Greg’s Reviews > Machiavelli: His Life and Times > Status Update

…he had told Vettori that, since he did ‘not know how to talk about the silk or the wool trade, or profits and losses’, he had to talk about the affairs of state.

Though Merano wasn’t an unattractive town, the Tyrol was not to his taste. The people were uncouth, the food was awful and the weather was perpetually freezing. He was also painfully short of money. Most of all, he hated having so little to do. Apart from writing a few letters on Vettori’s behalf and sending dirty jokes to his friends in diplomatic code, he had nothing to keep him occupied.

...the Florentine’s morale was high…the sight of so many troops marching through the city streets with drums playing and banners flying filled everyone with confidence. On 14 May, the completion of Michelangelo’s David helped lift their spirits even further…most regarded it as a fitting symbol of the city’s defiant stand against foreign invaders and took heart from the implication that God was on their side.

But, if poetry should make men good, oratory should make them free…Marcello drew a close connection between the rhetorical arts and the health of the republic…he pointed out that, while they had held sway, rhetoric had been allowed to decay, with the result that justice had been ignored and liberty overthrown.