Chapter 5 — Governing Cities That Lived Under Their Own Laws

The chapter opens with three options for governing a formerly self-governing city: ruin it, live in it, or allow it to keep its laws while extracting tribute and installing a friendly government. Machiavelli presents this as a forced choice rather than a menu. The Spartans tried the third approach with Athens and Thebes — establishing oligarchies and withdrawing — and lost both. The Romans used the first method on Carthage, Numantia, and Capua, and those cities did not rebel because there was nothing left to rebel. The Romans tried the softer approach in Greece and never achieved the same security.

The analytical core of the chapter is the argument about memory. A city that has been free carries the idea of freedom in its institutions, its habits, and its civic culture — in its very structures. Even if the city's leaders are replaced and its laws suppressed, the population remembers what it had. That memory is more dangerous than any army. As Machiavelli puts it: whatever you do or provide, if you do not disperse and destroy the inhabitants, they will not forget the name of liberty, or their ancient institutions, and will immediately recall them at every chance.

The exception Machiavelli notes is significant: when a city has long been governed by a prince, and that prince's family is exterminated, the situation is different. The people are accustomed to obedience; they no longer have a focal point for their loyalty; and the new prince can more easily establish himself as a legitimate successor. It is self-governing cities — those with republican traditions and civic institutions — that present the intractable difficulty. For those, Machiavelli sees no long-term solution short of destruction.