelli is a superb portrait of the brilliant and revolutionary political philosopher—history’s most famous theorist of “warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed”—and the age he embodied. Ross King, the New York Times bestselling author of Brunelleschi’s Dome, argues that the author of The Prince was a far more complex and sympathetic character than is often portrayed.
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incompetent when it came to dealing with Borgia. Vitellozzo Vitelli’s resolution was not improved by his syphilitic condition: he had been carried 54 MACHIAVELLI into the conference at La Magione on a stretcher, groaning in pain. No meaningful military action was taken after the compact was signed, and indeed a number of the condottieri even began making peaceful overtures. Machiavelli was puzzled by these approaches, wondering how their sins against Borgia could ever be forgiven. Borgia, for
Chancellor was set to expire... 26 Chapter Four THE REGION OF Italy known as the Romagna stretched some... 33 Chapter Five A YEAR ON from his conquest of the Romagna and... 43 Chapter Six THE REBEL condottieri of the Romagna possessed a sobering record... 54 Chapter Seven MACHIAVELLI HAD RETURNED to Florence in the middle of December 1503... 64 Chapter Eight THE FAILURE OF the Arno project was followed early in... 74 Chapter Nine SOON AFTER COMING to power in 1503, Pope Julius II...
the ottimati. (This epithet, from the Latin optimates, “best ones,” alluded to an aristocratic faction during the late Roman Republic.) Well-heeled and socially prominent ottimati like Salviati believed that the Great Council of the People had transferred power from their hands into those of an inferior class of citizens. In 1502 Salviati and his friends had supported Piero Soderini (who came from a rich and venerable family like their own) in hopes that as Gonfalonier for Life he would represent
invaded French territory in Lombardy. Julius was suddenly and miraculously spared. Florence’s relations with the papacy then deteriorated further when, in June, the pope compelled the Florentine ambassador in Rome to write a letter to the Signoria relating how His Holiness desired the resignation of Piero Soderini. Should Soderini refuse, the pope would remove him by force with the armies of the Holy League. This letter was followed by an ambassador from the pope, Lorenzo Pucci, who delivered a
sleep with his wife. The play is equally successful with its racy vernacular language. Machiavelli’s barnyard vocabulary supplies a stream of exclamations such as caccasangue (literally, “bloody shit”) and caccastecche (“shit-sticks”). The play is notable most of all for both its satire on the clergy and its portrayal of how ends can be achieved by the most unscrupulous of means. “We must always consider whether the 185 Ross King end justifies the means,” Friar Timoteo tells Lucrezia as he
