Abstract

This article examines Machiavelli’s discussion of Romulus’s slaying of his brother Remus. From Machiavelli’s viewpoint, Romulus’s action is excusable because it was aimed at achieving the common good of the city. Distancing himself from authors such as Cicero and Augustine, who tie this tragic event to the civil wars that led to the demise of the republic, Machiavelli praises Romulus for establishing the legal framework that allowed Rome to expand and remain free until Gaius Gracchus’s rise to the tribunate. I also argue that the position expressed in the Discorsi echoes Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s account in the Roman Antiquities.

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