ABSTRACT
In Hitchcock's collection we may identify two distinct types of intervention. On the one hand, we can note brief additions in the final sections of the maxims, glossing the actual content of the admonition on a more informal note and accentuating its aphoristic quality; in other cases we can observe changes in terminology, where expressions of a more general connotation are replaced with a more technical vocabulary that draws prevalently on the military sphere of warfare. Robert Hitchcock, or Captain Hitchcock as he was known in view of his military rank, and he came into possession of a copy of the Concetti Politici through a companion in arms during a military expedition to the Netherlands in 1586. The intense dialectic set up between the issue of violence and that of military command harks back to some extent to a broader argument hinging on the state as a product of force and not as a peaceful condition of man.
