Welcome back to the new Think Green on David Barr and with me as always my good friend Alex Priyoh. How are you Alex? Well David, how are you feeling? Last time I talked to you said you were curial.
Yeah, I'm feeling much better. And how are you feeling with the start of the semester? Today was the first day what are you teaching? Do cities in the Republican weren't class and then Aristotle and Immaculity to the founding in another class?
Are you using any translations in particular? We'll get to that. Yeah, yeah. And Greg McBrayer, how are you Greg?
Peachy, feeling good. Happy with you guys tonight from the World Headquarters and Icepeople. National Ohio. So who do we have?
We're talking about evil for today's episode. Who are the guests? Well, I'm very pleased to introduce to the folks at home. We have Nathan Tarkoff and Christopher Lynch.
Tarkoff is a professor of political theory, political philosophy, he studies political theory education and the family. He's at the University of Chicago. He's published Locke's Education for Liberty as well as Machiavelli's Disports is on Livy and also the legacy for so. He published numerous articles.
He's also numerous articles in obscure places. I have really irritated to know and the interlibrary loan trying to get PDFs of these things. I think you should email me, actually, somebody emailed me a bunch of his stuff. He's under ground under ground trading.
I won't name names, but he wrote a book on Machiavelli Christianity. I have all the PDFs if you need one, I can leave. There we go. He's also the director of the Leo Strauss Center at the University of Chicago.
Additionally, we have with us today, Christopher Lynch, Professor Emeritus at Carthage College. He's the translator and editor of the Machiavelli's part of war. He's just finished with the University of Chicago Press, a book on war in all of Machiavelli's writings. He's currently working on a full book-length treatment of Melville's Israel Potter.
I hope we can have him back to do that at some point. But tonight, we're so lucky. This is advanced. They're not yet on the market yet.
This is bootleg stuff we are working with right now. We are getting the privilege, the pleasure, the honor of getting to talk about Lynch and Tarkov's new book, The Complete Tales and Poems of Niccolo Machiavelli. We chose one of those stories, one of those tales. We're going tonight with Oxford Press.
Very good. Fourth coming. Do we know when? Gentlemen?
We have to hand it in December 2023, Chris, right? Yes. Yes. Yes.
So it'll be a long wait for readers. This is a very, very advanced, maybe between now and then we can do some more episodes. A little too advanced, to be honest. With some folks' appetites.
If you get tired, just listen to this episode on Reate. I will say I enjoyed the... Because I'm doing a little translate right now myself, so I leave notes for myself. So I wasn't used to see Chris's notes tonight and vice versa in the margin in the notes.
Hey, what do you think about this? Try this. In any event, gentlemen, before we jump into talking about Machiavelli, usually when we have folks on. And Chris, you are a meritist now.
And to our coffee as well. We'd like to hear from both of you about just your own intellectual biography. Maybe Chris first and Nathan, how did you get interested in political philosophy or what were your intellectual interests early on? And were there any significant mentors or teachers or friends who helped turn you to the study of these sort of serious things?
And evil things like Machiavelli. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I would have to blame Henry Yggara at St.
John's College in Atlas for sort of tricking me into political philosophy. I really had no idea that at the committee on social thought I would encounter what I encountered. I thought I was going to St. John's for big kids.
And there I found Alan Bloom and was in a couple of weeks of being there. I was considering whether Tierney is the best way of life. Our incest prohibition is really found in anything. Yes, no.
Okay. Sorry. Excuse me. And so I didn't intend to do this.
And then while there, Stumble Dummy's classes on Machiavelli by this gentleman named Nathan Tarkov and was sucked in further. So that's a broad to brushstroke. Thanks so much. And like Winston's, we haven't had that said gentleman right here, Nathan Tarkov.
How about yourself, sir? How did you get interested in political philosophy? Or some of your? I think I always was, as to say, in high school, I was both a political activist in the civil rights movement and the peace movement in the youth section of the socialist party and read a lot of things related to that.
But also in still in high school, I read Hobbes and Locke and was bored by the republic. And I read the Prince, which I thought was fun. So it was in a way natural or continuous to pursue that somewhat in college. But actually, I was a history major and doing early modern European history where Machiavelli fits into and had excellent teachers in history.
Brian Tierney did medieval political thought and helmet kernigsberger who did early modern. But there was also Alan Bloom when he was at Cornell, before he said Chris at Chicago, that was, as for many people, a somewhat overwhelming experience. And no doubt owing to his influence. I also read some Strauss then.
And somewhat accidentally went to Claremont. When I graduated, I had gotten a Fulbright to go to France. And my draft board said that if I took it, I would be considered delinquent or something like that, and subject to immediate drafting. And I didn't go to France.
By then I had turned down Harvard and New School, Penn State and Claremont in order to go to France. And Claremont was the one place that said, all right, you can have your fellowship back come anyway. I spent a year there with Strauss and Java and Diamond. And Mr.
Strauss very kindly warned me that he was going to leave and suggested that I do so also. And said I should try and get Harvard to readmit me and study with Mansfield. And I followed that advice, which is where I first seriously read Machiavelli. Wow.
Maybe that's a good transition at this point to David, maybe ask some questions about the project, but I'll just mention in passing. Maybe we should have you guys back to talk about Bloomton's point. I think an episode on Alan Bloom's teacher would be a great interest to our audience. But David, do you have any questions for the guys as we turn to the task?
