How Machiavellian was Machiavelli? Public lecture by Quentin Skinner

well thank you Matthew for these very generous words and thank you all very much for your presence it's a great Delight to be back here in York um this is a lecture about Nicola makavelli and his best known work of political Theory the Prince prin but I want first to say a word about melli himself a Florentine born 1469 he first of all devoted himself to a life of public service and it's an important fact about his biography that he wouldn't have expected uh in his earlier years to have been the author of any work

of politics he devoted himself as I say to the service of the Republic and he was indeed second Chancellor of the Florentine Republic from 1498 until the sudden collapse of the Republic and the return of the medich princes to power uh in 1512 1512 was a great year of Crisis for mavelli he was not only summarily removed from his position in the second chanary but he became an object of Suspicion to the medians alleged to have taken part in a plot against the return of the medi princes to power and he was imprisoned and tortured

he is released from prison in a general amnesty at the beginning of 1513 but he is ordered to absent himself from the city he is in compulsory Exile from the city living in his farm south of the city overlooking it but he's not permitted to re-enter that space and that is the end of his public career tremendous division in his life 1512 because from that time onwards he has no public role no political office and becomes the man of letters the philosopher of politics whom by who is known to posterity now settling down early in

1513 in the countryside in in forced Leisure which he hated he writes a famous letter to his friend um vori uh Francesco vori in December of 1513 in which he says well how have I been occupying this enforced Leisure he says well I have just finished writing a little book which is De pratus concerning principalities and he is referring clearly to the completion of his treaties the prince now if melli began writing that little book as he implies as soon as he was let out of jail then he began to write it exactly 500 years

ago to the month so it's this date it's a great anniversary for ma Scholars the the writing of the prince the beginning of the writing of the prince exactly 500 years ago in February or March uh of 153 so it's that date as well as the book that I want in way to celebrate as well as to talk about this evening so now let me turn from melli to his text to the Principe as I'm sure you know there's a pivot chapter in this book it's a book of what 26 chapters the last being this

formal rhetorical extio to the medich to restore Italian Unity but the previous 25 chapters being this analysis of how to gain and hold power the pivotal chapter I think is chapter 15 in which mavelli declares that his aim in writing the book is to offer practical advice about statecraft and his basic aim he says at the end of the book is this is chapter 24 to offer advice to new princes he's not interested in established princes if you've inherited your principality and you can't hold on to it then you're too incompetent to be worth thinking

about he's only interested in new princes who have the greatest difficulty and the aspiration as he nicely puts it is to make new princes look like well established ones that's the Practical aim of the advice now he discusses rulers of an Antiquity and rulers of the present time both as sources of Exemplar of course the the idea of operating with examples as much as with arguments very typical feature of Renaissance rhetorical culture so as you would expect no doubt uh all the princes all the political leaders whom he discusses in Antiquity and in his own

time are men um and that means that the vocabulary of the prince is quite a heavily gendered vocabulary and not to be an acronis I'm going to um have to follow it but let's notice at the outset that not all the rulers whom M discusses were in fact men one whom he mentions with great admiration both in the Principe and later in the discy is a woman Karina sorza and as we shall see everything that he has to say about the requisite qualities for political leadership would apply to women rulers as much as to male

rulers now there is one indispensable quality or rather set of qualities that any political leader man or woman any political leader must possess according to melli if they are to succeed in their leadership and this is the quality which in the Italian is called virtu now this word Lau it's the same in the plural Leu Echoes throughout the book it occurs once in Latin as perhaps you know of course the book is in Italian but the chapter headings of this book are in Latin and chapter six has the Latin form vus um that's the only

occurrence of it in Latin in the whole text but for those who like Precision the word v two either in the singular or the plural occurs 60 times in this extremely short book so that's an average of getting on for once per page it's absolutely pivotal to the argument of most of the chapters this notion of Prince Le Vu and so correspondingly it seems to me the pivotal task of The Interpreter of this book is to understand what he meant when he used that crucial term now melli never supplies a formal definition that's not his

