Clever girl.....

[Angrboda]

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

[Dotard]

What girl? I think the use of the words 'he' and 'his' are clues to the gender of this character. Not female.

[festive1]

What girl? I think the use of the words 'he' and 'his' are clues to the gender of this character. Not female.

Have you never seen Jurassic Park? The thread title is a movie line.

[jonb]

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.

[Anomalocaris]

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.

---

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?

[Cyberman]

Not sure if this is quite in the spirit of the topic, but one story I particularly like concerns John Napier, the 16th century astronomer and mathematician who invented logarithms and the decimal point (also the machine gun, apparently). As a way of testing which of his servants was stealing from him, he kept a black cockerel in a dark room which he told them was so sensitive it could distinguish between a thief and an honest man just by touch. So he made them all go into the room one by one and stroke his cock, which they all did. The guilty party, however, obviously didn't want to get caught out, so he only said that he had stroked it. Unfortunately, the bird was covered in soot, so the thief was revealed as the only one with clean hands.

[Anomalocaris]

How about the case where 4 students partied all night before the final exame and therefore missed the exame. By way of an excuse they concocted a story about carpooling to the exame and suffering a flat tyre on the way. The professor nodded sympathetically, offered reassuring words of confidence in their preparedness for the exame, and asked them to go to 4 different rooms to take a one question, pass or fail make up exame. The question is "Which tyre?"

[jonb]

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.

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I am very sorry that my example did not measure up to your high standards, I only mentioned it because it was a story which Machiavelli probably alluded to in the Prince without directly mentioning.

Lycurgus is one of those who have merited high praise for devising constitutions of this kind. The laws he drew up in Sparta gave appropriate shares of power to the kings, to the senate, and to the people, creating a state which lasted more than 800 years, much to the honour of the legislator and the tranquillity of the citizens. Very different was the fate of the laws devised by Solon at Athens: for the state he set up was a simple democracy, and proved so shorted-lived that it gave way to the tyranny of Pisistratus before the death of the legislator.

Because he was writing for an audience well versed in the classics, they would probably understand what the phrase the 'tranquillity of the citizens' meant when speaking about Sparta.

Incidentally your reason for the dismissal of the story from apophenia seems at odds with those written by Machiavelli himself which were meant to display a particular action, not necessarily all the ramifications thereof.

[Anomalocaris]

I am very sorry that my example did not measure up to your high standards, I only mentioned it because it was a story which Machiavelli probably alluded to in the Prince without directly mentioning.

I try to be a discerning apprasier of treachery.

Incidentally your reason for the dismissal of the story from apophenia seems at odds with those written by Machiavelli himself which were meant to display a particular action, not necessarily all the ramifications thereof.

I think the term Machiavellian has evolved to assume certain connotation beyond what Machiavalli himself may have attempted to directly illustrate. Basically cunning acts devised solely out of desparate self-preservation is no longer deemed to be quite completely "machiavellian". Instead the underhandedness must have been devised to serve a certain descretionary self-aggrandizement to fully qualify.

[Minimalist]

There is little machivallian in repeating the same old tired trick over and over again on a bunch of sheep.

It has worked for the church for centuries. Only now is it breaking down on them.