Stoics Who Sing: Lessons in Citizenship from Early Modern Lucca

The Historical Journal, 44, 2 (2001), pp. 313-339 Printed in the United Kingdom© 2001 Cambridge University Press

STOICS WHO SING: LESSONS IN

CITIZENSHIP FROM EARLY MODERN

LUCCA*

PETER N. MILLER

Bard Graduate Center, New York

abstract. Lucca wasthe smallest and least important of the three Italian republics that survivedtheRenaissance. Venice and Genoa still command the attention of historians. But in theseventeenthand eighteenth centuries, for all that it might seem out-of-the-way, Lucca developed anextraordinarypolitical literature. Theregular election of senators wasmarked by the musical performance ofa text,generally drawnfrom Roman history, that illustrated the way citizens of a republic were to behave.Thepoet and composer were natives and the event wasa lesson incitizenship. Aclose look atthe contentof these serenades, or operas, makes clear that the republic's motto might have been Libertas but itsleaching emphasized constantia. The themes and the heroes of Lucca's political literature were thosewe associate with neo-Stoicism. The relationship between neo-Stoicism and citizenship in earlymodern Lucca is thefocus of thisarticle. These texts present uswith the self-image ofanearly modernrepublic and its understanding of what it meant to bea citizen. They are an important sourceforanyone interested in early modern debates about citizenship and in the political ideas that are conveyedin thecommonplaces of baroque visualand musical culture.

Enclosed within her once imposing, now picturesque, ramparts Lucca strikesthe visitor as a wealthy, well-preserved, early modern Italian city, barelychanged from the time when those walls were topped by cannon and patrolledby soldiers rather than by trees and strolling lovers. While there are otherwalled towns in Italy, Lucca caught the eye of Thomas Hobbes - perhapswhile travelling through Tuscany in 1636, when he met Galileo. 'There iswritten on the turrets of the city of Lucca in great characters at this day, theword LIBERTAS', he observed in Leviathan (1651), 'yet no man can thenceinfer, that a particular man has more liberty, or immunity from the service ofthe commonwealth there, than in Constantinople.' For Hobbes, Lucca's mottowas a standing affront to right thinking and a concrete reminder of thecatastrophic attack on royal authority in England that had been motivated, sohe thought, by the ancient theory of political liberty which Italians and theirEnglish grandchildren had drawn from the Romans. In 1775 a leader of the lastgeneration of English commonwealthmen, James Burgh, contrasted the state of

* The author wishes to thank Harry Ballan and Bathia Churgin for reading earlier drafts of tiiisarticle, Marino Bercngo for his encouragement, and the librarian and staff of the BibliothecaStatale in Lucca for their kind and helpful assistance.

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Italy's dukedoms with its thriving republics. 'Lucca', he wrote, 'to mention noothers at present, is a remarkable instance of the happy effects of liberty. '*

The story of republicanism in Italy has never been written from theperspective of Lucca and hardly ever from that of the seventeenth century.What follows is an attempt to dojust this: to probe the history of citizenship inthe seventeenth century from the eccentric point of view ofan Italian republicthat is neither Florence nor Venice in the centuries after the Renaissance.

Lucca in 1636 was the smallest and least significant of the three Italian city-republics that had survived the Renaissance. Genoa and Venice remainedimportant European metropolcs, but Lucca, while still wealthy, was neither.Its earlier history has attracted some scholarly attention, but its later centurieshave been well and truly forgotten.2 And yet, like the other, greater, republics,Lucca in the seventeenth century faced the challenge of preserving somerelation between a theoretical social equality and the social reality of a smallcity whose declining wealth undermined that equality and amplified theexisting distinctions between richer and poorer. In the late 1620s, in all threecity-republics, the tension between the theory and reality of republicanismsnapped. Where demands were made to pry open closed ruling oligarchies theywere phrased in terms of a return to republican first principles: equal power forequal citizens. This social challenge inspired a political debate whoseimportance extends beyond local circumstances to raise broader questionsabout the meaning of republicanism in the seventeenth century.

In Genoa and Venice, suppression of the reforming movement was followedby a sharp ideological debate about the shape of political community - inVenice, by arguing about different models offriendship.3 In Lucca, events werenever to get so out of hand. We do not, for example, see the emergence ofanything like an opposition party or actual demands for reform. All wc sec isthe response: a Venetian-style 'closing' of the citizenry that limited the

1 Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, 1991), p. 149 (ch. 21); James Burgh,Political disquisitions (3 vols., London, 1775), m, p. 399.

2 Louis Green, Lucca under many masters: afourteenth-century Italian commune in crisis (1328-13.(2)(Florence, 1995); Christine Meek, Lucca, 1369-1400: politics andsociety in an early Renaissance state(Oxford, 1978); M. E. Bratchel, Lucca, 1430-1494:the reconstruction ofan Italian city-republic (Oxford,1995); Marino Bcrengo, .Yobili mercanti nella Lucca delcinquecento (Turin, 1965); for the later periodthere is only Rita Ma/./.ei, La societa lucchese netseicento (Lucca, 1977).

Gaetano Co/./.i, // doge Nicolb Conlarini. Ricerche sulpatriziato veneziano agli inizidelSeicento (Veniceand Rome, 1958), csp. ch. 6; idem,' Una Vicenda delta venezia barroca: Marco Trevisano e la sua"eroica amicizia'", Bollettino dell'Istituto di storia delta societa e dello stato veneziano, 3 (i960),pp. 61-154; Peter N. Miller,' Friendship and conversation in seven teen th-century Venice', Journalof Modern History, 73 (2001), pp. 1-31. For Genoa, see: Dibattito politico eproblemi digovemo a Genovanella prima meta delseicento and published as Miscellanea Storica Ligure, 7 (1975); Giorgio Doria andRodolfo Savelli, '"Cittadini di governo" a Genova: ricchezza e poterc tra cinque e seicento",Materialiper una storia dclla cultura giuridica, 10 (1980), pp. 277-355; Rodolfo Savelli, La repubblicaoligarchica: legislazione, istituzioni e cetia Genova nel cinquecento (Milan, 1981).

stoics who sing: early modern lucca 315

number of those who could legitimately claim to participate as citizens (rulingand being ruled) in government. In both Genoa and Venice the challenge of1628 sparked some serious and interesting political thinking by figures whosenames are not now well known, men such as Andrea Spinola and Anton GiulioBrignole Sale, Lodovico Zuccolo, and Vincenzo Sgualdi. In Lucca there seemsto have been no theoretical reflection on local conditions, whether because of

the absence of a tradition of political writing or because the quiet prosperity ofa small town had, over time, dulled all theoretical sensibility.'1 In the absenceof any such literature scholars have been unable to harvest the experiences ofcitizens in this other long-lasting Italian republic.

But the constitutional reform of the early 1630s in Lucca did produce a bodyof political thinking, and one utterly unlike anything found in Venice, Genoa,or for that matter anywhere else in Europe. Beginning almost immediatelyafter the reform and continuing every two or three years from 1636 to 1797,male citizens above the age of twenty-five who had paid their taxes, livedwithin 100 miles of the city, and were not heretics, illegitimate children, orfailures in business elected a new cadre of anziani who, along with thegonfaloniere, presided over the annually elected senate and constituted therepublic's sovereign authority. The anziani were installed during a three-dayelection festival, called thefunzione delle tasche, perhaps in recognition of thepouches (tasche) from which ballots were drawn, and which was punctuated bythe performance on each of the three days of a musical drama designed toelucidate one or another principle of political life deemed essential for themaking of good citizens. Eighty-nine little books, or libretti, produced for thesesemi-staged concerts over a 150-year period, have survived. This is Lucca'spolitical thought.5

For the first twenty-five years these texts were short, about sixteen smallquarto pages, and their contents allegorical. But beginning around 1660history, especially Roman history, began to supply the content that was set tomusic. Sometimes the textuality was made quite dense and the margins filledwith the Latin sources that were sung in Italian. By the end of the seventeenthcentury the daily dramas were transformed from short, free-standing, piecesinto the discrete but related parts of a three-act opera whose printed textnumbered up to fifty pages. Performances began at nine in the morning in thehall of the consiglio generate with an audience of the gonfaloniere, anziani, bishop,

4 Mazzeinotes that the city wasswept by grumbling and disquiet in the winterof 1647-8, atnewsof the rebellion in Naples. But nothing came of this: Mazzei, Societa lucchese, p. 69.

5 The textsare preserved in the Bibliotcca Statalc, Lucca, bound together in 5 volumes, undershelfmark y.m.f. 10-14. Facsimiles of some texts are found in Testi drammatici per lafunzione delletasche inLucca, published in the series Carmina Dramatica Italicac Lucensia by Antiquae MusicaeIialicae Studiosi (Bologna, 1972). A complete list of the surviving titles is printed in the appendixto Gabriella Biagi-Ravenni and Carolyn Gianturco, "The tasche of Lucca: 150 years of politicalserenatas', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 111 (1984-5), pp. 45-65. For a contemporarydescription of Lucca's form of government see Vincenzo Marchio, // Foresliere informalo dellecose diLucca (Lucca, 1721), ch. 15.

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civil servants, and invited guests. The hall was decorated with furnishingsrequisitioned from private palaces, as well as the banner ofliberty topped by anolive branch. Trumpeters, musicians, and singers led the counsellors into thehall and texts were then distributed to the audience. An oration given by ayoung man preceded the concert on the first two days; on the last its place wastaken by more music. Aside from 1750, 1760, and 1763, the composers andlibrettists were all natives.6

The elaborateness of the ceremonies of the tasche are the strongest evidencefor the notable increase in government pomp and ceremony in Lucca from themiddle of the seventeenth century to which Rita Mazzei has called attention:the gonfaloniere was styled eccellentissimo (1638), he began to wear a crimsonberet (1652) and the anziani became illustrissimi (1689).7 Pietro Testa's 1632commission for a fresco of liberty, discussed by Elizabeth Cropper, and a seriesof drawings from another unrealized commission from before 1637, might alsoreflect this reinvigoration of ritual.8 It is tempting to suggest that Testa'sdrawings might even have had something to do with the funzione delle tasche,though there appears to be no direct relationship between their subjects andthe 1636 texts, while those of 1639 and 1642 have been lost. Perhaps allthis - including the content of the music dramas - should be seen as an attemptby the ruling class to reverse a fairly precipitous decline in the prestige of beingan active citizen over the course of the seventeenth century. For it had becomecommon for senators to petition to be excused immediately after their electionand for those seats to remain vacant for some time. Mazzei describes 'a climate

ofscarce concern for public affairs' that had come 'to reign in the seats of eventhe more important magistracies'.9This kind of'opting out' was preciselywhatthe libretti for the tasche inveighed against.