way he's not Hobs as it were um and it's true to say that he uses the term vertu in a quite wide variety of context so wide that it's become quite standard to say in the critical literature I quote for example Whitfield that he uses the word without any consistency at all now the first point I want to make is that I really don't agree with that it seems to me that this term pivotal to the argument is used with complete consistency it is applied throughout this brief book as the name of a set of

qualities which melli wants to say several things about I think I'm going to turn out to to make four closely connected points here about how this terminology is in fact used first La V is said to be the name of the quality or rather it's always a set of qualities by means of which it is possible for a political leader at least in part to control and hence to offset the power of fortuna as he calls it the power of luck good luck or ill luck in political Affairs I should say and this I'm sure

you know M believes that you could never get rid of the element of luck in political leadership so as he frequently implies show me a successful political leader and I will show you someone who has been extremely lucky I mean what if John Smith had not had a heart attack we would never have heard of Tony Blair wow I mean these people are fortunate they're they're successful only because they're fortunate but of course although therefore cannot be a science of politics I mean that would be a grotesque mistake according to maell there couldn't be science

of politics because that would forget the role of luck in politics which is ex hypothesi incalculable but of great importance nevertheless he says it's a great mistake of some ancient thinkers and he cites plutar to suppose that in politics everything is luck for melli much of it is judgment and the relationship between lack and judgment is really one of the major themes of the book now the quality that you have to possess if you're going to be able in any way to control the role of luck is virtu and so one of the oppositions in

the book is always between La Vu and La Fortuna Fortuna Vu that comes out most explicitly in chapter 24 this concluding chapter on how the political leaders of Italy have in his own time so commonly lost their states lost their principalities and melli says they blame Fortuna they say this has been due to tremendous ill luck but he says and I quote all these quotations in my own translations by the way me my translations are very literal um where one's defenses are based upon one's own VT the capacity of ill Fortune to take away one's

power is limited so although they they blame what they regard as their ill luck they ought not to do so why not because in fact they're lacking in vtu if they had this quality it would have enabled them to offset to control to some degree ill Fortune now there's the first claim the second is a very closely associated claim which is that love two is also the name of the set of qualities which enable you this is a kind of very useful I think uh um American idiom which captures very well what maell is saying

you can get lucky it's possible to get lucky you shouldn't think of of fortuna as the same as Providence it's not inexurable it it's possible in certain ways to Ally with and to control Fortune um and if you ask well by what means is it possible the answer is again lau and this is the point that's brought out in chapter six which is in apposition to chapter 7 where the first first discusses how you can seize and hold Power by this quality of vus and the second discusses how you can do the same by means

of Fortune so now these two qualities are being put in apposition in the organization of the first part of the book now in chapter six Mell introduces another notion here which is connected with Fortune he says sometimes I'm quoting you may have the Good Fortune to encounter the right occasion the Italian word is occasion the the right we would have to say moment of opportunity uh to act and he says if you're not blessed with having the right opportunity to act if you don't have that kind of Fortune and that is a piece of good

luck having oion having the right moment to act then you're never going to succeed as a political leader at all so to that degree Fortune is inexorable and present but what it is to be a leader of your two is to seize opportunities that's the quality that enables you to seize opportunities so in chapter six he follows this thought out with the discussion of the leaders the three leaders whom he regards as having had the greatest virtue in the history of political leadership Moses Cyrus Romulus well Moses he says he cheats because God told him

what to do so that really doesn't count um his favorite is Romulus but of all of them he says and I quote if their lives and actions are examined it will be seen that they received from Fortuna nothing but occasion nothing but the right circumstances in which to act he agrees without having had that particular occasion um their VT would have been expended to no effect but because they had such great vtu no opportunity was wasted and that was what made them successful political leaders they grasped the opportunity and the quality that enabled them to

