Alexander's Initial Appearance in The Prince with His Satraps and Successors

Machiavelli devotes a chapter to an explicit consideration of Alexander the Great, his manner of rule, and his successors. Alexander's achievement, his analysis there suggests, is that the Greek was able to topple Darius III and to assume for himself the type of extreme obedience that the Persian extracted from all in his kingdom. Darius ruled his vast territory through the administration of his satraps who owed their position entirely to him. Such ministers are akin to slaves, and once conquered, a territory so ruled is easy to hold, Machiavelli maintains. He corroborates this fact by pointing to Alexander's successors, who held for themselves the various territories of Alexander's former empire. In this chapter he also compares the extraordinary obedience in Asia, exemplified by its continuing allegiance to Alexander's successors, to that which Rome ultimately imposed on its European provinces by the time of the Roman civil wars. Rome, he explains, was able to expunge the memory of the various predecessor states in ancient Spain, France, and Greece, where previously there had been frequent rebellions against the Romans. In this way, Machiavelli uses this chapter to draw an initial kinship between the subservience of the East, which Alexander assumed and passed to his successors, and the subservience of the West, which the Romans ultimately imposed on their European provinces. Machiavelli also points to the importance of memory in this chapter; Rome's European provinces became secure, he teaches, once the memory and the bloodlines of their former rulers were eliminated. A facet of his treatment of memory in this chapter speaks not of its elimination but rather of its endurance. Memory of past rulers can continue to rule over the minds of current subjects to such an extent that an exemplary ruler can be said to maintain his rule in death.Footnote ¹⁵ Alexander, Machiavelli declares, continued to rule over Asia after his death.

Chapter 4 of The Prince, with its anomalous chapter title “Why the Kingdom of Darius Which Alexander Seized Did Not Rebel from His Successors after Alexander's Death,” serves itself to explain an apparent anomaly. In chapter 3, Machiavelli delineates the difficulties involved in holding territory that is different in language, customs, and orders and illustrates them through an examination of the attempt by King Louis XII of France to invade and control Italy.Footnote ¹⁶ In turning to Alexander's conquest of foreign territory in the next chapter, Machiavelli admits that one does not find the same difficulties he has just delineated: “The difficulties that are involved in holding a state newly acquired having been considered, one might marvel at how it happened that Alexander the Great became lord [signore] of Asia in a few years.” After Alexander's death, “the successors of Alexander maintained it and had no other difficulty in holding it than that which arose among themselves out of their own ambition” (4, 16–17).Footnote ¹⁷

Machiavelli here refers to the fact that Alexander's empire splintered after his death. He died suddenly in 323 BCE without having settled on a plan of succession. At the time of his death he had a brother who was believed incapable of rule and a pregnant wife who ultimately gave birth to a son. Before that son could come to majority, Alexander's generals used the armies that they had commanded by Alexander's appointment to engage in civil war and to claim various territories for themselves. Antigonus with his son Demetrius marshaled the most vigorous attempt to claim the mantle of Alexander and his vast empire all for themselves, but they stumbled before the combined forces of some of the other successors, Cassander, Lysimachus, and Seleucus at the battle of Ipsus in 301 BCE. The result of this battle confirmed that Alexander's former empire would be divided into several smaller kingdoms. The larger and most important of these successor kingdoms were Antigonid Macedon, Seleucid Syria, Attalid Asia Minor, and Ptolemaic Egypt, two of which play a prominent role in The Prince. Although Alexander's empire passes to no one in its entirety, the various Asiatic kingdoms, Machiavelli suggests, remain securely in the hands of his successors. Therefore, Alexander's conquest of Asia, which his various successors maintained, would seem to undermine the lessons that Machiavelli furnishes in the preceding chapter.