The importance of opera as a vehicle for representing and analysing politicalideas is widely acknowledged.10 Ellen Rosand's classic study of seventeenth-century Venetian opera, for example, details the way in which one republican'myth' was celebrated on the stages of the city's public opera houses.11 RuthSmith's book on Handel's oratorios in their English context does somethingsimilar.1" But Lucca's operas were different. First, they were official texts,presented and performed on the most holy of state occasions, in the hall ofstate,with the leading figures of the city in attendance. Second, they were not exactlyoperas, at least not initially. In their study of the music and musical

8 Memorie e doaimeuti per servire alia storia di Lucca, vol. xiv pt 1: Spettacoli lucchesi nei secoliXVII XIX. vd. Almachide Pellegrini (Lucca, 1914), pp. 83-4.

7 Mazzei, Societa lucchese, p. 46.8 I draw here on the argument of Elizabeth Cropper,' Pietro Testa and Lucca: mythology of a

republic', Grafua Grajica (1977), pp. 88-109. Mazzei, Societa lucchese, p. 44.10 Some recent examples include John Bokina, Opera and politics (New Haven and London,

1997): Anthony Arblaster, ' Viva la liberta': politics in opera (London, 1992); Iain Fenlon and PeterN. Miller, I hesong of the soul: understanding'Pobpea' (London, 1992).

11 Ellen Rosand, Opera inseventeenth-century Venice: the creation ofagenre (Berkeleyand LosAngeles,1991), ch. 5.

'" Ruth Smith, Handel's oratorios and eighteenth-century thought (Cambridge, 1995).

STOICS WHO SING: EARLY MODERN LUCCA 3 I 7

organization of the funzione delle tasche, Gabriella Biagi-Ravenni and CarolynGianturco rightly suggest that these texts can contribute to a betterunderstanding of the particular musical form they first took, the serenata, butalso to the history of early modern Lucca and the political uses to which musiccould be put in early modern Europe.13 They focuson the first theme; the lattertwo will concern us here.

While the chief purpose of the funzione delle tasche was, of course, thecelebration of liberty, and to this extent seems to confirm Hobbes's interpretation of the meaning of being Lucchese, the texts are actually muchmore concerned with representing the kind of behaviour that sustained liberty.Lucca's political operas were the prime means by which lessons in citizenshipwere imparted by Lucca's citizen-rulers to its citizen-subjects. This educationwas by example —through the characters singing to the audience and throughthe historical figures whosestories were being re-told. Of course, for as long aseducation by example was the norm, well into the nineteenth century, we findhistory made into pedagogy. Under these circumstances what matters is thechoice of examples. In Lucca's libretti we find an especial emphasis on Romanheroes famed for their extreme displays of will-power and self-control likeRegulus, Scaevola, Cato, and Scipio.

These heroes, and their stories, are the same ones that were so popular withthe history painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Just as manyartists painted versions of the story of Mutius Scaevola plunging his hand intoa fire, or Regulus returning to Carthage, or Scipio renouncing his claim on aconquered beauty, different librettists and composers made them the subjectsof operas. The settings of the story of Mutius by Cavalli and Handel are betterknown than the three Lucchese versions. Similarly, Cavalli's setting ofthe 'continence' of Scipio, Paolumba's and Auletta's of the Horatii andStampiglia's and Scarlatti's of the fall of the decemvirs are all more celebratedthan the Lucchese sercnatas on these subjects. That the same stories fromancient history were made opera in Lucca as in London or Vienna or Venice,just as they were painted by different artists in these places, is evidence for thecommon cultural repertoire of aristocratic Europe in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries.

But why the convergence on these particular stories? The answer has to dowith the extraordinary fashionablcness of Roman Stoicism in the seventeenthcentury. For the heroes of these operas - Mutius, Regulus, Scipio - were theheroes of this philosophical literature. In Europe c. 1600, training inconslantia -Justus Lipsius's shorthand for the strength of mind to remainsteadfast in both good times and bad - was seen as necessary for enduring the

1-1 Biagi-Ravenni and Gianturco, 'The tasche of Lucca: 150 years of political sercnatas', p. 56.I will follow their terminology in referring to the seventeenth-century performances as 'serenades';in the light of the shift to a single three-act work (in 1687) that mimics the genre ofopera I will alsoemploy this term.Their workisa step beyond UldericoRolandi'ssurveyof the ground,' Spettacolimusicali per la funzione delle "tasche" in Lucca', Bollettino bibliogrqfico musicale, 7, 1 (1932),pp. 26-36; 7, 2, pp. 26-39; 7, 3 pp. 31-9.

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hardships imposed by malign fortune on distempered polities. The popularityof neo-Stoicism in the first half of the seventeenth century from France toHungary, as tracked by the translations of Lipsius's De constantia, was an indexof the anxiety produced by the ever-present threats to civil peace.1'1 Figures likeMutius, Regulus, and Scipio were convenient examples for those whoemphasized that strong minds were free minds. The appearance ofStoics on theoperatic stage, beginning with the philosophical avatar parexcellence, Seneca, inLincoronazione di Poppea, and then with greater regularity later in theseventeenth century, is the visible continuation of a social and intellectualprocess by which these ideas migrated from the narrower circles of the morephilosophically inclined to the wider one of what was soon to be called politesociety.

In Lucca, the focus on the moral psychology of the citizen draws on thisliterature of purposefulness. The republican, for example, had always preachedthe need to place the public good above the private; there now existed an up-to-date vocabulary in which he could urge his fellow-citizens to gird themselvesagainst the siren-calls of ambition and self-interest. In fact, rather thanemphasizing the freedom of the Lucchese, as Hobbes would have had it, thisliterature emphasized the necessity ofself-restraint and self-mastery.15 It is notserving the common good - the archetypal republican topos - so much asdominating the passions and conquering self-interest that defines the interpretation of liberty that republican Lucca held up in the mirror of the tasche.Nor was this a uniquely, bizarrely, Lucchese interpretation. Andrew Shifllet'sstudy of Stoicism in seventeenth-century English republican circles reveals thesame use of the same sources.16

The broader significance of Lucca's republicanism is two-fold. First, it showshow permeable was republicanism to another language of individual excellence, like neo-Stoicism, that was fundamentally agnostic about some of theother's most vaunted values, such as participation in government. If this

14 Mark Morlbrd, Stoics aiuGVeostoics: Rubens and the circle ofLipsius (Princeton, 1991);RichardTuck, Philosophy andgovernment, 1572-1631 (Cambridge, 1994); Anthony Levi, French moralists: thetheory of the passions, 1585 to 1649 (Oxford, 1965); Susan James, Passion andaction: the emotions inseventeenth-century philosophy (Oxford, 1997); Giinter Abel, Stoizismus und friihe jVeuzeit. <«rFntstehungsgeschiche modernen Denkens im Felde von Ethik undPolitik (Berlin, 1978); Julien Aymardd'Angers, Recherches sur le stoicisme aux XVI et XVII siecles, ed. L. Antoine (Hildesheim and New-York, 1976). The contributions of Leontine Zanta, La Renaissance dustoicisme au XVF siecle (Paris,1913): Wilhelm Dilthey, 'Die Funktion der Anthropologic in der Kultur des 16. Und 17.Jahrhunderts', Sitzungsberichte der Kbniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1904), pp. 2-33(reprinted in his Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig and Berlin, 1921), pp. 416-52); and Morris Croll,"Juste Lipseet le mouvement anticiceronien a la fin du XVF et au debut du XVIIe siecle' (1914),in Style, rhetoric andrhythm: essays byMorris IV. Croll, ed. J. Max Patrick, Robert O. Evans, John M.Wallace, and R.J. Schocck (Princeton, 1966), pp. 7-45, remain of fundamental importance.

15 This isemphasized in the interpretation ofGerhard Oestreich, Geist undGestalt desfruhmodernenStaates (Berlin, 1969), some of which was translated in H. G. Koenigsberger and B. Oestreich, cds.,trans. D. McKintlock, .Veostoicism and the early modem state (Cambridge, 1982); and in hisSturkturprobleine derFriihen X'euzeit (Berlin, 1980).

16 Andrew Shifllct, Stoicism, politics and literature in the age of Milton: war and peace reconsidered(Cambridge, 1998).

STOICS WHO SING: EARLY MODERN LUCCA 319

language of self-control, neo-Stoicism, typically served as 'a buckler againstadversity' in kingdoms that had collapsed into civil war, its emphasis on self-mastery and freedom easily lent itself to the self-restraint that was an essentialpart of the citizen's service of the common good. The republican might haveemphasized the city and participation in its government and the neo-Stoic theimportance of preserving the self intact, but they both believed that individualswere rational and therefore capable of controlling, to some extent, their localenvironment. This is what wc find in Lucca. Of course, these ideas had avenerable pedigree, long before Guillaume du Vair translated Epictetus (1585)and Justus Lipsius re-edited Seneca (1606).

