Niccolò Machiavelli's Decennale primo was published in 1506. Written in verse, it surveyed ten years of Florentine political turmoil, warfare and diplomatic crisis. The poem shows Machiavelli experimenting with historical narration before his better-known political prose made his name notorious.

The Decennale reminds readers that political theory and poetry were not separate worlds in Renaissance Florence. Verse could digest public events, shape civic memory and turn recent conflict into a compressed literary argument.