Sparta’s decline and demise to a lack of sufficient training in classical or Aristotelian
virtue. Machiavelli attributes it to bad institutions. In Aristotle’s view, a properly
ordered Spartan regime would not have sought empire and would have fought only to
defend its freedom and self-sufficient plenitude. For Machiavelli, a properly ordered
Sparta would have been both desirous and capable of taking and holding a vast empire.
This only begs the question: why not simply refuse to acquire an empire?
Machiavelli says that in an ideal world, in perfect circumstances, this might work
perfectly well. But we do not live in such a world. “Human things are in motion”;
people will always be trying to take what you have. Faced with such a prospect, one can
choose to let others get away with it, or one can admit that necessity sometimes forces the
acquisition of empire on a state. The former choice is contemptible, the latter more
“honorable.”
The lynchpin of the argument would seem to be Machiavelli’s assertion that “human
things are in motion.” It is not clear in D I 6 exactly what this means, or what is the root
or cause of this motion, but we may surmise the meaning by looking at certain remarks in
other chapters. In the very first chapter of the Discourses, he writes that men are not
“content to love off their own,” that they “seek to command others” and that they “cannot
secure themselves without power.” In Book I, Chapter 5 he says that “men do not believe
that they securely possess what they have unless they are also acquiring something new.”
Later (I 37) he writes that “nature has created men so that they are able to desire
everything and are unable to attain everything” and “some men desire to have more, and
45
See Strauss, p. 240. The argument does not to appear to be altogether convincing, and Machiavelli
indicates that he does not intend it to be by saying that he merely “believes” in the Roman order—which is
to say, the orders of expansion. Belief is of course an altogether different thing than knowledge, and
something that in principle ought to be repugnant to the philosopher (Strauss, p. 96, and Ch. 3 passim).
29
Convention