But, wc might be tempted to ask, if this is what republicanism meant in anItalian city-state at the end of the Renaissance, then how was it to bedistinguished from contemporary discussions of individual excellence inmonarchical France or England? The recent turn back to the origins of HansBaron's influential thesis identifying' civic humanism' with republican politicalthinking in Florence suggests that not all use of classical sources ought to beseen as 'republican', nor all 'republics' identified with the pursuit of life,liberty, and happiness.17 Lucca's 'soft' republicanism suggests that thedistinctions between early modern Europe's republics and monarchies haveprobably been drawn too sharply. It might be worth recalling that the mostinteresting of eighteenth-century thinkers, reflecting on this resemblance,coined a new term to describe politics in which the uniform administration oflaw and the needs of a commercial society determined the shape of theirinhabitants' lives: the 'modern' republic.

One measure of the convergence between different political models is theinterchangeability of their respective heroes; for example, a Stoic hero madeinto a republican exemplar. Erwin Panofsky's history of the image of the youngHercules choosing wisely at a solitary crossroads between Virtue and Pleasuredoes not try to probe the explanation for its tremendous popularity in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries.18 But if one were to read through theperiod's stoicizing moral literature one would be left with no doubts. For thestory of Hercules was repeatedly used as an example of the mechanics ofmoral choice. All the crucial elements of the neo-Stoic account are present:reason against the passions, self-mastery, freedom gained through delayedgratification and, above all, choice as the arena for the display of virtue. TheHercules of the Labours was celebrated as a republican hero during theRenaissance; the triumph of the young Hercules at the crossroads was a victoryfor self-restraint rather than action and fascinated seventeenth-century thinkersand artists. Lucca's operas, however much they arc designed to teach thepractice of good citizenship, all turn on characters who are confronted with a' Choice of Hercules', generally between the conflicting appeals of the common

Sec James Hankins, 'The Baron thesis after forty years', Journal of the History of Ideas, 56(1995), pp. 309-38; James Hankins, ed., Renaissance civic humanism (Cambridge, 2000).

18 Erwin Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewegc und andere unlike Bildstojfe in der neueren Kunst (Leipzigand Berlin, 1930; 2nd edn, Berlin, 1997).

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good (Virtue) and private, selfish, advantage (Pleasure). One could be stillmore precise and argue that if the operas for the tasche are trying to leachanything, it is how to choose well. The Lucchese understood that good politicaldecisions could only be made by citizens able to exercise good judgement inmanaging their own lives.19

If describing the mechanics of moral choice, and depicting it on canvas,reflects the importance attached to this lesson, there can be no doubt thatseeing it acted out on stage not only avoided some of the inherent difficulties inrepresenting a mental process by a static image - what the third earl ofShaftesbury struggled with in 'A notion of the historical draught of thejudgment of Hercules' (1711) - but did so in a powerful and engaging way.Lucca was not unique in putting Stoicism on the stage. The seventeenthcentury was, in fact, the great age of Stoic drama and the most importantcontemporary playwrights worked more or less directly in this idiom, includingCorneille, Caldcron, Gryphius, and even Shakespeare.""

And what was spoken on stage was also sung. One of the first great publicoperas, Buscnello's and Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643), was alesson in contemporary moral and political thought set to music. Neo-Stoicteachings were put into the mouth of Seneca, and the maxims of reason of stateinto that of his student Nero.'21 If we look to the second half of the seventeenth

century, and beyond, we find the same emphasis on self-mastery, reason, andcostanza, though no longer focused on questions of politics. There arc, literally,dozens of operas with the word costanza in the title - the Biblioteca NazionaleMarciana in Venice alone lists twenty-two in its catalogue - and hundredswhose plots turn on its presence or absence. Handel's Floridante (1721), forinstance, was based on La costanza in Trionfo (1696) and his Alalanta (for thewedding of Frederick Prince of Wales in 1736) on La costanza in amor vinceringanno (1694). Ariodante's magnificent second-act aria in the opera after hisname (1735) proclaims that love ascends 'on the wings of costanza\" But aseven these few examples show, the survival of constancy was bought at a price.By narrowing its meaning from an ideal of living that reflected an excellence ofmind to one that was embodied by domestic loyalty, constanlia was given a

19 We find thissameemphasisin Matteo Palmieri'sDelia vita civile (1430;pub. 1530),which washailed by Baron as the classic exposition of'civic humanist' ideas but perhaps this, too, needs tobe reconsidered. Hans Baron, Thecrisis of the early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1966; 1st edn,1955), pp. 106,330.

Andre Stegmann, L'he'roisme comelien: gen'ese et signification (2 vols., Paris, 1968); JacquesMaurcns, La trage'die sans tragique: le ne'o-stoicisme dans I'oeuvre dePierre Corneille (Paris, 1966); MarcFumaroli, He'ros et orateurs. Rhetorique et dramaturgic corne'liennes (Geneva and Paris, 1990); Gilles D.Monserrat, Light from the porch: Stoicism anil English Renaissance literature (Paris, 1984); GeoffreyMiles, Shakespeare and the constant Romans (Oxford, 1996); Diaii Fox, Kings in Caldcron: a study incharacterization and political theory (London, 1986); Margaret Rich Greer, The play of power:mythological court dramas of Caldcron dela Jiarca (Princeton, 1991); Xavcr Sladler. Formal des barockenStoizismus. Der einjluss der Stoa auf die Deutsche Barockdichtung Martin Opitz, Andreas Gryphius undCatharina Regina von Greijfenberg (Bonn, 1976).

-' See Fenlon and Miller, The song of the soul, ch. 6.22 'Con I'ali di costanza/alza il suo volo amor,/fa trionfa nel cor/fede e speranza.'

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second life, in an age otherwise unresponsive to the demands of Stoicism, all theway to Haydn's La vera costanza (1776) and beyond.

This summary only hints at a history that could be told at much greaterlength. One of the striking features of the Lucchese libretti is the extraordinarycontinuity of themes and language over 150 years. If, in the wider culture, thethinking of the 1630s had by the 1750s been transformed beyond recognition,in sleepy, out-of-the-way Lucca time seems to have stood still.2'' The themes forthe tasche were chosen in the middle of the seventeenth century and remainedthe same over a period in which neo-Stoicism became unfashionable on thestages of the wider world and was replaced by other, more contemporary,expressions, of moral life. In the courseofexplaining the ' triumph' ofopera buffain the second halfof the eighteenth century it is often noted that opera seria,withits aristocratic characters and themes, became increasingly estranged from itsaudience and their concerns. But, perhaps, what really changed, and madethem seem so dated, was its animating ideal of nobility. What may haveauthentically expressed contemporary sensibilities in the earlier seventeenthcentury no longer did so - or could do so - in the later eighteenth. Yet, likecreatures from an antediluvian age, the libretti remained and music was stillwritten for them: Mozart set La clemenza di Tito in 1791 but Pietro Metaslasiohad written the libretto in 1734 based on Pierre Corneille's China of 1640. Thegenealogies of other eighteenth-century operas could similarly be traced backto seventeenth-century origins bearing the impress of neo-Stoicism. Becauseof the remarkable, if necessary, continuity of content in Lucca's politicalserenades these subtle continuities were not obscured as they were, for the mostpart, elsewhere. The long run of operas in Lucca provides a benchmark againstwhich we can measure all sorts of change in the history of intellectual fashionand aristocratic musical taste.

Exploring the value of the Lucchese sercnatas for the history of music isobviously beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, a further point needsto be made. One of the most characteristic features of opera from the middle ofthe seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century is the so-called da capoaria, a tripartite song in which an opening section is followed by a more or lessdramatically and musically distinct second part before returning to, andrepeating, the first section (ABA). The actual evolution of this form, and itsvarious nuanccd particularities - including the sub-division of the first themeand their repetition so that the 'A' section was heard four times - have been asubject of great debate.24 It is commonly described as undramatic andregressive because, at least in its seventeenth-century form, it keeps thecharacters suspended in indecision (later it isused also to intensify an experience

8 This is in no way intended to contradict Biagi-Ravenni and Gianturco's claim for thepresence of many modern innovations in Lucchese musical practice as recorded in thefunzione delletasche: Ravenni and Gianturco, 'The tasche of Lucca: 150years of political screnatas', p. 55.

24 Rosand hasarguedforitsexistence by themiddle oftheseventeenth centurywhile cautioningthat the evolution to the familiar tripartite form occurred 'gradually and from a number ofdiversesources', and was driven by the needs of composers: Rosand, Opera in seventeenth-century Venice,p. 284; cf. pp. 289, 292.

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or reflection).20 Yet the dramatic purpose of the da capo aria was to illustrate justthis: what it looked like to be undecided and torn between conflicting emotions.It is, in fact, the perfect expression of the dynamic of personal choice as laid outby seventeenth-century neo-Stoics and given its canonical form in the paintingsof the Choice of Hercules.21' This aria form succeeded at demonstrating whatShaftesbury set as the task for painters of the 'Choice': to show a character'wrought, agitated, and torn by contrary passions ... He agonizes, and with allhis strength of reason endeavours to overcome himself.'2' In Lucca, because ofthe explicit political needs being served by the operas, the link between the dacapo aria and this Stoic background remains visible. But once we are able toidentify the 'philosophical' purpose of the da capo aria we can then 'see' itelsewhere, even in operas where constancy has been diluted to conjugal fidelityand the form left an empty monument to the frailty of reason in the face ofpassion.

II

How to ensure that individuals always chose what served the common good?This was the basic question facing Lucca's early modern republicans. Themusic dramas for the funzione delle tasche offer the answer. In them, the citizenwas trained to recognize, and then ignore, his personal desires. These were thesorts of motivations that were driven by the passions - and therefore theirconquest by reason became annexed to the practice ofvirtue. The audience forOrazio (1714), for example, was told that the work was directed at citizens whoruled and therefore daily confronted 'the noble, but difficult task of notyielding to their passions and blood, where the interest and honour of theFatherland demands it'.28

The neo-Stoic ideal of moral excellence worked so well for the Lucchese

because it provided a way of analysing the threat of selfishness. The emphasison control of the passions as the prerequisite for both true freedom (of the mind)and loyal devotion to the public provided a conceptual language in which apolitical identity, citizenship, could be expressed in terms of a personal one,self-control. La cadula de' decemviri, which was performed over two days for thetasche of 1717, insisted that the citizens of a republic be taught not to allow ' theprivate passions to ascend the throne'.29 If, in the best of circumstances,

25 For the brief against it see the summary in Reinhard Strohm, L'opera italiana nel settecento(Padua, 1991), pp. 21, 39. For the claim that the da capo form was most appropriate for 'situationscharacterized by obsession or indecision' or 'excessive passion' see Rosand, Opera in seventeenth-century Venice, pp. 295, 297.

