Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World

by Erica Benner

The sickness spreads rapidly through the city, into military camps. No one knows its causes, or how to cure it. Folk wisdom links it to solar eclipses or phases of the moon. Some of the rich believe it is spread by vile practices found among the poor.5 When God strikes them down in their filth, He is sure, they hope, to spare the honest, industrious classes. Italy is full of doctors who understand other diseases, and apothecaries whose shops produce an astonishing array of medications, some more efficacious than others. But plague seems to mock all their scientific wisdom, both ancient and modern. Only two things are clear: it is savagely contagious, and most often fatal. Plague had devoured more than two thirds of Florence’s population in the 1300s. The most reliable known treatment is isolation.