In his book Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction, Quentin Skinner, perhaps the foremost contemporary scholar of modern republicanism, relates how the renowned republican thinker Niccolò Machiavelli, discouraged by his failed efforts to secure a position in the latest Medici government of Florence, decided to repair to his farm south of Florence—“a poor house on a tiny patrimony,” in Machiavelli’s words—to begin a new life of contemplation and writing.
Skinner tells us that, to make his new and isolated life more bearable, Machiavelli would retire every evening to his study to read and think. “He has been concentrating on classical history, ‘entering the ancient courts of ancient men’ in order to ‘speak with them and ask them the reasons for their actions,’” Skinner writes. And in a journal article called “Crossings to Another World: Machiavelli and Others,” Sebastian de Grazia writes similarly, quoting from a letter Machiavelli wrote to a friend: “One journeys into another world where the great ancient dead dwell, and joyfully mingles with them, conversing, questioning and learning…. One crosses a divide to where the great ancients dwell.”