do so was V two now that brings me to the third of these four points I'm trying to make about this concept um which is also brought out in chapter six because he says political leaders with these qualities of V to are always able to seize opportunities they are in turn able and now comes a formula which Echoes all through the book they are able the Italian says man they're able to maintain their state so Vu is the name of the quality that enables you to maintain your state maintain your state mon what does that

mean Lo in m is I think quite deeply ambiguous of course in modern Italian L just means the state um and that notion Is Not absent in melli I've come to think but fundamentally what he means by being able moner lato is to maintain your state I.E as a as a ruler as a political leader that's to say to maintain your standing your status as a political leader um what you want to avoid is what the french at this time were already calling a kudeta that's to say any strike against the at meaning your at

your state your condition or um standing as a ruler but if you're going to maintain your position then obviously what you've in fact got to maintain is the jurisdictions and territories that have been given into your charge and that of course brings out the other notion of lato that sounds very like the state and it's true that if you're going to maintain your state IL you have to make maintain the state no the institutions the jurisdictions of the state and indeed the very first sentence of the whole book uses this notion of State in a

Remar for the age a remarkably abstract way because he says all the states that there have been to all the states there have been have either been principalities or republics so notice the notion of a state is something that could be either a principality or a republic so it's a rather abstract notion of some set of Institutions which could take different constitutional forms so what Ma very wants to say is all right that's your task you've got to be able to maintain your state of udet and the quality that enables you to do that is

this quality to so he ends chapter six by talking about a not celebrated Prince but I think actually the real hero of the book and is called hero so melli would have noticed that um chapter six Ends by discussing hero of Crause and I quote from being an ordinary private citizen he became the sole ruler of Syracuse it is true that he enjoyed a fine opportunity okaz but apart from that his success owed nothing to Fortuna but everything to the fact that he was a man of outstanding virtue and as a result although he found

it difficult to acquire power he had no trouble in managing monary why because he was of outstanding here to Now melli notes in chapter 19 that this point which is really the core of the book how you maintain your state could be put another way around what if you got to be absolutely sure you don't do if you're going to avoid audet if you're going to maintain your state and he says for two things you must avoid like a sh he says I mean the idea here of course being the you're steering the ship of

State don't steer it into the shs now how what are these shs there are two things that must be avoided at all costs one is being hated and the other is being despised and he illustrates the point in chapter 19 with a A Brief History uh of the late Emperors of Rome antoninus was hated so he quite soon lost his state perx and Alexander were despised so they quite soon they lost their state Commodus was hated and despised so he maintained his state for a very short time by contrast neither Marcus aelius nor septimius seus

mat's two favorite political leaders of antiquity were ever hated or despised although of course seus as his name implies was very greatly feared he was feared but not hated and that is of course part of the trick and as a result both of them managed without any difficulty man latoo to maintain their state and if you ask why this is so he says they both possessed extra extraordinar VT extraordinary vtu now it's true that melli throughout this book is at least as much concerned with how you can get power as with how you can manage

to maintain it monato but and of course chapters 1 to 11 are largely about getting power as well as holding on to it but notice that you can get power in all sorts of ways you can get power because you may inherit it I mean it may be a hereditary principality you can get power because it may be that you're elected into this particular kind of principality for example the papacy it's just happened hasn't it um that's an elected principality so that's another way you can come to power you can also come to power by

mere Good Fortune the only only way that you can maintain power however there just one way is by V let me turn to the fourth and final point that I think mackell wants to to understand about this notion of Vu but to appreciate this final point you have to see that we are in the high Renaissance here we're at the beginning of the 16th century and we are in a scale of political values very foreign to us in a Democratic Society and melli wants to say this goal which is the fundamental goal of princes being

able man Lo is not the main goal of the prince it's the fundamental one if you can't manage to hold on to the apparatus of power then then you're over there's nothing to say to you but it isn't the goal you should be setting yourself the goal you should be setting yourself and here we have the high Renaissance speaking is Glory like GL what you have to do as a prince is to do great things Grand you've got to do great things of such a kind as will bring you glory and so much Glory now

