Discourses on Livy (1531) demonstrates Machiavelli's fundamental preference for the republicanism of ancient Rome. In an age when political absolutism was increasingly the norm, Machiavelli's republican theories would become a dangerous ideology, and his works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Works in 1559. This new translation is richly annotated, providing the contemporary reader with sufficient historical, linguistic and political information to understand and interpret the revolutionary affirmations Machiavelli made, based on the historical evidence he found in Livy.