26 Margaret Murata drew attention to the importance of moral choice in the drama ofRospigliosi and argued that 'the moral choice is frequently the central issue': Operas for the papalcourt- 1631-1638 (Ann Arbor, 1981), p. 95.

27 'A notion of the historical draught of the judgment of Hercules', in Benjamin Rand, ed.,Second characters (Cambridge, 1914), p. 34.

28 'La nobile, ma difficile impresa di non perdonare alle loro passioni, e al loro sangue, ove lorichiegga l'interessc, e 1'onor della Patria.' Orazio, componimento per musica (Lucca, 1714),'Argomento', p. 4.

29 '...a non far salire sul Trono le private passioni'. La caduta de' decemviri (Lucca, 1717), p. 4.


personal rectitude upheld good citizenship, the reverse was also true, and itworked more rapidly: personal corruption led to public collapse. In // Catone(1690) Caesar's rise marked, for Cato, a different aspect of the confusion ofpublic and private privilege. 'To make a Prince into a private person', he tellsCaesar, 'is an offence against the Senate, the supreme authority'.30

Constancy in devotion to the public good captures, inmice, the chiefprincipleof political education conveyed in the texts for the funzione delle tasche. But thisconstancy demanded an equally powerful and prior display ofconstancy on thepersonal level. La costanza neWamor delta patria (1708), set in a Lucca (thennamed Aurilia) besieged by Narses in the sixth century CE - a famous episodein the history of the city and a rare post-classical plot - presents the mostexquisite version of the dilemma that could be posed by the priority of thecommon good. The persistence of the siege led Narses to plan the regularexecution of prisoners within sight of the city's walls in the hope of intimidatingthe population. Yet, 'the Citizens, before they would suffer the surrender of thecity resolved, with constancy, to sacrifice their lives, and those of their closestrelations and children'.31 Outside the walls, one of the doomed prisonersreplies, like a good Stoic, 'if I must die, then death is sweet. If my feet are inchains, my heart is free. In the end, just before the executions were to begin,it was Narses who broke down in the face of this extraordinary display ofconstancy. It is this 'strong and constant heart', Amelia's citizens note, thathas preserved their Patria.33 The plot is a reworking of Francesco Sbarra'sL amore della patriasuperiore ad ogn'altro (1668) which also provided a model fortheserenata L'amore della patria (1675). This featured a ruler (Alfonso) forced tochoose between the liberation of his son and the enslavement of the city, on theone hand, and his death and its liberty, on the other. 'But by such variedpassions', he sings, in a typical example of the da capo aria as a state of mind aswell as tool of musical exposition, 'reason is confused. Now it addresses theFatherland and now my son ... So I am confused and still irresolute.'34

Making Brutus the hero of the first opera on a historical theme, Bruto costante(1660), acknowledged the extremes to which devotion to the common goodsometimes led, since 'killing the sons of Brutus' was one of Machiavelli's greatset-pieces on the need for republicans to subordinate their private to the public

30 'Far da Principe tin privato, E' un offender del Senato/la Sovrana Autorita.' // Catone(Lucca, 1690), p. 26. Similarly, in Teramene (1744) a disagreement between two of Athens's ThirtyTyrants led Socrates to accuse one, Crizia, of arrogating public might to a merely private status.This was rebellion, no matter the cause invoked. 'Ola, chi la suprema/Autorita, che in tutti noirisiede,/Si presume arrogar? ben piii di lui/Ribelle, e traditor saria costui.' Teramene. Dramma permusica (Lucca, 1744), p. 28.

31 La costanza nell'amore della patria (Lucca, 1708), p. 4. Other operas explicitly addressing thehistory of Lucca include // Castruccio (1781), which told the story of the exiled CastruccioCastracani who returned from exile to liberate Lucca from the Pisans, and Lucca liberata (1784) setin the war between Florence and Lucca (1429-33).

32 'Se morir me farai dolc'e la morte./Se ho il pie fra catene/H6 libero il cor.' La costanzanell'amore della patria (1708), p. 45. M La costanza nell'amore della patria, p. 60.

34 'Ma da si vari affetti confusa la ragione,/Or rivolta a la patria, & ora al figlio, / ... /Cosiconfuso, irrcsoluto ancora.' L'amore della patria (1675), p. 15.

324 peter n. miller

good. When informed of his sons' treacherous plans by the shade of Lucretia,Brutus was forced to choose between his own deepest loyalties: was he toprotect his children and betray his city, or betray his children and protect hiscity? This dilemma, a version of which reappeared in many of the Luccheseoperas, was resolved in the only acceptable form. Brutus declared that thelarger loyalty was the greater, 'he who does not love the Fatherland is no sonof Brutus', and the Chorus intoned 'What can not be done by a noble heart,generous soul of constancy?'35

Identification of moral choice with the practice of citizenship in a culturethat taught by example helps account for the great preponderance ofserenadesand operas on historical themes. Many of the Roman stories that lentthemselves most easily to the Stoic interpretation of individual excellence - andwere so utilized in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Stoic tracts - wereadapted for the funzione delle tasche. Lucchese interest in figures such as AtliliusRegulus, Mutius Scaevola, and Scipio Africanus presents us in sharper focuswith a phenomenon of Europe-wide dimensions. Decius Mus, for example,whose heroism was celebrated by Rubens in a contemporary cycle of paintingswas also, as Decio sacrificato, the subject of the first day's serenata in 1684.Attention to the popularity of these figures in word, image, and sound inaristocratic Europe in the eighteenth century would make a valuablecontribution to our understanding of the borderline between political andmoral ideals in Old Regime culture.

Consigliofedele (1672) told the story of Attilius Regulus - whose fame enduredlong enough into the eighteenth century to be the subject of a brilliant earlypainting by Benjamin West (1769). The captured Regulus was presented bythe Carthaginians with a choice: he could either gain his freedom by persuadingthe Romans to accept a ' Carthaginian peace' or violate his word ofhonour andremain in Rome as free but base. Though sorely tempted by the opportunity toescape the clutches of his captors, Regulus confronted this weakness in one ofthose typical 'decision' arias. 'I am not miserable and unhappy as the othersbelieve, because the heart does not serve even if the feet do.' As Regulus gothold of himself, he was able to proclaim - like Seneca in Act n ofPoppea —' Immoveable Attilio will triumph with a noble heart over the blow offate.'36 At the opera's end, after he had warned the Romans not to accept theCarthaginian proposals and prepared himself to return to Carthage and a lifeof slavery, or worse, Regulus attributed his display of strength to constancy.' My heart I will give to another. Of the most constant faith ... I depart ORome: my suffering is constant.'3' In Metastasio's version, Attilio put things

35 'Chi non ama la Patria/Non e figlio di Bruto' and 'Che non puoid'un nobil core/Cenerosaalma Costanza?' Bruto costante (Lucca, 1660), pp. 11 and 13.

36 ' Misero, ed infelicc/Non son io no, non son com'altri crede,/Che non c servo il Cor, s'e servoil piede'; ' Vincera Attilio immobile/Con tin cor nobile/Dal suo destino la ferita.' IIconsigliofedele(Lucca, 1672), pp. 11-12.

'Lo mio core altrui dara/Dc la piii costante le/... Io parto 6 Roma: il mio soffrir costante.'// consigliofedele, pp. 22-3.

stoics who sing : early modern lucca 325

even more brutally, in a harsh echo of Montaigne: 'He is always free whoknows how to die. '3S

Mutius Scaevola was an even greater monster of constancy. His gesture ofswearing undying loyalty to Rome by placing his right hand in the fire of analtar until it withered was long famous; after Cesare Ripa reproduced it in theIconologia (1603) it became ///e symbol ofcostanza. Through the many reprintingsand re-editions of Ripa's book in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries theassociation ofScaevola and constancy was spread far and wide. There are threeLucchese serenatas devoted to his story. The first, of 1675, is a simple retellingof the tale in which Muzio describes himself as 'costante'.30 In the 1717production the narrative was made more elaborate to emphasize that constancydemonstrated the power of mind over matter. Before placing his hand in thesacred fire, Muzio declared, 'Only the hand sins, but not the mind.'40 The1723 Muzio Scevola did not bother with a summary, declaring that the storywas so famous that it needed no retelling. Here constancy - in the shapeof self-mutilation - was used as a weapon to intimidate the enemy.41

If Scaevola represented the barbaric power of self-mastery, Scipio presentedits human face. Like the story of Scaevola, the 'Continence of Scipio' was oneof the scenes from Roman history that was most frequently reproduced in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries.42 It told of a great conqueror whorestrained his passion for a captive beauty and acted with clemency towardsher fiancee. This, too, was the subject of several serenatas. // vero amante dipatrialibera (1693) was built around the act of clemency and aimed to provide aconcrete illustration of how one ought to rule oneselfand therefore others. Withthe beautiful woman and her desperate fiancee before him, Scipio's soul wasbesieged by 'two potent enemies, love and interest'. And, 'in order to resist theforce of the one and the violence of the other' he made for himself a shield out

of his 'love of country'. Scipio had to withstand the blandishments ofInteressc - a villain often appearing on Lucca's stage - who intervened throughthe person of the fiancee to suggest the profcrring of a bribe. He had also tocontend with Piacere, who offered satisfaction of a different sort. But he stoodfirm, nourished by a love of country which gave strength.

