Journal article
2022

Machiavelli’s Virtuous Princes: Rhetoric, Power, and the Politics of Ironic Historiography

Michelle T. Clarke

Journal of Politics 84, no. 1 (2022): 483–495.

Contrasts The Prince, where princely power rests on arms and force, with the Discourses on Livy and Florentine Histories, where princes in Rome and Florence rise through moral authority. With Cosimo de’ Medici as the central case, it shows how a reputation for generosity and good works, extended through personal rather than public channels, built networks of obligation that converted popular favor into princely rule, an art subtler than hypocrisy or heroics. Machiavelli exposes it through ironic history-writing in the tradition of Thucydides, Sallust, and Tacitus, teaching republican readers to doubt the moral language that legitimates domination.

  • Machiavelli
  • Cosimo de’ Medici
  • Power
  • Moral authority
  • Rhetoric
  • Irony
  • Historiography

How to cite

Clarke, Michelle T. “Machiavelli’s Virtuous Princes: Rhetoric, Power, and the Politics of Ironic Historiography.” Journal of Politics 84, no. 1 (2022): 483–495. https://doi.org/10.1086/715596.

@article{clarke2022princes,
  author    = {Clarke, Michelle T.},
  title     = {{Machiavelli's Virtuous Princes: Rhetoric, Power, and the Politics of Ironic Historiography}},
  year      = {2022},
  journal   = {Journal of Politics},
  volume    = {84},
  number    = {1},
  pages     = {483--495},
  doi       = {10.1086/715596},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1086/715596}
}