Dwarkesh Patel

Be good.

Send us letters informing us what's going on.

When we have diplomatic needs to talk to the king, we're going to send letters to you and you're going to forward them.

And if you're good, you get to come back.

So being in exile is sort of being on probation, but also being entrusted with state stuff.

That's not quite what they did with Machiavelli.

With Machiavelli, they banished him to a hamlet in the middle of the Tuscan countryside near nothing important and said, go sit in the country and rot.

And if you're good, we'll invite you back.

What they expect, what everyone expects, is that Machiavelli will break that promise and leave because he's a well-known statesman and a scholar and a playwright and a historian.

And there are dozens of cardinals in Rome and other cities that would love to employ him.

Kings of England love employing Florentines to work for them as secretaries.

Kings of Naples love employing Florentines to work for them as secretaries.

He might go get a job tutoring the daughters of the Duke of Milan the way Francesco Fallelfo did when he was kicked out of Florence for opposing the Medici.

There are lots of places that it's expected an exiled Florentine intellectual will go where he will have the ear of power and he will be able to exert influence.

He will be a mover and shaker at

the court of Milan or the court of Naples or the court of England.

Instead, when they say to Machiavelli, sit in the country and rot, this is a test, he passes the test and sits in the country faithfully and rots.

And if he had wanted to go be an intellectual power broker, the correct move is to run off to Rome, right?

And say, I will give up the chance to go home the way Dante did, but I will be a Florentine in exile and I will write important things and I will live at the house of wealthy men who will support me and take me in

and give me the ear of power and I will exert my influence in that way.