请将“At the end of Chapter 27, Machiavelli no doubt thinks he has proceeded far enough to draw his reader into a new interpretation of the history of the Roman Republic, which constitutes, up until the end of Book 1, the main content of the discourse. In approaching it, we already know that the same principles govern the understanding of that history and that of the politics of modem states. It was necessary, we believe, to remove the twofold obstacle of the classical and Christian interpretations of politics, shatter the certitudes tributary to the distinction between good and bad regimes, good and bad princes, good and bad governmental modalities, cast doubt upon the excellence of the original institutions of the state, and introduce us to the idea of a logic of historical action, in order to make a critical reading of the history of the republic possible. Indeed, that reading is such as to make us recognize that neither the Roman state nor its citizens are good by nature; corruption is already at work during the regimes’s earliest times; the dominating class is blinded by its egotism, and the people by their illusions and credulity; the best constituted republic is riddled with accidents analogous to those suffered by the decadent one, and shot through with the same weaknesses—and at the same time a certain ability to respond to events distinguishes Rome, giving it the possibility of mastering its history. Still, the discourse in this second part of the work does not feature themes that finally give us Machiavelli’s thinking undisguised. The writer constancy compels the reader to wonder which path to take, constancy leading him back to familiar ground only to make him abandon it in order to discover the truth by means of disenchantment.
The decision concerning the goodness of the Roman Republic governs the argument of the first four chapters [I: 28-31] we are presently considering. Machiavelli hastens to assert that the state was less ungrateful in Rome than in Athens toward the citizens who had distinguished themselves in their service to it, and he finds the explanation for this in the fact that no one dared infringe upon its freedom in the first period of the republic. Thus he suggests that the origin of the goodwill of the regime was the virtue of the people, with all the classes mixed in together. The preceding analysis having been concluded with the proposition that men cannot be all good or all evil, cannot the reader go back to dreaming that in Rome, at least, faithfulness to just principles was maintained? Chapter 29 confirms him in this disposition, inviting him to compare the behavior of the prince with that of the republic. After having remarked that the republic is justified in mistrusting the ambitious who exploit their popularity to reduce it to subservience, he points out that the Romans did not strike down those who had aroused their concern and whom they had every right to condemn harshly; and, pointing out the exceptional severity of their attitude toward Scipio, he has us read and admire its motivation: the conviction that the authority of a citizen, however good, could not exceed that of the magistrates in office. Again, in Chapter 30, after having revealed that a republic has special difficulties since, unlike a prince—who can and must command his army in person—it has to delegate the authority to a citizen, the author recommends taking Rome as a model; while the following chapter goes so far as to stress the indulgence shown toward military leaders whose mistakes on the battlefield seemed to call for punishment. Now, it becomes quickly apparent that his praise for Roman kindness is accompanied by considerations that radically modify its significance. Availing himself of the reference furnished by the position of the prince, Machiavelli observes that he must, if he is not capable of assuming command of the military, get rid of the captain whose authority offends him; he then boldly reverses his perspective, advising this same captain, “infallibly exposed to the bite of ingratitude,” to forestall the action of the prince, either in leaving the army on his own initiative after the victory, or in making sure he has the backing of his troops in toppling the established power. This analysis, which again renders visible the logic of political conduct, in recalling the need for being either all good or all bad, teaches the true reason why the Roman Republic did not know the vice of ingratitude. We are told that the conflict was not in fact between the political and the military authority but was secretly structured between the military leaders. Rome, turned toward war, had a great many citizens capable of assuming command, so none was indispensable and each feared the jealousy of the others: “their number even served to hold them mutually in check. They maintained their integrity so carefully, they were so fearful of giving the least umbrage, lest they give the people grounds for suspecting them of ambition that, having arrived at the dictatorship, the surest way to glory in that situation was to promptly abdicate.” Considering this commentary, formulated at the end of Chapter 30, we must concede that the comments on gratitude and ingratitude were just window-dressing. The important thing is not to assess the goodness of the Romans; we must simply explore up close the efficacy of a system that made it necessary for them to appear good. The same principles definitively govern the conduct of men; but whereas, in certain cases, ambition reacts openly to ambition, in others the play of generalized suspicion disarms it, to the point where external constraint—as we are instructed in Chapter 31—loses to a great extent its reason for being, and the differences between individuals can be tolerated without great danger.