Machiavelli resolves this apparent perplexity as he explains “that principalities of which memory remains have been governed in two diverse modes” (e' principati de'quali si ha memoria si trovono governati in dua modi diversi) (4, 17).Footnote ¹⁸ In declaring that all principalities have been ruled in one of two ways, he refers in passing to the role of memory in politics, which will play an important role not only in this chapter but also in his treatment of Alexander as well as in his political teachings more generally. The kingdom of France during Machiavelli's lifetime exemplifies one such mode because the king has as his ministers “barons who hold that rank not by favor of the lord but by antiquity of blood line.”Footnote ¹⁹ He provides “the Turk” as a contemporary example of the other method. In contrast to the king of France, who has as ministers “an ancient multitude of lords” with independent sources of authority and subjects who love them, the Turk's kingdom is divided “into sanjaks [Sangiachi]” and “he sends different administrators [amministratori] to them, and he changes and varies them as he likes.” In all such states, the prince's “servants hold their prince in greater authority because in all his province there is no one recognized as superior but himself; and if they obey someone else, they do so as a minister [ministro] and official, and do not bear him any particular love” (4, 17).Footnote ²⁰ The Turk's kingdom of Machiavelli's time is in this respect akin to Darius's.Footnote ²¹ Herein lies the explanation for the failure of Alexander's empire to rebel against their satraps after his death. Whereas these states are difficult to conquer, because the subordinates “are slaves and bound by obligation” (4, 18), Machiavelli claims here that they are held with “great ease” (4, 17). Alexander's achievement, according to Machiavelli, then, is that he was able to overcome Darius in the first instance. Given the extreme subservience in this state, which had originally been founded by Cyrus, Machiavelli maintains that it is not surprising that Alexander's successors were able to maintain for themselves portions of the former Persian kingdom. Therefore, the ancient Persian kingdom and the Turkish one of Machiavelli's own time manifest the rule of one under which all other rulers are slaves.

Although this type of extreme subordination to one “lord” characterizes the regimes of the East both in ancient and modern times, Machiavelli points out as the chapter comes to a close that later the Romans had managed to introduce this form of rule into Europe. He makes this point when he draws a parallel between ancient and modern France. In speaking of states akin to modern France, he claims that “it is impossible to possess [such] states… with such quiet,” and then corroborates this point with a reference to ancient Gaul among other European territories: “Hence arose the frequent rebellions in Spain, France, and Greece [di Spagna, di Francia e di Grecia] against the Romans, because of the numerous principalities that existed in those states.” He continues, though, that the Romans eventually transformed these territories so that they held them easily. “As long as their memory lasted, the Romans were always uncertain of their possession, but when their memory was eliminated with the power and long duration of the empire, the Romans became secure possessors of them.” Eventually, Rome rendered ancient France and these other European territories subservient. In making this point here, he underscores the importance of memory that had once attached the ancient peoples in their European territories to their own rulers and their independent states. After the memory of their former rule was extinguished, so secure had the Romans rendered this territory that “when they later fought among themselves, each took for himself a part of those provinces [provincie] in accordance with the authority he had got within it; and the provinces, because the blood line of their former lords was eliminated, acknowledged no one but the Romans” (4, 19).Footnote ²² So general a reference to Rome's civil wars could include many incidents over hundreds of years in which various generals fought among each other, claiming various provinces for themselves. The notion of such a division of the Roman Empire, however, begins with the Treaty of Brundisium in which the members of the Second Triumvirate formally agreed to divide the empire among them. By contrast to the subservience that the provinces of the Roman Empire manifested, the France of Machiavelli's time is characterized by its lords with independent authority. Ancient France had once been organized in a similar way, but was ultimately rendered subservient under Rome by the time of Octavian's rule there.

In referring to Rome's civil wars, Machiavelli implicitly equates the various Roman claimants to rule, who fought among themselves, to Alexander's fractious successors. The successors of Alexander and the members of the Roman triumvirate, for example, rule portions, without internal turmoil, of a larger empire that had once been united. The former empire of Alexander would remain divided until much of it was reunited under Roman rule. Rome itself, though, would be subjected to the rule of a single individual. Before the Second Triumvirate, Caesar achieved sole rule as dictator and after the Second Triumvirate, Octavian emerged as the first emperor, Augustus Caesar, who would be followed by a long succession of emperors who ruled under Caesar's and Augustus's name and memory. Of course, that empire would often fracture along provincial lines when contenders for empire claimed territories for themselves. Thus, in his first explicit treatment of Alexander, Machiavelli draws a parallel between Alexander's empire and that of Rome. He suggests that by the time of Augustus, Rome succeeded in rendering its European provinces as subservient as Asia's territories had been for Alexander's successors.

