The essential writings of Machiavelli (54 page)

53.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:75): “One day Dionysius’s steward Simos, a Phrygian and a contemptuous fellow, showed Aristippus a lavish house paved with mosaics. Suddenly Aristippus cleared his throat and spat in Simos’s face. Simos was outraged, but Aristippus said: ‘I couldn’t find a more suitable place to spit’”

54.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:76): “Asked how Socrates died, he said, ‘The way I hope that I shall die.’”

55.
This is a conflation of two different anecdotes. The opening line is from Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:76).

56.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 2:79): “He was once asked a favor of Dionysius for a friend, but as Dionysius would not listen, he fell at his feet. When someone made fun of him for this, he replied: ‘It’s Dionysius’s fault I am doing this, as his ears are in his feet’”

57.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 4:49): “Bion used to say that the road to Hades is an easy one. One goes downhill with one’s eyes shut.”

58.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 4:50): “To an idle prattler harrying him for aid, Bion said: ‘I will do what I can for you, as long as you send mediators instead of coming yourself.’”

59.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 5:20): “An idle prattler who had poured a stream of words over him asked Aristotle: ‘I hope I haven’t been boring you.’ To which Aristotle replied, ‘By Zeus you haven’t, I wasn’t even listening’”

60.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 4:49): “Bion used to reproach Alcibiades, saying that as a boy he had taken husbands from their wives, and as a young man wives from their husbands.”

61.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 4:51): “Bion said to a despondent envious man: ‘I do not know whether you are sad because something bad has happened to you, or because something good has happened to someone else.’”

62.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 6:54): “When Diogenes was asked what he would take in exchange for a blow on the head, he replied: ‘A helmet’” The sources of the three anecdotes that follow are unidentified.

63.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 6:31): “When Xeniades asked Diogenes how he wanted to be buried, he replied, ‘On my face.’ When asked why, he said, ‘Because soon enough everything will be turned upside down.’”

64.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 6:39): “When the Athenians asked him why he would not become initiated, as those initiated were accorded the best place in Hades, he replied: ‘It would be ridiculous if Agesilaus and Epaminondas remain in the mud, while men of no importance, just because they are initiated, will live on the Isles of the Blessed.’” Machiavelli juxtaposes Lazarus the beggar at the rich man’s banquet from the New Testament, who receives his reward in Paradise, to the heroic but unreligious Uguccione della Faggiuola.

65.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 6:40): “Asked when it was the best time for a man to eat, he replied, ‘For a rich man, whenever he wants to; for a poor man, whenever he can.’” The source of the anecdote that follows is unidentified.

66.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 6:39): “An odious eunuch had written above his door: ‘Let no evil enter.’ To which Diogenes said: ‘But then how will the master of house get inside?’”

67.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 6:57): “Arriving at Myndus, where he saw large gates but a small city, he said: ‘Men of Myndus, shut your gates or your city will escape through them.’”

68.
From Diogenes Laertius (Book 6:61): “He was once asked where a certain depraved boy was from, to which he replied: ‘He is from Tegea’” (a pun on the city of Tegea and
tegos
, “brothel”). In Boccaccio’s
Decameron
(Fifth Day), Pietro, a man from Perugia, catches his wife with a youth, whom he then seduces.

69.
A witty reference to Dante’s
Inferno
(Canto XXI) which Machiavelli’s readers would have recognized, where a devil says that Lucca is well furnished with sinners, as “Every man is a fraud, except Bonturo.” Merchant and demagogue Bonturo Dati had in fact gone down in history as a politician who was particularly corrupt.

70.
From Diogenes Laertius (6:68): “Alexander once stopped Diogenes and asked, ‘Are you not afraid of me?’ To which Diogenes replied: ‘Are you good or evil?’ ‘I am good,’ Alexander replied. To which Diogenes said: ‘So why should anyone fear what is good?’”

T
HE
M
ANDRAKE

The Mandrake
is the foremost play of the Italian Renaissance and the one most performed today. It is Machiavelli’s literary masterpiece, a comedy in prose in five acts. Machiavelli wrote it sometime around 1518, during his exile from Florence. He was already an established and successful playwright: his audience would have known
The Woman of Andros,
a paraphrase of Terence’s play, and perhaps his lost plays
Eunuchus
(also an adaptation of Terence)
, Aulularia
(an adaptation of Plautus), and
Le Maschere
(The Masks)
.

