ABSTRACT
Machiavelli never wrote any tragedies or ever contemplated doing so other than the tragedy he now described as he took up his history again. Nevertheless he had tragic thoughts enough in his mind to give a dramatic air to his denunciation of the princes who had not been willing to heed the exhortation which ends the Prince. He had already drawn with bold strokes an outline of the story which, starting with the ‘foreign invasions’ following the death of Lorenzo, and proceeding through a maze of mistakes and deceptions, led towards the fatal dénouement prophesied in his recent letter.
