Machiavelli and the Gracchi: prudence, violence and redistribution

摘要

In this article, I highlight a rhetorical strategy in Machiavelli's Discourses through which: (1) the Florentine endorses, despite appearances to the contrary, the redistributive agenda of the Brothers Gracchi, Roman tribunes frequently blamed for causing the collapse of the Republic; and (2) subtly intimates the violent means that other prospective reformers of republics must employ to succeed where the Gracchi had failed. Machiavelli invokes 'prudence' in his passages devoted to the Gracchi; following this lead, I accentuate the form of prudential rhetoric that he practices in such passages, and I point to the prudential form of violence he thought necessary if republics were to, in his words, 'keep the public rich, and the citizens poor'.