Deinocrates

Here is the meaning of the Deinocrates story in I 1, insofar as I understand it.

To recap: In that chapter, NM gives seven reasons why cities are built, the fourth (and central) being that they are built by a prince, not for himself to inhabit, but for his own glory. This of course echoes the reason that the prophet Isaiah gives for God's creating the world (a phrase that occurs frequently in the Bible). We must keep in mind that Machiavelli considers himself a kind of prince, and a kind of builder as well, one who builds in part for his own glory (but mostly "for the common benefit of everyone"; I proem).

The example of a prince building for his glory is Alexander's building of Alexandria. Then NM repeats the following story from Vitruvius. Alexander wanted to build a new city for his glory. His architect, Deinocrates, suggested building the city into the side of a mountain where it could take human form, which would be something rare and marvelous and worthy of his (whose?) greatness. Alexander then asked what the people would live on and Deinocrates replied that he had not thought of it. Alexander laughed and instead built the city in the plain where the fatness of the country and the convenience to the Nile and sea would make the people willingly stay because of its obvious advantages.

Deinocrates’ city in human form is Plato’s “city in speech” in the Republic, which is “the soul writ large,” i.e., the city in human form. That is, not physical human form, as Deinocrates’ proposed city in the mountainside would have been, but the city as a representation of the three parts of the soul: reasoning (guardians), spirited (auxiliaries) and appetitive (the producers or the people), with reason ruling. Deinocrates builds on high but builds too high: the people will have nothing to live on. This reminds us of Plato’s “city of pigs” (or “sows” in the Bloom translation) in which only the barest physical needs of the people are met, but which Socrates calls “the true city,” which is part means the city not in need of untruth: the noble lie comes after the introduction of greater wealth. The people having nothing to live on represents classical austerity, the recommendation of poverty over luxury.

Alexander is Machiavelli, the wise builder (as opposed to architect) who laughs at classical foolishness. To build in the plain means to build on “low but solid ground” (Churchill). It means to give up pretense and build for security, plenty, and necessity, for human needs rather than in accord with the human form. It is to satisfy, in other words, primarily the appetitive part of the soul, not perhaps to the exclusion of the others but certainly in preference to the others.

Note also that the people in Alexandria will “stay willingly” because of that city’s advantages, whereas in the Republic they have to be lied to. In Machiavelli’s scheme, the people can recognize utility and make rational calculations as to their own advantage. In the classical scheme, the people must be guided at all times. That’s because the goal is the perfect rule of reason, or the city in human form, which means that the highest part should rule. We are to abandon this conception and come down from on high.

In addition, this would seem to be connected to the founding of Florence, whose inhabitants came down out of the mountains above Fiesole to live in the plain “during the long peace that was born in the world under Octavian.”  But the nature of the connection is not yet evident to me.