“ANYONE WHO STUDIED PRESENT AND ANCIENT AFFAIRS WILL EASILY SEE HOW IN ALL CITIES AND ALL PEOPLES THERE STILL EXIST, AND HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED, THE SAME DESIRES AND PASSIONS”: FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH OF MACHIAVELLI’S DISCOURSES ON LIVY, 1636

MACHIAVELLI, Niccolo. Discourses. upon the first Decade of T. Livius translated out of the Italian; With some marginall animadversions noting and taxing his errours. By E.D. London: Printed by Thomas Paine for William Hills and Daniel Pakeman, 1636. Thick 12mo (3-1/2 by 6 inches), contemporary full brown tooled speckled calf rebacked and recornered in speckled calf-gilt, red morocco spine label.

First edition in English of Machiavelli’s commentaries on the work of the Roman historian Livy, a founding document of modern republicanism, read and quoted by John Adams in his great work, The Defence of the Constitutions, scarce in contemporary calf boards.

“‘After everything was lost’ is the way that Machiavelli referred to the years after he emerged from prison, failed to regain his job, and languished outside the halls of power. But even while he lamented his fate, and continued to angle for Medici favor, he went on writing, almost feverishly, and in a variety of forms. He completed his ‘Discourses on the First Decade of Livy,’ a scholarly ode to the republican ideal— John Adams loved this book— which he seems to have read aloud to friends in the increasingly anti-Medici circle that gathered in the gardens of the Rucellai palace…The Roman republic was for him the undisputed golden age; even before writing The Prince, he had begun a commentary on Livy’s ‘History of Rome,’ closely analyzing the Roman system of liberty and leaving no doubt that he was a republican at heart. (‘It is not the particular good but the common good that makes cities great. And without doubt this common good is observed nowhere but in a republic’). But Christian piety had sapped the strength needed to bring this heroic form of government back to life. The great republic of his own era had failed because the men entrusted with its liberties did not know how to fight for them” (Claudia Roth Pierpont). “Discourses on Livy, written in 1531, is as essential to an understanding of Machiavelli as his famous treatise, The Prince. Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a republican state. Comparing the practice of the ancient Romans with that of his contemporaries provided Machiavelli with a consistent point of view in all his works. Machiavelli’s close analysis of Livy’s history of Rome led him to advance his most original and outspoken view of politics—the belief that a healthy political body was characterized by social friction and conflict rather than by rigid stability. His discussion of conspiracies in Discourses on Livy is one of the most sophisticated treatments of archetypal political upheaval ever written. In an age of increasing political absolutism, Machiavelli’s theories became a dangerous ideology” (Oxford University Press).

“John Adams classified Machiavelli, along with Sidney and Montesquieu, as a philosophic defender of mixed government. To that end, he transcribes [in Defence of the Constitutions] in its entirety Machiavelli’s chapter on ‘The Different Kinds of Republics, and of What Kind the Roman Republic Was’ from the Discourses on Livy… John Adams was unique among the Founding Fathers in that he actually read and took seriously Machiavelli’s ideas…he openly acknowledged the intellectual debt to the Florentine statesman. Adams praised Machiavelli for having been ‘the first’ to have ‘reviewed the ancient politics,’ and he insisted that the ‘world’ was much indebted to Machiavelli for ‘the revival of reason in matters of government” (C. Bradley Thompson). “[Machiavelli] found in Livy the means to inspire scholars for five centuries. Within the Discourses, often hidden and sometimes unintended by their author, lie the seeds of modern political thought” (Peter Stothard). “Hitherto political speculation had tended to be a rhetorical exercise based on the implicit assumption of Church or Empire. Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind—it should be remembered that a parallel work to The Prince was his historical essay on the first ten books of Livy. Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery” (emphasis added, PMM 63). Two title pages are found for this edition: one with the word ‘animadversions’ in roman letters, and one with it in italic (as here); no priority given (STC 17160). With cancel leaf B1; containing rarely found initial blank A1 and final blank Ee12. Occasional mispagination as issued without loss of text. Containing engraved ornamental initials.

Text generally fresh with light scattered foxing, very tiny bit of marginal dampstaining to a few early leaves not affecting text. A highly desirable extremely good copy of this landmark translation.