Niccolo Machiavelli

• Born: 3 May 1469
• Birthplace: Florence, Italy
• Died: 22 June 1527
• Best Known As: Author of The Prince

Name at birth: Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

Machiavelli has been called the brilliant creator of modern political science by some, and a cynical beast by others; he is considered the originator of the idea of a political pragmatism that says "the end justifies the means." Either way, his 1513 book The Prince is a landmark work in the history of political power. A high-level statesman in Florence (1498-1512), he traveled on diplomatic missions throughout Europe before he was exiled by the Medicis. Imprisoned for a time, he later retired to his private estate and concentrated on studying and writing. A rumination on the acquisition and uses of power, The Prince remains a mainstay of college bookstores everywhere.

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Niccolò Machiavelli, detail of an oil painting by Santi di Tito; in the Palazzo Vecchio, … (credit: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

(born May 3, 1469, Florence — died June 21, 1527, Florence) Italian statesman, historian, and political theorist. He rose to power after the overthrow of Girolamo Savonarola in 1498. Working as a diplomat for 14 years, he came in contact with the most powerful figures in Europe. He was dismissed when the Medici family returned to power in 1512, and during the next year he was arrested and tortured for conspiracy. Though soon released, he was not permitted to return to public office. His famous treatise The Prince (1513, published 1532) is a handbook for rulers; though dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence from 1513, it failed to win Machiavelli his favour. Machiavelli viewed The Prince as an objective description of political reality. Because he viewed human nature as venal, grasping, and thoroughly self-serving, he suggested that ruthless cunning is appropriate to the conduct of government. Though admired for its incisive brilliance, the book also has been widely condemned as cynical and amoral, and "Machiavellian" has come to mean deceitful, unscrupulous, and manipulative. His other works include a set of discourses on Livy (completed c. 1518), the comedy The Mandrake (completed c. 1518), The Art of War (published 1521), and the Florentine Histories (completed c. 1525).

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Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469-1527). Florentine political thinker, writer, and historian, and also military thinker. Although he is popularly known as a scheming political spin doctor of satanic cynicism and subtlety, an examination of Machiavelli's work in the context of the brutal politics of the Italian city states and emerging nation states of the time suggests he was merely an accomplished practitioner and advocate of realpolitik. His best-known works are The Prince (1513-16), and The Discourses (1513-19). His Art of War (1519-20) seems to have arisen from the Discourses, and from 1520 Machiavelli became preoccupied with the Florentine History. The Prince, by far the most famous, was written to gain the attention of the Medici, rulers of Florence, after Machiavelli had been dismissed from the civil service jobs—one of them that of secretary to the committee responsible for military and diplomatic affairs—he held from 1498 to 1512. It includes three short sections on military organization, dismissing mercenaries and composite armies as ‘useless’ and advocating a citizens' militia. ‘The first way to lose your state’, he tells the Prince, ‘is to neglect the art of war; the first way to win a state is to be skilled in the art of war.’

His Discourses on Livy (see Roman military historians), which inevitably included Roman military organization, led to the Art of War. A great admirer of the Romans, Machiavelli asked what had changed since Roman times which might make their exemplary military organization obsolete. There was only one real candidate: gunpowder, and the most charitable view of Machiavelli's Art of War is that it was the first-ever attempt to wrestle with the results of a technological military revolution. The book takes the form of a civilized dialogue between a group of prosperous citizens and a renowned professional soldier, Fabrizio Colonna, in the garden of Cosimo Rucellai. The superiority of citizen armies over mercenaries is asserted, and Machiavelli dismisses artillery on the battlefield as an ineffectual nuisance, which can only fire one salvo, usually inaccurately, before it is overwhelmed. Therefore, Machiavelli concludes, artillery does not prevent modern armies following the well-tried methods and close formations of ancient times. He favours swordsmen, who move nimbly among pikemen and cut them to pieces. In all this, history proved him wrong. The French had won Marignano in 1515 with firearms, and the Spanish had developed the tercio, with pikes and firearms only. None of Machiavelli's recommendations bore any relation to the subsequent evolution of weapons and tactics. He deserves recognition, however, for defining the concept of virtū, a kind of active citizenship which embodied the willingness to subordinate personal safety and interest to the good of the state. Engels thought Machiavelli was the ‘first military writer of the new epoch’. He was partly right, for if Machiavelli's regard for classical antiquity made him backward-looking, his notion of virtū has formed an important component of morale to the present day.