The Mandrake
was an instant success; the audience was exhilarated by its well-crafted elegance and scandal. The increasing double entendres as the play progresses (most of them explicitly sexual) kept audiences laughing, as did the farcical situations. Word of the play quickly spread to the Vatican. Pope Leo X, formerly Giovanni de’ Medici, was intrigued, and in 1520 commanded a performance in Rome. He was very impressed
.

—

CHARACTERS

Callimaco—a wealthy young Florentine merchant
Siro—his servant
Ligurio—a former matchmaker
Messer Nicia—a wealthy, middle-aged Florentine lawyer
Lucrezia—his beautiful wife
Sostrata—Lucrezia’s mother
Friar Timoteo
A Woman

P
ROLOGUE

God bless you, gracious audience, though I imagine your graciousness will depend on our pleasing you. Please be silent now, and we will acquaint you with a strange and novel event that took place in our city. Look at this stage that is now being set up before you: it’s Florence, but it could just as well be Rome or Pisa.

This door on my right leads into the house of a certain lawyer, who learned all about law from Boo … Boo … Boethius. That street at the corner is the Street of Love, where he who
falls
will never
rise
again. And as for that church, if you sit still and do not leave our theater too soon, you will see what kind of man of cloth it houses by his outer garb.

There, behind that door to the left, lives Callimaco Guadagni, a young man fresh from Paris. Of all the fashionable young men in town, he shows at first glance every sign of upright gentleness and worth. He has fallen passionately in love with a wise young woman, which is why she was tricked, as you shall see—and I sincerely wish that all of you might be tricked as she was.

This play is called
The Mandrake
, and I trust you shall see why as the plot unfolds. The playwright is not of any great renown, but he will stand you a glass of wine if he cannot make you laugh. He has gathered together a miserable lover, a lawyer of little sense, a friar with wicked ways, and a sponger who is the darling of malice, for your entertainment today. And if this material, slight as it is, does not prove worthy of a playwright who wishes to appear wise and grave, excuse him with this: that he is trying his utmost to lighten his misery, for he has nowhere else to turn, barred as he is from demonstrating his skills and abilities through worthier tasks, his labor no longer prized. The only prize he can expect is to be sneered at and maligned. And, believe me, this is the reason why ancient skill and craft have degenerated in our century. When a man sees that everything he does is maligned, he will prefer not to toil and strain to accomplish with a thousand hardships a work that an ill wind will topple or clouds will obscure.

But if anyone believes that in speaking badly he can grab the playwright by the hair and intimidate him or make him recant, I shall caution him that the playwright too knows how to malign, as he has proven in an earlier work.
¹
I will have you know that he values no one in all the lands where
sí
means “yes,” even though he might bow and scrape to those who sport a better cloak than he. But let all those who wish to do so cast aspersions, and let us turn to the matter at hand, so that the play does not run too much beyond its time, for we must not pay heed to mere words nor hold in high regard some fool who knows not whether he is coming or going.

Callimaco has come out of his house along with Siro, his servant, and will shed some light on matters. Watch carefully for you will not get another explanation.

1.
This is thought to be a reference to Machiavelli’s lost play
Le Maschere
, which was said to lampoon many distinguished Florentines of the time.

A
CT
I

SCENE ONE

Callimaco and Siro

CALLIMACO:
Siro, don’t go. I want to tell you something.

SIRO:
Here I am.

CALLIMACO:
I imagine you must have been quite surprised by my sudden departure from Paris, and wondering that I have been a whole month here without doing a thing.

SIRO:
That is true.

CALLIMACO:
If I haven’t told you before now what I am about to tell you, it’s not because I don’t trust you, but because in my view it is better for a man not to discuss the things he doesn’t want known unless he has to. But I think I might need your help, so I will tell you everything.

SIRO:
I am your servant, and servants should never ask their masters anything or peek into their private affairs. But when the master speaks of his own accord, a servant must serve loyally. That is what I’ve always done and what I will always do.

CALLIMACO:
I know, I know. You must have heard me say this a thousand times, but it won’t matter if you hear it a thousand and first time: When I was ten and my mother and father died, my guardians sent me to Paris, where I lived for twenty years. I had been there just ten years when King Charles marched on Italy and the Italian wars began, which ravaged the whole country. I decided to stay in Paris and never return to Italy, as I felt I could live more safely there than here.

SIRO:
So it is.

