Imperial Republic?

This chapter addresses Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, in which he depicts an expansionist Roman republic as being more worthy of imitation than any other republic. To make his case and fill out his depiction, Machiavelli, particularly in the prominent opening chapters of the Discourses' first and second books, puts forth a version of republican Rome as dedicated to military expansionism. This imperial aspect of the Discourses on Livy is so prominent that today Machiavelli is generally regarded as having wholeheartedly advocated republican imperial expansionism grounded in a “fundamentalist” understanding of human nature as essentially and fixedly rapacious, suspicious, and ambitious. The chapter argues that Machiavelli's Discourses promotes Rome, to be sure, but also that it is at least as concerned with the problems of republican empire as with its promotion. For even as he celebrates Rome's ability to manage the passions and opinions of people, friends and enemies, Machiavelli is deeply critical of Rome's republican empire.