A Day Well Spent is a satire that forwards the Machiavellian
discipline through a detailed fiction.
But while illustrating the said
discipline, the book disfavors Niccoli Machiavelli 's amorale ethics and philosophies towards government.
The book goes forward by farce, and begins with three knights who have defected from their duties to their sovereign in favor of a senseless, joyful pact. They have resolved that since they have fought so admirably, and have achieved victory on every occasion, that nothing further could import their honor, and that their worth is proven beyond all doubt. They have decided in such case to go in search of the greatest brothel in all of the world, and they honor and maintain their pact with a jesting reverence, as if it were the last point upon their honor to find such a place to enjoy themselves.
But with so little to prove, the knights are still not ones to back down from a fight, and one of their number is wounded outside the walls of a
strange city. They are taken in by a wicked man of state, and he affronts the knights with the strange customs and notions of the land. In the house of Macrominus, the knights are made present at his godless gathering, and they witness firsthand how he maintains himself infamously against rival men of state.
In A Day Well Spent, an ahistorical government is modeled with a few detailed provisions by which men of state were able to settle stern differences among themselves. But beyond the provided rituals of humiliation, Macrominus is a tireless Machiavellian, whose tricks range from sensible diplomacy to maniacle efforts to wound and murder the subjects of his gathering. virtualbookworm