Yeah, we were curious how the new project came about. I mean, is it simply that we had Machiavelli's leftovers and they were in need of good translation? Or I mean, are like the letters next? Because I know that that translation there is okay.
But how did you guys alight upon this idea? One amendment is called, as Chris said, the complete tales and poems. But we are including a selection of letters which how do we define it? They are literary.
They are either ones in which he talks about his literary efforts or in which he tells stories very similar to his some of his written literary work. And our translations will be better than those of Atkinson and Siese. But there's a very helpful and certainly their notes are extremely helpful. I think in the letters he even refers to what he is telling as a tale or a favela.
Favela. Does he ever say a novella? I don't remember. Yeah.
Sometimes the letter starts with a sonnet. And then he tells the daughter he's fallen along again. I think I've lost track of the question, David. How did you know?
Yeah, how you decided to go on and break? But I have a follow up. Just could you situate where his literary works clustered together in time? Or did they all fought?
I mean, do we have a date available or is it? We're talking about the trove of? Some of the dates are controversial. But basically he always was during his period of political activity in the government before he wrote the prints or the discourses or the Florentine histories.
He was already writing poems of various kinds. And he wrote some in his youth in the early 1490s too. I guess maybe this is the answer to the question I distracted us from. Though cut me off if this gets too long.
It's somewhat autobiographical. But you asked how we got to this project. Chris can give his own answer. Like most people who are interested in political theory, I was interested in the prints and the discourses.
And occasionally looking at the Florentine histories and the art of war. And I would teach the prints and the discourses. Sometimes I would include them. And I would include them.
And to give them some time at the end of the course to write their papers. And mainly for a kind of polemical purpose that some people say, the immoral teaching and the princes for princes. It's not for private life. Read the mandragula.
That's not so. And I think, I mean, to some extent it's just Chris's influence. But also starting to read the letters. At first I read the letters in the same bad way, looking for passages that help you understand something in the prints.
But then I had this and also reading some of the biographies. Suddenly I had this realization that Machiavelli was a person. He was a man who lived a life. He wasn't just the prints in the discourses.
He wasn't these books. And he was a person for whom poetry and love were very important. I'll just give two pieces of evidence and let Chris give his version. Because the project is what's his idea.
He writes a poem to Giuliano de Manicci, who was the defacto ruler of Florence by 1513. He writes a poem that at least claims to be written while he's in prison being tortured. Obviously he couldn't have written the poem while being tortured, which his arms suspended from the ceiling. But it starts by saying, you know, I have these ropes around my arms and horrible lights climbing up on the walls.
This is how they treat poets. He thinks of himself as a poet. And I give one other little bit of evidence. There's a letter to Francesco Guichedini near the end of Machiavelli's life in late 1525.
He signs it, Dickelomacuvelli, historical, comic-o, Tragico, historian, comedian, Tragidean. Historian, I guess, no, 17 histories. Maybe the life of Castero Chia Cándi. Comic-o, the place, Mandragala, Clixia.
Tragico, I mean, that's the mystery. Is that where the prints in the discourses fit in to his literary work? In one of his longer poems, the sarinata, the serenade, there is a tragedy of a lover who tries to, who's love is not is not requited by the woman he sees, love with. And so he hangs himself on her door frame.
And then she feels bad. That's tragic. But it's embedded in a comedy, because another lover is telling this story to the woman and gets her. So it's a tragedy embedded in a comedy.
So this is one thing that's just continues to perplex me. Why did he think of himself as a Tragidean, and which of his works exemplify it? But I mean, those are just two bits of many pieces of evidence. To him, it was very important that he was a poet, a playwright.
And I can't quite say a novelist, a writer of tales. And the other thing that one is overwhelmed with in the letters is that he's always falling in love. And sometimes the writers say, I'm giving up, I'm not going to study politics anymore. I'm just going to develop myself to love.
So these two aspects of our project, really changed my whole enriched and changed my view of him and left us with a question which I'm sure you'll ask us about. What is the relation between those sides of him and the one that we're more familiar with? I felt before we go any further, I think we should take a second and talk about our sponsor, the ancient language Institute. You ever had a party and somebody starts speaking Latin to you and you just have no idea what they're saying.
Actually, I was talking with Greg the other day, he probably doesn't want me to mention this, but I threw out a mutatus new tundas and he just looked at this blank looking his eyes. Remember that Greg? He doesn't want to talk he's blushing a little bit. Anyways, look, Greg's an accomplished translator of ancient Greek.
But if you went to the ancient language Institute, he would understand Latin as well as well as biblical Hebrew because they offer all of these languages. Now, a la, that's short for the ancient language Institute, dispenses with long vocalists and grammar charts. Instead, they get you reading and speaking on day one registration for the spring term is open until December 18th with classes starting in early January. Now, all their courses are live and online with flexible schedules.
Nothing ancient about that that's state of the art stuff, folks. And in addition, their curriculum is innovative and interactive and you'll learn that curriculum is the new to singular, nominative and accusative. Also, their readings are fun. They have a happiness guarantee, which means that they will not keep your wife from cheating on you.
But if you are not happy with the first class after the first class, they'll give you a full refund. Maybe it's just not for you. So if you're feeling dumb and you want to get your ancient language on, go to ancientlanguage.com. You know what, tell them the new thinkory sent you and now back to the show.
If that's not, you stole the transition right out of my mouth and maybe I'll throw this question. Chris from giving. Oh, no, no, you gave out for this to Chris because he has a really wonderful paper, love versus war and Machiavelli's literary works. But it turns out it's also love versus war in Machiavelli himself, right?
