Lehal Library

ix Introduction circumstance. The result was a slim volume that would be a scandal for centuries. Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469, the same year Lorenzo de’ Medici (il Magnifico) came to power. First male child after two daughters, Niccolò would grow up very close to his father, Bernardo, an ­ex‑­lawyer, mostly unemployed, with good contacts but no significant wealth or influence. If the son was to rise in the world, and he was determined to do so, he would have to count on his own wits and charm. Niccolò’s younger brother, Totto, chose not to compete and went into the priesthood. The boys’ mother, it should be said, was an extremely devout woman, a writer of religious poems and hymns. Their father on the other hand was sceptical, more at home with the sober works of Latin antiquity than the Bible. Niccolò may have taken his writing skills from his mother, but over divisions on religion he stood with his father and the Roman historians. One says of Lorenzo il Magnifico that he ‘came to power’, but officially Florence was a republic and since Lorenzo was only twenty years old in 1469 he was far too young to hold elected office; an explanation is required. When, in the thirteenth century, the Florentines had thrown out the noble families who used to run the town, they introduced a republican constitution of exemplary idealism. A government of eight priori led by one gonfalo- niere, or prime minister, would be elected every two months by drawing tags from a series of bags containing members of the govt