There is a striking dissonance between the promise of the title of Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy and the one that he makes at the start of the preface to Book I. Even though the work seems to be a commentary on an ancient historian, Machiavelli promises “to take a path as yet untrodden by anyone”. The explanation lies in the lamentable way in which his contemporaries admire things ancient but fail to imitate them. This is particularly true in matters of government, where “neither prince nor republic may be found with recourse to the examples of the ancients.” It is, of course, no lack of ancient thoughts on politics that is to blame for this condition, but rather the mistaken impression that they can offer only diversion and not practical advice, as though human nature had somehow changed. As it turns out, this fairly cryptic diagnosis foreshadows one of the central problems in the Discourses, the loss of identity. With ancient tools in hand, the reader of the Discourses will follow Machiavelli's path towards its retrieval.

Machiavelli's new path requires a return to first principles, albeit an unconventional one. To demonstrate the misuse of things ancient and the benefits of a periodic return of this kind, Machiavelli proposes to reexamine the foundation of Rome.