So maybe maybe you could say something about those two sides of Machiavelli and whether they're one and if so in one way. Yeah, sure. I guess I'll back a little bit though for getting to that and just say that I kind of came to these other works in kind of abstract way, I guess. I had Strauss comments on the fact that in the discourses in the prints, Machiavelli is very circumspect about the use of certain words and terms, especially the words soul.
But also, I'm very careful in his use of the afterlife and so on. And I just wondered, well, he does use those words in other works. What could one learn about these things that he's silent about or circumspect about in his comprehensive works? And that sort of drew me into them.
And I started to realize that each of these works really is sort of a world in itself. You really can't, well, I mean, you can, but it's unfortunate if you do read them through the lens of the prints or the discourses. It just completely flattens them out. And it's what people generally do.
It's not as though there's not anything there. I mean, yeah, you read them in droggling. You can see all sorts of lessons of the prints being applied in the realm of love. And that's interesting as far as it goes.
But what's really interesting is the fact that this is treating a realm and not getting around to answering out this question, this is treating a realm of existence that is sort of downplayed or pushed inside in the works that we're all familiar with. And that's the realm of love is how it plays out. You could think of it as the private realm, sort of the private as opposed to the public. But however you think of it, in Machiavelli's depiction, as Nathan was suggesting, at different points, when Machiavelli, four characters of his are in the throes of love.
They look at the things of politics and they say, you know, or it's terrible. It's awful, it's painful. It makes me unhappy. Love is what makes me happy.
This is what I want. This is what my life is for. And then vice versa. When you're in the realm of politics, you look at love, you're like, no, that's silly.
So then coming to Alex's question of, you know, how are the two related? And this sort of Nathan already put it, you know, I think in a good way. How are they related? Well, they're related in the lives of individual human beings, you know, and with Machiavelli in particular, it's the most interesting case where both of them aren't there.
And then the question is, you know, are these two parts of a soul? Are these two different parts of existence? And what what unites them? Is it the mind?
Machiavelli seems to talk that way at different points, that it's prunes, that sort of hovers between these two realms. But that's a story you want to follow in different ways. Reminds me of your comments on the Alpha-Guit art, right? Yeah.
Because I'm not saying well, but the devil who married or something like that. Yeah. Just talk a wife. Talk a wife.
I'm talking a little bit about it. It reminds me of a make love not war if you want both get married. But that's a good transition to the constrictio because one of the things you observe is that there's one saying of all the 34 things with which it ends and we'll give an overview of the work. One saying that he gets from Machiavelli is about a man who is a hell of saying by day will not be held mad by night or something to that effect.
One saying he gets from Machiavelli? Yeah, there's it has a source within Machiavelli himself. Oh, I see. The one who gets from himself.
Yeah. He puts it in the stuccio. He puts it in a letter. He's and the one who's come up with any other source of it.
Right, right, right. That's just a weird way to say it. The one that has its source in Machiavelli. Sorry, the constrictio is saying but the author's in Machiavelli's own voice elsewhere.
But it points to the fact that constrictio himself seems to combine them in a kind of oscillating faction, sort of shrewd and coming by day. So maybe we can jump into the constrictio's life and why does text, what's the structure and all of that? And who is constrictio? Well, let's get to the title.
What's the title? The life of the constrictio, Castricani of Luka. Lucha. Yeah.
And when do we suspect this was written? 1520 is where we're pretty sure about that because there are letters that are exchanged between Machiavelli and his friends and we get reactions from the friends to it. And we know he was on a trip to Luka at the time. So we started it as early as 1515, I think Black says, but somewhere between 1515 and 1520 where it's circulated.
Just about small, before you guys, I'm eagerly anticipating the overview of this text. But I'll just say that a couple years ago, I was supposed to take a group of students to Tuscany and also Florence. And I had to come up with a one credit class to be able to justify taking them there. And so I did a course on some of Machiavelli's short writings.
And I'm very glad to see that you guys are doing this translation because I read this an existing translation of the life of Castricio. And even not knowing Italian, I immediately realized this was a very, very bad translation. So you guys are doing a great service. And my students five years now will thank you when I can send it to him.
So very exciting. So yeah, tell us what's this work about. I mean, most people would never even heard of this work of Machiavelli's life of Castricia. Castricia.
Yeah. So Nathan, do you want to do it? I'll say something about it. John, right?
Okay. You can say it's something. Great. It's something that is what we now call historical fiction.
I mean, Chris can go into more detail. A lot of it is just totally made up, though. But away, the most interesting thing in it to me is his relation to the Guinegee family. The strange way he's this child found in a vineyard by a priest and his sister.
That's such an amazing miracle that he found that the family found a baby in a vineyard. I think that's it's fabulous. And they wrap him in swaddling clothes too. Right.
I mean, can you hold this round for some reason? It's completely made up by Machiavelli. These Guineges don't exist. They're not the Guineges.
Then Francesca Guinegee, a concertari sees this 13 year old boy, I think as it said, exercising and wrestling and racing and the piazza. And basically adopts him because the boy doesn't want to grow up to be a priest. He wants to grow up to be a soldier. And when Guinegee dies, he makes Cascruccio, who's now 18, I think, the guardian of his property and his 13 year old son.
And this gangster, who's in many ways very similar to Cesare Borgio murdering lots and lots of people, remains totally, totally faithful to the promise he makes to Guinegee. He never marries or has children of his own because that would distract him from his loyalty to Paolo or Paolo. So I find that the most interesting part of it, but there is a military political story that Chris can summarize. Can I, when you mentioned that?