But scarcely have we arrived at that conclusion when the analysis of an episode apparently introduced to show the liberality of the Romans forces us to discover its limitation. In Chapter 32, titled “Neither a Republic nor a Prince Should Defer When It Is a Question of Providing for the Needs of Their Subjects,” we learn that shortly after the eviction of the Tarquins, when Rome was facing foreign aggression, the senate urgently took economic measures intended to win over the plebs, fearing that it might prefer the return of the tyranny to war. The event is exploited to reveal the imprudence of the senate, which only decided to make concessions to the people under the pressure of the circumstances, and risked seeing its ruse revealed. Now, the criticism deserves our attention for more reasons than one: indeed, the issue is no longer the goodness of the Romans, but that of the dominant class; and the latter appears mendacious. The reference made once more to the politics of the prince no longer supports a comparison between two regimes, but discreetly signals the close relationship between two kinds of oppression. The allusion to the danger of a reestablishment of the tyranny confirms that the new government did not have the support of the people. Finally, and especially, perhaps, the regime proves to be better at defusing conflicts that risk pitting the state power against private citizens than at resolving those arising from class division. Remembering the preceding argument, we must admit that the generosity normally shown toward military leaders contrasts with the reluctance to satisfy the demands of the plebs.
Now these first indications clarify the structure of the discourse from Chapter 33 on. They prompt us to find—beneath the appearance of a commentary that is discontinuous, attached to particular events— the thread of a discussion that ties the question of authority in the republic ever more tightly to that of the class conflict. Machiavelli returns in Chapter 33 to the threat posed to the state by the acquisition of individual power. In analyzing the events that favored Cosimo de’ Medici’s enterprise, the success of which he compares to that of Caesar, he limits himself to showing that where corruption has set in, it is better to temporize than to confront the ambitious individual head on, in hopes that his scheme will fail or self-destruct, or at least succeed more slowly. But he says nothing of the relationship between tyranny and the development of social conflict. His obvious intention is to stress, by contrast, the merits of the dictatorship that gave the Romans the ability to concentrate authority in the hands of one citizen to face a perilous situation. His analysis of that institution leaves no doubt about the sincerity of his purpose: the dictatorship is in his view the only way for a republic to offset its natural deficiencies. “The cities organized into republics,” he writes, “cannot think without that institution to get out of the most formidable crises. The pace of government in a republic is normally too slow. No council, no magistrate can do anything for themselves, and all having almost always a mutual need for one another, it happens that when all these wills must be united, the remedies are dangerously late, whereas it is a case of evils that require immediate ones. Hence all republics must have a similar institution in their constitution.” Thus those who blame Rome for having established such an authority, because it risks engendering a tyranny and because Caesar used it as a springboard to his power, misunderstand its function entirely. If it is true that the dictatorship degenerated as soon as, under the influence of corruption, its power was left too long to a few citizens, it was in its original form the opposite of tyranny, in the sense that it borrowed its effectiveness from tyranny in order to turn it against tyranny within the framework of the law. Recalling the conclusion of Chapter 16, which recommended for a corrupt republic the reorientation of the constitution toward the monarchic principle, the reader may even think that it presents the ideal formula for a regime that internalizes this principle before it is too late, without giving up anything with respect to its constitution. Such was its nature, Machiavelli observes, that the supreme magistrate held only a temporary power, and he could not “order anything that altered the form of the government, or decreased the authority of the senate or of the people, or destroyed the ancient constitution or established a new one.” With it, the Romans discovered a solution to the problems confronted by all the cities who rigorously subordinate the authority of persons to the law, since within the setting of the law itself accommodation is made for the institution of an extraordinary situation requiring the immediate and sovereign decision of the political actor. The law covers its own transgression rather than being subjected to it in a brutal violation that risks destroying it.”翻译为中文