In the prologue to the History of Florence (Istorie Florentine), which Machiavelli wrote between 1520 and 1525 and which comprises the period between the decline of the Roman republic and the end of the Quattrocento, the author explains the ‘ordini e modi’ which he followed in writing this history. While praising the ‘two excellent historians’ Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini for their ‘description of the wars waged by the Florentines against foreign princes and peoples’, he also criticises them for having neglected what he considered the specific and crucial element in the history of his city: ‘civil discord and internal strifes and their consequences’ or, as he writes a little later, ‘the hatreds and divisions in the city’. The Istorie Florentine does not only deal, as did the Prince, with ‘the actions of the great men’, but with actions that seemed ‘insignificant’ and ‘unworthy’ to be described in detail and to become part of historical memory. This vision of Florentine history seemed so crucial to Machiavelli as even to cause him to alter his original project. Initially, he intended to start with the year 1434 when Cosimo il Vecchio returned from exile to Florence and established his regime, and this was probably due to fact that it was a Medici – Cardinal Giulio and future Pope Clement VII – who had conferred this task upon him. It was precisely his interest in understanding civil discord that made him go back to the origins of the city.