of rulership, in turn, ensures that injustice is banished from the city. As Bruni
puts it, ‘‘every care is taken so that justice is held completely sacred in the city,
without which a city is not even worthy of the name.’’ ‘‘For this reason,’’ he
writes later on, ‘‘no one here can suVer any injustice [iniuria], and no one has
to part with his property [res sua] unless he is willing’’ (Bruni 1996 , 642 ). The
rich are protected by their wealth, the poor by the state, and justice applies
equally to all. This is, of course, a diYcult claim to take seriously; yet the
ideological commitments behind the claim are important. Florence is just, we
are told, because it respects the private property of its citizens. Bruni adds
that this reverence foriusproduces ‘‘armonia’’ ( 1996 , 632 )—concord and
harmony in the city—without which imperial glory is unattainable. With
all of these values in place (liberty, virtue, justice, concord), Florence is poised
to acquire empire. In Bruni’s words, ‘‘to you, men of Florence, belongs
dominion over the globe by a kind of hereditary right, as a paternal inherit-
ance’’ ( 1996 , 598 ). Having inherited Rome’s liberty and virtue, Florence will
surely inherit its empire.
The innocent republican enthusiasm of Bruni’s panegyric could not, how-
ever, withstand the events of theWfteenth century. Beginning in 1434 , Florence
came increasingly under the control of the Medici family, and apart from a
theocratic experiment under Girolamo Savonarola ( 1494 – 8 ) and a brief
republican interregnum ( 1498 – 1512 ), Florence was clearly moving in the
direction of a principate. It was against this backdrop of Medici rule and
civic decline that Niccolo`Machiavelli wrote his monumentalDiscorsi sopra la
prima deca di Tito Livio (known in English as the Discourses on Livy),
unquestionably the most inXuential republican text of the period. In 1513 ,
after the Medici had been returned to Florence under the protection of
Spanish arms, Machiavelli had writtenIl Principein order to advise the new
rulers on how best to govern the city. Yet, although he was not above seeking
patronage from the new regime, Machiavelli never relinquished his convic-
tion, born of long service to Florence, that republican government was best—
and theDiscorsi(written between 1515 and 1519 ) are eloquent testimony to
that belief.
Machiavelli’s text might seem atWrst glance to adopt the prevailing Roman
republican traditionin toto. He announces early in the second discourse that
‘‘it is an easy thing to know whence arises among peoples this aVection for the
free way of life, for it is seen through experience that cities have never
expanded either in dominion or in riches if they have not been in freedom’’
(Machiavelli 1996 , 129 ). The reason, Machiavelli insists, is that ‘‘it is not the
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