Bibliography

• Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Chief Works and Others, trans A. Gilbert (Duke, NC, 1965).
• Anglo, Sidney, Machiavelli (London, 1969).
• Oman, Sir Charles, The Art of War in the 16th Century (London, 1937)

— Christopher Bellamy

The Italian author and statesman Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) is best known for "The Prince", in which he enunciated his political philosophy.

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence of an aristocratic, though by no means wealthy, family. Little is known of the first half of his life, prior to his first appointment to public office. His writings prove him to have been a very assiduous sifter of the classics, especially the historical works of Livy and Tacitus; in all probability he knew the Greek classics only in translation.

In 1498 Machiavelli was named chancellor and secretary of the second (and less important) chancellery of the Florentine Republic. His duties consisted chiefly of executing the policy decisions of others, carrying on diplomatic correspondence, digesting and composing reports, and compiling minutes; he also undertook some 23 missions to foreign states. His embassies included four to the French king and two to the court of Rome. His most memorable mission is described in a report of 1503 entitled "Description of the Manner Employed by Duke Valentino [Cesare Borgia] in Slaying Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Signor Pagolo and the Duke of Gravina, Orsini" with surgical precision he details Borgia's series of political murders, implicitly as a lesson in the art of politics for Florence's indecisive and timorous gonfalonier, Pier Soderini.

In 1502 Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini, who bore him four sons and two daughters. To his grandson Giovanni Ricci we owe the preservation of many of his letters and minor works.

In 1510 Machiavelli, inspired by his reading of Roman history, was instrumental in organizing a citizen militia of the Florentine Republic. In August 1512 a Spanish army entered Tuscany and sacked Prato. The Florentines in terror deposed Soderini, whom Machiavelli characterized as "good, but weak," and allowed the Medici to return to power. On November 7 Machiavelli was dismissed; soon afterward he was arrested, imprisoned, and subjected to torture as a suspected conspirator against the Medici. Though innocent, he remained suspect for years to come; unable to secure an appointment from the reinstated Medici, he turned to writing.

In all likelihood Machiavelli interrupted the writing of his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius to write the brief treatise on which his fame rests, II Principe (1513; The Prince). Other works followed: The Art of War and The Life of Castruccio Castracani (1520); three extant plays, Mandragola (1518; The Mandrake), Clizia, and Andria; the Istorie fiorentine (1526; History of Florence); a short story, Belfagor; and several minor works in verse and prose.

In 1526 Machiavelli was commissioned by Pope Clement VII to inspect the fortifications of Florence. Later that year and the following year his friend and critic Francesco Guicciardini, Papal Commissary of War in Lombardy, employed him in two minor diplomatic missions. He died in Florence in June 1527, receiving the last rites of the Church that he had bitterly criticized.

The Prince

Machiavelli shared with Renaissance humanists a passion for classical antiquity. To their wish for a literary and spiritual revival of ancient values, guided by such authors as Plato, Cicero, and St. Augustine, he added a fierce desire for a political and moral renewal on the model of the Roman Republic as depicted by Livy and Tacitus. Though a republican at heart, he saw as the crying need of his day a strong political and military leader who could forge a unitary state in northern Italy to eliminate French and Spanish hegemony from Italian soil. At the moment that he wrote The Prince he envisioned such a possibility while the restored Medici ruled both Florence and the papacy. He had taken to heart Cesare Borgia's energetic creation of a new state in Romagna in the few brief years while Borgia's father, Alexander VI, occupied the papal throne. The final chapter of The Princeis a ringing plea to his Medici patrons to set Italy free from the "barbarians." It concludes with a quotation from Petrarch's patriotic poem Italia mia: "Virtue will take arms against fury, and the battle will be brief; for the ancient valor in Italian hearts is not yet dead." This exhortation fell on deaf ears in 1513 but was to play a role 3 centuries later in the Risorgimento.

