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Ancients and Moderns under the Empire of Circe: Machiavelli’s The Ass, Commentary2 8 7are given some of Machiavelli’s deepest reflections on what he perceives to bethe specific necessity determining the founding of such a movement and themotives and ends that animate this effort and effect its shape.Having provided us with a proem to his work in which he distinguisheshimself from Dante and the tradition, our author begins his narration properin such a way as to affirm his link to Dante and the tradition. The hero ofThe Ass is found at the opening of the poem in a difficulty similar to that inwhich the protagonist of the Comedy is involved at its commencement. He islost in “a place as harsh as was ever seen” and lacking in wakefulness to sucha degree as to be ignorant of the cause of his misfortune (II.19–24). Dante isand is not Machiavelli’s teacher. Machiavelli’s thought is and is not a continuationof the prior philosophical tradition.Machiavelli gives us rather precise information about the temporal settingof the action he will recount. The season of the year is springtime (II.1–2).The time of the day is dusk (II.19–20). The temporal setting of the actionnarrated is, therefore, radically ambiguous. In winter giving way to spring“the day proves more resplendent” (II.7); in day giving way to night darknessenshrouds the world and one is bound to lose one’s way without a lamp orguide. The change of times is pregnant with the opportunity for renewal andrenovation, but also the danger of decline and dissolution.The characters that populate the valley into which our hero has strayedare suggestive of a similar ambiguity. On one hand, Diana and her selectband of virgin nymphs are now “hunting in the woods” (II.4–6). On the otherhand, a promiscuous herd of assess is raising a ruckus as it returns home inthe evening (II.10–12). We are familiar with the significance of noisy asses.What is the meaning of the presence of the chaste hunters pursuing theirquarry through the forest? The gods of the poets, among whom the sisterof Apollo may be numbered, were previously associated with a subtlety andelevation of mind alien to the current climate. The activity of hunting furtherbut rather follows, in the end, the advice of his teacher Epicurus to “live hiddenly,” that is, to retreatinto private life in the company of a small number of philosophically minded friends (1.140–48).In this Lucretius resembles the whole tribe of ancient philosophers. By contrast it is precisely thisdream of a secular society that Machiavelli is the first to propose as a blueprint for political action andrenovation. Machiavelli is a revolutionary in a sense that Lucretius and the rest of the ancients simplyare not. In the last analysis, therefore, Machiavelli and his modern followers’ critique of religion mustbe much more public than that of Lucretius or any other ancient philosopher. Machiavelli’s critiqueof religion is not accomplished merely in speech or argument, but is meant, as we will see, to issuein a practical demotion of the status of religion (the divine and the sacred) in the political affairs ofmankind. Machiavelli “went public” in a way that is entirely contrary to the retiring spirit of bothEpicurean philosophy and ancient philosophy generally speaking.