Abstract

Reviewing the recent literature on Vincenzo Cuoco, with particular reference to Nunzia Di Maso’s Il repubblicanesimo di V. Cuoco a partire da Machiavelli, the author focuses on the Cuoco’s notion of “the Two Peoples”, in order to show its connection with the so-called “dualist historiography” which develops during the post-1815 Restoration in the works of Manzoni, Thierry and Guizot. From this perspective, he points out as a central influence the Chapter 37 of the First Book of Machiavelli’s Discorsi. The Florentine, ascribing the origin of the crisis of the Roman Republic to the controversy centering on the lex agraria and the subsequent struggles between patricians and plebeians, was among those authors who started the debate on the significance of social conflicts, showing himself able to express the main implication of the “Two Peoples” thesis, and provided an important point of reference, through the intermediary influence of Cuoco, to the forming of Manzoni’s thought