Seeing an opportunity in the Pisan disaster, Florence and its Guelf allies struck, but after the fall of Ugolino, Pisan patriotism revived, and–short of men–in 1292 they secured a famous condottiere, Guido da Montefeltro, who trained the Pisan militia to use crossbows and recovered the city’s lost fortresses from both Lucca and Florence.
Suppose, per impossibile, we were to carry out an even more thoroughgoing plan of reform. You can fill in any impossible details and requirements that suits your fancy. Even if we were to gain the whole world, we would still be left with a population of some 300 million clueless lost souls, without any skill or knowledge that is not technical, with churches that are the enemy of Christ, with a commercial culture that is more morally degrading than heroin and methamphetamines.
Machiavelli’s fourth chapter is devoted, at least ostensibly, to answering the question: Why did the Persians not rebel, after the death of Alexander the Great? The republican Machiavelli has a reasonable answer, but one that should be chilling to any American who can think dispassionately about his own country.
Attentive reading has become a lost art like the production of stained class and the painting of frescoes. Part of careful reading is being careful not to draw conclusions before examining the evidence.
What the Good Men of Pisa and their Archbishop had in mind was a duomo beyond the dreams of Theoderic or Charlemagne
Among the many reasons why a regime would wish to eliminate all knowledge of antiquity and the insights ancient writers offer is the desire to shield the subject masses from anything that might make them uneasy. We might view it as a kindness on the part of the ruling class.
As a rational and classically trained writer, Machiavelli begins with definitions. He first distinguishes the two types of government as republics and principalities.
Artificial Intelligence is the operation of a machine programmed by dullwitted aliens posing as human beings.
The dates of Machiavelli’s life are significant: He was born in the year Lorenzo “the magnificent” succeeded his father as ruler of Florence and died in the year the Medici were again expelled and when the Emperor Charles V sacked Rome.
Anyone who does not own a copy of the work can easily get one online from many sources including gutenberg.org. It is a short book, which can be read in the matter of a few hours. We’ll take a few weeks.
