The objetive of this and the following posts is to reinforce Machiavelli’s relation with Lucretius as a source of inspiration. (I’ll provide a survey of literature some other time.)
I wish to argue today that Machiavelli employed Lucretius’ image of the newborn infant as a ship-wrecked sailor on two occasions, firstly, in his Vita di Castruccio and, secondly, in his Asino, though in neither of the cases the context of the ship-wreck has been adopted.
To begin with, consider Lucretius’ passage from De rerum natura in Book V (222-227):
Then further the child, like a sailor cast forth by the cruel waves, lies naked upon the ground, speechless, in need of every kind of vital support, as soon as nature has spilt him forth with throes from his mother’s womb into the regions of light, and he fills all around with doleful wailings (vagituque locum lugubri complet)—as is but just seeing that so much trouble awaits him in life to pass through. (V.222-227) [1]
We may first point to Machiavelli’s Vita di Castruccio [2] where we read that Dianora, about to find the abandoned child:
Turning her eyes toward it [a rustling], heard a sound like weeping (piangere). So, moving toward it, she saw the hands and face, surrounded by the leaves, of a baby boy who seemed to ask for help (pareva che aiuto le domandasse).
Machiavelli’s weeping (piangere) child, “who seemed to ask for help” (pareva che aiuto le domandasse) may recall Luretius’ child who is “in need of every kind of vital support (indigus omni vitali auxilio, 223-224), and who “fills all around with doleful wailings” (vagitque locum lugubri complet, 226)
I argue elsewhere that this imagery may be linked with the role which Lucretius ascribes to pity in V.1019 ff. in the context of his description of softenend mankind. By hypothesis, this explains the fact that Dianora, at first sight of the child is, amongst other things, “full of compassion and amazement” (ripiena di compassione e di stupore), and that Antonio is “not less filled with wonder and pity” (non meno si riempiè di maravilia e di pietade) when he sees the boy.
Moving on to Machiavelli’s Asino, here again we encounter the Lucretian image of the helpless newborn as the hog-transformed man advertises his animal-condition in the last extant chapter of the unfinished poem:
Every animal among us is born fully clad; this protects him from weather cold and harsh under every sky and on every shore. Only man is born devoid of all protection; he has neither hide nor spine nor feather nor fleece nor bristles nor scales to make him a shield./ In weeping (pianto) he begins his life, with the sound of a cry painful and choked, so that he is distressing to look at (miserabilie a vedello). (VIII 118-124)
Here, the human child is born helpless in contrast with animal pubs, and begins its life with weeping, expressed here as in the Vita using the word pianto. Moreover, this helplessness evokes pity, one of the presumed germs of civilisation, the Lucretian “softening” of mankind, which is here put in terms of miserabilie a vedello.
While it has been argued that this image could be actually drawn from Pliny’s Historia naturalis (VII.2-3), I tend to favor Lucretius’ as a source of inspiration. Though Pliny also develops the comparison between essentially helpless man and naturally well-adapted animal, I propose that Lucretius’ distinction between hard and soft race of man should be viewed as one of the influences of his Asino. [3]
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[1] Cited after Lucretius. On the Nature of Things, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1924).
[2] This point has been made first in M. Burkard, Essays on Machiavelli’s Conventional Piety, Literary Inspirations, and Pre-Christian Preoccupation (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambrdige Scholars Publishing, 2024), 95 ff. There the argument is made in context with Livy amongst other things. Other references to Lucretius can be found on page 85 ff. concerning the Vita and on page 104 ff. concerning Machiavelli’s Epistola.
On the book see: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-7033-7
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[3] A text on this is work in progress.
First published on April 2 2024 on Ko-fi