At this point Machiavelli concludes his chapter, suggesting that all his reflections have led to one unmistakable conclusion: “Having considered all these things, therefore, no one will marvel at the ease with which Alexander held the state of Asia and at the difficulties others such as Pyrrhus and many more like him had in keeping their acquisitions” (4, 19). Before he had explained the apparent anomaly, he conceded that “one might marvel,” but now after his consideration he insists that “no one will” (4, 16, and 19). In making his summary statement, however, he actually gives his reader new cause to marvel, or at least to ponder, because he here claims something new. He claims that “Alexander” himself “held the state of Asia” (4, 19) Of course, that is not, in fact, what the chapter has argued; rather, Machiavelli points out at the beginning of the chapter that Alexander was not himself in a position to hold Asia, noting that Alexander, “just after he had seized [Darius's kingdom], died” (4, 17). Alexander did not hold his empire; rather, his successors did, but each held portions of it and none in its entirety. Indeed, that is the very point of the chapter and its title, as Machiavelli endeavors to explain why Darius's kingdom did not rebel after “Alexander's Death” (4, 16). For Machiavelli to insist now that Alexander held the empire is to suggest that he somehow ruled his empire after his death. The only way Alexander can be said to have “held Asia” after his death is through the memory of his universal rule. The subjects in all the successor kingdoms of Asia remember his rule. That memory allows them to accommodate themselves to the rule of his successors.

The Roman Republic's Conquest of Alexander's Successors and Its Reduction of Greece to a Province

When mentioning Pyrrhus's failure at the conclusion of chapter 4, Machiavelli also points to the Roman Republic's ultimate success in competing with Alexander's successors for control of Greece, one of the territories in which Rome initially suffered many rebellions against its rule. Pyrrhus is, in fact, one such successor of Alexander as are Philip V, the Antigonid ruler of Macedonia, and Antiochus, the Seleucid ruler of Syria, although Machiavelli fails to mention their relation to Alexander's legacy. Until the Roman Republic conquered it, Greece consisted of various cities and leagues, some of which continued to assert their independence against the leadership of Macedonia, to which Alexander's father, Philip II, first subjected them.Footnote ²³ Machiavelli focuses in The Prince on how Rome quashed the flickers of resistance to outside rule in the various Greek states—flickers that still burned well after Alexander's father had made himself the head of Greece. In so doing, the Roman Republic accomplished something that Machiavelli teaches is very difficult—that is, expunging the memory of former liberty. Having conquered Greece, the Roman Republic reduces Greece to a province, which, along with the provinces of Sicily and Macedonia, represents the very beginning of its imperial rule over a vast territory.Footnote ²⁴ In this manner, Machiavelli shows that whereas Alexander became lord over those who were accustomed to being slaves, the Roman Republic conquered and held those who were used to being free. In this respect, then, Rome's accomplishment surpasses that of Alexander and his immediate successors.

When speaking of the Roman Republic's subjugation of its European territories, Machiavelli compares its success to Pyrrhus's failure, noting that this difference in results derives “not from much or little virtue in the victor but from the disparity in the subject” (4, 19). The Roman Republic transforms the Greek subject from rebellion to subservience. Machiavelli says no more about Pyrrhus here, or anywhere else in The Prince for that matter, but a consideration of his history reveals Pyrrhus's very close connection both to Alexander himself and to the beginning of Rome's military contact with the rulers of those successor kingdoms, particularly Philip V and Antiochus. Pyrrhus was king of Epirus, a small successor kingdom near Macedonia, and a kinsman of Alexander, and at two points in his career he won the kingship of Macedonia, the very kingship that Alexander the Great had inherited.Footnote ²⁵ As a young man, Pyrrhus fought under the command of Demetrius, son of Antigonus, at the battle of Ipsus. In addition, and significantly, Pyrrhus's history relates to an emergent Roman Republic. Pyrrhus invaded southern Italy when Tarentum, a Greek city located there, requested that Pyrrhus aid it against Rome's expansionist ambitions. In response to this invitation, Pyrrhus invaded the peninsula, gained a victory at Heraclea, then moved toward Rome itself, and won another, although costly, battle at Asculum. In coming into Italy, Pyrrhus bears with him the legacy of that great conqueror who went east rather than west.Footnote ²⁶ After these victories against Rome, however, the Greek moves suddenly on to Sicily, which begged his assistance in driving out the Carthaginians.Footnote ²⁷ On his return to Italy, he is unable to maintain his position on the peninsula. He goes on to fight for control of Macedonia, but again is unable to consolidate his gains.Footnote ²⁸ As a result, his name is remembered as an adjective for a crushing defeat that first manifests itself as a victory.

