Quote · Dwarkesh Podcast
Ada Palmer – Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker of all time
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Cesare Borgia brought terror to rulers and justice to the people
At 1:05:08 · chapter starts 47:55
The elder Lorenzo de' Medici spent ~$30M equivalent on education. Florence used art as cheaper diplomacy than armies — commissioning gifts for French kings was more cost-effective than fighting France. [1] — Ada Palmer "Florence couldn't afford armies to fight France. So it spent lavishly on art, architecture, and cultural gifts for French kings instead. Cu…" 59:20
Borgia massacred the ruling families of the cities he conquered, then installed neutral justice — and became wildly popular. For the first time in generations, the carpenter whose son killed someone got the same verdict whether he worked for the faction in power or the faction out of power. Machiavelli was startled. The lesson: feared but not hated works.
Cesare Borgia became popular with common people after conquering cities because his neutral justice — unbeholden to local factions — was fairer than anything they had experienced before.
The elder Lorenzo de' Medici spent what would today be roughly $30 million building a library to educate his grandson, illustrating the scale of Renaissance humanist patronage.
Florence couldn't afford armies to fight France. So it spent lavishly on art, architecture, and cultural gifts for French kings instead. Culture wasn't a surplus from peace — it was a rational substitution for unaffordable military spending. Florence was playing the culture victory because the military victory wasn't available.
Florence could not afford armies sufficient to repel France, so it used spectacular art and cultural gifts as diplomatic tools — effectively buying peace for less than the cost of war.
Renaissance thinkers saw human potential as recapturing ancient Rome, not advancing into an unknown future — making imitation of antiquity the highest intellectual ambition.
Medieval Catholic tradition held that Pope Gregory the Great summoned and baptized the ghost of Emperor Trajan posthumously, because Europeans loved Trajan too much to accept that he was in hell.