The clemency of Scipio also featured in a 1702 performance which, by

18 ' Liberoe semprechi sa morir.' Pietro Metastasio, Attilio Regolo, in Pietro Mctastasio Teatro, ed.Mario Fubini (3 vols., Turin, 1977), 111, p. 356. Note that this late (1750) libretto is a perfectdemonstration of the themes discussed in the context of Lucchese opera.

39 Mutio Scevola (Lucca, 1675), pp. 6, 14, 17.40 'Solo il braccio peccb, ma non la mente.' La Liberia stimolo agrandi imprese ne' due campioni della

Romana Repubblica, Orazio Coclite, & MuzioScevola (Lucca, 171 7), p. 44." ' Mini, mint se questa mia mano/Tcmc scempio di barbara sorte./Mira indegno,se in petto

romano/Ha ricetto vil tema di mortc./Volontaria la destra/Eccor porge alle (iamme ... /VccliPorsenna: queste/Opere soliteson d'alnia Romana.' Muzio Scevola. Componimento per musica (Lucca,'723). P- 39-

42 See, for example, David Kunzle, 'Van Dyck's "Continence of Scipio" as a metaphor ofstatecraft', in John Onians, ed., Sightandinsight: essays on artandculture in honor ofE. II. Gombrich at8j (London, 1995), pp. 169-90.

326 peter n. miller

incorporating romantic sub-plots, comes closer to opera seria. The betrothed wasnow given a suitably Phoenician name, Anagilda, and an independent spiritthe equal of any Roman. She claimed to prefer to die than serve Scipio.' I willbe constant ... I wish to die the loyal lover of Fatherland and Liberty.'43 Wecan see here the slippage between constancy as a political-philosophical idealand a domestic-matrimonial one. Scipio, in turn, saw in the conquest oftemptation an opportunity to display his great virtue even more spectacularly.'By keeping constant faith with you, Rome awaits my heroic test. To theassaults of rebellious passions, like a rock flailed by the waves, this soul will notyield or move.'4I As Scipio realized, the triumph of self-mastery was also avictory for the common good: 'Thus he who is the true lover of the Fatherlandwill not offer the constant breast to other passions than the public good.'45

The greatness of one who triumphed over himself - 'And the true ruler, thatcommands himself, has a great empire'46 - defined the Stoic hero. In theseventeenth century this heroism was adapted for civil life in the ideal of thescholar and for the military as the exemplary officer. Transposed into the realmof the political it defined the practice of the ideal citizen-ruler who could alwaysbe counted on to serve the common good because always guided by reason andtherefore able to resist the almost irresistible selfish appeal of the passions. 'Andhe is not worthy to be a king over others', suggested one seventeenth-centurywriter, 'that is not first a king over himself; rejoice that you are a commanderover your own affection, to see your passions such good subjects.*47 In Fabiovincitor di se stesso (1681) a dictator needed to be appointed for the good of thecity, but the appointment had first to be approved by his enemy. Could Fabiocurb his jealousy? The officials who first turned to him urged in the name of thepublic good, 'Conquer, O Roman hero, conquer yourself for yourself."18 Afterrepeated and rebuffed appeals, Fabio had to choose. Under the 'pertinaciousassault' of 'indomitable passions', torn between 'hale' and 'love', Fabiohesitated. 'My heart is agitated, and what shall I do?' While the ambassadorsstood by, Fabio interrogated himself and so showed the audience what themechanics of moral choice looked like.49

43 'Sarb costante ... Morire iovoglio/Di Patria, e Liberia fedelc amante.' Scipione. Componimentopermusica (Lucca, 1702), p. 30.

44 'Per serbarti costante la fede/Roma attendi l'eroichc mie prove./A gli assalti d'affettirebelli,/Quasi scoglio, che l'onda flagelli,/Gia non cede quest' alma, b si move.' Scipione, p. 37.

*" 'Cos!chidella Patriae veroamante/Non scrbi ad altri affetti,/Chedel pubblico bene, il sencostante.' Scipione, p. 49. In Minato's Scipione Affricano (1664) the hero observed that as great atriumph as it was to conquer the world, 'ma vittoria maggiorvincer se stesso' (quoted in PaoloFabbri, // secolo cantantc. Per una storia del libretto d'opera nel seicento (Bologna, 1990), p. 193).

46 'Et un Rcgnante vero,/Che comanda sestesso hit tin grande [mpero.' La costanza nell'amoredelta patria (1708), p. 33.

4' Anon., Stoa triumphans (London, 1651), p. 48. The translator, one 'J. H.', attributes it toVirgilio Malvezzi but I have been unable to confirm this.

48 'Vinci, b romano Eroe, vinci te stesso/A se stesso.' Fabio vincitor di se stesso (Lucca, 1681),

P- '3-49 'Agitato mio core, e che faro?' Fabio, p. 16.Germanicus, too, in L'idea dicommando nel cuor di

Gcrmanico, showed sufficient self-command as not to be swayed by the siren call of ambition andrebuffed the pleas of his troops to seize power after the death of Augustus. Tiberius's


It is easier, in the field of vision framed by Lucca''sfunzione delle tasche, to seethe connection between governing the self and governing others that is foundin many later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century operas. The story of howAlexander the Great mastered his passion for a woman gives the plot ofFrancesco Sbarra's Alessandro vincitor di se stesso, the most elaborate demonstration of the political dimension to self-mastery. The opera was firstperformed in Venice in 1651 with music by Antonio Cesti and then again inLucca in 1654 - Sbarra was a Lucchese who had already written texts for thefunzione delle tasche - where wc can assume that its themes were readilyunderstood by an audience used to opera as a medium for political education.Alessandro was, in turn, the model for a series of operas celebrating self-controlin rulers that include Defl'Angclo's La Cleopatra (1662), Minato's ScipioneAffiicano (1664), Pompeo Magno (1666), and Se/euco (1666); and Beregami'sL'Annibale in Capua (1661) and Tito (1666).50

Alexander's conquest of himself was a model for the achievements of Lucca'sAttilio, Fabio, Muzio, and Scipio, each described in turn as a 'vincitor di scstesso'. In the prologue to the Venetian version, Alexander, after the battle inwhich Babylon was laid open to his forces, observed that Jove promised a still-greater victory: 'Today Alexander, after having conquered all others, must forhis greater glory, conquer himself.'51 The didacticism of the prologue to the1654 Lucca production made this triumph still more explicit: from hisachievement the audience was to learn ' that true greatness is dominion overthe self... and it is the glory of a king to conquer himself'.52

Alexander's desire for Campaspe launched him into the familiar complaintagainst the indecision caused by the senses. 'What new accident', he askedhimself, 'clouds' and 'confuses' his soul and 'upsets' his senses? He blamed the'rare' objects of his mind and the strange 'images' born ofdesire.53 Askingoneof his philosopher-counsellors, Calonc, for advice, he was told that a ruler hadonly to answer to himself; moral scruples, almost by definition, could not exist.'The reason of a great man', his flattering adviser responded, 'is whatever hewants' ('la ragione d'un Grande e quel che vuole'). In a dialogue reminiscentof the confrontation of Nero and Seneca in L incoronazione diPoppea, though thistime with the roles reversed, Alexander responded that 'one cannot wish forthat which is unjust' ('volcr non si puo quello, ch'e ingiusto'). But, fired back

incomprehension is instructive: this was such an extraordinary act that it had to be intended togarner him still greater praise. But for Germanicus, though after a battle of'fier contrasti", it wasclear that' L'aura de miei trionfi/Non v'ispiri nel corc/Ambizioso ardore.' L'Idea delCommando nelcuor di Germanico (Lucca, 1684), pp. 20-1.

50 Discussed by WolfgangOstholl". 'Antonio Cestis "Alessandro vincitor di sc stesso"', Studienin Musikwissenschafl. 24 (i960), pp. 13-43; Rosand, Opera in seventeenth-century Venice, pp. 277-80.Both focus on formal questions.

51 'Hogiji deve Alessandro/Doppo haver vinto ogn*altro/Per sua gloria maggior vincer sestesso." FrancescoSbarra, Alessandroil Vincitor dise stesso. Tragicomedia Musicale (Lucca, 1654),p. 19.

"" 'Che la vera Grandezza/E' il dominio di se ... Et e Gloria da Re vincer se stesso.' Sbarra,Alessandro, p. 23. ''' Sbarra, Alessandro, p. 49.

328 PETER N. MILLER

Calone, whatever Alexander desired was, by definition, 'permitted and just'('lice, ed c giusto') and that 'he who can do all can want all' ('Tutto volerpotra chi tutto pub').54 Aristotle, the other adviser, argued that the bestremedy for Alexander 'was to distance himself from the flame'. Failing to do sowould leave him in thrall to the 'tyranny of the senses'. It was, Aristotleconcluded, a ' triumph worthy ofa king to conquer himself (11.6).05 The operaends with Alexander exulting in his great victory: 'I wish to conquermyself... as I conquered the sword, so have I the heart.'06 What is especially-interesting here is the pairing of self-mastery with good government on the oneside, and indulgence and tyranny - presented in the language of reason ofstate - on the other: exactly the relationship that we find in Lucca's 'official'political thought.

Alexander's epochal conquest, then, was not over Babylon or Persia orBactria, but over himself. His words and deeds defined the bad citizeninversely: one who succumbed to self-interested ambition and subordinatedthe public good to the personal. This describes the plot of Marcantonio (1687),the first of the three-act operas and one that offered instruction by example inhow not to behave. If friendship was so praised in the seventeenth centurybecause it was a human relationship that rested on the firm foundation ofreason, love was feared because it embodied the triumph of passions andtherefore the defeat of reason.57 And there were few more famous examples oflove as a force of misrule and agency of disaster than the story of Anthony andCleopatra.