So it's a novel or a novella. When you mentioned this historical fiction, I just heard a lot of echoes of a book that was near Guinegee, the American Irish to be a historical novel. But you want to say something about the war political side of it? I got obsessed with the family part.
Well, I mean, the two are related. The flip side of what Nathan mentioned, there's Cascruccio's loyalty to Paolo. He has Foster's son, but it goes the other way as well. Paolo is completely loyal to Cascruccio.
And he's essential to Cascruccio's success. So the story as a whole is framed at the beginning and by the question of fortune and prudence. But he basically says this is sort of a test of the power of fortune in its relationship to virtue or prudence at the beginning and then reminds us about the issue of fortune at the end. But then in between, as Nathan indicated, Cascruccio's off with this depiction of his sort of discovery and the garden of a priest by the priest's sister recently widowed, the raising of him, he began rejecting the priesthood and choosing the life of the Condotee area, the mercenary captain and being taken in by this fellow.
Meiji rises to prominence in Florence, in Luca. And not only is everyone in the family, but everyone in Luca loves him because he's so charming and he's so successful at the few military ventures that he goes into at that point. Things get more complicated as his career develops and the Guelph dibiline disputes that we're shooting through Italy, just dominating Italy at the time are very prominent here. There's a major gibiline leader who's himself in Condotee area, helps Cascruccio basically get a bunch of gibilines who have been exiled from Luca back into Luca.
That then allows Cascruccio to kind of dominate the Guelphs, kick out a bunch of people who were rivals to his role, then go on to gain much greater military victories. This guy who helped him is gibiline who would be showing who would have helped him take over Luca more or less. He becomes envious of Cascruccio. Cascruccio has to do him, which he does, and he goes from there to being taken in by the emperor as his representative in Italy.
This ends up pitting him very strongly against Florence, the big Guelph power in Italy. Meiji then invents this great showdown between Luca and Florence and really all the gibilines in Italy against all the Guelphs in Italy. It's a great victory of the gibilines and Cascruccio over Florence and the emperor's representative, the people of representatives throughout Italy. He's on the verge of not only being Prince of Tuscany, but really potentially Prince of Italy, because in this battle he has in effect wiped out the Guelphs.
Catch the cold and dies then. That's how it ends. Because he doesn't cover his head, right? Yeah.
He has to cut them not to do. He's the custom to himself to hardships. He never covers his head. Cold wind comes off the arnold.
He has a deathbed, talked to Pogolo with the only speech in the whole work. And it seems to blame himself and we should look into that seeming, seems to blame himself for having an empire building. Because now Pogolo was really made for peace, not for war. He wasn't going to be able to hold off the onslaught of the reaction to his attempt at an empire.
That's great. I want to circle back to the more important things you said, a small detail. I took him not wearing something I said and catching cold as a kind of comic stand-in for the ancient warriors who didn't wear helmets in battle and died nobly. He made it through the battle.
He's successful but he catches a cold and dies. I sort of, I don't know, it seemed like a comic stand in for a sort of heroic type. In a way. It vaguely echoes Cesar Eipard's real land, not the one.
Is that right? It doesn't be crossing a river in Spain and gets wet and sick and died. Yeah. I think one of the one of the two parks heroes, maybe it's one of the sea bins, epiminondas or pelopidas, one of those guys meets an end like this to, I mean, I'll take it.
We will say more about fortune and beer too. But certainly, the biggest threat of fortune is death. You never know when you're going to die and this could interrupt your projects. We both plan to stay alive through December of 2023 so we can give Oxford this book.
But you never know. And he makes that so clear in the Cesar Eipard's case in the prince. Whatever else fortune is, it is the unpredictability of death. Well, hopefully you guys remember where your hats in those cold Chicago winters between now and December 2023.
And Kenosha or whatever it is. Yeah. So I think that does bring us kind of right back to the question of fortune and virtue, right? Because you mentioned his regrets, his kind of deathbed regrets about feeling to, you know, he basically adopts a Golo from his father, right?
Or it takes the place of his father. Much as a Golo's father took the place of Castruccio's father, right? The priest. And there's, I think, a, there's a subtle parallel there in which he realizes he's failed to prepare him and perhaps he jumped the gun and established an empire and not, you know, making Luca.
And then is it Pisa at the second place? Yeah. More friendly to him so that everything falls except from Golo takes over. And the work also starts with this claim.
So it's very strange. He claims everything comes from fortune. And then he goes on to claim that Castruccio had exceptional virtue. And not everything goes from fortune.
So one of the running themes seems to be, to what extent his Castruccio possesses virtue, to what extent he's subject to fortune. Is it just the matter of his head covering or is it his upbringing that makes him subject to fortune? It's a difficult question. I'm maybe you guys could just spell that out a bit.
Yeah. The claim at the beginning of the, I'm going to read some of it because it's so perverse and twisted. The great argument is argument to the first paragraph. That the greater part of those who have done great things in this world have had their beginning and birth low and obscure or have been afflicted by fortune beyond every measure.
For all of them have been either exposed to wild beasts or had some wild father that being ashamed of him, they have made themselves sons of Joe or some other guy. Who these may be since they are very well known to everyone would be a thing tiresome to repeat and a little acceptable to whoever may read it. So I'll admit it. Now clearly, I think this is an illusion to Moses in the basket.
