CHAPTER ONE
ON THE ORIGINS OF CITIES IN GENERAL, AND ROME IN PARTICULAR

Those who read about the origin of the city of Rome, its legislators, and how it was organized will not be surprised that so much excellence was sustained for so many centuries in that city, nor that Rome later managed to gain such an empire. As I would first like to discuss Rome’s origins, I propose that all cities are built either by men born where the city was built, or by foreigners. The former case occurs when people live dispersed in many small communities and do not feel that they are living in safety, because, owing to the locations of these communities and the small number of people living in each, they cannot on their own resist the force of those who attack them. Nor can they unite in time to defend themselves once the enemy has arrived. (And even if they did manage to unite, they would be forced to abandon many of their refuges and so fall easy prey to their enemies.) To escape these dangers, the people living in these scattered communities unite either spontaneously or because they are stirred by one among them who is prominent in authority, and settle together in a single place more suitable to live in and easier to defend.

Athens and Venice are two examples among many of such cities. Athens was built under the authority of Theseus by inhabitants who had been living in dispersed communities.⁴ In the case of Venice, many people gathered on the little islands at the head of the Adriatic Sea in order to escape the wars that after the decline of the Roman Empire raged every day in Italy with the arrival of new waves of barbarians. These first Venetians gathered without a prince to govern them, with the intention of living under laws that seemed most apt to sustain them. This succeeded only because of the long period of peace that their situation on the islands afforded them, as the sea had no harbor and the peoples attacking Italy did not have boats with which to overrun the islands. Thus the most modest beginning was enough to lead the Venetians to the greatness they have achieved.

The second case, when foreigners build a city, involves either free men or men who depend on others. Such are the colonies sent out by republics or princes either to relieve their lands of overpopulation or to defend a land that has been newly acquired, and they want to do this securely and without expense. The Romans built many such cities throughout their empire. Such cities were built by a prince, not for him to live in, but for his glory, as Alexandria was built by Alexander the Great. Since these cities do not have a free beginning, they rarely make much progress or grow to be counted among the capitals of an empire. This was the case with the building of Florence. It was founded by the soldiers of Sulla, or possibly by the inhabitants of the mountains of Fiesole, who, reassured by the long period of peace under Emperor Augustus, came down to live on the plain above the Arno River. But since Florence was built under the Roman Empire, it could not initially grow except at the pleasure of the emperor.

The builders of cities are free when a populace, either under a prince or of their own accord, are forced by disease, hunger, or war to abandon their native land and look for a new place to live. Such a populace will settle in cities that they find in the lands they acquire, as Moses did, or build new cities, as Aeneas did.⁵ In such cases we know the skill of the builder and the fate of what he built, a fate more or less happy depending on the extent of its founder’s skill. His skill can be distinguished first by the site he has chosen, and second by the organization of the laws. Man acts either by necessity or by choice, and it is recognized that he shows greater skill where there is less choice. Hence the question arises whether it is not better to choose a barren site to found a city, so that its inhabitants are forced to work hard and are less beset by idleness, and therefore live in harmony. This way, the barrenness of the site gives them less cause for discord. This was the case in Ragusa⁶ and many other cities built in similar places. Such a choice would without doubt be wiser and more advantageous if men were content to live from their own resources and not seek to control those of others. But as men can secure themselves only with power, it is necessary to avoid barren terrain and settle in the most fertile regions, where the fercundity of the land allows them to multiply so that they can defend themselves from those who attack and subjugate those who challenge their prosperity. As for the idleness such a site might inspire in its inhabitants, one must organize things in such a way that any hardship not imposed by the site will be imposed by the laws. One must imitate those wise men who have lived in lands that were most pleasant and fertile, lands likely to produce indolent men unfit for any effective military activity. To remedy the shortcomings which the pleasantness of the land would have caused to make men indolent, rulers who are wise have made military training obligatory for men who are to become soldiers. As a result, they became better soldiers than the men of those states that were naturally rough and barren. Among the pleasant countries was the kingdom of the Egyptians,⁷ which, despite its land being most abundant, had laws that imposed the kinds of hardship that produce excellent men. Had their names not been lost in the ravages of time, they would have merited more praise than Alexander the Great and many others whose memory is still fresh. And whoever considers the Egyptian sultanate and the institutions of the Mamluks and of their army before the Grand Turk, Sultan Selim, destroyed them⁸ would have seen the prodigious training that was imposed on soldiers, and would have seen how they shunned the indolence that the mildness of the land might have induced had they not avoided it by means of the strictest laws.

I propose, therefore, that it is more prudent to settle a fertile place when this fertility can be subjugated to the laws. The architect Dinocrates rates had gone to Alexander, who wanted to build a city to his glory, and shown him how he could build it on top of Mount Athos, a place that was secure and that could also be constructed to represent a human form. This would have been a most wonderful and rare thing, worthy of Alexander’s greatness; but when Alexander asked Dinocrates how the inhabitants would live, he replied that he had not thought of that. Alexander laughed, and casting aside Mount Athos had Alexandria built on a site where men would gladly want to live because of the abundance of the land and the convenience of the Nile and the sea.⁹

So whoever examines the building of Rome, if he takes Aeneas as its founding father, will regard it as one of the cities built by foreigners, and if he takes the founder to be Romulus,¹⁰ a city built by men born in that place. In either case, he will regard it as having had a free beginning without being dependent on anyone. He will also see, as I will discuss further on in my discourses, how much hardship was imposed on the city by the laws made by Romulus, Numa,¹¹ and the other early rulers, so that the fertility of the place, the convenience of the sea, the frequent victories, and the greatness of the empire did not manage to corrupt it for many centuries, maintaining it in more glory than any other city or state was ever adorned with.

And because the things accomplished by Rome and which are celebrated by Livy came about either through private or public decisions, either inside or outside the city, I will begin my discussion with the matters that occurred within the city and by public decision. I believe these merit more comment, and will add to them everything dependent on them. With these discourses I will end this first book, or rather this first part.

4. According to Greek myth, the legendary king and hero Theseus, after fighting the Minotaur in the labyrinth in Crete, had united the scattered communities of Attica into a single Athenian state.

5. In Machiavelli’s interpretation, Moses, after leading the Israelites out of Egypt, sought towns to settle in, whereas the Trojan hero Aeneas had, according to legend, founded Rome after the destruction of Troy..

6. Today the Croatian port town of Dubrovnik.

7. The Mamluk sultanate, 1250–1516.

8. The Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluk armies at the battles of Marj Dabiq in 1516 and Raydaniyah in 1517, bringing Egypt under Ottoman rule.

9. Vitruvius (first century BCE), in his preface to Book II of De architectura, reports that Dinocrates said: “I have created a design for shaping Mount Athos into the statue of a man. In his left hand there will be a great city with strong fortifications, and in his right hand a bowl to capture all the rivers from the mountain, which will pour from the bowl into the sea.” To which Alexander replies: “I am delighted, but anybody who would found a city in such a place would be censured for bad judgment.”

10. Romulus was the legendary founder and first king of Rome, who was said to have ruled from Rome’s founding in 753 until 715 BCE.

11. Numa Pompilius was the legendary second king of Rome, said to have ruled from 715 to 673 BCE.