CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS

Rome’s founding father was Romulus, and Rome, like a good daughter, recognized that she owed to him her birth and upbringing. And yet the heavens determined that Romulus’s institutions were not adequate for a state like Rome, and so they inspired the Roman senate to elect Numa Pompilius as Romulus’s successor, so that what Romulus had neglected was instituted by Numa.⁴⁹ He found the populace of Rome most ferocious⁵⁰ and, wanting to bring them to civil order through the arts of peace, turned to religion as vital if he wanted to maintain civil order, and so he constituted it in such a way that for many centuries there was never so much fear of God as there was in that state.⁵¹ This also helped all the undertakings of the Senate and the great men of Rome. Whoever considers the countless ventures of Roman individuals or the populace as a whole will see how Roman citizens were more afraid of breaking an oath than they were of breaking the law, just as are men who esteem the power of God more than the power of man. This is clearly evident in the examples of Scipio and Manlius Torquatus. After Hannibal had defeated the Romans at Cannae,⁵² many Roman citizens had given up their city as lost and decided to abandon Italy for Sicily. When Scipio heard this, he faced them sword in hand, and forced them to swear that they would not abandon their city⁵³ In the case of Lucius Manlius, the father of Titus Manlius (who was later called Torquatus), he had been indicted by Marcus Pomponius, the plebeian tribune, but before the day of the trial Titus went to Marcus Pomponius and threatened to kill him if he did not swear to lift the indictment against his father, and forced Marcus Pomponius to take an oath. Marcus, having taken the oath in terror, saw himself compelled to withdraw the accusation.⁵⁴ Likewise, the Romans whose love of their city and its laws had not been enough to keep them in Italy were kept there by an oath they had been forced to take. And the tribune put aside the hatred he had for the father, the offense of the son, and his personal honor, in order to keep the oath he had taken. This arose from the religion that Numa had introduced into Rome.

Anyone who looks closely at Roman history can see how religion served to govern the armies, encourage the plebeians, keep good men good, and shame the evil. If one were to debate to which of its kings Rome was more indebted—Romulus or Numa—I believe Numa would have to be ranked first, for where there is religion, an army can be introduced with ease, though where there is an army but no religion, religion can be introduced only with difficulty. It is evident that Romulus did not need divine authority in order to set up a senate and other civil and military institutions, but Numa did need it, and feigned familiarity with a nymph who advised him how to counsel the populace:⁵⁵ all this, because Numa wanted to establish new and drastic laws in Rome, and doubted that his own authority would suffice.

In fact, there has never been a legislator of drastic laws who did not turn to God, for otherwise his laws would not be accepted. A wise legislator can see many good things that are perhaps not evident enough in themselves to persuade others. Therefore, wise legislators who want to avoid this difficulty have recourse to God. Lycurgus and Solon did this, as did many others who had the same goals. The Roman populace admired Numa’s goodness and wisdom and embraced all his ideas. It is true that in that era, filled as it was with religion, the men with whom he had to work being rough and simple, Numa achieved his designs with ease, as he was able to imprint on these men whatever new form he pleased. Without doubt, whoever wants to create a republic in our day will find it easier to do so among the people of the mountains, who are uncivilized, than among people who are used to living in cities, where civilization is corrupt, since it is far easier for a sculptor to shape a beautiful statue from a rough piece of marble than from one that has already been badly chiseled by another.

Weighing these matters, I conclude that the religion introduced by Numa was among the foremost reasons for the happiness of the city, because it brought with it good institutions; good institutions brought good fortune, and good fortune brought successful enterprises. As the observance of religious worship is the reason for the greatness of a republic, so the contempt for religious worship is the reason for its ruin. A state in which a fear of God is missing will either come to ruin or be sustained by the people’s fear of a prince who can make up for the lack of religion. But because princes are transient, it stands to reason that that kingdom will fail as soon as his skill is absent. Therefore, states that depend only on the skill of a single prince do not last, because that skill will cease to exist with the life of the prince, and it is rare for this skill to resurge in a successor, as Dante wisely says:

Rarely does human worth descend from branch
to branch: so it is demanded by Him who grants
this gift, as He wants us to pray to Him for it.⁵⁶

Therefore the security of a republic or kingdom is not in having a prince who merely reigns wisely during his lifetime, but in having one who can establish institutions in such a way that the state will be maintained after his death. And though it is easier to persuade unrefined men to embrace a new institution or idea, it is nonetheless possible to persuade civilized men who do not like to think of themselves as being unrefined. The people of Florence did not consider themselves rough or ignorant and yet Brother Girolamo Savonarola persuaded them that he was talking to God. I do not wish to judge whether he was being truthful about this or not, because one must speak of such a man with reverence, but I will say that countless people believed him without ever having witnessed any extraordinary event that might compel them to do so. But his life and doctrine, and the subjects of his sermons, were enough to make them believe him. Thus nobody should despair of attaining what has been attained in the past by others, because men, as we have said in our preface, have always been born, and have lived and died, within the same order of things.

49. Numa Pompilius was the second of the seven legendary kings of Rome, who was said to have ruled from 715 to 673 BCE.

50. Machiavelli is directly translating Livy’s words (Book I, chapter 19): ferocem populum.

51. King Numa Pompilius was believed to have founded many of Rome’s religious institutions. Livy describes Numa’s reforms in Book I, chapters 19–21.

52. A major battle (216 BCE) between the forces of Rome and Carthage during the Second Punic War. The Roman army was utterly crushed by Hannibal. Of 80,000 Roman troops, only 14,000 managed to escape.

53. Livy describes this incident in Book XXII, chapter 53.

54. Livy describes this incident in Book VII, chapter 4.

55. Livy (Book I, chapter 19) writes: “But he needed some miraculous contrivance in order to convince them, and so pretended that he held nocturnal meetings with the goddess Egeria.”

56. Machiavelli quotes Dante’s Purgatory, Canto VII, line 120, with a slight alteration. Where Machiavelli has human worth “descending” from one branch to another, Dante says risurge, “rises.”