The Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy) is a work of political history and philosophy composed in the early 16th century by the famed Florentine public servant and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), best known as the author of The Prince. Where The Prince is devoted to advising the ruler of a principality, i.e., a type of monarchy, the Discourses purport to explain the structure and benefits of a republic, a form of government based on popular consent and control. It is considered almost unanimously by scholars to be if not the first, then certainly the most important, work on republicanism in the early modern period.[1] Machiavelli dedicated this work to Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai, two of the greatest exponents of the Orti Oricellari in Florence, where aristocratic young people met in order to discuss politics, art and literature.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian philosopher, writer, and politician and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science.[1] He was a diplomat, political philosopher, musician, poet and playwright, but, foremost, he was a civil servant of the Florentine Republic. In June of 1498, after the ouster and execution of Girolamo Savonarola, the Great Council elected Machiavelli as Secretary to the second Chancery of the Republic of Florence.[2]

Like Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli is considered a typical example of the Renaissance Man. He is most famous for a short political treatise, The Prince written 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death, the same like another work of realist political theory, the Discourses on Livy. Although he privately circulated The Prince among friends, the only work he published in his life was The Art of War, about high-military science. Since the sixteenth century, generations of politicians remain attracted and repelled by the cynical (realist) approach to power posited in The Prince, the Discourses, and the History.[3] Whatever his personal intentions, which are still debated today, his surname yielded the modern political word Machiavellianism—the use of cunning and deceitful tactics in politics or in general.