Summary This work thematizes the notion of conflict in the political theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Niccolò Machiavelli. Even though the conflict is not the central concept of the republican political thought to whom the aforementioned duo undoubtedly belongs nor is the conflict the central concept in Rousseau's or Machiavelli's work, this work defends the thesis that Machiavelli clearly theoretically influenced Rousseau through the theory of conflict. While the frequent interpretations classify Rousseau as a strong opponent of conflicts, this work tries to prove that there is a place for conflict inside Rousseau’s political theory and that this use of conflict is inspired by Machiavelli’s theory of conflict which is detailly elaborated in his Discourses and Florentine Histories. Moreover, in order to further advance the thesis about the existence of conflict in Rousseau's thought, this work tries to establish a connection between Rousseau and Machiavelli through the concepts of economic equity and expansionism, recognizing that these are the key concepts for drawing conclusions about the significance of conflict in the theories of the Genevan and Florentine thinker. Finally, this work seeks to differentiate the manifestations of conflict depending on the virtue of the political order, questioning the conflicts within the modern commercial societies. And while, it seems, in the virtuous societies of antiquity (like Sparta and Rome) the conflicts were those that produced the greatest of all freedoms, modern commercial societies are condemned to conflicts that do not generate freedom, nor are they directed towards the common good but exclusively towards obtaining the material wealth which greatly affects Rousseau's (as well as Machiavelli's) final assessment of the conflict itself.