Whereas Alexander is a successful conqueror, Pyrrhus is an unsuccessful one. Pyrrhus is unsuccessful, though, according to Machiavelli because of the “disparity in the subject” (4, 19).Footnote ²⁹ In making Pyrrhus both a foil and a substitute for Alexander, Machiavelli detects in Pyrrhus a desire to subjugate the territories in Italy and Sicily which he was ostensibly attempting to protect from subjugation to the imperialistic ambitions of Rome and Carthage respectively.Footnote ³⁰ By going west rather than east, Pyrrhus encountered territories that were resistant to being subjugated to a foreign lord and subsumed into an empire, Machiavelli suggests. But ultimately, the Roman republic did conquer all these territories for which Pyrrhus contended: the remainder of the Greek cities in Italy; Sicily, when Rome defeated Carthage in the first Punic War; and Macedonia itself. Pyrrhus's defeat points ultimately beyond him to Rome's great successes.

Rome's particular success comes where King Louis of France fails, in defeating and holding “disparate” territory. Particularly revealing, according to Machiavelli, is Rome's conduct with respect to Greece: “I want the province of Greece [la provincia di Grecia] alone to suffice as an example” (3, 12).Footnote ³¹ His use of the word “province” here has an ominous import. As Mansfield notes in his translation, Machiavelli uses the term to designate a sizable territory, that is, “a country or region that may be larger or smaller than a ‘state.’”Footnote ³² But it sometimes has another meaning as well, when, as here, Machiavelli applies it to Rome's conquests specifically. The Latin provincia originally conveyed “the sphere in which a magistrate,” including perhaps one with “imperium,” “is to function.” As Rome accumulated territories, “the word provincia, although it never lost its original meaning, was mainly used for overseas territories under permanent Roman administration.”Footnote ³³ Those who administered these territories were promagistrates, including proconsuls who wielded the power of consuls in their respective territories.Footnote ³⁴ Therefore, Machiavelli's reference to the province of Greece refers both to the extent of its territory and to its status as a conquered territory of Rome.

Machiavelli's account of the story of Greece's subjugation to the Roman Republic features successors of Alexander in two of the major successor kingdoms: Antiochus in Syria and Philip V in Macedonia. His discussion moves from the time that Rome first gained a foothold in Greece to when it had finally defeated Philip V and driven Antiochus from the Greek homeland. “The Achaeans and the Aetolians,” Machiavelli begins, “were indulged by the Romans; the kingdom of the Macedonians was brought down and Antiochus was chased out” (3, 12). A detail that he does not provide here is that the Aetolians provided Rome with its entry into Greece, becoming Rome's first ally outside of Italy.Footnote ³⁵ Later in The Prince, Machiavelli notes that subsequently the Aetolians turned against Rome: “Antiochus came into Greece, summoned there by the Aetolians to expel the Romans from it” (21, 89). Thus, the Aetolians, the Romans' erstwhile allies, ultimately call into Greece Alexander's successor in Syria, a direct descendant of Alexander's general Seleucus Nicator, to expel the Romans from their territory. Machiavelli's praise of the Romans in chapter 3 of The Prince includes the Romans' refusal to allow the Syrian a foothold in Greece: “nor could the power of Antiochus make them consent to his holding any state in that province” (3, 12).

