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Often appears with: forms of government · faction, party, and civil strife · tyranny and despotism · self-government · restraints on rulers · civil war and rebellion · civil principality · causes of tyranny in republics · appius’s political strategy · anarchy
Usually: argument (1) · commentary or gloss (1) · ambition and its cost (1) · crisis of belief (1) · detachment (1) · skepticism (1)
“For when they cannot agree to pass some measure favourable to freedom, one faction or the other sets itself to support some one man, and a tyranny at once springs up.” Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius · insight
Machiavelli defines a civil principality when a leading citizen becomes prince by civic favor, explaining outcomes from conflict between people and nobles: principality, self-government, or anarchy.
CONCERNING A CIVIL PRINCIPALITY But coming to the other point—where a leading citizen becomes the prince of his country, not by wickedness or any intolerable violence, but by the favour of his fellow citizens—this may be called a civil principality: nor is genius or fortune altogether necessary to attain to it, but rather a happy shrewdness. I say then that such a principality is obtained either by the favour of the…
Machiavelli generalizes: creating tyranny in Rome arose from the same causes as tyrannies elsewhere—people’s excessive love of liberty and nobles’ eager desire to govern. He argues the commons and Appius both support the decemvirs for opposed ends, but if a faction backs one man to attack hated rivals, that man inevitably becomes tyrant; Appius fails by siding with nobles rather than maintaining durable support.
themselves to the Sacred Hill, and there remained until the decemvirs laid down their office; when tribunes and consuls being once more appointed, Rome was restored to her ancient freedom. In these events we note, first of all, that the pernicious step of creating this tyranny in Rome was due to the same causes which commonly give rise to tyrannies in cities; namely, the excessive love of the people for liberty, and…