nicely done translation that flows well, Machiavelli is Machiavelli, so obviously a solid source, but this is a coherent biography of a renaissance warrior.
I've come to enjoy Machiavelli's writing even if it is of a topic I haven't much interest.
That being said I loved at the end of this little biography how there was a list of Castruccio's quotes.
It made him seem like a very real human to me, and Castruccio was very funny.
Interesting book. This came with my copy of "The Prince", Parts of this little biography come across like Nick is fanboying, You can tell thought this guy was damostawsomest politicohistorical figure,
Of course he also works in references to his own political theories: as to what extent one's fate in life can be controlled.
My favorite part was when spoiler alert Castruccio finds out he's going to die and calls in his heir and has a little hearttoheart about ambition and the legacy he wanted to leave behind.
A great historical overview filled with a treasure trove of information,
Read for personal research, Overall, a good book for the researcher and enthusiast,
I found this Life of Castruccio Castracani's contents helpful and inspiring number rating relates to the Life of Castruccio Castracani's contribution to my needs.
" Castruccio passed from the house of Messer Antonio the priest to the house of Messer Francesco Guinigi the soldier, and it was astonishing to find that in a very short time he manifested all that virtue and bearing which we are accustomed to associate with a true gentleman.
"
"He was once asked in what manner he would wish to be buried when he died, and answered: 'With the face turned downwards, for I know when I am gone this country will be turned upside down.
'" Also included is a review on the Prince, the two were combined in my copy
The Prince is an important book, but it has been overshadowed by many of the texts that followed.
The very name of its author, Niccolo Machiavelli, has become something of a byword for manipulation and realpolitik.
Having read the book from start to finish this is not entirely undeserved, but it is not nearly as morally corrupt as I thought it would be.
The snipets and quotes I read in the past appear to be the worst of the corrupt morality of statecraft.
Most of which has been internalized, adapted, and updated by a number of different schools in political science.
A decent chunk of it informs the international relations paradigm of Realism, and so I have been, perhaps, overexposed to the state morality and logic overshadowing and overruling the morality of mankind.
Attached at the end of the audiobook was the Life of Castruccio Castracani, and I have to say I was considerably more interested in the most likely partially fictionalized narrative portrayed.
That was actually a very decent, and quite fast, read, About an hour, actually while the Prince is maybe, I understand why it was included to, for while Cesare Borgia was understood as the model prince in recent memory, Castruccio's life also lent itself to the lessons of his work.
Passing judgment on Machiavelli has been in vogue for half a millennium now, and I see no need to tell you whether or not I believe him to be a wicked man or a man who provides sound advice to ensure to the survival of the state.
Perhaps it is both, perhaps it is neither, For such a quick read, I am amazed that I never actually did so in the past.
I recommend that you take a look at it yourself, and decide whether or not you are capable of passing your own judgment.
Score
The Life of Castruccio Castracani
/B
The Prince
/A
In a vacuum the score is highly inflated, but in the context of human thought and political science it may appear underappreciated.
This score represents an unhappy medium, while the Life of Castruccio Castracani represents only itself, and thus may actually be the more praiseworthy for it.
The ruler of Lucca at the time, this is more of an essay of another “Prince” at a fragile time in Italian politics.
It almost felt like an obituary or short biography, The Life of Castruccio Castracani seems like an elaboration of the last chapter of The Prince proper chapter, in which Machiavelli discusses fortune and its role in ones life.
This is how he describes it:
Its like one of those raging rivers that sometimes rise and flood the plain, tearing down trees and buildings, dragging soil from one place and dumping it down in another.
Everybody runs for safety, no one can resist the rush, theres no way you can stop it.
Still, the fact that a river is like this doesnt prevent us from preparing for trouble when levels are low, building banks and dykes, so that when the
water rises the next time it can be contained in a single channel and the rush of the river in flood is not so uncontrolled and destructive.
For the better part of the book the narrative follows the life of Castruccio Castracani, a child who possessed virtù and became a man of exceptional abilities.
Virtù, as Machiavelli envisaged it, is a quality of character that enables one to achieve power and be able to hold on to it, with disregard for moral virtues.
Leading a bold and successful life, Castracani was on his way of uniting Tuscany under his rule until Fortune turned her back on him at a crucial time in war.
The most meaningful part of the story begins when Castracani, on his deathbed, summons his fosterbrother Pagolo Guinigi and tells him of Fortune, and how Pagolo should rule after his death.
The book follows up with the description of Castracanis character and an account of his unusual sayings.
Tldr: an extension of The Prince with focus on Fortune, nested in a partly fictitious biography.
This was hilarious Interesting biography of a man who was born someone insignificant and achieved greatness through virtú virtue, skill and cunning.
Although some historical facts are incorrect, there are a lot of real facts and happenings from history.
