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3 0 4 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3ostensible rule of the recurring cycle of regimes. The unchecked expansion ofRome’s dominion over the course of several centuries, however, effected theelimination of political life by political means, that is, the complete destructionof political freedom within the territories of her empire and the city ofRome itself. 50 This destruction in turn paved the way for the complementaryelimination of the vestiges of the political by theological means that was thework of Christianity: political freedom, the thought of such freedom, and,finally, freedom of thought itself, were suppressed. Rome’s unlimited ascent,so to speak, was in fact an unstoppable descent, a descent continued andexpanded by the New Rome. The free-fall initiated and driven on by the twoRomes seems to call into question the beautiful woman’s sanguine assessmentof the infiltration of necessity by the good such that the providence of natureinevitably turns evil to advantage. The diminution of man’s political characterand the unchecked decline of “postpolitical” affairs seems to suggest that men,taken on the subphilosophical level, are more malleable and necessity moreindependent of the good than the ancients, by Machiavelli’s account, werewilling to admit. 51 The existence of a natural providence is dubious. 52Indeed, rather than a reversal of fortune and the initiation of an ascentfrom the present low point anticipated by the beautiful woman, the most likelyevent on the horizon of the immediate future would appear to be a “flood”that will sweep everything away before it: the Turks, unified and ordered to adegree unknown to European politics, wait upon the frontier for an opportunityto acquire. 53 The very survival of Europe has been put in jeopardy by theempire of Circe. But through an accident of the manner in which Circe wascompelled to acquire that empire—not by the sword but by the power of thepen, that is, by means of persuasion and propaganda—the books and the languagesof ancient wisdom have been left in her hands. 54 Since the eliminationof philosophy has already been accomplished in the lands of the caliph, the50Machicavelli, Discourses, 2.2; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 118.51Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 253.52Seth Benardete commented upon this difference between the ancient and the modern points ofview in regard to the discrepant premises of their natural philosophies: “You might put it this way,Aristotle seems to have underestimated the matter-like character of matter, which we call inertia.Inertia is equivalent to Sod’s law…[which] states that if something can go wrong it will: if you’re goingto a picnic it will rain. That is, this absolute nitty-gritty of things, which resists one’s will, plays a muchlarger role in the world than Aristotle thought it did” (unpublished transcript of lectures on Aristotle’sMetaphysics, lecture 13, p. 17).53Machiavelli, Prince; Discourses, 2.4.2: “Since we are prey to this ignorance, we are prey to whoeverhas wished to overrun this province.”54Machiavelli, Discourses, 2.5; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 144.