Similarly, the reign of Philip V was defined by an ultimately futile struggle with the Roman Republic. He had long been Rome's antagonist, having watched Rome and Carthage vie for supremacy, and when he erroneously judged that Carthage would emerge the victor in the Second Punic War, he entered into a pact with Carthage against Rome.Footnote ³⁶ Philip went on to fight two large-scale wars against Rome. Although he died in possession of his throne, his successor would succumb to Rome. In addition to chapter 3, Machiavelli also considers Philip in chapter 24 of The Prince, when he introduces the topic by identifying precisely the Philip to whom he refers: “Philip of Macedon, not the father of Alexander but the one who was defeated by Titus Quintius” (24, 97). Machiavelli's manner of introduction underscores two points. First, by denying the paternity of Alexander to this particular Philip, he not only reminds the reader of Alexander, but also underscores the fact that this king is not the father but rather a successor of Alexander in Macedon. Second, in pointing to Philip's defeat at the hands of a Roman general, he points to a victory of a Roman over Alexander's successor.Footnote ³⁷ The Romans brought Philip to terms, including the conditions that Philip should remove his garrisons from all the Greek cities of which he had been in control and that he should confine his aspirations to Macedonia.

By no means were the Greeks during this time united against the Romans as a foreign and invading force. The Roman general, whom Machiavelli mentions in passing here, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, had much to do with that fact. First, Titus maneuvered so that Philip and Antiochus, jealous rivals in Alexander's former empire, were even more unlikely to unite in a single force against Rome.Footnote ³⁸ Second, given the general suspicions that the Greeks in the heartland harbored for the Macedonians who had reduced them to subservience under Alexander's father, Titus was able to cast the Roman Republic's fight against Philip V not as a war of Romans “against the Greeks,” but rather as one in which the Romans fought “for the Greeks against the Macedonians.”Footnote ³⁹ Indeed, shortly after Philip's capitulation, the Roman general to whom Machiavelli refers is famous for having declared to the assembled representatives of the Greek cities at the Isthmian Games that all of Greece was to be free: its cities were to be exempt from tribute and able to live under their own laws; the Roman troops, who had fought Philip, were to be withdrawn from the province. Titus Quinctius Flamininus enjoyed the “signal triumph” of receiving in person the joyful gratitude of the Greeks for the restoration of their freedom.Footnote ⁴⁰ The Greeks who celebrated the expulsion from Greece of Alexander's successors were actually helping to install the Romans as Alexander's successor. A mere fifty years later the Romans would subdue the heartland of Greece, destroying cities and populations.

Despite the great glory of the Roman who defeated Philip, Machiavelli sees fit to praise the Macedonian. Although admitting that Philip “did not have much of a state by comparison to the greatness of the Romans and of Greece, who attacked him,” Machiavelli maintains that “nonetheless, because he was a military man and knew how to deal with the people and secure himself against the great, he kept up a war against them for many years; and if at the end he lost dominion over several cities, his kingdom remained to him” (24, 97). In fact, in the succeeding years, Philip fought with Rome against the Spartans and their leader Nabis and against Antiochus in the Syrian War.Footnote ⁴¹ Whatever praise Machiavelli extends to Philip, it actually redounds to Rome because Rome so deftly handled the Macedonian: “nor did the persuasions of Philip ever induce [the Romans] to be his friends without putting him down” (3, 12).

Just as the Aetolians ultimately became Rome's opponent, so too did the Achaeans. Machiavelli notes the manner in which the Romans managed them: “Nor did the merits of the Achaeans” “make the Romans permit them to increase any state of theirs” (3, 12).Footnote ⁴² The Achaean League united city states in the central and northern part of the Peloponnese but eventually grew to include the entire peninsula. Machiavelli points to the league's great hero when he refers to the “praise given by writers to Philopoemen, prince of the Achaeans” (14, 59). Plutarch, who offers just such praise of Philopoemen, notes that the general was called by an anonymous Roman “the last of the Greeks,” “as if after him Greece had produced no great man, nor who deserved the name of Greek.”Footnote ⁴³ Almost thirty years after Philopoemen's death, the Romans destroyed the Achaean League. The Achaeans had been allies of Rome, but they considered jumping to the other side during the Third Macedonian War, which Rome fought with Perseus, the son and successor of Philip V. The Romans took hostages from the Achaeans to assure good behavior, including Polybius the historian. Later, the Achaeans revolted outright and were defeated decisively at the Battle of Corinth. There the Romans destroyed the Achaean League, and with the destruction of the Achaeans came the destruction of the city of Corinth. The Romans sold Corinth's population into slavery and leveled the city itself.Footnote ⁴⁴ Henceforth, Greece would be the Roman province of Achaea.

