On this day 510 years ago (December 10th, 1513), Niccolò Machiavelli wrote a now-famous letter to his friend Francesco Vettori about his life in exile from Florence - and about a little book he was writing, which has come down to us as The Prince. After relating what had happened that day on his farm and in the village, he described his evening routine, when he would "visit" with Plutarch, Polybius, Livy, Aristotle, and other great minds of antiquity:
When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them. And because Dante says that to have understood without retaining does not make knowledge, I have noted what capital I have made from their conversation and have composed a little work De Principatibus, where I delve as deeply as I can into reflections on this subject, debating what a principality is, of what kinds they are, how they are acquired, how they are maintained, why they are lost.
I love the image of Machiavelli's ancient friends, who receive him lovingly and converse with him in their great-hearted humanity. It reminds me of something that Nietzsche wrote in Human, All Too Human, which I quoted once before in a blog post about Aristotle and Thoreau over twenty years ago:
I, too, have been in the underworld, like Odysseus, and will often be there again; and I have not only sacrificed rams to be able to talk with the dead, but have not spared my own blood as well. There have been four pairs who did not refuse themselves to me, the sacrificer: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With these I have had to come to terms when I have wandered long alone, from them will I accept judgment, to them will I listen when in doing so they judge one another. Whatever I say, resolve, cogitate for myself and others: upon these eight I fix my eyes and see theirs fixed upon me.
I, too, might have such pairs: Aristotle and Thoreau, Nietzsche and Epicurus, Socrates and Pyrrho, Lao Tzu and Rand, Spinoza and Montaigne are the ones that come immediately to mind, at least in philosophy (I can think of others in the realms of poetry and literature). It's a rare and good thing to have such friends.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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