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Horst Steinke
40
«heroic commonwealths (repubbliche eroiche)»
60
. This serves to
direct our attention to §§ 246-294 on how forms of rule/
governance/states historically have been aligned with certain cul-
tural-anthropological conditions, with respect to which Rome
was no exception. Conversely, actual Roman legal history is illu-
minated by the overarching principles set forth in Book I; the
segment is therefore not simply supporting material but presents
us with the kind of nexus of “philosophy” and “philology” that
Vico promised in Book I.
3.2
Vico’s “axiomatic method”
In view of the juridical and governance-related background
and thematic weighting of
Scienza nuova
, the presentation of the
guiding principles in the language of Euclidean geometry is sur-
prising, and
prima facie
arbitrary
61
. One way to make Vico’s choice
intelligible is to see it in a historical context. In this connection,
without going back further than the Italian Renaissance
62
, math-
ematics took on a “game-changing” role, irrespective of whether
historically it is entirely correct to speak of a “revival” of mathe-
matics or not
63
. In the 16
th
century, Tartaglia and Benedetti relied
heavily on Euclidean terminology (axioms, definitions, postu-
lates, etc.) in explicating physical phenomena. And, of course, in
the 17
th
century, the greatest scientist of them all was Galileo
who put “mathematical physics” on a more solid footing than
any of his predecessors. In addition to the increased technical
proficiencies in mathematics
64
, however, what is more relevant to
the present discussion is the aura of intellectual rigor and certain-
ty given the Euclidean axiomatic system and the power of deduc-
tion. Did Vico therefore join in the
Zeitgeist
and conceive of his
own “Elements” as a logically sound and unassailable set of
propositions? Our answer to this question will have to wait until
later in this section. Let us nevertheless acknowledge from the
outset that Vico scholarship has seen the “Elements” more in