Machiavelli in Context | Discourses: A Republic at War (Lecture 18)

Lecture 18: One of Machiavelli’s most quoted lines is that “wealth is the sinews of war.” This thought leads to a long discussion of the organization and practice of warfare in ancient Rome. He concludes that it is better to use fraud than force.

When Machiavelli gets fairly technical about certain tactics of war and defense, it is more important for us to see what general lessons we can draw from his analysis than to work through details of a kind of warfare no longer practiced in our time. When dealing with the use of artillery in the wars of his own time, he concludes that technological changes do not invalidate principles of warfare established in a different time.

Recommended Readings:
Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, translated by Julia Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, Discourse II, chapters 6–21.