Machiavelli

Italy was divided between four dominant city-states, and each of these was continually at the mercy of the stronger foreign government of Europe. Since 1434 the wealthy Medici family ruled Florence. Due to a reform movement, Medici rule was temporarily interrupted in 1434, in which Machiavelli became an important diplomat. The Medici family regained power in 1512 with the help of Spanish troops. At this time, Machiavelli was tortured and removed from public life. While being in political exile, he wrote a letter to his nephew. It was said to be “the most famous letter ever written by an Italian, shows how the hours spent each day in his study helped to bring a measure of balance and even exhilaration into his life as a whole”(Hale, 147). At this point Machiavelli is beginning his philosophies about the nature of princely rule, eventually, leading him to create, “The Prince.” Nicocolo Machiavelli in 1513 wrote his masterpiece, The Prince, which remains one of the single mo!

st important works in history. To this day scholars struggle over interpreting Machiavelli’s precise point. For the next 10 years he devoted himself to writing history, political philosophies and even plays.

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Machiavelli reflected on the dilemmas of political life and the realities of fast moving, unpredictable situations that may affect Princes and the state. Machiavelli maintains that,

I have not found anything in my inventory that I hold more dear or esteem so much as my knowledge of actions of great men, learned from long experience of modern and long study of ancient affairs, which, after having long mediated upon and examined with great diligence…I can bestow no greater gift than to make it possible to understand in a very short time everything that I have discerned and understood at such discomfort and peril over a great many years (Sonnino 33).

Brian Richardson, “The Prince and its early Italian readers,” in Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince: New Interdisciplinary essays, ed. Machiavelli was a political and military theorist, historian, playwright, and diplomat.

Machiavelli’s previous experience, in life and politics, gave him the ability and knowledge to dictate on how to be a successful ruler. In Machiavelli’s The Prince, the chapter on “How Princes Should Keep Faith”(91), Sonnino concludes,

Since a prince, then, obligated to know how to act like a beast, he must choose the fox and the lion, because the lion has no defense against snares and the fox has none against wolves.

Niccolo Machiavelli was born on May 3, 1469 in Florence, Italy to a poor but respectful urban family.

Machiavelli was sought after as being an anti-Medici conspirator; he was imprisoned, and released, as there was no evidence that he had been involved in a plot.

Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London: Alden Pres, 1955). Through his observations, Machiavelli felt that Italy required a leader who could have complete control over Italy’s society. Machiavelli wrote The Prince during an error in!

history, where change was unacceptable and his writings where difficult to accept by society.

Machiavelli advises it is safer to be feared, given the nature of men:

Because it can be said generally about men that they are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, and dissimulating avoiding perils, avid for grains, all yours as you are their benefactor, and as I said above, offering you their blood, belongings, life and children when the need is distant, but when it approaches, they revolt. He offered a view as to how, why,!

and what we might regard as hypocrisy, harshness, deceit and ruthlessness in governance.

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Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

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