Marcantonio's first night in Cleopatra's arms ended with a dream in whichhis ancestor Hercules informed him of the impending arrival of Octavian'sarmy. His adviser's interpretation of the dream explicitly invoked the referencesassociated with the early modern Hercules and other heroes of self-mastery:'Conquer yourself and you have defeated the enemy.'58 But Anthony hadalready fallen for an incarnation of Voluptas, the scantily clad beauty who laybeckoningly at Hercules's feet. Marcantonio's inability to heed this counsel is,of course, precisely the failure that the opera is designed to illustrate. Withoutcostanza Anthony was warned,' neither hope ofvictory nor glory can any longerbe advanced to you'.''9

We are reminded in Act 11 that failure to master the self could have dire

consequences for the polity. In a debate, supporters of Octavian, Anthony'srival, sing that 'Man lives more contented being a slave to one than serving a

54 Ibid., pp. 52-3. The parallel to the exchange between Nero and Seneca in Poppea was notedby Fabbri, // secolo cantante, p. 193. Sbarra, Alessandro, pp. 90-1.

56 'Voglio vincer me stesso ... Com'hb invitta la spada, invitto il core.' Ibid., pp. 168-9.57 Cleopatra's ladies-in-waiting celebrated her beauty in terms of its evanescence - exactly

why the Stoics warned against relying upon it for anything. 'Come neve al raggio estivo,/Comecera a carbon vivo,/Come tin fumo, tin ombra. un vento,/Chc sparisce in un momento,/Come tin(ior./Che in un giorno nasce, e muor/Tal da noi fugge belta.' Marcantonio (1687), p. 16.

58 'Vinci sc stesso; c l'inimico liai vinlo.' Ibid., p. 34.r'9 'Ne speranza di vittoria,/Ne di gloria piii t'avanza.' Ibid., p. 36.


hundred', while Liberty responds that 'often a great king is a great tyrant'.60Anthony's inability to fight had left Liberty defenceless. The shade of Cassiusfingered the root of all evil: 'The god of everything is Interest alone.'61

If the origin of tyranny lay in the selfish 'ambition to command', thenrepublics, which were governed by the many, were even more vulnerable toselfishness.02 The importance of rotation of offices as a bulwark against thisdeadly ambition is the theme of one of the surviving pre-sercnata orations, byGiuseppe Altogradi.63 In 1648 he proclaimed that the 'the stability of everywell-regulated republic depends solelyon reciprocity of governing'.64 Like hisEnglish contemporary James Harrington, Altogradi sought to institutionalizewhat even the most disciplined human nature could not be counted upon tosupply with any regularity. A 'Rota' would 'give complete perfection to everygovernment' because it could ensure that citizen-rulers are kept away from'private interests [and] are caught up completely in public affairs'. By'substituting new successors in a regular rhythm' the occasions for self-aggrandizement and faction would be eliminated.60

Altogradi noted, however, that the Rota also reflected a truth about thesocial reality of the republic. For this form of governance rested on the beliefthat society was itself the sum total of the exchange relations that constitutedit. 'Because it is a truth too much practised, that a republic cannot longmaintain itself without the union of citizens; nor can this union have a belterfoundation than on the reciprocity of honours, making equal the conditions ofeveryone. '00

Altogradi here slides from reciprocity as a principle of government toreciprocity as a principle of society. Exchange acknowledged the fact of adiversity of talents, needs and desires in a given human population, and

80 'Vive piii I'tiomo contento/Schiavo ad un, che servo a cento'; 'spesso un gran Monarco cun gran tiranno.' Ibid., p. 42. 61 'II Dio di tutti e linteressesolo." Ibid., p. 44.

5i La Liberia sempre stabile nelle vicende del principato (Lucca, 1693), 'Al Lettore', p. 3. The 1720discussion of the restoration of Thcban liberty offers another illustration of how tyranny fusttriumphed. Evil counsellors - Leontida, Ippato, Filippo, and Archia placed the desire to ruleabove their loyalty to the liberty of the whole and traduced the city to the besiegingSpartans whorewarded them for their treason with political power. Pelopida, overo Tebe liberata da'liranni (Lucca.1720), [a]v.

63 Orationi diGiuseppe Altogardi ... Recilate dal medesimo nella Celebre Funtione delle Tasche I'anno 1648e i6ji (Lucca, 1651), pp. 5-6.

1,4 'La stabilita d'ogni ben Regolata Rcpublica solo dalla Vicendevolezza del Principatodepende.' Altogradi. Orationi, p. 6.

65 'E qual Argo piii veglante, o Sig.rl si pub ritrovare di questo continuo ravvolgimento diPrencipato? questi colle sue vicende non lascia giii avvilire le forze di quei primi, che assuntiall'Honor supremo, longi da gl'interessi privati, sono del tutto tra gl'affari public! involti; masostituendo con regolato tenore i nuovi Successori,fa, che cedano quegli di buona voglia il gradoloro, vedendosi da cure cosigravi allcggeriti; e subentrino questi allegramente, vedendosi inalzatia tal Dignita, e ricevendo con animo piii che intrcpido l'lmpresa emulano a gara la diligenzade'passati.' Ibid., p. 8.

'Peroche e verita troppo praiicata, che non pub una rcpublica senza l'unione de i Ciiiadinilungamente mantenersi; ne ha questa tal Unione maggior fondamento, che su la vicendevolezzade grHonori, questa uguagliando Ic condiiioni di tutti ... ." Ibid., p. 10.

330 PETER N. MILLER

provided a means for using these inequalities, which might otherwise give riseto sectarian politics, in order to create a union of commonly disposedindividuals. Seeing the republic as the sum total of its exchange relations istaking 'civil conversation' from the academy and bringing it into the life of thecity. Altogradi himself seems to acknowledge this by distinguishing, in adefence of Lucca against the papal interdict of 1640, between the 'govemodella Republica' and all those relations that could not be subsumed underpolitics, for which he used the term 'conversatione civile'.67 We can only notehere that it is the convergence of the ideals of self-mastery and constancy withthose of conversation and friendship that describes the ideal of individualexcellence that was being formulated in the contemporary Republic of Letters.

Ill

When seeking the broadest and most conceptually satisfying description for thesort of motivation that was most harmful to the survival of their regime theLucchese had singled out 'interest'. In 1651 Altogradi had held up themenacing spectre of a citizen driven by nothing but interest who would noteven scruple at selling his liberty to the enemy.68 This fear runs through theLucchese operas from beginning to end. Three years after Marcantonio, leadingcitizens were made to witness another spectacle of depraved interest at work. Inthe second act of// Catone (1690) Cicero lamented the fate of the senate: 'Alasthat the Senate blinded by gold approves iniquitous laws and no longer sees thedanger of an imminent servitude. Interest is the poisonof all counsel.'°9 Threeyears later, when the importance of the Rota provided a common theme for theserenades, it was the deceptive ambivalence of'Interest' that was probed. ForTyranny was wont to wrap itself in the 'public' interest when, in fact, it wasworking for a private one.'0 This ambivalence lay at the core of instrumentalarguments like reason of state, since its legitimacy was determined retrospectively by its success or failure. As Hobbes so acutely observed, in his age' the name of Tyranny signifieth nothing more, nor less, than the name ofsovereignty, be it in one or many men, saving that they that use the formerword are understood to be angry with them they call Tyrants'.'1

Coriolanus, who could have been judged for any number ofsins - Shakespeare caricatured a petulant, selfish, rebel - was in Lucca

87 'Per quella poi che appartiene al governodella Republica, & alia conversatione civile, nonsi vede ben minima mutatione.' Ibid., p. 35.

68 Orationi diGiuseppe Altogradi, pp. 11-12. In describing the near betrayal of the city by one ofits own foreign mercenaries in exchange for money Altogradi neatly summarizes the plot of anynumber of dramas for the Funzione delletasche, including Lucca liberata (1787).

69 'Ah, che il Scnato/Acciecato dall'oro/L'iniqua Legge approva, c piii non vede/Dell'imminente servitii il periglio;/L'Interesse e il velen d'ogni consiglio.' Cato's zeal, he thought,had simply come too late: 'LTnteresse trionfa del zelo.' // Catone, pp. 23-4.

70 'Se col Publico Intercsse/maschcrare i rei pensieri,/E l'inganno hoggi a me lice,/A rcgnarm'apro le porte.' La Liberia sempre stabile nelle vicende del principato (Lucca, 1693),p. 7.

71 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 486.


condemned as an advocate of this reason of state (Martio Coriolano, 1669).Coriolanus was unmoved; he admitted that he was motivated solely by his owninterest. 'There is no reason where force rules. Other things there could be,where and when private interest so demands.'72 Another tyrant figure, Crizia,in Trasibolo Ateniese (1681) asserted that 'Political reason teaches the mightythat he who rules should desire fear not love."3 In Themistocles (1678), Xerxes'ssister Mandane played the Machiavellian adviser urging Themistoclcs's deathas condign retribution for all those he had inflicted by proxy on the Persians.'All is permitted to a ruler', she argued, 'as long as it has the appearance ofjustice.'74 The author of La Liberia Ramminga (1678) -probably Michele diPoggio - invoked Cicero's description of Jove as the protector of absolutepower. This same source had been used by Grotius to acknowledge the priorityof necessity and would be used, in turn, by Kant in order to dclegitimize it.75

The most extended work of political opera to come out of Lucca, andperhaps all of Italy, was not, actually, written for the funzionedelletasche but forLucca's public stage. Francesco Sbarra (1611-68) was a Lucchese who madea career as a successful playwright whose works were performed elsewhere inItaly and in Germany. He was a member of the Lucchese academies of theOscuri and Accessi and his career as a dramatist actually began with works thathe contributed to the first funzione delle tasche in 1636 and those of 1645, as wellas La nave d'Argo, written for the third day of the 1654 celebration. Among hisother works were, as we have already seen, Alessandro vincitor di se stesso (1651),but also political allegories La moda and La corle, performed in Lucca in 1653and 1657 respectively, and Laforza dell'opinione (1658), and L'amor della patria(1668). La tirannide dell'interesse: tragedia politicomorale, first performed in Luccaat the Teatro de Borghi in the autumn of 1653, is his masterpiece. It reflects adeep understanding of the contemporary literature on reason of state which isbrilliantly and precisely parodied.

