Book I, Chapter 1

I am going to try to post an initial outline of each chapter for ease of reference to the argument.  These are not meant in any way to reflect Machiavelli's intricate structure, which I don't think can be captured in outline form.  To mention only one difficulty, he frequently states things in a certain order and then proceeds to discuss them in an entirely different order.  Or drop certain topics altogether.  My outlines will follow the actual order as given, not the promised order.

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I.      All cities are built by

a.    Natives who build for security and who are moved to build either by

                                  i.    Themselves (Venice); or

                                 ii.    One among them (Athens under Theseus)

b.    or foreigners; these can be:

                                  i.    dependent on others; i.e., colonies--Example: Florence, which was built either by the soldiers of Sulla or by mountain men who came down into the plain: either way, it was not free and therefore unlikely to become great)

1.    Colonies are sent by:

a.    Republics (as were many Roman colonies)

b.    or a prince (e.g., Alexandria)

2.    Their purpose is to:

a.    Relieve their lands of inhabitants

b.    Defend conquered territory

c.     Built for the prince’s glory (again, Alexandria)

                                 ii.    Free cities (given first in the outline but actually discussed second)

1.    Reasons people leave ancestral place

a.    Disease

b.    Hunger

c.     War

2.    Origin of these cities

a.    Inhabit existing (i.e., conquered) cities (Moses)

b.    Build anew (Aeneas)

II.     Virtue of the “builder” can be seen in:

a.    Choice of site

                                  i.     Sterile

1.    People constrained to be industrious

2.    Less opportunity for discord

3.    Choice would be wiser IF

a.    men were content to live off their own

b.    Did not wish to dominate others

                                 ii.    Fertile—better choice since men can’t secure themselves without power

b.    Ordering of the laws

                                  i.    Need laws to impose the necessity that sterility would have imposed

                                 ii.    Examples: Egypt, Sultan, Mamelukes; Alexander and Deinocrates story

III.    Who built Rome?

a.    Those who say

                                  i.    Foreigners: Aeneas

                                 ii.    Natives: Romulus

b.    Doesn’t matter; either way it was free, not dependent on anyone

c.     Romulus, Numa and others imposed good laws conducive to freedom and eventual perfection

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Thee are several notable things here.
 
Here is the first instance of Machiavelli telling us not to marvel.  We are not to marvel at Rome's beginning.  Livy marvels but that's because Livy believes, or pretends to believe, or at least puts out there for those who want to believe, the divine aspects which Machiavelli simply ignores.  There is nothing marvelous about Rome—which is in a way Machiavelli's promise for this book.  He will explain it all.

Machiavelli asserts that the fundamental purpose of politics is security.  He will actually elaborate this more fully in Chapter 2, which is itself odd, because that is supposed to be a chapter on a specific type of regime (republics) whereas this one is on the origin of cities, but he begins here later in the order of nature than he does there.  Not sure why.  In any event, security, not any natural sociability nor the fulfillment of any teleology, is the fundamental purpose of politics. He later in the chapter cites hunger, disease and war, as the reason people flee their ancestral country.  Which may well be true, but nowhere does he describe politics as necessary to fulfilling of human nature or as the coming together of men in a positive joint effort to do together what cannot be done alone.  Politics appears to be all about the avoidance of evils.
 
Also, he goes straight to the friend-enemy distinction.  Mansfield notes (p. 28) that “he cannot go back to the first beginning before Rome’s when men were not divided into natives and foreigners.”  Well, why not?  Also, as noted above, in the very next chapter he DOES go back to such a point, as we shall see. 

Alvarez, in audio recordings of a lecture course I have, calls the friend-enemy distinction the “fundamental lie” of politics and the basis for Plato’s noble lie.  Nature does not divide men into nations.  As an aside, I am not quite sure what to make of this.  On a certain level it is doubtless true.  But on another level, the ties of race, ethnicity, kin, language, etc. can be extremely powerful—almost natural in their effects, you might say.  There are several places where Machiavelli acknowledges as much, at least tacitly, for instance in Prince 17, where he says that Hannibal’s cruelty was essential to holding together his diverse army. 

