ABSTRACT
History is the praise of Rome. With this statement Petrarch inaugurated the Italian Renaissance, and in Machiavelli's writings on the Roman republic, above all in his Discourses on Livy, that same intellectual "rebirth" came to a spectacular and shocking fulfilment. Republics are superior to monarchies, and the people are superior to princes, Machiavelli maintains. Republics and peoples also have the advantage over monarchies and princes in matters of leadership. On occasion, Machiavelli himself was troubled by his deliberately troubling political vision. Not that there was enough of the Christian in his psyche to bother him with belief in a moral standard over and above Rome, outside history. Tragic or not, Machiavelli's Romans accompany him everywhere his thought leads him. Yet they are never his only companions. Beside his Romans people always find his Florentines, juxtaposed for purposes of dramatic and instructive comparison.
