Rarely is Machiavelli’s distance from Livy more obvious. Where Livy barely confesses the positive effect Manlius’s filicide had on discipline, Machiavelli joyously and openly commends that act and predicts that a republic filled with such ‘excessive virtue’ would perpetually ‘return its orders toward their beginning and into its ancient virtue’; such a republic may even become ‘perpetual’ (D 3.22.3; Liv. 8.7–8; cf. McCormick 2008: 394–396, 403–407 and Sullivan 1996: 85–95, 157–168, 169–711).
Torquatus’s commitment to the common good – Livy has him choose explicitly between respect for the consulate and love of his son – is, in Machiavelli, most glorious in its violent extremity. On the basis of this example, Machiavelli recommends that every decade or so the sound republic should sacrifice a few of its talented young men, the very individuals most likely to be another Valerius, or Scipio, or Caesar. If a republic is to survive for a long time, then there is ‘no remedy more powerful, nor more valid, more secure, and more necessary, than to kill the sons of Brutus’ (D 1.16.4; note D 3.3.1; P 7). It is even best, as the examples of Torquatus and Brutus themselves attest, that the father himself should do the killing. On the one hand, Machiavelli praises sons with little respect for traditional authority; on the other hand, he suggests that those same sons must suffer fearful necessities to prevent them from destroying or corrupting the city. Only the greatest founders have the prudence to know how to balance these conflicting needs.
Machiavelli’s alterations, his exaggerations and his minimisations, of the youthful virtue of Valerius and the radicalised virtus of Torquatus, suggest the larger changes he makes in explaining how Rome virtuously attained and effectively maintained power. Among his reasons for admiring well-ordered republics, Machiavelli mentions that the republic’s diverse human types allow it to adapt to changing circumstances:
Hence it arises that a republic has greater life and has good fortune longer than a principality, for it can accommodate itself better than one prince to the diversity of times through the diversity of citizens that are in it. For a man who is accustomed to proceed in one mode never changes, as was said; and it must be of necessity that when the times change not in conformity with his mode, he is ruined. (D 3.9.2)10
Adaptation to evolving times and powers leads us back to the question of the perpetual republic. Are growth and decline counterbalancing elements of an inevitable cycle? Or can Machiavellian virtù evade the seemingly inexorable links between the two? In Chapter 25 of The Prince, Machiavelli argues that because fortune varies, cities and individuals should ideally vary with her. Republics prove to be the regime type most successful at achieving this goal, precisely because of the diverse leadership that they make possible. The occasional Manlian execution stands opposed to, but is also the precondition of, continual Valerian striving. The caution of Fabius Maximus, although unpopular, enables Scipio’s brilliance to shine, until it is later cut off by Cato’s sternness.
Rome proved effective in overcoming fortune to the extent that it cultivated both types of leaders. In the first chapter of Discourses Book 2, in fact, Machiavelli blames Livy along with Plutarch for failing to understand correctly virtue and the limits of human possibility. The ancient historians erred because they did not attribute enough of Rome’s rise to her true virtue; how could they have done otherwise, when they did not know the nature of virtue itself? For Livy, the Romans’ reverence for their fathers and their obedience to the ancient customs were good in themselves and in the eyes of the gods, especially Fortune, who aids the virtuous.11 Machiavellian virtù, on the other hand, is radically opposed to Fortune and to any resignation to inevitable decline or decay. Rome demonstrates that the virtuous, well-ordered, self-reliant republic is the best regime because Rome, more than any other city, shows how much virtue can do in the world if good orders and new princes renew it over time. Since Fortune is always changing, and since human beings become lazy and wicked by nature when they are not subject to necessity, the virtuous republic must have both orders that give opportunities to young elites, and rival elites who keep the youth in line through occasional, spectacular punishments (Mansfield 1979: 301–303; Fischer 2005).
If the healthy republic excels in part because it pits talented citizens against one another, however, then its greatness, as well as its vulnerability, becomes most apparent when it relies on an even rarer citizen type: the most excellent individual, the refounder (P 6; D 1.49, 3.30). The best republican prince combines the youthful boldness of Valerius and Scipio Africanus with the caution and severity of Manlius Torquatus and Fabius Maximus. Such a prince is ‘the same in every fortune’ and hence ‘fortune does not have power over him’ because he understands when he has to be one way and when he has to be the other, according to necessity (D 3.9.1). It is his understanding of ‘worldly things’ derived from continual practice in arms that shows him the ‘true path’ to the true ends of republican life; he works for the common good as Romulus ought to have done because he sees how much he can achieve his own ambition through the common good, properly understood; he, like Brutus, goes beyond all the old modes and orders while retaining the shadows of the ancient traditions, and then resets them in his own image so that his power and authority last far beyond his death; he is, in sum, Camillus, the ‘most prudent of all the Roman captains’ of the Republic, and the central character of both Livy’s first Decade and Machiavelli’s Third Book (D 3.12.3).
In Livy, Camillus is the exemplar of Roman virtue. He is stern in discipline, honest in dealing, devoted to the Republic, reverent toward the gods, brilliant in war, just in his treatment of both friends and enemies and (all in all) prudent, brave, patient, moderate, loyal and pious (Liv. 5.26–27, 5.37, 5.43, 5.49, 6.12, 6.28).12 For these many reasons Camillus is deservedly loved by Fortune, who, Livy says, misled the Romans into banishing him, violating the ius gentium and making a whole host of other errors that nearly destroyed the city so that he might have the opportunity to show his brilliance. For Machiavelli, prudence was Camillus’s singular virtue: it allowed him to conquer Fortune and, after liberating his fatherland from the barbarians, to make ‘all Roman citizens yield to him without its appearing to them that reputation or rank were taken away’ (D 1.8.1).
In Camillus, above all, we see that it is not Valerian vigour or Manlian severity but flexible prudence – taken to an almost inhuman degree – that most closely approximates Machiavelli’s virtù. Camillus is the central figure in a critical chapter of the Discourses entitled ‘How One Must Vary with the Times if One Wishes Always to have Good Fortune’ (D 3.9). Camillus’s greatness came not from his moderation or his mercy or piety, but rather from his understanding of how to acquire the most power and glory for himself by using those qualities and others according to necessity. Camillus’s traditional virtue cloaks his virtù.
The prudent openness of Rome’s orders and the severity of her martial education allowed that well-ordered Republic to renew its citizens’ virtù continually, through an endless succession of virtuous princes in the moulds of Valerius, Manlius and Camillus. Even if Rome could not be literally perpetual, then it could have lasted even longer if it had found a Camillus rather than a Caesar when it badly needed to reorder itself (D 1.2, 1.10, 1.17–18, 1.20, 2.18–19, 3.16, 3.17). Machiavelli’s Romans still relied on Fortune, but far less than Livy’s; they rose not because Fortune loved them, as their historians believed, but because they were her greatest enemy.
2.5 Rome’s End and the Return to Livy
Machiavelli agrees with Livy that virtue is the foremost question for the historian of Rome, but he disagrees with his predecessor about the nature of virtue and its significance for human achievement and human power. Whatever his disagreements with Livy, however, Machiavelli chose to bind