History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy / From the Earliest Times to the Death of Lorenzo the Magnificent

Opening of the book

HISTORY OF FLORENCE
AND OF THE AFFAIRS OF ITALY
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE DEATH OF LORENZO THE
MAGNIFICENT
By Niccolo Machiavelli

With an Introduction by
HUGO ALBERT RENNERT, Ph.D.
Professor of Romanic Languages and Literature,
University of Pennsylvania.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This text was typed up from a Universal Classics Library
edition,
published in 1901 by W. Walter Dunne, New York and London.
The
translator
was
not
named.
The
book
contains
a
"photogravure" of
Niccolo Machiavelli from an engraving.
INTRODUCTION
Niccolo Machiavelli, the first great Italian historian,
and one of the most eminent political writers of any age
or country, was born at Florence, May 3, 1469. He was of
an old though not wealthy Tuscan family, his father, who
was a jurist, dying when Niccolo was sixteen years old. We
know nothing of Machiavelli's youth and little about his
studies. He does not seem to have received the usual
humanistic education of his time, as he knew no Greek.[*]
The first notice of Machiavelli is in 1498 when we find
him holding the office of Secretary in the second Chancery
of the Signoria, which office he retained till the
downfall of the Florentine Republic in 1512. His unusual
ability was soon recognized, and in 1500 he was sent on a
mission to Louis XII. of France, and afterward on an
embassy to Cæsar Borgia, the lord of Romagna, at Urbino.
Machiavelli's
report
and
description
of
this
and
subsequent embassies to this prince, shows his undisguised
admiration for the courage and cunning of Cæsar, who was a
master in the application of the principles afterwards
exposed in such a skillful and uncompromising manner by

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