Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius

The Discourses on Livy, published posthumously in 1531, is a work of political history and philosophy composed in the early 16th century by the famed Florentine public servant and political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) and is widely considered one of his masterpieces. The title identifies the work's subject as the first ten books of Livy's Ab urbe condita, which relate the expansion of Rome through the end of the Third Samnite War in 293 BCE, although Machiavelli discusses what can be learned from many other eras including then-contemporary politics. Machiavelli saw history in general as a way to learn useful lessons from the past for the present, and also as a type of analysis which could be built upon, as long as each generation did not forget the works of the past.