Machiavelli refers to Rome's destructive actions in this province when he notes that although Rome “wanted to hold Greece much as the Spartans had held it, by making it free and leaving it its own laws,” this approach failed, and as a result, the Romans “were compelled to destroy many cities in that province [provincia] so as to hold it” (5, 20).Footnote ⁴⁵ He explains that anyone who holds “a city used to living free and does not destroy it, should expect to be destroyed by it” because “the memory of their ancient liberty does not and cannot let them rest” (5, 21). Titus's rousing declaration of the freedom of Greece was destined to fail, according to Machiavelli, because “in truth there is no secure mode to possess [such cities] other than to ruin them” (5, 20). Here he emphasizes that the obliteration of the memory of freedom necessitates destruction of cities as well as bloodlines (cf. 4, 19). Therefore, a comparison of chapter 3 with chapter 4 shows that Rome accomplished a much more difficult task in overcoming Greece than did Alexander's successors in holding his acquisitions that derived from the empire of Darius. Indeed, in subjecting Europe to the form of rule of Persia, Rome surpasses the accomplishment of Alexander.

Alexander's Roman Successors and Europe as Asia

Just as Machiavelli declares that the memory of their former liberty lingers in the minds of those in former republics (5, 21), so too does he teach that the memory of a universal empire can burn in the hearts of the most ambitious in functioning republics. Machiavelli alerts his reader to the fact that Caesar longed to emulate Alexander. Propelled by his ambition, Caesar overturned the republic, transforming Rome into the rule of one, as the emperors who succeed him ruled under his name. When Lepidus, Octavian, and Antony divided the Roman territories among them, the memory of Caesar lingered. Machiavelli shows that the rule the emperors administered, in fact, harks back to that of Alexander as well as to that of the two Persian rulers named Darius whom he treats in The Prince. Moreover, in examining how the provincial structure of the Roman Empire mingled military power with its civilian governance, he shows how the emperors were rendered vulnerable and proceeds to equate the vulnerability of the Roman emperor to that of the Persian satraps. This odd comparison shows that in Machiavelli's analysis, although the Roman Republic conquered Greece and Alexander's successors, the Roman Empire is the inheritor of Alexander and his form of rule by satrap. In this manner, Machiavelli shows more precisely how the Romans brought the Persian form of rule to Europe.

Machiavelli reveals Alexander's fundamental impact on Caesar, and hence on Rome itself, when speaking of the influence that writers can have. Princes and potential princes should read histories, he maintains: “Above all [the prince] should do as some excellent man has done in the past who found someone to imitate who had been praised and glorified before him, whose exploits and actions he always kept beside himself.” Neglecting to specify the identity of the excellent man to whom he here refers, he continues, “as they say Alexander the Great imitated Achilles; Caesar, Alexander; Scipio, Cyrus” (14, 60).Footnote ⁴⁶ Caesar, he reports, imitated Alexander, as he juxtaposes their names.Footnote ⁴⁷ Moreover, Machiavelli highlights Caesar's extreme ambition, when he comments in chapter 16 of The Prince that “Caesar was one of those who wanted to attain the principate of Rome” (16, 64). To attain the principate of Rome would be to overturn the Roman Republic, which is precisely what Julius Caesar did.Footnote ⁴⁸

Machiavelli corroborates Caesar's success in imitating Alexander as a conqueror when he explains under what circumstances a prince might be held to be liberal by his subjects. He notes that one should not be liberal with the property of one's subjects but rather with the property of others: “And of what is not yours or your subjects' one can be a bigger giver, as were Cyrus, Caesar, and Alexander, because spending what is someone else's does not take reputation from you but adds it to you” (16, 64). These three rulers were liberal without succumbing to the dangers inherent in liberality. These three rulers had such access to the property of others precisely because they were conquerors. In fact, Alexander conquers an expanded version of Cyrus's empire and sits upon his very throne.Footnote ⁴⁹ Indeed, Cyrus is, in fact, the actual originator of the realm that Alexander conquers. Thus, in this explication, Machiavelli links the founder of the Persian Empire, its Macedonian conqueror, and the Roman who emulated the Macedonian.

