The essential writings of Machiavelli (53 page)

10.
Machiavelli invented Uguccione’s illness and departure for Montecarlo in order to place Castruccio in the foreground of the action. Castruccio did participate in this battle, but not in the role of a military leader.

11.
Though Villani’s chronicles and other accounts of the battle describe the tactics Uguccione used, Machiavelli is describing the methods that Livy attributed to Scipio in his battle with Hannibal.

12.
Carlo d’Anjou and his father, Filippo d’Anjou, Prince of Taranto and Acaia.

13.
This account is fictitious. Castruccio, outside his jurisdiction, had put to death some thirty men in Lunigiana, which historians believe Uguccione perceived as a challenge to his authority.

14.
Today San Giuliano Terme, about four miles from Pisa and five miles from Lucca. Machiavelli is closely following Giovanni Villani’s
Nuova Cronaca
(IX, 78): “Uguccione had not yet reached the mountain of San Giuliano, when the populace of Pisa rose […] and ransacked the building of the Signoria where Coscetto dal Colle was magistrate, and ran with arms and fire to the palace where Uguccione and his family lived, shouting ‘Death to Uguccione the tyrant!’ They robbed and killed his entire family.”

15.
Gaddo della Gherardesca, Count of Donoratico, also a prominent member of the Ghibelline faction, overthrew Uguccione in 1316.

16.
Cangrande della Scala, Lord of Verona, was the leader of the Ghibelline League. Uguccione, however, did not die in poverty, but after an unsuccessful attempt to regain Pisa and Lucca, became chief magistrate of Vicenza, where he died in 1319.

17.
Machiavelli is rearranging the sequence of events for effect. Castruccio built the Fortezza di Sarzanello in 1322 on the site of a tenth-century fortress.

18.
In April, 1320, Castruccio was elected Dominus Generalis of Lucca for life.

19.
In 1320 Frederick III appointed Castruccio as his governor, or Imperial Vicar General of Lucca, Versilia, and Lunigiana.

20.
Gaddo della Gherardesca, a moderate ruler who was an ally of Castruccio’s, in fact died in 1320.

21.
Matteo I the Great, 1250–1322.

22.
Valdarno is the Arno River valley, and Fucecchio and San Miniato important strategic castles on the Arno, approximately equidistant from Lucca, Florence, Pisa, and Pistoia. San Miniato had been the seat of the Holy Roman Emperors, and Frederick II had fortified the town extensively in the mid—thirteenth century.

23.
Machiavelli has recast the incident. One of the junior members of the Poggio clan, Stefano di Poggio, had killed one of Castruccio’s officials. Castruccio, on his immediate return to Lucca, invited the heads of the Poggio family to his house to discuss what should be done about Stefano. When they came, he had them seized and executed.

24.
Giovanni Villani in
Nuova Cronaca
(IX) writes: “Fearing that the populace of Lucca would revolt, Castruccio ordered a wondrous castle to be built within the city, taking up almost a fifth part of the town facing Pisa. He reinforced the mighty walls with twenty-eighty towers.”

25.
Pistoia, surrounded by hills that form part of the Apennine Mountains, lies about eighteen miles northwest of Florence.

26.
The Whites (Bianchi) and Blacks (Neri) were feuding factions within the Guelph party that did much to destabilize Pistoia, and later Florence too. Machiavelli, however, invented the names of the faction leaders.

27.
This account of Castruccio’s seizing power in Pistoia is fictitious. Machiavelli closely follows a tale from Xenophon’s
Cyropaedia
(7.4.4), in which Adusius, Cyrus’s general, tricks two warring Carian factions and so takes over the city of Caria. “[Adusius] arranged a meeting with both factions for the same night, each without the other’s knowledge. On the night in question he entered and took possession of the strongholds of both factions.”

28.
In 1309, when Pope Clement V moved the papal residence to Avignon in France, Rome suddenly lost its lucrative role as the center of the Catholic world and faced escalating turmoil triggered by the factional fighting of the Orsini and Colonna families.

29.
According to Villani’s
Nuova Cronaca
, Arrigo d’Ostericchi (Henry of Austria), the emperor’s brother.

30.
In 1320 the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III had made Castruccio his “imperial vicar” of Lucca, Versilia, and Lunigiana. Four years later, Emperor Louis IV appointed Castruccio Duke of Lucca and Count of Latran. Beside this debt, which Castruccio felt he had to repay, it was strategically vital for him to keep Roberto of Naples, the champion of the Guelph cause and the enemy of the Holy Roman Emperor, out of Rome and Ghibelline territory.