that poly you attain fame fame is pous which is why you must always be polite to historians because they are in charge of your Fame but they're not in charge of your glory that is what you can aspire to and so it's the figure of the virtuoso who gains Glory this the figure of Glory that melli wants you to focus on because virtuoso now would just mean someone extremely good at playing the violin in public or the piano or something like that that would be a virtu virtuoso but you see the connection because when you

watch these people in action they are amazing aren't they and you know they they they're glorious figures they bring the house now this discussion of Glory uh is also very much Ma's theme in chapter 19 um when he discusses Seas uh and Marcus aelius because he says both were able not merely to remain in power but to attain so much Glory that they died venerated by all okay there it is as far as I can see that's to understand this pivotal notion in the book that if you wish to attain Glory if you wish to

maintain your state if you wish to overcome and control Fortuna the answer in every case is the same you need this quality of your truth so there it is well you might say well that's extremely unhelpful because what is this quality or this set of qualities we we want a list don't we I mean so far I've just given you the charistics of it but you want to know yeah but what what is this thing vir what does it right now mavelli is writing his book in a culture and at a time when there was

a considerable literature devoted to exactly that question and I I want to talk for a moment about this literature and mach's relationship to it when I say a literature of advice book to princes I'm thinking of a number of Italian texts Latin texts of the last part of the 15th century Giovanni pontano writes a book called day prip B saki writes a book called de prip um um Franchesco patri writes a book called de reg concerning the king so notice that Mell IL Prin okay that's gone into the Italian from the Latin and that's a

very important moment in uh in Italian literature the move from Latin to Italian for a learned Treatise like this one is the move made by melli but all these writers de prip are writing about the quality that they call vus now they completely agree with what is said in the Next Generation by m that vus is the name of the quality that in that brings you glory as pontano says and I'm translating vus alone is the source of Glory but these writers also want you to have a list they want you to have a list

of what the qualities are that go to make up the vitus of The Prince and the the account is very clear and they all agree there's one fundamental quality that you have to have and it is the political virtue and it is Justice I quote saki a society will remain firm only if it is governed with Justice if Justice is neglected it will die Justice is the foundation of a Prince's Perpetual Acclaim and glory to which pontano adds quoting Cicero I quote again the essential element Injustice consists in feed days that's to say faith keeping

faith meaning keeping your promises never breaking your word nothing I'm quoting again is more Despicable than failing to keep your word the watch word and here he is quoting Cicero again must be fed days sit savander good faith must always be served must always be kept that is actually a maxim of the Roman law that they're citing but also it's to be found in Cicero the foundation of justice is FES keeping your word fides sit sander that must above all be upheld so there's one classical thought essentially ciceronian thought but their classicism is broader than

that and as Peter Stacy in a major recent book on um the classical origins of Renaissance theory of principalities brings out we should cite here not just Cicero but Sena senica the tutor to Nero bad luck that was um uh wrote two treatises of advice for princes one of which is called the de benis in which he is talking essentially about the giving and receiving of benefits and thus about the virtue of liberality in princes generosity liberality and so there is one of the two of what he calls the princely virtues the other princely virtue

is the subject of his incomplete Treatise which he addressed to Nero with which is called de clementia concerning clemency now what liberality and clemency have in common which makes them specifically princely virtues notice is that they go beyond Justice um being generous or being liberal is more than being just being Clement is more than being just and of course princes have a prerogative of clemency they can cancel the law and insert Mercy instead so these are the special features of princely morality so you could summarize by saying the standard classical humanist view current in maell

society is that there are three princely virtues and that they are Justice and generosity and clemency now if we turn back to what I called the pivot of the book chapter 15 what we see is that maell is engaging with exactly this tradition of thought and he says and I'm quoting chapter 15 I am well aware that many people have written about this subject of Prince Leia 2 already clear reference to exactly the literature I've just cited and he goes on I fear he doesn't of course mean that at all I fear that I may