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The meaning of a “free” city is unusual here, in that free cities can live under princes.  The true meaning seems to be a city that is not dependent on “anyone”; that is, not a colony sent by an established power, but also—I believe we are led to surmise—not dependent on any kind of divine beginning.  Is this, incidentally, the reason why Machiavelli cannot go back to a time that pre-dates the friend-enemy distinction?  Because it points to a divine beginning?  As far as I know, the classical tradition does not have any myth in which there is a united humanity.  But the Bible famously does.  After the flood, but before the Covenant, men were united and spoke one language.  They tried to build the Tower of Babel and God scattered them and confused their speech (Genesis 11).  The Covenant is made in the very next chapter. 

I note as well that Moses is included in the builders of free cities, which implies that he did not in fact act with any warrant or assistance from God.  And Moses is said to be one who inhabited an existing city (i.e., he was not a builder?); the implication being, he was a thief and murderer.  This will be stated more bluntly in III 30 but the blasphemy begins early. 

He says that free cities are built when men abandon their ancestral country.  This implies that free cities are always built by foreigners.  However, he takes that back at the end when he says that whether one takes Romulus (a native) or Aeneas (a foreigner) as the founder of Rome, either way it was free.  So not only does the native-foreign distinction not matter, his implication that free cities are built by foreigners also turns out to be wrong.  So why does he make it? 

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Interesting, too, he uses the world “build” or a variant 21 times in this chapter but “found” or “founder” not even once even though he discusses several notable founders.  Now, as we shall see, in I 9 he will say that it might appear that he has gone on a while without discussing founders, at which point and beyond he will discuss them thoroughly in many chapters.  So perhaps he is saving the discussion of founders for that.  But the difficulty remains that he is still talking about founders in I 1, while avoiding the word.  Why?  To indicate that on some level this chapter is not about founding?  Then what is it about?  Now, as we shall also see, for Machiavelli “founder” turns out to be a rather ambiguous terms that means something like “ruling class.”  Founding in his new state must be continuous, with acts of renewal committed with frequency.  As we know from The Prince, founding not only reveals the character of society and the nature of politics (and of man), the act of founding and what it represents (essentially, cruelty well used) must present in all states all the time.  So perhaps the reason is that he wants to disconnect in the reader’s mind the link between founding and the first beginning.  Founding is always, in a way, a return to the beginnings but it is not always or even primarily to build anew, from scratch, ex nihilo, etc. 

Machiavelli here also lays the first foundation of a rather unconvincing argument that he will develop further in I 5 and 6 (and perhaps elsewhere), viz., that conquest is simply necessary.  He speaks of the benefits of choosing a sterile site in ways that make it sound very attractive: you have as it were a built-in generator of virtue.  But then he says that men are not content to live off their own and that they wish to master others.  OK, but this is a wish, right?  Not a necessity.  So it seems.  No, NM insists, “men cannot secure themselves without power.”  Well, OK.  He makes no attempt to demonstrate this beyond his appeal to men’s wishes but let’s stipulate it for the sake of argument.  Why does “power” require both domination over others and a fertile site?  It’s easy to see how a fertile site is conducive to power, and how power can be used to dominate others—but it can just as easily, in fact more easily, be used for defense. Not convincing—and I suspect not meant to be.  But then what’s the purpose? 

Here we have also the first, or at least the first glaring, example of NM undercutting his teaching with one of his own examples.  He recommends choosing the fertile site and then imposing that necessity that the sterile site would have imposed by itself through laws that require soldiers to exercise.  Interesting that he recommends such laws on narrow grounds for only a part of the population,  Anyway, he gives three examples, the last being the Mamelukes, only to add immediately that the Mamelukes were eliminated by the Turks (the central example).  So this is a mode that apparently works for some but not for others, or at least not every time.

Finally, note that whoever the founder of Rome is taken to be, it had a princely beginning, it was not like Venice or Florence (notably both modern examples) where people just came together.  Machiavelli does not give an ancient example of a people simply coming together without princely guidance.