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Ancients and Moderns under the Empire of Circe: Machiavelli’s The Ass, Commentary3 1 1controlling source for this exterior, however, its intrinsic philosophical core,is revealed most clearly in Machiavelli’s quiet dialogue with ancient philosophyregarding the question of what support may be found in the nature ofthings for the human good or how necessity and chance operate to advanceor thwart the possibility of philosophy. Even in its extrinsic teaching, however,and especially in the aims that shape and guide it, Machiavelli’s partialagreement with the ancients can be detected: both Machiavelli and his predecessorsrecognize the theologico-political problem as among those centralproblems to which the inquiry of political philosophy must be devoted. Theyperhaps disagree concerning the degree to which that problem may be ameliorated,but they do not disagree on its urgency and importance. 6969Machiavelli seems to have deduced from the depoliticization of man effected by the Roman empireand the Christian religion, the possibility of man’s “secularization” at the hands of a new, politicallyeffective science. Ordinary men, he concedes, must always be ruled by opinions, and opinion mustalways be at the foundation of political life, but those opinions can be modified, in his view, in such away as to exclude, to an unprecedented degree, man’s reliance on the sacred and the divine.