31.
Giovanni Villani describes Castruccio’s pomp, commenting on the arrogant words of the toga: “And thus he himself prophesied the future judgment of God.”

32.
A city eight miles northwest of Florence.

33.
A cavalry of three hundred that King Roberto had sent in December 1325 had proved insufficient to curb the increasing raids of Castruccio’s soldiers on the Florentine countryside. Carlo of Calabria, King Roberto’s oldest son, was then officially proclaimed Lord of Florence for ten years in January 1326, though he did not serve the full term.

34.
Machiavelli is transposing a Pisan plot that had occurred three years earlier, in 1323. Lanfranchi was in fact a supporter of Castruccio who was conspiring to kill Nieri della Gherardesca, the governor of Pisa. Lanfrachi was actually executed by della Gherardesca.

35.
Bonifacio Cerchi and Giovanni Guidi, exiles from Florence, had been the co-conspirators who betrayed Lanfranchi’s 1323 plot.

36.
Castles and their communities near Florence along the Arno River. Machiavelli is combining elements from three major campaigns.

37.
The castle, about twenty-five miles from Florence, stands on a two-hundred-foot hill.

38.
Machiavelli invented the speech, taking elements from Villani’s
Nuova Cronaca
, in which Villani reports the advice and suggestions Castruccio gave to his actual son and heir Arrigo and to his closest supporters.

39.
In fact Castruccio had a wife and nine children, four of whom were sons, which Machiavelli would have known from his sources.

40.
Castruccio’s empire in fact fell apart within a few weeks of his death on September 3, 1328. After the people of Lucca revolted on October 7, Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV removed Arrigo Castracani from office. According to Giovanni Villani’s
Nuova Cronaca
(X, 104): “Castruccio’s sons were deprived of their ducal title and were exiled to Pontremoli with their mother.”

41.
Machiavelli took or adapted most of the sayings in this section from Diogenes Laertius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers
(c. third or fourth century
CE
). This saying comes from “Aristippus” (Book 2:66): “It is said that Aristippus ordered a partridge to be bought for fifty drachmas. When he was admonished, he asked: ‘Would you yourself not have bought the partridge for an obol?’ When the man who had reproached him said that he would, Aristippus replied: ‘Well, fifty drachmas are no more to me.’”

42.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:67): “Dionysius once spat at Aristippus, without Aristippus reacting with a single word. When Aristippus was reproached for his silence he replied, ‘Fishermen are patient at being sprayed by the sea in order to catch a tiny gudgeon, so why should I not endure being sprayed with a little wine to catch a whale.’”

43.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:68): “Upbraided for living extravagantly, Aristippus said: ‘If extravagance were bad, we wouldn’t have so much of it during the feasts of the gods.’”

44.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:69): “Aristippus once entered the house of a hetaera. When one of the young men accompanying him blushed, Aristippus said, ‘It is not going into such a house that is bad, but not being able to leave.’”

45.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:70): “Someone asked Aristippus to solve a riddle, to which Aristippus replied: ‘You fool, why would you have me unknot something that vexes us so much even when it is safely tied up?’”

46.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:70): “When someone said that he always saw philosophers at the doors of the rich, he replied: ‘One also always sees physicians at the doors of the sick. And yet nobody would choose to be a sick man above being a physician.’”

47.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:71): “Aristippus was once sailing to Corinth when a violent storm arose and he became perturbed. Somebody said, ‘We simple folk are not afraid, but you philosophers tremble.’ To which Aristippus replied: ‘That is because we are not trembling over the same kind of soul.’”

48.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:72): “When a man asked him in what way his son would be better once he had completed his education, he replied: ‘If nothing else, he won’t sit at the theater like one stone on another’”

49.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:71): “Seeing a man who prided himself on the extent of his erudition, he said, ‘Those who eat and exercise without limit are in no better health than those who do so within limits. Likewise, it is not those who read much, but those who read what is useful who excel.’”

50.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:73): “A man boasted of being able to drink a great deal without becoming drunk, to which Aristippus said: ‘A mule can do the same.’”

51.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:74): “Reproached for living with a hetaera, he said, ‘Does it make a difference whether one chooses a house where many have lived or one where no one has lived before?’”

52.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:75): “When someone reproached him for buying expensive food, he asked, ‘Wouldn’t you have bought all this for three obols?’ The other said that he would, to which Aristippus replied: ‘In that case, I am not as much of a glutton as you are a miser’”