The Life of Castruccio Castracani: an Exemplar of Innovation in the Republican Tradition

This paper analyses a biography written by Niccol<bold> </bold>Machiavelli of a condottiero of<bold> </bold>the city of Lucca, entitled The Life of Castruccio Castracani. Delving into this book, the main objective of this article is to study Castracani as an exemplar of the new prince and his virtues, while also exploring the possibility of a different reading of the relationship between personal leadership and democracy. This work by Machiavelli has generally been ignored by specialists; yet it offers a concept of popular government that can function as a representative form of a democracy legitimized by novelty, incarnated by an individual while remaining within the republican matrix of the Machiavellian approach.