Discourses on Livy

The Discourses argues that a healthy republic is characterized by social friction and conflict rather than rigid stability, and that Rome's greatness came from institutionalizing the clash between the people and the nobles. The Prince examines how an absolute ruler acquires and maintains power; the Discourses examines the rules that enable a self-governing state to retain its freedom. John Morley characterized the relationship clearly: 'In the Prince he lays down the conditions on which an absolute ruler... may maintain that power... while in the Discourses he examines the rules that enable a self-governing state to retain its freedom' . The cardinal precepts are the same, but the problems differ.

Machiavelli argues that the conflicts between Rome's plebeians and patricians — the 'tumults' that many historians condemned — actually produced the laws and institutions that safeguarded Roman liberty. He identifies 'two diverse humors' in every republic: the desire of the great to dominate and the desire of the people not to be dominated. Rather than suppressing this tension, the Roman constitution channeled it productively through institutions like the tribunate. This view was revolutionary: where Cicero and Polybius praised harmony and consensus, Machiavelli located republican vitality in managed disagreement.

The Discourses reveals Machiavelli's fundamental preference for a republican state, a fact obscured by the fame of The Prince's absolutist advice. In contrast to the defense of monarchy in The Prince, the Discourses proposes the republic as the ideal political system because a well-organized republic allows both the great and the common people to participate, containing the usual political conflicts between them. The republic must possess institutions capable of channeling this participation — something monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, or democracy cannot achieve given their instability. This has generated intense debate about the coherence of Machiavelli's thought.

Machiavelli chose Livy's history of Rome as his textual interlocutor because it provided abundant material on the early Roman republic, which he regarded as the exemplary state by which all others, ancient and modern, should be assessed. But he does not approach Livy with mere reverence: he feels free to contradict him and to offer advice on how Rome could have improved upon its achievements. As one scholar notes, Machiavelli 'demands that the admirers of antiquity be consistent and imitate antiquity not only in subordinate matters but in the most important matters as well' . Livy is his Bible, and the Romans his chosen people.

The Discourses were published posthumously with papal privilege in 1531. Like The Prince, Machiavelli's republican theories were considered dangerous in an age of increasing political absolutism, and his works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. The Discourses was long neglected relative to The Prince, but modern scholarship has increasingly recognized it as essential to understanding Machiavelli. Scholars now debate whether the two works are contradictory or complementary — one view holds that they represent two complementary political contexts: personal leadership during crises, and law-based governance under stable conditions.

A common misreading treats the Discourses as a straightforward celebration of republicanism and popular government, opposed to the cynical realism of The Prince. In fact, Machiavelli is deeply pessimistic about human nature in both works: 'it is necessary to whoever disposes a republic to presuppose that all men are bad, and that they always have to use the malignity of their spirit whenever they have a free opportunity for it.' He claims all three classical forms of government — monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy — are 'pestiferous.' His republicanism is institutional, not optimistic: good orders, not good men, make good fortune.