ABSTRACT
Many accounts of Machiavelli’s life are character assassinations to serve particular religious or political purposes. The Machiavellis were an ancient Florentine family, of sound republican principles, who were a bit down on their luck when Niccolo was born in 1469. Machiavelli’s lawyer father was able to provide his son with the education in the classics, then much in vogue both as a humanist training and as a preparation for public office. The problem of Machiavelli’s political thought can be stated very simply: anyone with the energy to trawl through the vast secondary literature on the great Florentine would have no trouble in finding fifty-seven varieties of Machiavelli. Part of the ‘shocking to Christian sensibilities’ view of Machiavelli is the contention that he is forward-looking in a sense that minds still intent on living in the Middle Ages would have found deeply disturbing.
