In the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy Machiavelli undertook a wide-ranging comparison of ancient and modern states and societies, enlivened by a running contrast between the ancient Roman republic and modern Florence that gives the work much of its polemical force. The proem to book 1 announces a search for “new methods and institutions [modi e ordini nuovi]” for “organizing republics, maintaining governments, ruling kingdoms, organizing militias, conducting wars, rendering justice to subjects, and extending territorial power.” Machiavelli chose Livy's history of Rome as his textual interlocutor because of its abundant material on the early history of the ancient republic, which was, for Machiavelli, the exemplary state by which all others, ancient and modern, should be assessed. This was not a purely theoretical inquiry. Motivated by the “inborn desire I have always had to work, without fear or hesitation, for those things I believe will benefit everyone” (proem, book 1), Machiavelli hopes that “those who read these analyses of mine may more easily draw from them that utility for which knowledge of history should be sought.” Asserting (proem, book 2) that ancient “virtù” and modern “vice [vizio]” are “clearer than the sun” and that the modern debasement of religion, laws, and military training has reached extreme levels of corruption, particularly among those holding the reins of power, he must “boldly” say what he understands of “past and future times, so that those, still young, who will read these writings of mine can reject the present and prepare themselves to imitate those former times whenever fortune gives them the opportunity.”

Machiavelli introduces himself nowhere better than in his correspondence, particularly with challenging interlocutors like Francesco Guicciardini, his younger contemporary who, when they exchanged a memorable set of letters in 1521, had already risen to political prominence and written a lively history of Florence as well as several memoranda on Florentine government. Their friendship was made possible by a shift in Machiavelli's political fortunes. After eight years in which the Medici had shunned Machiavelli following the 1512 coup d'état that restored them to power in Florence, their antagonism finally softened. Friends intervened to win the assent of Pope Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici) for a Roman performance of Machiavelli's play, Mandragola, and smoothed the way for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici's approval of Machiavelli's commission from the university (the Studio) to write a history of Florence. In May 1521, the Florentine government, again with Cardinal Giulio in the background, sent Machiavelli, who had once negotiated with kings, emperors, and popes, as its representative to the chapter general of the Franciscans in Carpi, near Modena, with instructions to promote a plan for the separate administration of Franciscan convents in Florentine territory. When the consuls of Florence's guild of manufacturers of woolen cloth learned of Machiavelli's assignment, they gave him the additional task of finding a Lenten preacher for the cathedral, whose administration was the guild's responsibility. Machiavelli, formerly an influential chancery official, adviser, military organizer, and diplomatic envoy for the republican government displaced by the Medici, was now on a mission of almost comical modesty.

Dante's angry denunciation of Florence and the Florentines is one of the memorable themes of the Divina Commedia. Repeatedly in the great poem, and in several of his letters, Dante excoriated the Florentines for the violence, factionalism, and instability of their politics, for their excessive pursuit and consumption of wealth, and, worst of all, for their criminal resistance to what he considered the divinely ordained authority of the Roman emperor. Because we know so little of Dante's political views and opinions about Florence before his exile in 1302, it is tempting to use the fact of the exile and Dante's emotional reaction to it as a way of explaining his harsh critique of his own city. While there is no doubt much truth in such an approach, it is equally important to grasp the influence on Dante of the traditions of political and historical thought that emerged in Florence during the course of the thirteenth century, and in particular of the ideas associated with movements of popular opposition to the traditional dominance of the elite of upper-class families.

What little is known of Dante's political life before 1302 suggests that he played a role quite typical of those politically active Florentines who did not belong to the elite of economically powerful and influential families. The Alighieri were Guelfs, but by the 1290s Ghibellinism was a dead issue in Florence and everyone (or at least anyone who wanted any role in politics) was a Guelf. From about the mid-1290s, Dante held a number of important posts and was several times a member of the advisory boards convened by the government to give advice and support to its policies.

For forty-five years now historians have debated the arguments advanced by Hans Baron in The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, and elaborated in many separate studies and essays, according to which a tenacious defense of republican liberty and an ethic of civic participation suddenly emerged among early fifteenth-century Florentine citizens and humanists as a consequence of Florence's struggle for survival against the expansionist ambitions of the Visconti dukes of Milan. Baron's thesis has enjoyed (and suffered) a degree of attention and controversy that has not abated even now, a decade after his death and in a completely transformed world of historiographical assumptions and practices. One reason for this is certainly the dramatic quality of Baron's thesis – its claim that big and lasting changes in the intellectual history of the Renaissance occurred as a direct and immediate response to what Baron saw as the Florentines' life-and-death conflict with Milan. Other reasons for the continuing debates may be less clear, less related to the merits and weaknesses of Baron's historical arguments, and rooted, perhaps, in the political agendas and ideological stakes that still surround modern versions of civic humanism. Whatever the reasons, the problem of when and why civic and republican attitudes emerged in Renaissance Florence still generates a good deal of debate.

The question of Florentine civic humanism, as understood both by Baron and most of his critics, has typically been framed around three points: the genesis, the originality, and the accuracy of the civic humanist representation of republican politics in fifteenth-century Florence.

DANTE'S ANGRY denunciation of Florence and the Florentines is one of the memorable themes of the Divina Commedia. Repeatedly in the great poem, and in several of his letters, Dante excoriated the Florentines for the violence, factionalism, and instability of their politics, for their excessive pursuit and consumption of wealth, and, worst of all, for their criminal resistance to what he considered the divinely ordained authority of the Roman emperor. Because we know so little of Dante's political views and opinions about Florence before his exile in 1302, it is tempting to use the fact of the exile and Dante's emotional reaction to it as a way of explaining his harsh critique of his own city. While there is no doubt much truth in such an approach, it is equally important to grasp the influence on Dante of the traditions of political and historical thought that emerged in Florence during the course of the thirteenth century, and in particular of the ideas associated with movements of popular opposition to the traditional dominance of the elite of upper-class families.

At the origin – or very close to it – of Machiavelli's encounter with the traditions of republican history and thought lies his complex relationship to the Florentine republic that he served for fourteen years as chancellor and secretary. Machiavelli himself, in the dedicatory letters of both The Prince and the Discourses, emphasised the ‘lunga esperienza’ and ‘pratica’ of modern events together with the reading of ancient texts as the twin sources of his knowledge of politics. In fact most of the usual images of Machiavelli's years in the chancery derive from these and a few other famous sentences (mostly in the great letter to Vettori of December 1513) that he wrote after the fall of the republic and the Medicean restoration forced him out of office: the picture of the tireless and self-effacing public servant, full of good faith and honesty, who paid a heavy price for such devoted service. Clearly, these post-1512 representations by Machiavelli of his chancery years are coloured by the bitterness he felt over his dismissal and humiliation.

But what did that experience seem like during the years it unfolded, both to Machiavelli and to those with whom, in one way or another, he worked? And, in the light of what we can learn about his activities and experience before 1512, what can be said of its relationship to his later writings on republics?