Machiavelli's intellectual kinship with the ancient Romans surpassed allother ties he felt.Published posthumously in 1531, Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, shows that,despite the reputation he gained for his brief treatise, The Prince, hispreferred form of self-government for his native Florence or any similarcity-state was based on a republican ideal. Livy's primary ideas for therepublican model appealed not only to the humanist and political scientist inMachiavelli but also to the masterful literary stylist, who understood veryclearly how the rhetorical impact of a superhuman hero's gallant deeds upon areader's imagination was superior to the force of logic or the persuasive powerof historical precedent. With no interest in ideal or utopian schemes,Machiavelli's close analysis of Livy's Rome led him to advance his most originaland controversial view of politics - the belief that a healthy body politic wascharacterised by social friction and conflict, not rigid stability. Hisdiscussion of conspiracies is also the longest and most sophisticated treamentof the archetypal political upheaval in all of policitical theory up to histimes. In an age when political absolutism was increasingly the norm,Machiavelli's republican theories would become a dangerous ideology, and hisworks were placed on the Index of Prohibited Works in 1559.The present new translation of The Discourses, with critical annotations farexceeding those of any other edition in English, aims at providing thecontemporary reader of Machiavelli's republican theory with sufficienthistorical, linguistic and political information to understand and interpret therevolutionary affirmations Machiavelli made, based on the historical evidence hefound in Livy.

Julia Conaway Bondanella is Associate Professor of French & Italian and Associate Director of the Honors Division at Indiana University. She is Coeditor of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists in World's Classics. Peter Bondanella is Distinguished Porfessor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Film Studies, Italian and West European Studies at Indiana University. He edited and co-translated Machiavelli's The Prince (WC).