Jesus is a remarkable conception. Alexander's mother being impregnated by Zeus, etc. You can just throw one thing out there. I was reading Catherine Zuckert's chapter in her Machiavelli book on this and she points out there was another life of Kistrutia written before Machiavelli that cleans that he was a virgin birth, right?
That his mother, the sister here, right? Actually did give birth to her. It was just a dream of a God coming to her. So there's definitely the undertones of Jesus there.
Right. And if you believe that, I can sell you a bridge, right? All right. So then he says though that I do believe, your cradle, that this arises because Fortuna wanting to show to the world that she and not prudence who makes men great begins to show her own forces at a time when prudence cannot have any part in it.
Instead, everything can be known to be from her. Well, this just makes no sense whatsoever. You would think that if great men all start from some low upstew or birds, that shows fortune plays a role. It's not that they're locked in being born in the Son of a King.
It's there too and prudence that did it. That's a very good point. And I think that's what he's really saying that, I mean, why is it that all the great men were exposed? I mean, you can add more cases.
Actually, you can add all the cases in chapter six of the Prince, Rombius, who was the leader of some bandit gang and claimed to be the grandson of the King of Elba, a sight Herodotus, a Cyrus, who was some peasant boy who claimed to be the grandson of the King, C.C.S., who knows who he was. They're all like and Moses. Do you think that Machiavelli is saying that, I mean, these stories, so in chapter two of the Prince, when he said something along the lines of, let me treat this chapter in short, this chapter in short, because you can't actually affect your paternity or whatever. You can't help but to have been a predatory prince.
It's the lesson here that you can actually, and is that what's, that these exposure stories are obviously there for, events that are fabricated and that these great men are sort of retroactively giving themselves even more fabulous or fantastic stories. I think this is a critique of hereditary rule, which is, I guess, most explicit in book one, chapter 19, 20 of the print of the discourses. Herese tends to be lazy. You know, they're born with what do we say, the spoon in their mouth, the silver spoon in their mouth.
They didn't have to work hard to be where they were. They were born. Alex, were you. Sorry, Alex is one of the students in his mouth.
Not like me and Barr. We're real men of the people. See, okay. Whereas these people, these nobodies, these peasants, sons, and orphans, and what do you call it?
Children who are abandoned. They work hard. They know they need beer too. So in a way, it seems to be the opening paragraph is just deliberately misleading.
This is really an argument for the importance of beer too. Since your birth is in a way a matter of fortune, but what looks like good fortune is bad fortune and what looks like bad fortune can be good fortune with the right beer too, except for this death problem where fortune has the last word. Yeah. And the death scene is a very important one to scrutinize for the whole theme of fortune, because it looks, if you just sort of follow the drift, it looks as though she is having deep regrets and having this realization, oh my goodness, I never should have started on this empire building scheme.
If I had understood fortune, I just wouldn't have done it. But when you really look at the practical application of his realization and the wording of what he really says, he says that if I had known that fortune was going to cut me off halfway through my plans, then I wouldn't have done this, right? Which practically speaking means if I had known the hour of my death in advance, I wouldn't have done it. But one can know one's hour of death in advance.
So practically it really isn't and can't be a repudiation of what he had done. It's a contrafactual that can't be tested. So again, circles back around too. Now it really is his virtue.
He was on the verge of accomplishing everything and he clocked cold and died. I mean, if he had not got cold, he was going to be Prince of Tuscany. And there's a material clause for his death and it was unforeseeable and he was on the verge of victory when it happened. You could argue that many of his political and military successes were favored by fortune because his opponents, both his domestic political opponents and his foreign military opponents, make mistakes fall into his traps.
Yeah. That way is just to say he's more prudent and virtuous than they are. The most important good fortune is to have the good luck of having enemies who make mistakes. Yeah.
Now there is to kind of argue against what's both Nathan and I are arguing for and at the same time to plug in another work in this translation of ours. There are three long poems. They're kind of about the length of a canto in Dante. They refer to as the two sets.
One is on ambition, one is on ingratitude, and one is on fortune. And in the one unfortunate, he does talk as though fortune is in a way responsible for the rise of people because he throws up obstacles and these obstacles are then, you know, they have to be overcome and he in a way while trying to trip people up provides them if they have the virtue, the latter, you know, that they climb to greatness on. So, you know, it's the he takes the personification of fortune that everyone's familiar with from the prince and a little bit in the discourses and turns it into a long elaborate poem with a kind of cosmology attached to it. Yeah.
So there it is even more so about whole nations than about individuals. And in a way, what we see in a small scale with Castruggio, overextended empire, making too many enemies, etc., is in a way the fortune story about nations. The longest one, of course, is the story of Rome in the discourses where Rome too, overextended, conquered too many free people, and therefore ends up losing its own virtue and its own freedom. So there's that sort of fortune plays a role in that success leads to failure too, which in a way is more complicated in Castruggio's case, because the death is probably again.
But in a way, it's typical that a very successful Alexander Cyrus, someone who's very successful, creates an empire, but he doesn't have a successor who will be able to maintain it and it falls apart after his death. Not really, well, I'll leave it at that. I think Nathan and I sort of disagree on this too, because I think that he needs to have a non-great successor with him. He needs a lieutenant.
He doesn't need a rival. So he knew all along that Bogolo is not up for empire building. He was going to be the maintainer. That was the idea.
Have Bogolo get the empire, set it up, and then let him be the new one to to Castruggio's rawness. So maybe this is a good way to transition to the next topic we have is a religion. It's just the way you've both described it. The book ends with a lament, right?
