Seyssel, Machiavelli, and Polybius vi: the Mystery of the Missing Translation

Abstract

Somewhere between 1510 and 1520, Niccolò Machiavelli composed the Discorsi sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio. The second chapter of that work contains what for Machiavelli is a rather elaborate theoretical disquisition. It deals with such arcane matters as the origin of civil polities, the beginnings of law, the forms of political rule, and the succession that those forms naturally follow in their historical sequence. Never before and never again did Machiavelli concern himself in so concentrated a way with the higher and more ghostly issues of political theory. Never before and never again was Machiavelli literally so un-Machiavellian. In Chapter 2 of Book I of the Discorsi he was literally un-Machiavellian in the simple sense that he cribbed most of that chapter without acknowledgement from another writer. In so doing he initiated a minor literary mystery—the Mystery of the Missing Translation or the Puzzle of Polybius vi.