be thought presumptuous for what I have to say departs from the precepts offered by these other writers on this subject and then the Italian says massim it departs massively from what these idiots these people have been saying and then he proceeds it's this famous sequence of chapters from chapter 15 the next chapter chapter 16 is called day liberality arti concerning liberality the next chapter after that is called day crudel at Pio concerning cruelty and clemency and then chapter 18 is on feed days the keeping of your word the foundation of justice so having introduced the

idea that he's going to depart massively from what is normally said he alerts you to the literature that he's talking about by singling out these three particular qualities so the question is what is this massive Department arure because that's to get inside the structure of the book I would submit and to understand the title of this lecture how mum was mat Elli we need to focus on these chapters well I think myself that these chapters could be said to have a kind of um essential answer to that question which is that all the elements of

princely virtue as commonly understood In classical and Renaissance humanism are treated by melli purely instrumentally by which I mean that the the fundamental argument I think is that here are these qualities and that you should follow them in so far as they're helpful to your basic task which you remember is man lato and you should not follow them if they get in the way of that task so for melli the key question in political morality is always framed consequentially so he's not really interested in the idea of a virtue that's to say a quality that

absolutely forbids you to do certain things for him there is no such quality because the consequentialism is such that in respect of Any Given action you must always ask will this action which is liberal or which is Clement or which is just help me to maintain my state if it will do it if it won't don't and so the princely judgment and this is what V two is is judging when that is right now that's then applied to each of these virtues and first as I've said to the virtue of liberality the topic of chapter

16 I quote and this is how the chapter begins it is very good to be held to be liberal but remember your basic task man Lo and then for M the problem is I quote again practicing liberality can lead to your being hated by Those whom you will have to tax heavily in order to sustain your reputation as a man of liberality but don't forget what happens if you're hated you'll soon lose your state there's no exceptions to that so maki's advice here in chapter 16 is I quote a prudent Prince Will therefore not mind

being called miserly such misin is a vice but it is one of those viices that enable a prince to rule what about the second princely virtue clemency he starts again by affirming and even more strongly than in speaking of liberality I quote every prince ought to want to be considered to be merciful and not cruel but remember your basic task man loar and he adds once you see that you will recognize clemency can be badly used M us can be badly used he gives the example of chesar Bor I quote who was harsh and cruel

but his harshness and cruelty reformed his principality it was Drew to his cruel measures that he succeeded in unifying the Romania uniting it bringing it loyalty bringing it peace only by cruelty did he manage mle what finally about um chapter 18 on the fundamental virtue of the prince fiday Justice now here I think he wants to make the same point um even more forcibly which is of course keeping your word is a great uh a great virtue but as he says always keeping your word you will find an evasive simple form in the Italian he

says it's it's uh it'll Tor cont it it'll turn against you if you always keep your promises so the question is always will the keeping of This Promise endanger or help to maintain the state if it will endanger it don't keep it if it will help then keep it and this advice that you should take a completely instrumental view of the virtue of Justice he says is conf confirmed by experience I quote the chapter experience shows that in our times in AI those princes who have done great things Gran Kos are those who have held

the keeping of their word to be of no significance and the great example he says is the pope he he would have no idea what it was like to keep his promise but has been very successful I hope the conclave will keep that in mind so the basic Doctrine is very economically summarized in the title of chapter 18 now the title of chapter 18 it's impossible to recapture how shocking this title would have been at the time remember fed sit savander that's the watch word for the prince the watch word for the prince the title

of chapter 18 of Prince of Mac's Prince is crom Modo how far fed sit sander how far should you keep your promises so so what's an order F sander good faith must always be kept is turned into a question quodo how often how far that's for M the question and that would have seemed as it did uh almost an unbelievable moment of um political wickedness now the second thing that melli wants to say about feed days is well you know people really care about about feed days and how was it that Pope Alexander V 6

