Abstract

The Ciompi revolt, as expressed in Machiavelli’s set-piece oration delivered by an imaginary wool worker, is the paradigmatic exemplum that resumes and summarizes Machiavelli’s understanding of politics as well as his trenchant critique of Florentine republican institutions. Both the rhetorical and the political converge in the oration as to uncover and to expose the contradictions inherent within republican politics in order to discover within them the germs of a possible future reform.