Oh, if only had, and which suggests maybe a kind of hopefulness on Castruggio's part that he could have avoided death and evaded this role of fortune. It's incredible that he's going into battle and he's not thinking that in a way, that he could die. So I just wondered to what, maybe just as a way into the question of religion, I think Greg has some questions here. Is that closing lament?
Does it evince any hopefulness on his part? That maybe he had more time or he believed he had more time than it was reasonable to expect? I don't think that last thing is quite so I think what you're angling at in general, yes, that there's this, you know, the presence of Christians within him and desires, and in particular faith, hope and love. These three words, suffuse the thing that Nathan and I mentioned at the beginning, and that's the relationship between Castruggio and Pagolo.
It's out of his faith to Pagolo's father that he has so much love for Pagolo and that he has hopes for the success of his empire and his succession by Pagolo. So that there is a kind of secularized Christianity that's being represented, I think, it's never said like that. It's just those words are used in proximity to one of Alex's. There's one point where I think it's explicitly said, right?
It doesn't get Stu-Chio saying that God favors the strong. Yeah, pretty close. It puts it not in terms of, it's not like how Machiavelli puts it, we need to change your mode with fortune. It's put in theological terms.
Yeah, that God uses the strong to punish the weak or to push put down the weak. And I go slogan and see where it's on his left. So basically whatever happens is God's will and I will and that's not good. We should make t-shirts with that on it just to find Machiavelli.
It's what they're out and about. It's very, I mean, that almost sounds like I am what I am though, right? I mean, it sounds almost very much like the Hebrew kind of what's got, I mean, obviously identical, but not I am what I am, but any of that stuff. No, it's pretty close to me, it's close to the sort of mysterious version of it too, because it's I am what I am and I will be what I'll be.
So yeah, I think it is meant to echo that. But all that said, I mean, it's a very weird world that Machiavelli has constructed and he's chosen a time when the pope is not in Italy, right? He's in Avignon. And he's one moment where it looks like the pope might come back and Kastru-Chio is rushes to Rome and fixes things and the pope doesn't need to come back.
But it's amazing how little religion plays a role. The wealth and gambling division, which is born of Christianity and allegiance to the pope or the emperor, that's pervasive. But the cause of that Christianity, anyone having any belief in a god or harboring any sort of religious hopes, specifically religious. When I answered Alex before, there's a secularized version of these things, but I'm actually religious person.
They're just the only one after the father. He's a father figure. Set to the side, boom, that's good. There's not another hint of religion as a force in anyone's life, whereas, you know, in the prince, there's, you know, Chasariborja's the thing that gets him is that he's hoping for forgiveness from the pope.
There's nothing like that in the district. There's no that I can think of anyhow. So it's weird that he constructs this sort of non-religious world, which is nonetheless pervaded by the religious, the political results of the religion of the day. And that's what that earlier, the sort of psychic results, the Christian passions.
So again, at the very beginning, the way the most remarkable thing in it is his face and love for the religion that he's so grateful that he's so grateful that he's really expected him to, you know, when you hear that he's a guardian of this boy, you see, he's a kind of murderous gangster. You say, oh, the poor boy, what's gonna happen to him? But no. And the victory of the givolines over the glows.
I mean, it is what we call it down, alternative history. You know, this is our war on the Civil War. It's just the givolines that defeated the glows. And just for Florence in particular, when the givolines are permanently exiled, and the city is totally wealth.
And remains, it's never part of Castruggio's empire. Florence is always the enemy. That it's a very different history, he's imagining in which the givolines were. That's fascinating.
That's not exactly religion, but it's certainly would mean diminution in the folks political pop. I guess we had this in the run show because this is something that Alex and I texted a lot about and with David too, they were making fun of me because I this is like catnip for me all these subtle illusions to things. I think you're right, Chris. I didn't notice the absence of sort of overt religious themes in this text because I just focused then I was laser focused on these subtle illusions.
Nathan already mentioned the one at the beginning of the birth. I mean, the way he's called Madonna couldn't be any more clear. So for me, like the book or I guess what everyone call this, this tale begins and ends with a very, to me, a very clear religious kind of, I don't know, odor, let's say that's a Machiavellian term. And so I get strange at this.
And so the beginning is there. And in the end, I was struck by, it says that he died when he was 44, like Philip and Scipio, but then between them is Alexander who died at age 33. So again, at least for me at the very beginning and end, I saw a clear illusions to Jesus again. I don't know where to go from that point there or that observation.
But even that, the death is sort of weird. And I think your footnote says that he didn't actually die 44. I'll use 48. Yeah.
And the other day, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm also 43.
So that sort of made me afraid for a moment, but then I realized they lived a little longer since good. So yeah. What else is there anything else you want to say about? I was most interested in like, like Nathan, I wasn't, I tried to follow the political machinations, but I was much more interested in Kestrichio's upbringing.
And then this death scene, I feel like we kind of exhausted. But is there anything central to his how he was raised? He had a sort of priestly education, I guess it didn't take. And then anything else related there?
And one small question, by the way, isn't his name kind of a joke? I feel like I read this in one of the versions I read before. No, okay, Chris is kind of not in guess enough. No, it's just yeah.
I mean, because there's a so Kestrichio, Kastrichlani of Luca, there's a Kestration is being- And he doesn't have any kids. I mean, he doesn't have any kids. So it's sort of- I think he- No legitimate kid. Right.