The story is a bitter one. Sbarra reflects on the way 'Interest', madeacceptable as 'Reason ofState', destroyed will, intellect, virtue, and the publicgood - all of these, not coincidcntally, being characters in the story - while

72 'Ragion non e, dove la forze impera./Altri ben si potero, a lor talento,/Ove, e quando ilchieda/Il privato Interesse.' Martio Coriolano (Lucca, 1669), p. 10.

3 'Politica Ragione/A i Dominant] insegna, Che il timor, non l'amor brami chi regna.'Trasibulo ateniense (Lucca, 1681) , p. 3.

'4 'Tutto lice a un regnante basta sol che di retto habbia il sembiante.' This, of course, wasunsatisfactory for the wise, exemplary, King Xerxes: 'No, non, non deve chi regna/per piacer alsuo sanguc esser ingiusto.' The person who wore the crown was obligated to think 'Sempre alpublico ben piii ch'al privato.' // Temistocle (Lucca, 1678), p. 9.

75 Cicero, Philippics, xi.xii.28; I discuss this in my Defining the common good: empire, religion, andphilosophy in eighteenth-century Britain (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 61, 419. Jove's chorus of followers, inboth contemporary Europe and this opera, defended this position: 'La Ciustitia c unaChimera/Che i morali horspingc, or tiene;/Ma forz'e, che tosto pcra/Se Potenza in leis'avviene.'La liberta ramminga (Lucca, 1678), p. 8. This was not an uncommon theme: it is also invoked byRodante, the court philosopher, in Strozzi's Lafinta savia (1643):' La forza, che e il primo Privilegiodel principe: il gran Ciove,/Di cui sostieni il personaggio in terra,/Con quante frodi all'onesta faguerra.' Quoted in Fabbri, II secolo cantante, p. 109.

332 PETER N. MILLER

taking over the kingdom. In his preface to readers, Sbarra warned that the'portrait and customs of Interest ... represented the majority of Europe'skingdoms'.'0 It was a story in which the ruling figure, Intellctto, was killed off.a fitting example of the effect of tyranny on the individual and a reminder ofthe debility of reason." Introduced by a series of prefatory poems celebratingthe achievement of the author and the seriousness of the threat posed byinterest and ragion di slato - including one by Altogradi - the play occupies amiddle ground between the didactic and the imaginative.

The story is set on the Island of Free Will, ruled over by Queen Volunta. Shewas persuaded by Virtu to marry his brother Intellctto and cede the sceptre tohim. Attracted by the fame and wealth of the kingdom, Prince Interesse hadarrived at the court of Intellctto travestied as Ragion di stato, supposedlychased from her realm by Ignoranza and forced to seek assistance fromIntellctto and Virtu. The king was attracted by her beauty which he describesin the contemporary Ncoplatonic aesthetic language as 'a harmonious concordand concert of well-arranged parts' ('un concerto/Armonico, e concorde/Diparti ben disposte'), but his Secretary Hen publico - the secretary being a stockfigure of seventeenth-century statecraft and generally not associated with thepublic good - warned that reason of state was not merely a set of policies buta wholly instrumental way of understanding political life.78 Other counsellors,Sincerita and Genio buono, added their deep misgivings; they said of Ragiondi stato, echoing some contemporary Aristotelian critics, that 'it is nothing butreason without reason' ('non e che Ragione senza ragione').'9 Sbarra'sreflection on the Aristotelian adaptation of reason of state is instructive; like theJesuit arguments to which it is related, he shows that the attempt to 'normalize'Ragion di stato only disseminated its dangerous teachings more widely underthe coverofacceptability.80 With Intellettostill wavering, Ben publico declaredthat the first priority of a king was to himself and his state ('A' te stesso, al tuostato'). Intellctto, thinking aloud, mulled over the alternatives and, isolated ina soliloquy like Hercules at his lonely crossroads, sang about his condition ofepistemic and emotional uncertainty. 'Ah cruel storm that disturbs my breastand confuses the mind. I cannot decide ... I do not know what to do.'81 Virtu

also declared himself afflicted by the 'contrary passions' of hope and fear, fireand ice produced by the appearance of Ragion di stato.82

76 Francesco Sbarra, La tirannide dell'interesse. 1Tragedia politicomorale (Lucca, 1653), p. 8." 'Che il suo misero stato, all'hor, che sepolto nel profondo letargo dcll'ignoranza. spogliato

dclfinsegne del comaiido, & oppresso da qucsto crudo liranno resia come morto del tutto inhabileallc sue opcratiom.' Ibid., p. IO.

'8 'Ma so ben anco, che di poi nutrita/Da la falsa Dottrina /... anzi veleno' the end would beatheism. Ibid., i.iv, pp. 40 and 42-3. '9 Ibid., i.iv, p. 43.

'Che il suo misero stato, all'hor, che sepolto nel profondo letargo deH'ignoranza. spogliatodcH'insegncdel comaiido, & oppressoda questo nudo tiranno resta come mono del tutto inhabileallc sue operationi.' Ibid., p. 10.

81 'Ah cruda tempesta,/Che turba il miosenoj/Confusa la mente/Risolver non pub; /.../Chefaccio non so.' Ibid., i.iv, p. 44. For this figure sec David Halstcd, 'Ships, the sea, and constancy:a classical image in the Baroque lyric', Neaphilologus, 74 (1990), pp. 545-60.

82 Sbarra, Tirannide, i.vii, pp. 48-9.


The location of this drama was itself a signifier. Sbarra tapped into thevoluble seventeenth-century literature on courts as the locus of moralcorruption. In a soliloquy, Vitio, the daughter of Politica, proclaimed that 'theair of the court is not good for the simple and the foolish. One had better openthe eyes wide, be attentive, listen carefully and refer all to occasion.'83 Geniocattivo, later, sings about the practices of its habitudes. Courtiers 'valued asfriends only their own advantage. The wisest and most shrewd undermineothers to raise themselves higher. '8'' Genio cattivo also picked up theNcoplatonic imagery used earlier by Intelletto but now emphasized its valuefor deception: 'These are good means for one who wants to acquire the favorof patrons. For in a beautiful face, sweet harmony and music of shrewd songslies the key to open the gate of the most closed heart. '85

The next hurdle faced by the conspirators was the elimination of the king'sfavourite, Ben publico. Malitia thought to take counsel at the 'Albergo de laSimulatione' with the other offspring of Politica, Inganno, and Hippocrisia,while Vitio declared that he would avoid detection by assuming the title ofBrio(i.viii, pp. 51-3). When confronted by Sincerita, Adulatione proclaimed him' the most beautiful of virtues that is found in courts', an example of the flatterythat was condemned in contemporary discussions of political thought andcourtly conduct. Angry at the turn of affairs, Sincerita acknowledged that shehad lost the field and fled.8*' Another of the progeny of Politica, Inganno,expressed his confidence now that Madonna opinione was working on theirbehalf (i.xi, p. 58). Opinion, like flattery, was a means of manipulating rulers;like fortune, another woman, it was seen as a wholly unstable justification foraction.

With Inganno now disguised as Ben publico, who had been secretly killedand his body disposed of, the path to Intelletlo's heart lay open. Inganno'sinitial approach, sanctioned in the contemporary literature on statecraft, wasto emphasize prudential argument, not simple right and wrong. There was noone ideally best course of action, he affirmed, and even truth was just a matterof context. 'But Prudence consists only in one thing: amidst the variousopinions to choose the best one.'8'

While the king's capacity for judgement was being preyed upon by thedeception of ministers guided by interest, the queen's attachment to Ragion distato was cemented by mutual proclamations of love. 'Your rare beauty',declared travestied Interesse, 'the marvel of the world, produces never before

1 'Quest'aria de la Corte non c buona/Per i semplici e sciocchi;/Conviene aprir ben gl'occhi,Star attento, & udire,/E a tempo referire.' Ibid., i.v, p. 45.

84 ' Fa la Corte, Chenon hanno,cheartifici,/Echestimaper amici/Sol i propri lor vantaggi,/Ipiii saggi,/I piii scaltri/Per inalzar sc stessi, abbassan gl'altri." Ibid., 11.x, p. 84.

85 'Questi son mezzibuoni/Per chi vuolcacquistarsi/La gratia de Padroni,/Che in un bel voltoun'armonia soave/Cb la musica chiave/Di canzonette accorte/De piii rigidi petti aprc le porte.'Ibid., i.vii, p. 47.

88 'Ch'io non son piii sentita,/Non e'e piii da spcrar, sono spedita.' Ibid., i.x, pp. 55-6.87 'Ma la prudenza al fin solo consiste/Tra le varie oppinioni/Xel prender la migliore.' Ibid..

11.xi, p. 87.

334 PETER N. MILLER

seen, nor understood, wonders of love.' Once compromised, Volunta couldthen, in baroque style, be undeceived, with terrifying consequences. 'I am notwhat I seem', proclaimed Interesse. 'And that famous name of Reason ofStateis imaginary and made up by me alone to hide what I am.' 'And who areyou?', asked Volunta, only to recoil in shock when told of her beloved's trueidentity. 'Interest is my beloved?' ('L'Interesse il ben mio?')88

The ruler's inability to recognize the threat lodged in his midst was a sign ofirreversible rot. When Genio buono informed Intellctto of the palaceconspiracy 'by your own servants, your own proud, uncontrolled appetites'('Da gl'istessi tuoi scrvi,/Da tuoi fieri appctiti sregolati') that aimed to 'makeyou slave to a cruel tyranny', the king could not hear it. How could he bebetrayed 'by my very own senses, happiest of guides'? Of course, it wasprecisely this deceptive quality of sensory information that contemporarymoral and natural philosophers harped upon. Genio buono replied that underthese conditions the only recourse was to eliminate the source of disease andimmediately purge Ragion di stato from the court. Besides, he added, 'a well-disposed populace is the best fortress that secures the state'.89

As Genio buono went into exile he was comforted by Astrea, who lamentedthat now 'the sole counsellor is unworthy Interest'. 'This', added Geniobuono, 'that unworthily is called Reason, but is nothing but Interest.' Underthese conditions, Astrea observed, 'Interest alone prevails and all the rest is afiction.'90 More bitterly still, she described a world in which the mostfundamental human relations had been destroyed by hypocrisy and manipulation : ' Friendship is betrayed, parents renounce themselves, language ismocked, oaths are not observed, people are assassinated under the mantle ofgoodness with sighs and promises. There is no longer fidelity. All is Interest.'91After first remonstrating with Intellctto, accusing him of unfaithfulness andemploying the language of love as a surrogate for an indictment of his lack ofmoral rectitude, Virtu tried to warn Volunta. She, too, did not want to hear ofher fate.