It is clear that Machiavelli is celebrating Castracani's life and suggesting that new princes follow his lead.
Better than Duke Valentino. Machiavelli admires Castruccio whereas he was only using Valentino to explain a point, Castruccio himself is very intriguing or at least the way in which Machiavelli presents him, In Machiavelli's mind he is better than Ceasar and Alexander the Great put together, His only flaw was being born in the wrong year and at the wrong place, Perhaps, Machiavelli's resentment towards fortune comes from the untimely death of Castruccio by illness, That bit at the end, where he notes examples of how Castruccio acted, is majestic, If you dislike long texts, at least give the bit at the end a small read.
It will give you an understanding of what qualities Machiavelli saw in Cartuccio that he deemed admirable.
I believe it to be a reflection of Machiavelli's ideals, Set amid the ferment and factionalism of early modern Italy, Life of Castruccio Castracani is a vivid and actionpacked account of the rise and fall of a very "Machiavellian" prince.
A charismatic warlord of the earlyth century, Castruccio Castracani came from humble beginnings as a foundling, and ended his life as ruler of Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia, and Florence.
In this Life, Machiavelli extols Castracani for his acute understanding of the politics of warfare and statecraft, and while sparing no detail of his shrewd and often bloody tactics, he overturns our moral prejudice, depicting Castracani as a popular unifying force.
Life of Castruccio Castracani is accompanied by selected passages from Machiavellis Florentine Histories to give a powerful, rounded portrait of the abandoned child who rose to become the most powerful man in Tuscany.
Niccolò Machiavelli was a prominent Florentine politician and writer, whose greatest work, The Prince, has ensured his lasting fame.
Read in the Bondanella/Musa translation in sitelinkThe Portable Machiavelli,
The early part of this semifictionalised account of athth century soldier and leader of Lucca detailing the superlative natural talents and early life of its dashing hero reminded me of jingoistic Victorian and Edwardian boys' stories about Great Men of the British Empire.
Those were, no doubt just like this influenced by Plutarch's Lives, which I haven't read, Though if I had a pound for every time I'd seen them mentioned in the introduction or notes to another classic work.
Then we get into something much more similar to The Prince, sequences of military adventures, strokes of luck, good or bad, and dastardly plots.
Including murdering someone at a banquet, because stories from the Classical world and Renaissance Italy usually involve that sooner or later.
Some detailed battle scenes liven it up somewhat although the troops could really be robots but a lot of this sort of thing, like the political manoeuvring, IMO would be more exciting in film form than on the page.
It's back to the paeans to the Great Man as he dies, It's interesting that he had assumed he would live consierably longer than tohis age at death in this account.
Death at that sort of age looks from our perspective like a common part of medieval life one might assume a person would reasonably expect.
Then there are pages of anecdotes about occasions when Castruccio Castracani said something witty or aphoristic.
Along with the battles, this I found the most involving part of the story, Unlike much of the rest, it doesn't necessitate visualising maps and diagrams of troop movements, Those wellversed in Classical literature may be able to detect sources here,
The story highlights certain categories and pieces of advice from The Prince, such as the importance of Machiavelli's preoccupation with Fortune, and of how it is better for a prince to have the support of the people than of the nobility, if one can't have both.
A more prosocial lesson implicit here is the importance of a loyal and competenti/c, which Machiavelli's version of Castruccio Castracani has in his late mentor's son, whom he had, to all intents and purposes, adopted.
As in The Prince, "the people" are quite often mentioned, but they are usually a sort of lumpenproletariat, a faceless mass that assists or hampers regime change, only occasionally displaying a sense of their own interests, whilst the guys at the top are the of the show.
I would love to know and it's largely unknowable unless someone invents a kind of time travelling opinion polling if medieval and early modern people really did have such fondness for various despots, as described in works like this, for being a bit nicer to them than the previous lot and to what extent some quietly dissented.
One paragraph among the aphoristic addenda about a man who, when he was a beautiful boy, had stolen husbands from wives, and now as a handsome man steals wives from husbands seems to confirm a kind of sexuality lifecycle for upper class men in Renaissance Tuscany surprisingly, rather similar to the Greeks and Roman world of romantic and sexual relations in youth more with boys and men, and later on with women, indicated in the early chapters of a new biography, sitelinkMachiavelli: His Life and Times.
The morals and virtues of this piece are very much Classical there is little in it that's Christian, after Castruccio rejects his clergyman adoptive father and his own reluctant attempt to study for the priesthood.
You wouldn't think all the action was happening in a world so pervaded by Christianity as medieval Europe.
Its absence shows, with Machiavelli's tellingitlikeitis honesty about such things, that military leaders of the time behaved in a way that rejected Christian norms, as if in a parallel world to the church, as well as the humanist leanings towards Classical pagan values which were part of the author's education and psyche.
May.