CALLIMACO:
And having from Paris commissioned someone to sell all my property in Florence except for my house, I settled down in France and continued living there most happily for another ten years …

SIRO:
I know.

CALLIMACO:
… dividing my time among studies, pleasure, and business, always striving that no activity should encumber the others. As you know, I lived a calm life, being of use to everyone and doing my best not to harm anyone, so that from what I could tell I was liked by townspeople and gentlemen, foreigners and locals, rich and poor.

SIRO:
This is true.

CALLIMACO:
But Fortune deemed that I was having too good a time, and sent a certain Cammillo Calfucci to Paris.

SIRO:
I am beginning to guess what your trouble is.

CALLIMACO:
I often invited him to my house, as I invited many other Florentines in Paris. Then one day, as we were conversing, we began to debate which were more beautiful, the women of Italy or the women of France. As I could not evaluate Italian women, since I was young when I left, another Florentine who was present debated for France, and Cammillo for Italy. After many arguments presented by both sides, Cammillo, almost irate, proclaimed that even if all Italian women were monsters, there was one lady of his family who could single-handedly win back their honor.

SIRO:
Now I see what you mean.

CALLIMACO:
And he named Madonna Lucrezia, the wife of Messer Nicia Calfucci. He so praised her beauty and grace that he left the rest of us stupefied. He sparked such a desire in me to see her that without further ado, and without giving a thought to war or peace in Italy, I set out for Florence. Here I found to my amazement that Madonna Lucrezia’s beauty far outshines its fame, which so rarely happens. I have been seized by such a desire to be with her that I shall go mad. SIRO: Had you told me about this in Paris, I’d have known how to advise you. But now I don’t know what I can say.

CALLIMACO:
I’m not telling you this so you can advise me, but to get it off my chest, and also to have you prepare yourself to help me should the need arise.

SIRO:
I am ready and willing, but what hopes do you have?

CALLIMACO:
Alas, none—or few, if any.

SIRO:
Oh, why is that?

CALLIMACO:
I’ll tell you. First of all, her nature wages war on me, for she is most virtuous and a stranger to matters of love. Then, she has a husband who is extremely rich and who allows her to rule him in every way, and though he is not prodigiously young, he is not prodigiously old either, from what I can tell. She has no relatives or neighbors with whom she could go to a soiree or a ball, nor does she involve herself in any of the entertainments in which the young delight. No tradesmen ever visit her house. All her maids and servants tremble before her, so there is no possibility of bribery.

SIRO:
So what do you think you might be able to do?

CALLIMACO:
No circumstance is ever so desperate that one cannot nurture some spark of hope. And even if this spark is weak and futile, man is blinded by his will and desire to achieve his goal.

SIRO:
So what is it that gives you hope?

CALLIMACO:
Two things: One is the foolishness of Messer Nicia, who, though a doctor of law, is the simplest and most foolish man in all of Florence, and the second is his desire to have children. They have been married for six years and have not had any yet, but as they are so rich, they do not wish to die childless. There is also a third thing that gives me hope: Her mother used to enjoy going out on the town a bit, but now she is rich and I’m not sure how she is to be approached.

SIRO:
Have you tried anything yet?

CALLIMACO:
Yes, I have, but nothing substantial.

SIRO:
What do you mean?

CALLIMACO:
You know Ligurio, who’s always coming around to dine here? He used to be a matchmaker, but now he’s taken to scrounging lunches and dinners. He is a charming man, and he and Messer Nicia have become quite inseparable. Ligurio is swindling him for all he can. Messer Nicia never asks him to dinner, but sometimes lends him money. I’ve befriended Ligurio and told him about my love, and he’s promised to help me body and soul.

SIRO:
You must be careful he doesn’t trick you. Such villains aren’t known for their loyalty.

CALLIMACO:
True. But when a man will gain from a deal, and you make certain he knows it, he will serve you loyally. I have promised him a good sum of money if he succeeds. And if he doesn’t, he’ll get a lunch and a dinner out of it: That way at least I won’t have to dine alone.

SIRO:
What has he promised to do so far?

CALLIMACO:
He has promised to talk Messer Nicia into taking his wife to a spa this May.

SIRO:
What good will that do you?

CALLIMACO:
What good? A spa might change her nature. In such places all people do is enjoy themselves, and I’d go there and instigate all the fun I could, missing no occasion for extravagance. I would befriend her, her husband … You never know. One thing leads to another, and time has a habit of steering things.

