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Ancients and Moderns under the Empire of Circe: Machiavelli’s The Ass, Commentary2 7 9Ancients and Moderns under the Empire of Circe:Machiavelli’s The Ass, Translation and CommentaryPart Two: CommentarySt e v e n B e rgBellarmine Universitysberg@bellarmine.eduWe have learned from Socrates that the political things, or thehuman things, are the key to the understanding of all things.—Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli 1Wrapped in a military cloak so that the enemy would notnotice the leader going about, he surveyed all these things.—Machiavelli, Discourses on LivyIt is characteristic of the founders of modern philosophy to boast of theirdeparture from the ancients. The affirmation of novelty presupposes the rejectionof tradition, and sharp critique, if not dismissive ridicule, of precedentphilosophy is likewise ubiquitous in the treatises that initiate the modernventure. Declarations in this vein, found in the writings of Bacon, Hobbes,and Descartes, however, take their inspiration from the arguments andattitudes of the first mover of modernity, that author who proudly declaredhimself to be a discoverer of “modes and orders” that are “wholly new.” In1The following essay is very much indebted to Strauss’s work on Machiavelli. Indeed, it is in largepart simply an attempt to think through some of the implications of Strauss’s analysis of Machiavelli’sthought.© 2015 Interpretation, Inc.