Rise of Rome - Renaissance View

Renaissance View

Italian Niccolò Machiavelli in The Discourses was the first modern political theorist to review the history and practices of the Romans in any depth. While his other, more forward-looking work, The Prince, is better known, it is difficult to understand the advice it gives without noting the contrasting advice he gives to magistrates via his careful quotations of the Roman patriarchs and chroniclers. During the Renaissance which provided the context for Machiavelli's writing, there was a general belief that European society, being contained at the margins by Islam and the rejection of Roman Catholicism by Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox faiths, and not yet having conquered and colonized the Americas, was inferior and only capable of recovering some of its former glory by reconsidering its past life.

Machiavelli focused on the consistency and clear oratory of the magistrates, and argued that with no clear and consistent rationale for rule, it was inordinately difficult to maintain it. He was the first to note explicitly the necessity for a well-educated bourgeois or middle class that would carry forward the instructional capital of the civilization, independent of the rulers and aristocracy, and hold it to account by criticism and shame, to prevent the worst abuses of power, which in turn would cause rulers to lose support - this in turn causing civil strife and revolutions.