never kept his promises but was so successful well he says because he was brilliant at dissembling and that's what you must become as a prince and hence the famous image of the fox people will Gravely object if they con see that you're someone who doesn't care about promisee keeping so it you must minimize the extent to which they can see that otherwise you're a fool and of course the figure of the fool who thinks that it's in line with region not to keep your promises who occurs in in Hobs laran is clearly the figure of

um so don't be a fool he's saying You must dissemble as much as you possibly can and that leads to the summary of M's argument and I'll read it it must be understood that a ruler and especially a new ruler cannot always act in ways that are considered good or held to be good tenuto buo because in order man he is often forced to act contrary to good faith contrary to humanity contrary to clemency contrary to liberality he should not depart from the good when that is possible but he must know how to enter into

evil ways when that is necessary necessi now the Revolutionary claim is that's the virtuoso Prince that's all part of the virtu of the prince and so you end with the thought not that I'm going to end with this thought because I've come to think this is a crude analysis of MCU but fundamentally the thought is that the prince must be someone willing to do evil that good shall come of it that is as it were the basic message of the book now I I think that that sort of is the basic message of the book

um or rather I think that that is definitely what he wants to say about the virtue of justice but if we turn to the other two crucial princely virtues liberality and clemency I come to be much less clear that that is actually what he wants to say so hence the title of this talk how mellan was melli in respect of Justice the traditional picture of melli namely he is the person who tells you to do evil that good may come of it if you think that that's the right judgment that I think that goes through

that is the argument about justice but I don't think that is the argument about either clemency or liberality I think it's a far more rhetorical argument and I think it has very deep classical roots and it gives us a somewhat different melli and I would like to end with it what I think maty basically wants to say about the other two princely virtues is that if the following of what are held to be examples of liberality and clemency have the effect of ruining you of your losing you your state then how can they be the

name of the virtues because notice he said that the quality of virtu is the quality causally brings about success in maintaining your statement you've just said well it doesn't but notice what's underlying this is a phrase that we would still use these are the qualities by virtue of which you're able to maintain your state so there's a question mark against the idea that it makes any sense to say that was an act of great ality but unfortunately um it didn't help you to maintain your state do we really understand these virtues is what m is

I think saying so there's something deeply rhetorical going on here and what exactly is it well the ultimate classical thought for what I've come to think is going on in this part of Mell text is one of the great moralists of antiquity according to the Renaissance FUSD we think of thees as an historian and of course he writes the history of the pelian war but he was thought of as one of the great realist moralists of antiquity and there is a crucial passage which resonates through the Renaissance from uh fuses his history which is the

discussion in book three of when civil war broke out in one of the city states that's to say corsar now I'm not saying that melli knew this text although it's very striking one of the great philological achievements of the high Renaissance was the first ever Latin translation of fuses directed from the Greek into Latin made by Lorenzo Vala in uh 1452 but printed as early as 1483 and widely available in print in Italy in the generation just before m is writing he may not have read the book but this particular discussion was very widely known

so what does FUSD say in this famous passage in talking about it I'll I'll use valor's translation which I shall inter translate just to avoid any anachronisms what FUSD says is that when Civil War breaks out the very first casualty is moral language because people will try to seize moral language for their partisan purposes and I now quote The Valor translation as soon as War breaks out people will will begin to excuse merely Reckless Behavior by redescribing it as courage taritas will be called fortitudo and they will begin to excuse slackness and slowness to act

by calling them instances of honorable cautiousness and they will begin to redescribe and even to excuse mere ill temper and rage by calling them instances of true manliness now M um fuity says the opposite can also happen I quote once more as soon as conflict broke out in corsar not only were evil acts excused as instances of virtue but good actions were denigrated so modesty came to be redescribed and condemned as nothing more than cowardice and careful and prudent deliberation came to be dismissed as mere lack of decisiveness now F's writing as a moralist he

