Practically nothing is known of Nicolo Machiavelli before he became a minorofficial in the Florentine Government. His youth, however, was passedduring some of the most tumultuous years in the history of Florence. He wasborn the year that Lorenzo the Magnificent came to power, subverting thetraditi...

Niccolo Machiavelli is probably at one and the same time one of themost read and one of the most widely misunderstood of any of the politicalphilosophers of the renaissance in Europe whose ideas are still consideredrelevant and in active circulation today, indeed, as Leo Strauss has noted,ther...