



Produced by John Bickers; Dagny





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 h