is saying that's what happens under Civil War moral language corrupts it seed by factions but in later generations that very powerful moral passage is picked upon by the retortion we don't know how early but the earliest retortion who picks this up is the greatest in the history of rhetoric namely Aristotle in book one of his art of rhetoric now again I'm not saying melli knew this text but I I should add that it was translated in Florence in the 1470s by George of trebizon into Latin Mell is bilingual in Latin the text is very freely

available in Florence at the time so he may well have known it too so what happens when Aristotle picks up FUSD he gives all the same examples is that instead of saying look this is a terrible thing that happens morally in circumstances Civil War he says no here's a good rhetorical trick you can try you can try read describing recklessness as courage so instead of this being presented in moralistic terms it's presented in rhetorical terms he's saying you know this is something you you know you could try at home now he gives examples um of

how the virtues could be denigrated he gives lucid's examples but he's much more interested as a retortion is bound to be in how you can manipulate moral language in order to excuse Vic he not only gives fd's example which is I'm quoting Georgia Trevon now mere ferocity being redescribed and indeed commended as Courage the ferox is called Fortis but then Aristotle adds lots of examples so far as we know they're his own of course they may have come from some earlier um rition but in the history of rhetoric we know these as Aristotle's examples of

how you can excuse the vices he says H you could try redescribing in a completely simple-minded person as very good natured you could try redescribing a completely cold and emotionless person as particularly calm and gentle you could try redescribing someone who is almost always Furious as remarkably Frank you could try describing someone who is appallingly arrogant as remarkably dignified you could try describing someone who is invariably extravagant as extremely generous these are all Aristotle's examples and they flow into the rhetorical tradition they're picked up by the greatest of the Roman rition quintilian who gives it

a name parad Stony excusing vices by redescribing them by the names of the neighboring virtues and the examples that quintilian gives are simply translations of Aristotle's examples and that understanding of what Paradise is namely excusing um vices the act of excusing vices by redescribing them as virtues then goes into the later rhetorical tradition the medieval tradition in particular because Isidor picks this up in his encyclopedia quoting quintilian word for word and then in the Renaissance the new the Revival of of rhetoric in the Renaissance people like Manelli for example de figuris they simply repeat quintilian

all over again so there's one strand that comes down in the history of rhetoric of that kind however however however there is another strand and that goes back to the original fusan position but if you think about it you can adapt that to rhetoric as well the claim is that the rhetorical trick is not redescribing the vices as virtues but pointing out that that's what people are doing of course that's what fides is doing he's pointing out that in circumstances of Civil War vices get redescribed as virtu so there's a rhetorical tradition which says look

that's what parad St is it's not the act of redescription it's pointing out that this act of redescription is going on that we're living in stupendously corrupt times that the virtues and the vices have all got muddled up and uh in in the Roman tradition uh there are a number of texts in which that rival understanding of how to think about parad story is picked up Rus lupus but above all the most important text from Roman Antiquity and in the Renaissance picks it up and that is the anonymous rhetorica ad herum now this is a

quite unpretending text but it was the way that you learned rhetoric at school Ander University in the Italian Rance and indeed in the English Renaissance uh you learned it first of all at school um in the sixth form as it was still it was already called the sixth form in any grammar school it was also called the rhetoric scho class the sixth form was the rhetoric class why because you studed refere what did you study the adenium you have to think of a culture that knew this text by heart and melli certainly leared his rhetoric

from it and Virginia Cox in a classic article showed how the structuring of the whole discussion of the the U in m is taken directly from the adum so he knows this text and this is the text which says the the rhetorical trick is not redescribing the virtues of the vice of the virtues it's pointing out that that's going on and that's the forensic thing to do and that shows you that your opponent is a corrupted person now what I want to end by noting is that this is what is going on in these famous

