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CAPITOLO SECONDO. 179
CAPITOLO SECONDO.
DE' PRINCIPATI EREDITARI.
Io lascer6 indietro il ragionare delle repubbliche, perch_
tous.., accept6rent, n'appartenait qu'aux times d'_lite, douses de la
virli_. Machiavel a analys6 les conditions de eette virt_ dont le nora,
comme la morbidez_a n'a point d'_quivalent dans les autres langues.
... Quelque chose de supdrieur a manqu6 alors /t l'Italie, dans sa
politique comme dans ses mceurs, une notion plus nette du droit,
plus de d_licatesse morale et de s_rieux; elle eut trop de virli_, et
pas assez de vertu'; Gebhart, de l'Italie, Preface, pp. xv, xviii.]
The meaning of the word was often mistaken, and even so recent a
critic as Maz_res has been misled. The following examples will make
the meaning clear : Disc. i. I, Op. 3. io, ' la virt@ del quale si conosce in
duoi modi, il primo _ nella elezione del sito, 1' altro nella ordinazione "'
delle leggi' ; where 'virffl' signifies the ability of the legislator ; in
Disc. iii. 21, Op. 3- 381-2, Hannibal, whom Machiavelli calls ' empio'
and 'crudele,' is said none the less to have displayed 'virtU' ; in the
Vita di Castruccio, Op. 2. 402, _ei mostrava virtt_ di animo e di corpo,'
it simply means energy or vigour ; in Ist. Fior. lib. ii, Op. i. 70, it
retains its old meaning of courage in battle.
In conclusion, we may shortly notice the substance of Frederick
the Great's attack upon this chapter. He held that Machiavelli,
instead of beginning with a list of the different sorts of dominion,
should rather have enquired into the origin of supreme power, and
determined the reasons which induce men to submit to a master:
in short, he should have investigated the principles upon which
monarchyis based. But it is easy to see that such a method of treatment
would have been entirely beside the purpose here ; Machiavelli
was not writing ' alia filosofica,' and all he wished to do was to get a
clear list, sufficient for practical purposes, of the forms of monarchical
government which he thought possible in Italy. Frederick the Great
has simply mist_nderstood what Machiavelli wanted to do [cf. Mundt,
pp. 67, 68], and this one example may serve as a type of the kind of
criticism which runs through the whole of the ' Anti-Machiavel.'
2. Prineipati ereclitaxi] The subject of hereditary monarchies is
discussed again in Discorsi, iii. ch. 5. The question was not one
which" especially interested Machiavelli, and he passes it over
briefly both here and in the Discorsi. For the sake of completeness
he inserts this short account, which does little more than draw
attention to the more obvious methods by which an hereditary
monarch may maintain his position. He believed that the tendency
of hereditary monarchies was to degenerate [Disc. i. Io, Op. 3. 46,
' e come 1'imperio cadde negli eredi, ei ritorn6 nella sua rovina '], and,
Ng.