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Ancients and Moderns under the Empire of Circe: Machiavelli’s The Ass, Commentary2 9 9account. His presentation will exclude the “idealism” of Dante and the philosophicaltradition even or especially when treating of the beautiful.Still, that the “idealism” of ancient philosophy is the topic underlyingthe description of the charms of the beautiful woman’s body seems to beindicated by the fact that the author declares himself incapable of portrayingthem without the aid of the Muses. Towards the center of this portrayal theauthor-hero describes the beauties of his beloved’s mouth, including aboveall her tongue and her voice (IV.70–78). This description is the key to thesignificance of all of the beautiful woman’s charms and to the explanationof the reticence that they at first inspire in the hero. The hero attributes themaking of the beautiful woman’s mouth to Jove, the god of the law and thename the beautiful woman employs, after the manner of Dante, to designatethe Christian god. How could the god of the law, let alone the god ofAbraham, be held responsible for the creation of the mouth of the figure representingancient wisdom? The voice that issues from the beautiful woman’smouth is said to possess the capacity to “stop the winds and make plantsmove” through the sweetness of its harmony (IV.76–78). This metaphor isof Dantean and, ultimately, Ovidean provenance. At the beginning of thesecond book of his Il Convivio, Dante describes how the allegorical meaningthat lies behind the literal sense of the fables of the poets is the truth thattheir “beautiful lies” convey. He employs Ovid’s account of Orpheus as anexample: when Ovid says that “with his lyre Orpheus tamed wild beasts andmade trees and rocks move toward him,” his words convey the allegoricalsense that “the wise man with the instrument of his voice makes cruel heartsgrow tender and humble and moves to his will those who do not devote theirlives to knowledge and art, for those who have no rational life whatever arealmost like stones.” Allegorically interpreted, Orpheus’s song points to therhetorical self-presentation of ancient wisdom. It signifies, that is, the apologeticalrhetoric deployed by the ancients to reconcile the majority of men tothe presence of philosophy in their midst despite their natural opposition toit. Through this allusion, Machiavelli indicates that the voice of the beautifulwoman, with its sweetness and harmony, has an identical significance. Itis this rhetorical self-presentation of ancient wisdom, then, that leads to thefailure of virtue that the hero experiences in the presence of the beautifulwoman’s charms such that, “timid and ashamed” like a new bride, his naturaldesire falters, overpowered by shame. The mouth of the beautiful womanmay plausibly be described as “made” by the hand of “Jove,” then, because theeffects of the sweetness of her voice are similar to the effects of Circe and herlegions—they emasculate.