SIRO:
That’s not a bad scheme.

CALLIMACO:
Ligurio left me this morning saying he’d have a word with Messer Nicia and would let me know.

SIRO:
Ah, I see them coming toward us.

CALLIMACO:
I shall step a little to the side so I’ll be in time to talk to Ligurio once he has gotten rid of Messer Nicia. In the meantime, go back inside and continue what you were doing. I’ll let you know if I want you to do something for me.

SCENE TWO

Messer Nicia and Ligurio
.

NICIA:
That was very good advice you gave me. I had a word with my wife, and she told me she’d let me know today. But to tell you the truth, I can’t say I’m champing at the bit.

LIGURIO:
You’re not?

NICIA:
Home is home, and I don’t like crawling out of my cave. Not to mention having to drag wife, servants, and cartloads of knickknacks across open fields. That’s not my idea of fun. Also, I spoke to all kinds of doctors yesterday: One tells me to go to San Filippo, another to Porretta, another to Villa. They’re all a bunch of frauds! Those damn doctors couldn’t find your gizzard if you dangled it before their eyes.

LIGURIO:
It’s the idea of leaving Florence that’s putting you on edge. You’re just not used to losing sight of the great cupola.

NICIA:
You’re wrong there. When I was younger I was a great vagabond. I was always the first to stroll over to Prato whenever they had a fair, and there’s not a castle within walking distance of Florence that I haven’t been to! And I’ll have you know that I’ve often taken a stroll over the hill to Pisa or to Livorno, so there!

LIGURIO:
You must have seen the Gleaming Tower of Pisa.

NICIA:
You mean the Leaning Tower?

LIGURIO:
Oh, yes, the one that leans. And did you manage to see the sea at Livorno?

NICIA:
Of course I did.

LIGURIO:
How much bigger than our Arno River is it?

NICIA:
How much bigger? Four times bigger! Maybe even six, maybe seven times. You wouldn’t believe it, but all you see is water, water, water!

LIGURIO:
I’m surprised that having sown your seed in every corner of the earth you would make such a hullabaloo about going to one of the spas just outside town.

NICIA:
What a milksop you are! Do you think it’s a trifle to pack up a whole house? But I’m so eager to have children that I’m ready to do anything. Go have a talk with those doctors and see which of the spas that they suggest would be best for me to go to. I’ll be with my wife in the meantime. I will see you later.

LIGURIO:
That is a good idea.

SCENE THREE

Ligurio and Callimaco
.

LIGURIO
[aside]:
I cannot believe you’ll find a more foolish man in all the world! And yet how Fortune has favored him: He is rich, and he has a beautiful wife who is wise, has every grace, and is fit to rule a kingdom. People say about marriage, “Like meets like,” but if you ask me, that is rarely the case. You often see a man of substance married to a beast of a woman, or a wise woman on the arm of a fool. But Callimaco has something to hope for from this man’s foolishness. [
Enter Callimaco
] Ah, there he is. Hello, have you been lingering in the shadows?

CALLIMACO:
I saw you with Messer Nicia and was waiting for you to get rid of him so you can tell me what you’ve accomplished.

LIGURIO:
You know what kind of man he is: of very little wisdom and even less spirit. He resists leaving Florence, but I’ve warmed him up to the idea, and he has finally agreed to everything. I believe he will follow our lead should we decide on that plan. Only I’m not sure we can reach our goal that way.

CALLIMACO:
Why not?

LIGURIO:
Well, you know all kinds of people go to those spas, and some man might show up who will find Madonna Lucrezia as appealing as you do, a man richer than you and of a more pleasing countenance, so that you run the risk of exerting yourself only for the benefit of others; or else the large number of competitors will make her more reticent, or once you have overcome her reticence, she will favor someone else, not you.

CALLIMACO:
I know what you are saying is true. But what can I do? What path can I choose? Where can I turn? I must try something, be it momentous, be it dangerous, harmful, underhanded! It is better to die than to live like this. If I could sleep at night, if I could eat, if I could converse, if I could take pleasure in anything at all, I would be more patient and wait for the right moment. But there is no remedy, and if I cannot be kept in hope by some scheme, I shall die! Hence, if I am bound to die, I don’t see why I should be afraid of anything! I’m even ready to throw myself into a scheme that is wild, cruel, abominable!