RE: Clever girl.....
October 30, 2012 at 3:57 pm
(This post was last modified: October 30, 2012 at 4:03 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(October 30, 2012 at 3:51 pm)jonb Wrote: For shear ruthless Machiavellian guile the Spartans are hard to better-
The story goes that once in a while the Spartans would announce that they were low in numbers an would consider promoting the most able Helots (the slave class) to Spartan status. When the Helots applied to be Spartans they would be executed, because the Spartans only wanted subservient slaves, and it was a good way to find out which slaves thought of themselves as being anything more than just possessions.
The essence of machivellian is to succeed with unexpected underhandedness against reasonably cunninge adversary. There is little machivallian in repeating the same old tired trick over and over again on a bunch of sheep.
(October 30, 2012 at 3:40 am)apophenia Wrote:
This thread is for your favorite historical examples of Machiavellian cleverness.
"In the third century the Roman emperor Aurelian had a private secretary, named Eros, who had incurred
his master’s anger and was about to be punished. To forestall the outcome, he forged a list of names of political
leaders whom the emperor had supposedly decided to have executed for treason and put the forged list
into circulation. The men on the list rose up and assassinated the emperor."
— Forged: Writing In The Name Of God, Bart Ehrman
this thread is dedicated to Sun Tzu
If he was so machivellian, what did he do to ensure his own future after avoiding punishment?