We don't know what he's doing at night when he's when he's, you know, being mad by night. Oh, after hours. So yeah. But, you know, he has no kids that we know.
He is a kind of this goes back to, you know, what you're, I think, the beginning of Greg, to that early choice that he made, to not be a priest. And even the priestly father figure knows that it's in his nature. He just as I see that his nature has bent on war and he needs to do this. There's no point in trying to sort it.
But it's a it's an all-consuming, you know, I'll use the word vocation. This is Condotee Ari thing, as he presents, if he really becomes a kind of priest of war, right? Because he does not marry, he does not have kids. He devotes himself to this, this practice.
And that makes that opposition between the two, you know, throw going. These are two mutually exclusive and all-comprehensive ways of life. And he chooses one and then you get to see it go all the way, you know, to the end. And the gangster character, I mean, he devotes himself to this gangster character, right?
And he for sakes everything for him. Well, yeah, to learn from him at any rate. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. And he even makes professions of almost like he's proud of his eat, right? And he's open about it in the way that a person might be with their faith. Whereas, right, if you read, if you read, you know, I was at chapter 18 of the Prince on, on, on keeping faith, Machiavelli's, you shouldn't go around doing this, right?
He should be, you know, have the appearance of morality, but because Stu Tio doesn't care for any of that, which I think goes to this sort of commitment he has to this life as a sort of overtness of it in a way that I'm pretty smart. But I'm not quite sure what you mean, like in particular, he does, I mean, it is true. He's unvarnished in his sort of Machiavellianism in his actions. So I follow you there.
But I mean, he is, he is, you know, it's, it's said, I don't know, I guess as I'm speaking, I'm speaking, I'm coming around to your point. It said, it said at the end that he is, you know, always just and good to his friends. So there's a friend's enemy, you know, kind of a lemecous ethic that he is that he would hear to. Now, it's true though that he betrays multiple people.
It wasn't my friend. It was a new enemy. Right. Right.
Right. That's one of the sayings that, so he says, right, just kill this person that helped you out so much. That's a new friend. That's not an old friend.
That's a new enemy. That's like, so, but anyway, yeah, but I don't know if he's quite, I guess what I'm talking about Alex's expression that he's, you know, insulting his evilness. I'm not quite sure I see that. Are you thinking of the sayings or?
I'm thinking of one in particular that really struck me and maybe this is a good, this was sort of the next thing we want to talk about was the 14th where he said, asked how Caesar died. He said, may God be like him. He's Socrates. Yeah.
Yeah. And it struck me with one that's an interesting substitution, obviously, but to just take it on its face, it seems, you know, like that's his model that he has this dream to establish an empire. Yeah. I see.
He even died just by his friends, by his friends. Yeah. He killed by his friends. Yeah.
Martyrd for the sake of a kind of imperial ambition. Yeah. Any idea why he changes that to Caesar from Socrates there? I mean, like, well, gosh, there's just a grimy Socrates died for his friends instead of being killed by his friends.
Yeah. I mean, he's surrounded by his, if you think of Socrates' death, surrounded by his or his pratic friends dying at the, you know, the hands or at the indictment of the demos of the democracy, whereas Caesar, you know, exalted by the people and killed by his aristocratic friends. Yeah. So the context of each is, you know, really sort of flipped when you think of the, of the people versus the aristocracy.
But it's, but also, I mean, I think it's, it's, you know, we're meant to think in these substitutions of what the original was. And I think it does point to reminds us of the fact that this, this is these things are the single biggest presence, explicit presence of philosophy. Probably I shouldn't say explicit because philosophy is only made explicit a couple times, but the single biggest presence of a book of philosophy in Machiavelli's writings, right? I mean, it takes all of these things from the Agnes.
One from Dante and the one from Machiavelli and to the green, the green. Yeah. But then that also makes you wonder, well, so should we think that since we have all these philosophers and then we have Dante and Machiavelli and admittedly to green, I wouldn't suggest as a philosopher, but does that mean that Machiavelli is sort of because he's put his words into the mouth of Kastricho just like he put all these other philosophers words into his mouth? Does that mean he is considering himself a philosopher like the other philosophers and really trying to get us to think of him?
He and Machiavelli has a philosopher and I'd say yes, that's what's going on. Strauss, of course, in the Lotsa Machiavelli emphasizes that it's Aristotle in the middle surrounded by the atheist, hedonist, whether the atheist, Mayan and the hedonist, Aristotle, that this is somehow the core of Machiavelli's thought. So it's not just that this is philosophy, but that it is the particular kinds of philosophy that he's given the emphasis to atheists and hedonists. We know now, I assume Strauss and to Machiavelli has a whole whole manious, early manuscript of Lucretius, and in which this is shown in my Colleague Aedip Palmer's book of all the readers of Lucretius of the time, he's the one who emphasizes the atheism that he sees in the book.
And then which is the saying where he talks about someone who professed philosophy. Yeah, this is one of the things that's remarkable about the saying, it's not always him having the witty saying. Some are him having heard. He just Machiavelli distinguishes between the I'll try and find the passage real quick.
There are four instances in which he hears. Some are things that he sharply said and others are things that he patiently heard, but my problem is I don't actually see any of them that he patiently heard. I mean, he heard them, but I didn't see any that he patiently because his, you know, anyway, there's a guy who kisses his feet, right, and says you have ears in your feet. And he's, the professor of philosophy does get the last word.
