L’uso politico della storia antica negli scrittori della cancelleria fiorentina

Abstract

This work deals with the interpretation of texts produced by Florentine authors employed at the Chancery of Florence. The reading focuses on the use that the writing examined reserve to ancient historiographical sources, with the assumption that the retrieval of past events may have been conceived as an instrument of argumentation. We will try to prove that this method of work – illustrated by the cases of Coluccio Salutati, Bartolomeo Scala and Niccolò Machiavelli – could lead to the deliberate manipulation of sources, defining what we can call a “political use of ancient history”.

Keywords

• Machiavelli
• Livy
• inventio
• Florentine chancery
• ancient history