Abstract

ABSTRACTGiven Machiavelli’s fascination with ancient Rome’s plebeian tribunate, it is not surprising that he would take an interest in Cola di Rienzo, the Roman who declared himself Tribune of the Plebs in 1347. However, Cola appears just once in Machiavelli’s corpus, in a single short and enigmatic chapter in the Florentine Histories. This paper argues that Machiavelli nevertheless quietly elaborates on Cola’s legacy later in his Histories, when he introduces Stefano Porcari, another ‘Roman citizen’ whose reform efforts fail catastrophically. Though Machiavelli never explicitly criticizes Cola, he does blame Porcari for exercising poor judgement. This blame, importantly, is entwined with Machiavelli’s allusions to the humanist writings of Francesco Petrarch. By placing these accounts of Cola and Porcari side by side, this paper aims to reveal the Florentine Histories’ complicated relationship with Petrarch, Italy’s most famous humanist. The web of cross-references among Cola, Porcari and Machiavelli himself indicates the latter’s vexation with the sort of rhetorical idealism that Petrarch’s famous endorsement of Cola’s revolution came to represent.