Sun, Jan 25
|maman
January 2025 Book Club: Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy
Time & Location
Jan 25, 2026, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
maman, 750 9th St NW Suite 101, Washington, DC 20036, USA
About the event
Join Alumni Philodemica's Book Club for brunch as we meet to discuss Discourses on Livy by Machiavelli. Book Club will take place at maman, 750 9th St NW Suite 101, Washington, DC 20036. Get your book today!
Book description: Discourses on Livy, written in 1531, is as essential to an understanding of Machiavelli as his famous treatise, The Prince. Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a republican state.
Comparing the practice of the ancient Romans with that of his contemporaries provided Machiavelli with a consistent point of view in all his works. Machiavelli's close analysis of Livy's history of Rome led him to advance his most original and outspoken view of politics--the belief that a healthy political body was characterized by social friction and conflict rather than by rigid stability. His discussion of conspiracies in Discourses on Livy is one of the most sophisticated treatments of archetypal political…