The Frauds of Humanism: Cicero, Machiavelli, and the Rhetoric of Imposture

• Published in: Rhetorica 2004, Vol.22 (3), p.215-240
• Main Author: Zerba, Michelle
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: (PN) Literature; Antiquity; Aristotelian rhetoric; Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BC); Classical rhetoric; Deception; Deliberative rhetoric; Ethics; Forensic rhetoric; Fraud; Humanism; Italian literature; Machiavelli, Niccolo (1469-1527); Oratory; Political rhetoric; Princes; Rhetoric; Rhetorical dialogue
• ISSN: 0734-8584; 1533-8541
• DOI: 10.1525/rh.2004.22.3.215

AbstractMachiavelli's advocacy of force and fraud in the conduct of politics is the key teaching that has secured his reputation as “Machiavellian” and that has led to the conception ofThe Princeas the first document in the Western tradition to lay bare the dark, demonic underside of civic humanism. But this interpretation overlooks the degree to which a politics of intense competition and personal rivalry inhabits the humanist vision from antiquity, producing an ethics of expediency and a rhetoric of imposture that seeks to mask its alertness to advantage behind the guise of integrity and service. This vision is nowhere more apparent than in Cicero'sDe Oratore, which exerted a powerful influence on the Italian humanists of the quattrocentro in whose direct descent Machiavelli stands. Deception, to put it simply, is an acknowledged and vital element in civic humanism long beforeThe Prince. The difference is that Cicero typically couches it in a sacrificial rhetoric that is euphemistically inflected while Machiavelli opts for a hard-edged rhetoric of administrative efficiency to make his case. But the stylistic differences, important as they are, should not mask the essential affinity between the Machiavellian doctrine of princely fraud and the Ciceronian ethics of gentlemanly dissimulation