…I am now beginning to write again, and I relieve myself by blaming the princes, who
have all done everything to bring us here. Farewell.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Historian, comic writer, and tragic writer.
Letter to Francesco Guicciardini, 21 October 1525
Introduction
Scholars of Machiavelli have long puzzled over this letter. Machiavelli was clearly an
historian. He not only wrote a commentary on Livy’s history of Rome, but composed his own
history of the city of Florence. That he was a comic writer is also beyond question since he both
wrote his own comedy and also adapted and translated the comedies of others. Yet, in what
sense was Machiavelli a tragic writer?
Several answers have been proposed to this question. One possible answer is that
Machiavelli’s life itself was the tragedy he speaks of. After years of dedicated and able service
to the Florentine government, he was ousted from the government by the ‘malignity of fortune’
that brought an end to republican rule. Even while he remained in his job he was never able to
rise high within the ranks of government due to his relatively low station at birth.
Another answer, put forth by the Italian biographer of Machiavelli, Roberto Ridolfi, is
that Machiavelli’s play, La Mandragola, is his work of tragedy. Beyond the lightness of the
subject matter the play reveals, for Ridolfi, the fallen state of Florentine politics. The lack of
ancient virtù in Machiavelli’s day is never remedied, and the type of ambitious, self-interested
citizens he represents precludes a return to the civic republicanism he so admired in ancient
Rome.
A final answer is that it is Machiavelli’s view of politics that is tragic. This view flies in
the face of the Straussian interpretation of Machiavelli which paints him as a thoroughly modern
thinker dedicated to the view that human beings could conquer nature through virtù. Support for
this view is found in Machiavelli’s cosmology which, in describing all of the supernatural forces
2
Convention