Lionardo Salviati, Tacitism and the People of Florence

This article explores Lionardo Salviati’s Discorso sopra le prime parole di Cornelio Tacito, a brief commentary on the beginning of Tacitus’ Annales published in 1582. While it is widely recognised as one of the first examples of political commentary on the Roman historian, its content has only received scant attention. Moreover, the few interpretations that do exist all agree that Salviati presents a fairly straight-forward defence of the Medicean dynastic monarchy under which it was written. While it is true that Salviati argues in favour of that monarchy, the article shows that the way in which it does so is more complex than has been realised. By paying attention to Salviati’s lexical decisions as well as his treatment of the rule of Walter of Brienne, a notorious event of Florentine history, the article argues that Salviati, even against his own principles, is at pains to deprive the Florentine people of the historically acquired characteristics that republican historiography had always endowed it with. This strategy points to a tension in Salviati’s text between, on the one hand, the ambition to establish a historical analogy between Roman and Florentine history and, on the other, the wish to avoid reactivating republican agency.