The idea that a God-fearing community will naturally reap the reward of civic glory was a familiar one to Machiavelli’s contemporaries. As he himself observes, this had been the promise underlying Savonarola’s campaign in Florence during the 1490s, in the course of which he had persuaded the Florentines ‘that he spoke with God’ and that God’s message to the city was that He would restore it to its former greatness as soon as it returned to its original piety (226). However, Machiavelli’s own views about the value of religion involve him in departing from this orthodox treatment of the topic in two fundamental respects. He first of all differs from the Savonarolans in his reasons for wishing to uphold the religious basis of political life. He is not in the least interested in the question of religious truth. He is solely interested in the role played by religious sentiment ‘in inspiring the people, in keeping men good, in making the wicked ashamed’, and he judges the value of different religions entirely by their capacity to promote these useful effects (224). So he not only concludes that the leaders of any community have a duty to ‘accept and magnify’ anything that ‘comes up in favour of religion’; he insists that they must always do so ‘even though they think it false’ (227).
Machiavelli’s other departure from orthodoxy is connected with this pragmatic approach. He declares that, judged by these standards, the ancient religion of the Romans is much to be preferred to the Christian faith. There is no reason why Christianity should not have been interpreted ‘according to virtú’ and employed for ‘the betterment and the defence’ of Christian communities. But in fact it has been interpreted in such a way as to undermine the qualities needed for a free and vigorous civic life. It has ‘glorified humble and contemplative men’; it has ‘set up as the greatest good humility, abjectness, and contempt for human things’; it has placed no value ‘in grandeur of mind, in strength of body’, or in any of the other attributes of virtuoso citizenship. By imposing this other-worldly image of human excellence, it has not merely failed to promote civic glory; it has actually helped to bring about the decline and fall of great nations by corrupting their communal life. As Machiavelli concludes — with an irony worthy of Gibbon — the price we have paid for the fact that Christianity ‘shows us the truth and the true way’ is that it ‘has made the world weak and turned it over as prey to wicked men’ (331).
The rest of the first Discourse is largely devoted to arguing that there is a second and even more effective means of inducing people to acquire virtú: by using the coercive powers of the law in such a way as to force them to place the good of their community above all selfish interests. The point is first made in broad terms in the opening chapters of the book. All the finest examples of civic virtú are said to ‘have their origin in good education’, which in turn has its origin ‘in good laws’ (203). If we ask how some cities manage to keep up their virtú over exceptionally long periods, the basic answer in every case is that ‘the laws make them good’ (201). The pivotal place of this contention in Machiavelli’s general argument is later made explicit at the beginning of the third Discourse: if a city is to ‘take on new life’ and advance along the pathway to glory, this can only be achieved ‘either by the virtú of a man or by the virtú of a law’ (419–20).
Given this belief, we can see why Machiavelli attaches so much importance to the founding fathers of cities. They are in a unique position to act as lawgivers, and thus to supply their communities from the outset with the best means of ensuring that virtú is promoted and corruption overcome. The most impressive instance is said to be that of Lycurgus, the original founder of Sparta. He devised a code of laws so perfect that the city was able to ‘live safely under them’ for ‘more than eight hundred years without debasing them’ and without at any point forfeiting its liberty (196, 199). Scarcely less remarkable was the achievement of Romulus and Numa, the first kings of Rome. By means of the many good laws they enacted, the city had the quality of virtú ‘forced upon her’ with such decisiveness that even ‘the greatness of her empire could not for many centuries corrupt her’, and she remained ‘full of a virtú as great as that by which any city or republic was ever distinguished’ (195, 200).
This brings us, according to Machiavelli, to one of the most instructive lessons we can hope to learn from the study of history. The greatest lawgivers, he has shown, are those who have understood most clearly how to use the law in order to advance the cause of civic greatness. It follows that, if we investigate the details of their constitutional codes, we may be able to uncover the secret of their success, thereby making the wisdom of the ancients directly available to the rulers of the modern world.
After conducting this investigation, Machiavelli concludes that the crucial insight common to all the wisest legislators of antiquity can be very simply expressed. They all perceived that the three ‘pure’ constitutional forms — monarchy, aristocracy, democracy — are inherently unstable, and tend to generate a cycle of corruption and decay; and they correctly inferred that the key to imposing virtú by the force of law must therefore lie in establishing a mixed constitution, one in which the instabilities of the pure forms are corrected while their strengths are combined. As always, Rome furnishes the clearest example: it was because she managed to evolve a ‘mixed government’ that she finally rose to become ‘a perfect republic’ (200).
It was of course a commonplace of Roman political theory to defend the special merits of mixed constitutions. The argument is central to Polybius’ History, recurs in several of Cicero’s treatises, and subsequently found favour with most of the leading humanists of fifteenth-century Florence. However, when we come to Machiavelli’s reasons for believing that a mixed constitution is best suited for promoting virtú and upholding liberty, we encounter a dramatic divergence from the conventional humanist point of view.
His argument starts from the axiom that ‘in every republic there are two opposed factions, that of the people and that of the rich’ (203). He thinks it obvious that, if the constitution is so arranged that one or other of these groups is allowed complete control, the republic will be ‘easily corrupted’ (196). If someone from the party of the rich takes over as prince, there will be an immediate danger of tyranny; if the rich set up an aristocratic form of government, they will be prone to rule in their own interests; if there is a democracy, the same will be true of the common people. In every case the general good will become subordinated to factional loyalties, with the result that the virtú and in consequence the liberty of the republic will soon be lost (197–8, 203–4).