ABSTRACT
Those whose stock-in-trade is early modern intellectual history, and who therefore find themselves dealing largely with abstractions, may cherish the narrative interventions or digressions that can embellish the point at issue. The hint of aggression in this phrase seems justified by certain early modern instances of anecdotal illustration. Suppose, for instance, the anecdote had been inserted in a diatribe against the wickedness of Cesare Borgia, and suppose also that we already believed him to be wicked. In other words, Niccolo Machiavelli is doing more than illustrating his theory through an anecdote that would enable one more clearly to grasp the concepts involved. He attempts to modify the reader's relationship to the theory through the affective impact of the anecdote. And yet the tendency of maxim 504, prior to the anecdote, was towards universal truths about the human condition.
