Interpretatio nominis in Machiavelli's Mandragola

• In Event: Of Chess, Dukes, Power, and Politics in Italy and Savoy

Abstract

Much has been written about the significance of Lucrezia's name in La Mandragola; but hardly anything has been written about the significance of the names of the other characters in Machiavelli's comic play. By comparing the way Machiavelli portrays these other characters to the ancient Greek, Roman, and early Christian figures after whom they were named, we discover an added comic dimension and social criticism that has been ignored heretofore. Machiavelli's characters are not just parodies of the homonymous figures of Nicias in Plutarch, Callimacus in Ovid, Sostrata and Siro in Terrance, Timothy in St. Paul, and, very obliquely, Ligurio-like characters in Plautus; they are also Machiavelli's inter-textual commentary of how his fellow Florentines used and misused as models the ancient writers.

Author

• Steven M. Grossvogel, University of Georgia