Journal article
2015

Machiavelli and the Imagined Rome of Renaissance Humanism

Michelle T. Clarke

History of Political Thought 36, no. 3 (2015): 452–470.

Asks why Machiavelli opens the Discourses on Livy by presenting Rome as unexplored territory, after a century of intense humanist study. His aim was to defend Rome as it really was against the Rome imagined by Leonardo Bruni and especially Poggio Bracciolini, whose Oration on Behalf of Venice faulted the turbulent Roman republic. Machiavelli agrees that earlier humanist portraits of Rome were idealized but rejects Poggio’s critique on historical and theoretical grounds: Rome’s tumults sustained a more popular liberty, and humanist hostility to conflict reflected an oligarchic bias. The article challenges Quentin Skinner’s view of the Discourses as a continuation of humanist orthodoxy.

  • Machiavelli
  • Discourses on Livy
  • Poggio Bracciolini
  • Leonardo Bruni
  • Renaissance humanism
  • Venice
  • Civic conflict
  • Quentin Skinner

How to cite

Clarke, Michelle T. “Machiavelli and the Imagined Rome of Renaissance Humanism.” History of Political Thought 36, no. 3 (2015): 452–470.

@article{clarke2015imagined,
  author    = {Clarke, Michelle T.},
  title     = {{Machiavelli and the Imagined Rome of Renaissance Humanism}},
  year      = {2015},
  journal   = {History of Political Thought},
  volume    = {36},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {452--470},
  url       = {https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/hpt/2015/00000036/00000003/art00003}
}