Plato, Cicero and Machiavelli are considered the classics of political philosophy. Their research constantly stimulates the imagination of researchers and provokes further interpretations. What seemed particularly interesting to me was to illustrate, by dint of deliberations focused on the ethos of a political leader, a certain continuity of thought that can be noticed in the views of these thinkers, and also to indicate the differences appearing in them, resulting from the personal nature of their perceptions and individual understanding of state reality. Despite a keen interest in the writings of Plato, Cicero or Machiavelli, and in the few works that compare ancient thought with the opinions of Renaissance authors, there is still a shortage of this kind of study. My sense of unsatisfaction was augmented by the realization that the work of Francesco Guicciardini – which is a valuable source of information about the social and political situation of Renaissance Florence and offers an additional reference point for Machiavelli's opinions, in this way painting a more complete |