The Popolo, the People, and the Grandi

Mediaeval and renaissance thinkers were nearly unanimous in assuming that unity of purpose and amity between social groups is politically healthy. Commentators like the younger hisorian and political thinker, francesco guicardini, rejected machiavelli's idea out of hand. In understanding the sentence, you should never take yourself fully to understand a remark in a historical work unless you've read it in the original language. The relevant italian terms are popolo, the people, and grandi, which i translated rather literally as the great.