Castruccio says to him, you're like dogs who go around to whoever's able to feed them. And professor of philosophy says rather we are like doctors who go to the houses of those who have the greatest need of us. That's ended in the Dante one number 33 is also one that he hears. Right.
Is that is that one of the ones I didn't tag all of them? Is that one of the ones from Deogenes? That struck me as very interesting because Deogenes was a cynic, right? And cynics were literally where the root comes from dog, right?
And so does Castruccio by the way, that's the way he's getting. So is he saying he's like a castrated dog? Like a cast? Yes.
I've no idea what that would mean, but it struck me that there might be that kind of plague going on here. That's what I meant to be getting out with the priestly side of things. Right. So, so that he doesn't have virtue fully, actually.
In fact, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, yeah, I mean, I can't make a drive with the saying that he's, you know, doing wild stuff at night. Right.
But I missed that wild stuff at night. Yeah. That's the number 15. Is that right?
Yeah. Yeah. In a way that is a kind of answer to our question that came up at the very beginning. What is the relation for him between eros and politics?
You can, if you're, you know, practice politics in the day, and eros at night and nobody's going to say you're crazy. And so different from, you know, the typical advice he gives say to princes explicitly in the prince, leave their women and children alone. Don't do that. It'll get you in trouble.
And implicitly in the discourses when he talks about how the Rapes of the creature led to the overthrow of the monarchy, the rape of Virginia led to the overthrow of the December, the rape of Hausenius led to the assassination of Philip of Macedon. And you know, letters under the pillows of lovers leading to his, you know, conspiracies being uncovered. And so it's always put in a negative light. Right.
So you wouldn't expect the moral to be, you know, if you're having fun at night, nobody's got objects as long as you were prudent and day. So, you know, presumably one could make an exception for not for rape and Paul. And this thing, by the way, is that Machiavelli is using, you know, he's quoting himself from this letter comes from a series of letters that we don't have time to recount, but that we are going to be translating that our it's just a speed factor series of letters where Machiavelli has a straight friend and a gay friend. And the two of them are sort of criticizing each other for their sexual inclinations.
And Machiavelli is, you know, says to both of them, you know, stop with your sort of sexual moralism and, you know, sort of be like me and explains to them, you know, you have to realize, and then he gives this quotation, or he says this, which now becomes the quotation and estrucio. So, but the series of letters are really, they're a masterwork in themselves between him and Batori. I'll speak in one more thing here as I think we're winding up, but I used to feel that people who wrote biographer, the more recent biographers of Machiavelli, who are so concerned to show his homosexual activities, I thought this was just some silly fashion. But the series of letters that that Chris is referring to, especially that one where with the two friends, or Machiavelli takes his bisexuality in a way as a symbol of his moral stance.
I don't condemn our gay friend for doing it with boys. I don't condemn our straight friend for doing it with hoars. And he says, if you were to listen to them, he says to Batori, and then I'd come to your house and say, what kind of fucking house is it? Excuse my Italian concept.
Oh my goodness, Machiavelli was nasty. There's no voice. There's no girls. Well, what's going on here?
And there are references in his letters to his patronizing posts. You'll reachio, curly, male, and loricia, curly, female, he goes to professionals, as well as falling in love with younger women. And I believe curly, female, got him into some legal problems. So we don't need to go into that.
There's some letters to that effect. I don't know. I have a question before we go to the lightning room. How do you guys say a plea for you if you know the tale of the tapes, so to speak, of his letters, how are these things preserved?
I just get curious. One thing we have, we may have seemed to markedly omit it in the preceding minute. He seems to have been basically a good husband and father and grandfather, because it's his grandson who preserves all this stuff. Okay.
Yeah. Thank you. Wow. It's interesting.
I know I do. I know I do. I know I do. I mean, I don't know.
I think most people think about it. They found out that grandfather had letters like these. They burned them. But they're, I mean, they're remarkable.
I mean, what a what a interlocutor to have, right? And pistolary exchange with a guy like that. I mean, they're they're so subtle and brilliant and witty. I mean, I could just see if you get a letter with his name, I'll be like, okay, this is going to be great.
You know, Lord knows what's inside this letter. Yeah, they've reserved our text messages. I'm sure David just writes me limericks and his letters to me. No poems.
Yeah. Yeah. I'll switch from email to text. So you guys just follow totally ephemeral.
Yeah. So Greg, well, what's the final part? You're up. Okay, we'll do we'll go to the lightning round then.
So just so you guys know, we have some questions, they're meant to be quick. You guys give us your answers. We'll do Christopher and then Nathan. And if at the end, you guys, you can pass by the way, obviously.
So just quick quick quick quick. All right. So Christopher, who is your favorite philosopher? Oh, Xenophon.
Oh, nice. Nathan. Yeah, I'm just saying it because of you, Greg, you were five people here on the new thing. By my book, the shorter writings you guys didn't see this before we started recording Nathan, talk off, held up a copy of the short writing.
They've only got now go by it. All right. Fantastic. All right.
What's your favorite work of philosophy? Favorite book? This is bad. Education of Cyrus.
Nathan. Oh my God. This is fantastic. I didn't I didn't plan this.
All right. We should at this point, I think Nathan has a special education of Cyrus projects. Oh, right. I will advertise it.
Okay. For reasons I cannot really reconstruct, but which somehow are connected to my growing interest in Machiavelli's literary work that Chris Foster and my sense of him as doing both these political writings and these poetic writings, I've written a 200,000 word novel based on the education of Cyrus. And all I need now is an agent or a publisher. Question two in Lightning Round.