In treating the Roman emperors at length in chapter 19 of The Prince, Machiavelli reminds his readers not only of Caesar, but also of Alexander the Great, whom he regards as Caesar's touchstone. Although he did not rule as an emperor himself, Caesar, of course, had as successors all those Roman emperors who ruled under his name—under “the title of Caesar,” as Machiavelli points out in this chapter (19, 78). Indeed, it is in this context that he discusses the emperor who is Alexander's namesake, Emperor Alexander Severus.

Machiavelli's discussion of Emperor Alexander in the chapter highlights the vulnerability of some of the Roman emperors. Machiavelli explains that Emperor Alexander “was of such goodness that among the other praise attributed to him is this: that in the fourteen years he held the empire no one was ever put to death by him without trial” (19, 77). It would appear that by all rights Alexander's goodness should have won him a secure reign as Machiavelli has already asserted in this chapter that “a prince should take little account of conspiracies if the people show good will to him” (19, 74). But Emperor Alexander's fate as the victim of a conspiracy carried out by the army illustrates the additional consideration that Machiavelli introduces with his examination of the Roman emperors—namely, that princes must “contrive with all industry to avoid the hatred of those communities which are most powerful” (19, 76). Machiavelli explains that the most powerful group in the Roman Empire was comprised of the soldiers, who were armed not only with weapons but also with their “avarice and cruelty.” The soldiers came to despise Alexander because “he was held to be effeminate and a man who let himself be governed by his mother” (19, 76–77). Machiavelli thereby teaches that the Roman emperors were in particular need of the support of the soldiers, whom they had to satisfy in order to escape a violent death at their hands. This resulted in extreme cruelty, Machiavelli notes, providing the example of an emperor who, “after infinite individual killings,” “had put to death a great part of the people of Rome and all the people of Alexandria” with the result “that he became most hateful to the world” (19, 79). So vast was his empire that the emperor could subject to his wrath not only the people of Rome, but those of the Egyptian city, which Alexander the Great himself had founded to enhance his glory and which his general Ptolemy took for himself and his descendants after Alexander's death.Footnote ⁵⁰ The Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt until Rome conquered it. In this way, Machiavelli underscores once again that Rome both inherits and surpasses Alexander's empire.

Machiavelli offers Severus as the prime example of a notorious emperor, who comes to power through his army and maintains his rule through pleasing his soldiers. The case of Severus also highlights the vulnerability of the emperor because he himself uses his position as one of the emperor's governors to oust the then ruling emperor and to make himself the universal ruler. The “armies of the Roman Empire” were “entrenched in the government and administration of provinces [provincie],” Machiavelli explains (19, 81).Footnote ⁵¹ Thus, the claim to universal rule creates the need for the one lord to command those who help him to administer his territories by force of arms. Here again, Machiavelli displays the particular importance of the word “province” in the treatise. In this instance, the word carries the full connotations of the Latin word that are entwined with Rome's military might, as the term signified that a given territory was the responsibility of a general.Footnote ⁵² One Roman may rule over a vast territory, but he needs ministers to rule in his name and by his authority in his various provinces.

At the time of Emperor Pertinax's death, Severus was governor in the province of Pannonia.Footnote ⁵³ Machiavelli shows how Severus used his position as a subordinate to become preeminent when he reports that Severus brought his army from Slavonia to Rome, ostensibly “to avenge the death of Pertinax,” but with designs on the empire itself. “Under this pretext, without showing that he aspired to the empire, he moved his army against Rome; and he was in Italy before his departure was known.” Because Severus was in Rome with his army, the Senate elected him emperor “out of fear.” Severus's ploy reveals the power of those who command armies as they hold far-flung provinces in an emperor's name. Having attained the rule to which he aspired, Severus protected himself against similar threats emanating from underlings as he was respected and “not hated by the army,” and “his very great reputation always defended him from the hatred that the people could have conceived for him because of his robberies” (19, 78–79).

