Discourses on Livy · Chapter
Chapter XVII: That a corrupt people obtaining freedom can hardly preserve it explained
Machiavelli argues that a corrupt people cannot maintain freedom, using Rome as the prime example: the early Romans, uncorrupted, easily preserved liberty after expelling the Tarquins, whereas later Romans, corrupted by the Marian faction,
What happens
Machiavelli argues that a corrupt people cannot maintain freedom, using Rome as the prime example: the early Romans, uncorrupted, easily preserved liberty after expelling the Tarquins, whereas later Romans, corrupted by the Marian faction, could not retain freedom even after the deaths of Caesar, Caligula, and Nero. He contrasts this with Syracuse under Dion and Timoleon, and notes that corrupt cities like Milan and Naples cannot recover freedom. Only a single virtuous ruler may temporarily restore order, but without a long succession of such rulers, the city relapses into corruption.
Themes in this chapter
Virtù and Fortune
The virtue of a single ruler like Dion, Timoleon, or Epaminondas can temporarily preserve freedom, but fortune and the brevity of life prevent lasting restoration.
Corruption and Freedom
Corruption in the people makes freedom impossible to maintain, as seen in later Rome, Milan, and Naples.
Leadership and Moral Character
The character of leaders like Brutus and Caesar determines whether freedom is preserved or lost; only virtuous rulers can temporarily check corruption.
Characters to notice
- Brutus
First Brutus: expelled the Tarquins and established freedom; later Brutus: could not rouse the corrupt people to maintain freedom.
- Caesar
Became head of the Marian faction and blinded the multitude, leading to the loss of freedom.
- Tarquin
The Tarquins were expelled while Rome was still uncorrupted, allowing freedom to be preserved.
- Marius
The Marian faction infected the people with corruption, paving the way for Caesar's tyranny.
Key passages
“I believe that if her kings had not been expelled, Rome must very soon have become a weak and inconsiderable state.”
If the Roman kings had not been driven out, Rome would have quickly become weak and insignificant.
Machiavelli argues that early expulsion of corrupt kings saved Rome from decline.
“For seeing to what a pitch of corruption these kings had come, we may conjecture that if two or three more like reigns had followed, and the taint spread from the head to the members, so soon as the latter became infected, cure would have been hopeless.”
Given how corrupt the kings were, a few more such reigns would have infected the entire population, making recovery impossible.
Corruption spreads from rulers to the people, and once the people are corrupted, reform is hopeless.
“But from the head being removed while the trunk was still sound, it was not difficult for the Romans to return to a free and constitutional government.”
Because the kings were expelled while the people were still uncorrupted, the Romans easily restored a free government.
Timely removal of corrupt leadership preserves the health of the state.
“For in such a city it must necessarily happen that one prince will be replaced by another, and that things will never settle down until a new lord be established; unless, indeed, the combined goodness and valour of some one citizen should maintain freedom, which, even then, will endure only for his lifetime.”
In a corrupt city, one ruler will simply replace another, and stability only comes with a new master, unless a single virtuous citizen temporarily preserves freedom, but only for his lifetime.
Corruption leads to perpetual tyranny; only exceptional individual virtue can briefly restore freedom.
“For on the first occasion, nothing more was needed to prepare and determine them to shake off their kings, than that they should be bound by oath to suffer no king ever again to reign in Rome; whereas, afterwards, the authority and austere virtue of Brutus, backed by all the legions of the East, could not rouse them to maintain their hold of that freedom, which he, following in the footsteps of the first Brutus, had won for them; and this because of the corruption wherewith the people had been infected by the Marian faction, whereof Caesar becoming head, was able so to blind the multitude that it saw not the yoke under which it was about to lay its neck.”
Early Romans needed only an oath to reject kings forever, but later, even Brutus's virtue and Eastern legions could not make the corrupt people keep the freedom he won, because Caesar, leading the Marian faction, blinded them to their impending tyranny.
Corruption makes the people blind to their own enslavement, rendering even the most virtuous leadership ineffective.
“And so we find that Milan, although desirous to return to a free form of government, on the death of Filippo Visconti, had neither the force nor the skill needed to preserve it.”
Milan wanted freedom after Filippo Visconti's death but lacked the strength and ability to maintain it.
Corrupt cities like Milan cannot sustain freedom even when they desire it.
