particular good but the common good that makes cities great. And without
doubt this common good is not observed if not in republics’’ ( 1996 , 130 ). The
willingness to do what is necessary to advance the common good, and thereby
acquire glory for the city, is virtue (virtu), which for Machiavelli explains why monarchies cannot compete with republics. After freedom is replaced by princely rule, he argues, cities ‘‘go backward’’ because a prince ‘‘cannot honor any of the citizens he tyrannizes over who are able and good since he does not wish to have suspicion of them.’’ 9 This passage, as we have seen, is a straightforward paraphrase of Sallust’s famous observation in theBellum Catilinae. It is, on this account, in the nature of princely government to repress virtue and to inviteXattery and corruption.Liberta, on the other
hand, breedsvirtu`and leads tograndezza. As Machiavelli puts it in theIstorie
Fiorentine, ‘‘from order comes virtue, and from this comes glory and good
fortune’’ (Machiavelli 1963 , 773 ).
So far Machiavelli is simply ventriloquizing the standard Roman account
of republican government. But he dissents from this tradition in two vital
respects. First, Machiavelli completely rejects the value of concordia,or
‘‘internal harmony.’’ It was, as we have seen, a staple of the Roman narrative
to claim that civic peace and quiet were necessary prerequisites of empire and
glory: if the city was divided, it could not conquer. This conviction accounted
in large part for the hagiography of Venice that grew up in theWfteenth
century; Venice, after all, was calledla serenissma, the most tranquil of cities. 10
For Machiavelli, however, tranquility was no virtue. On his view, Rome had
indeed been a ‘‘perfect republic,’’ but its perfection had been the result of ‘‘the
disunion of the plebs and the senate,’’ not their concord. Machiavelli defends
this startling claim by articulating his theory of theumori(temperaments).
Those who deride the Romantumulti(the frequent battles between patricians
and plebs), he argues, ‘‘do not consider that in every republic are two diverse
humors, that of the people and that of the great, and that all laws in favor of
freedom arise from their disunion’’ (Machiavelli 1996 , 71 ). The great wish to
rule, while the people simply wish not to be ruled. These two temperaments
are inherently adversarial, and a republic can only survive if it allows them to
9 Here Machiavelli is clearly thinking of Florence.
10 Venice’s serenity was thought toXow from its ‘‘mixed’’ constitution. The historian Polybius, in
his analysis of the Roman constitution, had famously argued that a mixture of the three predominant
sorts of regime (rule by the one, the few, and the many) would save the state from the ravages of
continual revolution. Venice, with its doge,Consiglio di Pregati, andConsiglio Grande, appeared to
have realized this ideal. See Polybius ( 1923 , vol. 3 , 271 – 311 ).
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