Things had already gone too far. Virtii was deceived into committing suicideand after Adulatione had lulled Intellctto to sleep with words of praise,

18 'La tua rara bellczza. Meraviglia del Mondo/Produce gli stupori/Di non piii visti, e nonintesi Amori'; 'Non son qual mi dimostra/E quel eclebre nomc/Ch'hb Ragion di Stato/E'Imaginario, e finto,/Da me solo inventato/Per occultar qual sono.' Ibid., in.ii, pp. 97, 99.

' II popolo ben affetto/E1 la miglior fortezza./Ch'assecuri lo stato.' Ibid., in.vii, pp. 109-11.90 'Che il solo consigliero/F'l Interesse indegno ... Questa che indegnamente/vien chiamata

Ragionc,/Ma non e, che interesse ... L'lnieresse sol prevale./tutto il resto e una fmtione.' Ibid.,m.xiii, pp. 128-9.

91 'L'amicitia si tradisce,/Si rinegano i parenti,/La parola si schernsicc,/Non s'osservangiuramenti./S'assassino le genti/Sotio il manto di Bonta/Con Iusinghe, e con promcsse./Non e'epiii fedelta, tutl'c Interesse.' Ibid., m.xiii, pp. 128 9. This same connection between friendship anda golden age on the one hand, and between the declineof friendship in an age of iron was madein the preface to a 1630 Venice edition of Las Casas's Breve relatione de la destruttione de gl'Indi. SeeGactano Cozzi,' Una Vicenda della venezia barroca', Bollettino dell'Istituto di storiadellasocietaedellostato veneziano, 3 (i960), p. 95 n. 51.

STOICSWHOSING:EARLYMODERNLUCCA335

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Interesse, dressed as rovalty, entered the bed-chamber and murdered the king.In the next scene, Interesse announced himself to the ex-king's Genio cattivoand proclaimed that 'this royal throne waits only for me'.92 In the end, heannounced his complete triumph to Volonta, 'I am Interest who under thename of Reason of State have with force and deception occupied thisKingdom. '!M When challenged as to the justice of hiscause he mocked Volonta.Like the true tyrant, he believed that 'Just iswhat pleases me' (' E giusto/Qucl,che piace al mio gusto'). Her task was now to be silent and serve his needs. Leftalone on stage to comment on her disgrace and serve as a warning to theaudience Volonta concluded, bitterly, that 'He is surely mad who believes thathe will find love and faith in Interest.'"1

Sbarra's unmasking of Ragion di stato as an elegant cover for the wilfulpursuit of selfish ambition, or interest, is very similar to Traiano Boccalini'santi-Tacitist Tacitism in Ragguagli di Pamasso (1612). Both of them craftedmagnificent works of art whose very perfection is designed to open the eyes ofreaders and viewers to the dangers lurking all about them. From Venice, toLucca, to the United Provinces, Europe's early modern republics faced therising tide of an ideology of a purely instrumental politics by trying to showtheir citizens how to recognize the devil beneath his everyday garb. Sbarra'sopera, written by a Lucchese and performed in Lucca, also found an audiencein these other republics: the text was reprinted three times in a decade atVenice (1658, 1662, 1668), where he was said, by his publisher, to want everycitizen to know 'what his own responsibilities are, and the obligations of eachperson to contribute with his love and actions to the breath and prosperity ofhis beloved homeland'.90 The Tyranny of interest was also translated into Dutchat the beginning of the eighteenth century. There, the printer explained thatthe story concerned 'in general all peoples, societies, cities, provinces, republicsand monarchies and therefore you, too, O reader'. Its conclusions depended onwhether or not the reader had given up on virtue and been taken in by Interest'usually under the pretence of il being necessary for the running of the state'.The frontispiece done for this edition completes the task of generalizing theallegory (Fig. 1). The same Amsterdam print-shop produced a secjucl to thestory giving the comeuppance of Interest at the hands of Will, guided byCaution and Piety. All that remained of the early seventeenth-century neo-Stoicism was the useof a pillar - the symbolofcostanza —by a figure resemblingVirtue to rout Interest, Hypocrisy, Dcceitfulncss, Cheating, Unfaithfulness,and Vice (Fig. 2).9G

92 'E questo Regio trono/A me solos'aspetta.' Sbarra, Tirannide, v.xvi, p. 188.9,i ' Io son,sonl'Interesse,/Chesottonome di Ragion di Stato/Hb conforze, & inganni/Quesio

Regno occupato.' Ibid., v.xvi, p. 188.M 'folle e benchi sicrede/trovar me i.'interesseamore, e fede' (sic). Ibid.,v.xx, p. 192.95 Quoted in Rosand, Opera in seventeenth-century Venice, pp. 150—1.96 'Want bet slaat in het algemeen op allc Menschen, Maachtschappyen, Stepden, Landen,

Rcpublyken, en Koningryken: by gevolgmedeop u, Leezer; en dat zo veel te flaauwer, of vinniger,als gy meer, of min, waare Deugd verlaatende, u laat verleiden door de liefde tot Eigenbaat, die zich

338 PETER N. MILLER

IV

No ideal ofindividual excellence, like no individual, is an island unto itself. Theneo-Stoics' self-help had clear implications for social life. The power of reasonto rein in the passions favoured friendship over love; the ability of a trainedmind to distinguish the indifferent from the essential helped the individualfavour the common good over self-interest; and the need for adequateknowledge in order to make these often fine distinctions depended upon theexchange of ideas, or conversation. We are more used to seeing neo-Stoicism asa language of survival under tyranny than as a philosophy of perfection, letalone as a republican ideal. But the Lucchese harnessed its emphasis on self-mastery to underpin a defence of citizenship in an age ever more unresponsiveto the old call to self-sacrifice. This story is another reminder that anyinterpretation of neo-Stoicism as purely a service ideal for bureaucrats, apolitical theory of discipline, or a systematic ' philosophy' is inadequate. It wasan eclectic set of ideas whose sum describes a lifestyle or outlook rather than abody of doctrine.

But the history of Lucca's political operas also reminds us that we also needto be careful when wc speak of a 'classical republicanism', even for Tuscany.Republicanism in early modern Italy was a complicated phenomenon. In theseventeenth century, in Lucca as in Venice and Genoa, the language of politicswas loose and flexible: Stoicism could support an Aristotelian commitment torepublican citizenship in Lucca, as easily as reason of state could be wielded toundercut the Aristotelian ideal in republican Venice.97 Moreover, theimportance the Lucchese attached to self-mastery as a moral prerequisite forcitizenship and the resemblance this bears to much older visions of moraleducation like Matteo Palmicri's suggest that this element might occupy amore significant place than has been acknowledged thus far. If the Lucchesepossessed less Libertas than they celebrated it was not because, as Hobbes wouldhave it, all forms of government constrain freedom of action, but becauseLibertas was the residue of a self-disciplining so harsh as to leave no distinctionbetween liberty and duty.

gewoonlyk aan oons in den schyn van Redenvanstaat, ofStaatbelang vertoont.' Tieranny van Eigenbaat.In het Eiland van Vryekeur, £innespiel (Amsterdam, 1708), sig. Br. The project of a translation andsequel suggests some internal Dutch debate; as this is beyond my competence I would welcomefurther clarification.

97 For Tuscany see now WilliamJ. Council and Andrea Zorzi, eds., Florentine Tuscany: structuresandpractices ofpower (Cambridge, 2000). On Venetian republican reason of state the classic sourceis Opinionefalsameute ascritta al Padre Paolo Servita, come debba govemarsi intemaniente & estemamente laRepublica Venetiana, per haver il perpetuo Dominio (Venice, 1685, but written in the 1620s); alsoVincenzo Sgualdi, Republica di Lesbo overo dellaragione di stato inundominio aristocratico (Venice, 1640).For modern studies see Caetano Cozzi,' Venezia, una repubblica di principi ?', Studi Veneziani, n.s.,11 (1986), pp. 139-57; Marco Zanetto,' Mitodi Venezia' ed'antimito' negli scritti delseicento veneziano(Venice, 1991).


These same constant Romans were also celebrated as heroes in eighteenth-century Britain and France. For even great monarchies, like little republics,faced the problem of securing the common good and preserving social virtue.Lucca's 'soft' republicanism, an oligarchy's tribute to the idea rather than thepractice of a citizen government, illuminates the points of contact betweenthese two types of regime, contacts that seemed more apparent in the secondhalf of the eighteenth century than they have in the second half of thetwentieth. If, in the republic, neo-Stoicism helped ensure the continuingpriority of the public over private interest, in a monarchy it could undcrgirdthe integrity of the self in times of adversity.98 Paying attention to the role ofneo-Stoicism in early modern discussions of citizenship reminds us that theinsidious appeal of self-interest was a problem for anyone who saw theformation of the individual, whether as citizen or subject, as the crucialbattleground. In the seventeenth century, Hercules's choice had becomeEveryman's.

98 This 'service ideal', however, ignoresanother side of neo-Stoicism, in which the power of atrained mind was believed to establish an area of freedom from external conditions, a feature that

would have seemed equally unappealing to a king or to republican oligarchs.

Stoics Who Sing: Lessons in Citizenship from Early Modern Lucca

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