ABSTRACT
Machiavelli's treatise on conspiracies, it should come as no surprise, has always had independent circulation and diffusion, already certified in the manuscript tradition. All things considered, it seems clear that the idea of presenting Machiavelli's reflections on conspiracies in an autonomous format—first realized in France in 1575—can hardly be classified as an arbitrary extrapolation or a forced interpretation from the historical-philological point of view. The text—as with the majority of Machiavelli's works, left unpublished and printed only after his death—has been the subject of debate concerning the exact, or better, plausible, date of its composition. Some critics—already starting with Pasquale Villari—have done well to highlight these differences, but in order to avoid interfering too much with the reading of Machiavelli's palpitating composition. The Florentine Histories are Machiavelli's last great composition, his most relevant one from the historiographic point of view, and for a long time the most critically neglected.
