Machiavelli’s Politics is aptly named. Catherine Zuckert’s new book concentrates intently on Niccolo Machiavelli’s judgment about how best to govern political communities in the ordinary sense—places such as Florence and Rome. Her views about what makes Machiavelli novel when compared with ancient and medieval thinkers primarily concern such governing. And, her most telling disputes with other scholars also concern political themes. This focus might seem unsurprising or inevitable, for who would doubt Machiavelli’s political thrust? But Professor Zuckert’s argument differs from those that feature or co-emphasize a Machiavelli who is a spiritual warrior, one who means to reorient not only politics…
Roman Liberties Lost
G.K. Chesterton once said “the act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has to-day all the exhilaration of a vice.” Finding our own time still more ill-disposed towards vindicating almost any virtue, I was puzzled at first to find so little exhilaration in Valentina Arena’s Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Republic. This is the more unfortunate because Arena is dealing with what, to me, is the issue for the Romans: the corruption and confusion of their civic virtues between 70 and 52 B.C. Arena’s contextualist methodology, witnessed by a heavy reliance on Quentin Skinner throughout and…
