The powerful Medici family had a profound impact on a great many lives, but few to the extent of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). As a leading political thinker Machiavelli personally dealt with the Medici, and as a writer their influence was all the weightier, exemplified especially in The Prince and The History of Florence (Hereafter Istorie); both works in which Machiavelli paid considerable attention to the way the Medici would envisage his work. The relationship between Machiavelli and the Medici is particularly queer, for the Medici were Machiavelli's imagined rescuers from internal exile, yet at the same time his reason for discontent.
This relationship is especially important because Machiavelli's work has been given a great deal of credit for the path politics would traverse after his death. …
