ABSTRACT
One May day of the year 1521 Machiavelli, leaving the ridge of the Appenines behind him, was riding down the road into Bologna. In his saddle-bag he had a commission from the Otto di Pratica (the Eight), the body which had superseded the republican Ten, written in the very office where he had served so many years, and signed by the man who had taken his place there, Niccolò Michelozzi. 1 Still, he was at last again being sent on a mission beyond the borders of the Republic, outside Tuscany, and with a pocketful of government credentials. Could it be that his country had remembered him, remembered the acute observer, the far-sighted politician? Was he off again to the King of France, or the Emperor?