chapters of melles chapter 16 and chapter 17 so let me turn back to them and just finish at this point chapter 16 day liberal it's desirable melli begins I quoted him already saying this to be held to be generous however he goes on I quote if you practice generosity in the way that will enable you to sustain among men of the present time the name of being a generous man what you will in fact find it is necessary to do is to emit no element of extravagance the Italian says and to such an extent that

you will in the end consume the entirety of your resources so ma is saying what passes in our society of the present time in nor EMP as he says as the virtue of liberality is in fact the vice of extravagance which is being excused that's what machell is pointing out people go around talking about princesses liberal but actually they're describing extravagance what about the next chapter when we come to the virtue of clemency well again melli says actually what I have to point out is that when people get praised for clemency in inos in our

times what is being praised is actually not a virtue but a vice and he gives two examples I quote the florentines in order to avoid being called cruel refused to intervene to stop an uprising in pistoia with the result that the whole town was destroyed but while the florentines congratulated themselves on their clemency they gave a wrong description of their behavior this was not clemency this was being tropo ptoo this was overindulgence they could have killed the ring leaders and saved the town instead of which they left the ring leaders and the entire town was

killed how is that clemency these are corrupt people that's not clemency that is just overindulgence the second example is again it's very hard to recapture this this would have been unbelievably shocking in Mai's time the second example is skipio one of the most revered Heroes of the Roman Republic and revered above all for his clemency maell says he wasn't Clement at all he's living in a society in which what he did was corruptly called clemency but it wasn't actually clemency two examples are given one is he forgave a mutiny the there was promptly another Mutiny

so a large number of people were killed who didn't have to be killed so how is that Clement he says that's not Clement that's trop P that's again that's just overindulgence he should have known what military discipline required and then there wouldn't have been a second Mutiny second example he gives um one of Skip's legats allowed a city in Calabria to be destroyed skipio to avoid a reputation for cruelty refused to punish anyone involved in um destroying the city how is that clemency says that's not Clement and what he says is that is an example

of un that's just someone who is completely LAX they don't care and that is the celebrated skipio he's not Clement he's he's lack he's overindulgent people don't understand the true virtue so we live in a corrupted society in which people think that what is in fact extravagance is liberality now he says consider Louis the 12 everyone says well what a terrible man he was extremely parsimonious Mell says and I quote yes as a result of that parsimony he was able to fight all wars without ever raising taxes I call that generous because it led to

no capacious demands upon the people and that enabled him to maintain his State now the Paradox is resolved this is true virtue because it does help you Mano but you have to understand what the true virtue of liberality is second example chesar bja he was called cruel but his methods brought peace stability good fortune and prosperity to the Romania it enabled him that's to say to maintain in his state so melli wants to say his behavior which was cruel to at the outset had all these further consequences which meant that it was far more merciful

Behavior than the behavior of the florentines who to avoid a reputation for cruelty allowed destruction instead now here I draw to a close but what I've been trying to say in these closing minutes is that Ma's view about the virtues the political virtues is I think more complicated than has often been allowed certainly he treats them all instrumentally the question is always will acting in a way that is held to be virtuous help you to maintain your state now in the case of Justice he says well sometimes it will and sometimes it won't and and

in fact not really sometimes but the Italian says often SPO you will have to avoid the um the virtue of justice but when he turns to the other two princ virtues it seems to me that the argument is rather different he says of course you must only follow those virtues if you think that they will conduce to the maintenance of your state but he thinks that true liberality always will and that true clemency always will it's just that we live in a corrupt Society in what is in which what is called clemency is in fact

just being overindulgent and fasile and LAX and what is called Liber it is just suos and display and extravagance these are not virtues that will maintain your state because they're not virtues at all the truly understood virtues if you get around this redescription that everyone is going in for will always help you to maintain your state so how mellian was melli entirely I think in the traditional picture in relation to the virtue of justice but much more complicatedly in relation to the other two virtues he's still an instrumentalist he's still a complete consequentialist he thinks

that you should follow them if and only if they will maintain your state but he thinks rightly understood they always will thank you very much