Elsewhere Machiavelli treats this mutual dependency between the rule of one and his ministers, and in so doing, Machiavelli explicitly links the Roman Empire to the ancient Persian kingdom. In chapter 7, he treats the type of principality which is not acquired through one's own initiative but is rather bestowed on one by fortune. The very first example he provides of those who come to rule through fortune are the Greek princes who were given their rule by Darius I. He notes that “such princes come to be when a state is given to someone either for money or by the favor of whoever gives it, as happened to many in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the Hellespont, where they were made princes by Darius, so that they might hold on to those cities for his security and glory” (7, 26). Machiavelli refers here not to the Darius whom Alexander vanquished but rather to a predecessor, Darius I, who expanded the Persian Empire, as Machiavelli specifies. Herodotus refers to Darius's satraps in the Hellespont and Ionia as combining the offices of generals and tyrants.Footnote ⁵⁴ Machiavelli's point here is that their status is precarious. They come to power solely through the will of the one ruler.

Darius may have given them their rule for his glory and security, as Machiavelli here declares, but the historical record shows that these particular satraps certainly did not render him secure, as these satraps ultimately rebelled against his rule.Footnote ⁵⁵ It is on the basis of insecurity that Machiavelli proceeds to link the situation of Darius and his Greek princes to that of the Roman emperors. He does so in a rather surprising way. Specifically, he links these satraps of the Persian king in Ionia and in the Hellespont to “those emperors … who from private individual attained the empire through corrupting the soldiers” because both sets of princes “come to be when a state is given to someone either for money or by the favor of whoever gives it” (7, 26). It is an odd comparison indeed. Through this analogy, Machiavelli links the satraps—that is, the many who administer the rule of one in the Persian example—not to the various promagistrates who administer the many provinces of the Roman Empire, but rather to the supreme Roman ruler—that is, to the emperor himself. Machiavelli here equates the many subordinate rulers of the Persian Empire with the one supreme ruler of the Roman Empire. He does so on the basis of the dependency each element manifests. Whereas the Greek princes were dependent on Darius's goodwill, the emperors were dependent on that of the soldiers. “These persons,” he elaborates, “rest simply on the will and fortune of whoever has given a state to them, which are two very inconstant and unstable things” (7, 26). Machiavelli's analysis emphasizes that the ministers of imperial rule, with their arms and their ferocity, could influence the elections of the emperors. This influence created a mutual dependency that made the emperor insecure unless he constantly pandered to the soldiers, satisfying their lust for rapine. If the emperor failed to satisfy in this regard, the soldiers could install another ruler who was more to their liking. Although chapters 7 and 19 elaborate on the type of rule Machiavelli introduces in chapter 4, in these two later chapters he shows some of its vulnerabilities, which he does not reveal when he compares it in that earlier chapter to the manner by which contemporary France is ruled.

With the ruin of the Roman Empire, this need to satisfy so terrifying a constituency has largely been eclipsed, Machiavelli notes. Given this fact, he instructs: “Now it is necessary for all princes except the Turk and the Sultan to satisfy the people rather than the soldiers, because the people can do more than the soldiers” (19, 81). Again, as in chapter 4, he adduces the state of the Turk. The Alexandrian claim to empire has not been entirely eclipsed, and thus Alexander's legacy remains in Machiavelli's times in this eastern empire, for example. The tribes who later overturned the Roman Empire brought back to Europe the form of political rule in which “an ancient multitude of lords,” whose privileges the “king cannot take” “away without danger to himself” (4, 17).Footnote ⁵⁶

But the claim to universal rule has not been entirely overturned in Europe. If the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire could not credibly aspire to universality, Christendom could, and Machiavelli acknowledges this fact. The earthly manifestation of that empire on the eve of the Reformation had a single ruler, the pope who would send out ministers to administer various territories. Machiavelli compares the specific manner in which some of these ministers and the supreme ruler interact to that of the “sultan's state,” which, he explains, “is formed unlike all other principalities because it is similar to the Christian pontificate” in that “it is not the sons of the old prince who are the heirs and become the lords, but the one who is elected to that rank by those who have the authority for it” (19, 82). This is a narrow basis on which to draw a connection to the state of the sultan, but a connection it is, and an ominous one at that, because the papacy is now linked, through the sultan's state, to that of the Turk, which is similar to the empire that Alexander took from Darius III (4).Footnote ⁵⁷ But, of course, the name of one of the three popes, whom Machiavelli features so prominently in The Prince, also points a reader to that very connection. For Machiavelli, something of the old Rome and its Asiatic aspirations persists in Christian Rome.