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Machiavellis Agathocles 133
manner of tyrants that Machiavelli unhesitatingly despises:
those who separate the soldiers from the people (P 19), those
who resort to extensive proscriptions (D I.52) and those who
maintain satellites (i.e. personal bodyguards) (D I.40 twice).
The emperors retain the name Caesar, but they effectively
act the part of Octavian not Julius.
Like so many of the Greek tyrants discussed and often
praised by Machiavelli, Caesar does not behave very
tyrannically at all, certainly as far as his citizen soldiers are
concerned. However, his failure to commit the one act that
cause writers to call Agathocles, Nabis, Cleomenes and
Clearchus tyrantseliminating their cities nobilities is
the chief cause of his failure as a princely reformer. Thus, the
distinction between Scipio and Caesar traditionally set forth
by the humanists proves to be no distinction at all, for
Machiavellis ultimate purposes. Each, in the end, allowed
Conclusion
Machiavelli is the most (in)famous expositor of political
prescriptions in the history of political thought. The Prince is,
after all, the most frequently cited howto book on politics
ever written. This is, at best, a partial characterization of the
means by which Machiavelli imparts political advice. In order
to apprehend the full meaning of Machiavellis political
thought, I have shown that an alert reader must pay attention
not only to his explicit statements of judgment and
injunctions to action, but also, just as closely, to the complex
web of analogies that he constructs through a peculiar
manner of story telling; a narrative approach that highlights
slightly different choices made and actions taken by various
political actors and their concomitant outcomes in myriad
historical circumstances.
Machiavelli, arguably at his most pedagogical, espouses
examples, and proceeds from particular case to case without
himself always subsuming those particular examples under a
general rule or category. Rather, the Florentine invites
readers themselves to engage in judicious
comparisons/contrasts and reach moral political conclusions
concerning the relationship of these particular examples to
each other without consistent recourse to definitive
statements on his part (or at least without recourse to
political precepts appearing in the immediate textual
vicinity). In this sense, Machiavelli is an instructor who guides
without always prescribing. This serves as a sketch of
Endnotes
Authors note: I thank Michle Lowrie and Yuna Blajer
de la Garza for their comments and criticisms on
earlier drafts. This essay is part of a book project
titled The Peoples Princes: Machiavelli, Leadership
and Liberty .
1 Niccol Machiavelli, Il Principe ( De Principatibus ),
composed circa 1513 and published in 1532, ed. G.
Inglese (Turin 1995), abbreviated as P, cited with
chapter numbers within the text. I will also cite
Machiavelli, Discorsi [1513 19], C. Vivanti, ed. (Turin
1997); hereafter D within the text.
2 The most prominent negative accounts of
Agathocless career include: Diodorus, The Library of
History: Diodorus of Sicily ; and Polyaenus,
Stratagems of War , trans. R. Shepherd (Chicago 1974)
194 195. More amenable evaluations are offered by
Justin, Epitome of the Phillipic History of Pompeius
Trogus , ed. R. Develin, trans. J. C. Yardley (Oxford
1994), Book XXII, and Book XXIII, chaps. 1 2, pp. 172
182; and Polybius, who reproves the unavailable
history of Timaeus for exaggerating Agathocless
faults. See Polybius, Histories , XII.15 (Oxford 2010)
426. Matthew Stukus offers a valuable compilation and
analysis of the extant classical sources on Agathocles
in The Monstrous Agathocles
(http://lovesexandthermonuclearwar.wordpress.
com/2012/05/16/the-monstrous-agathocles/).
3 On this question, see the paradigm setting piece by
Kahn (1993); and, with further qualification, Kahn
(2013).