Machiavelli's Art of War: A Reconsideration*
Abstract Machiavelli's Art of War contains an unexplored and unexplained paradox: the dialogue's chief interlocutor is Fabrizio Colonna, a condottiere in the employ of Ferdinand of Aragon, who played a critical role in the Spanish conquest of northern Italy and in the collapse of the Florentine republic led by Piero Soderini, in which Machiavelli worked as a civil servant. Yet, Machiavelli chooses Fabrizio to defend the superiority of the citizen militia, which he associates with republican civic virtue, over mercenary troops. This paradox has remained unaccounted for because literary scholars have ignored the historical background underlying the text's assorted political subtexts, while historians have ignored the nature of Quattrocento dialogue, as a literary genre, in contextualizing the work. Once these historical and literary dimensions of the Art of War are brought together, it can be seen why Fabrizio Colonna would have been perceived, by Machiavelli and his audience, as the ideal representative of a military position which he espoused neither in theory or in practice.
The Man of the Renaissance
As known, to finish this book, you may not need to get it at once in a day. Doing the activities along the day may make you feel so bored. If you try to force reading, you may prefer to do other entertaining activities. But, one of concepts we want you to have this book is that it will not make you feel bored. Feeling bored when reading will be only unless you don't like the book. man the renaissance really offers what everybody wants.
MACHIAVELLI AND CASTRUCCIO
Abstract In her Essay on Machiavelli of 1934, Signora Marchesini wrote of the blunting of Machiavelli's heroic fervour in his later years, and she saw reflected in the Arte della Guerra and the Vita di Castruccio the persuasion of defeat in the face of malignant fortune: ‘Egli sente che il suo desiderio di agire non ha presa sulla realta … non sa accordarsi con i tempi. In eta corrotta e misera volle parlare di rinnovamento e di grandezza ….’ Now the surprising thing, perhaps, is that such a judgment should be, in the general criticism of Machiavelli, so isolated. The modern preoccupation with the Prince has meant not only a lack of concern with the Discorsi by themselves, but also a readiness to assume that the minor texts echo and confirm the Prince. Nowhere, as will be seen, has this been more the case than with the Vita di Castruccio. It has been taken strictly for granted that Machiavelli, in his admiration for the prince-condottiere, took the opportunity to express it here. Almost a hundred years ag...