The preceding 25 chapters of The Prince are written in a terse, analytical, and frequently aphoristic style. Preceding political writers, from Plato and Aristotle in ancient times and through the Middle Ages and the 15th-century humanists, had all concurred in treating politics as a branch of morals. Machiavelli's chief innovation was to break with this long tradition and to confer autonomy upon politics. In chapter 15 of The Prince he writes: "My intent being to write a useful work for those who understand, it seemed to me more appropriate to pursue the actual truth of the matter than the imagination of it. Many have imagined republics and principalities which were never seen or known really to exist; because how one lives is so far removed from how one ought to live that he who abandons what one does for what one ought to do, learns rather his own ruin than his preservation." Like Galileo in astronomy at the end of the 16th century, Machiavelli in politics chooses to describe the world as it is, rather than as people are taught that it should be. Although his longest work, the Discourses on Livy, takes the familiar humanistic form of a commentary on a classical text, his approach to political theory marks a sharp break with tradition.

Fundamental to Machiavelli's conception of history and politics is the binomial of fortuna and virtù. Abandoning the Christian view of history as providential, Machiavelli views events in purely human terms. Often it is fortune that gives - or terminates - the political leader's opportunity for decisive action. Borgia, though a virtuoso politician, succumbed to an "extreme malignity of fortune" when he fell ill just as his father died. Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus alike received their occasions from fortune. Sacred history implicitly is reduced to the same plane as secular history. In some passages it seems that fortune itself hinges upon human habits and institutions: "I believe that the fortune which the Romans had would be enjoyed by all princes who proceeded as the Romans did and who were of the same virtue as they." Like others in the Renaissance, Machiavelli believed in man's capacity for determining his own destiny in opposition to the medieval concept of an omnipotent divine will or the crushing fate of the ancient Greeks. Virtù in politics - unlike Christian virtue - is an effective combination of force and shrewdness, the lion and the fox, with a touch of greatness.

The kernel of The Prince is found in chapters 17, "On Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better To Be Loved or Feared," and 18, "How Princes Should Keep Their Word." As Machiavelli frequently says also in other works, the innate badness of men requires that the prince instill fear rather than love in his subjects and break his pledge, when necessary, with other princes, who in any case will be no more honest than he. Moralistic critics of Machiavelli have sometimes forgotten that he is attempting to describe rather than to invent the rules of political success. For him the state is an organism, greater than the sum of its citizens and individual interests, subject to laws of growth and decay; its health consists in unity, but even in the best of circumstances its longevity is limited.

The founding of a state is the work of one man; its continuance, however, is better trusted to many than to one (Discourses, I, 9 and 58). If this maxim is kept in mind, much of the alleged discrepancy between the monarchical Prince and the republican Discourses vanishes. The two books differ little in their teachings; the Discourses is more leisurely and somewhat fragmentary, The Prince more "scientific," absolute, revolutionary, and exciting. Both works are excessively exemplary; unlike Guicciardini, Machiavelli thought it possible to find in his Roman ideal a practical guide to contemporary Italian politics. Particularly in The Prince, he combines recent examples with ancient ones to illustrate his axioms.

Other Works

Certain passages in the Discourses (I, 11 and 12; II, 2) set forth Machiavelli's quarrel with the Church: by the bad example of the court of Rome, Italy has lost its devotion and religion; the Italian states are weak and divided because the Church, too feeble politically to dominate them, has nevertheless prevented any one state from uniting them. He suggests that the Church might have been destroyed by its own corruption had not St. Francis and St. Dominic restored it to its original principles by founding new orders. However, in an unusual if not unique departure from traditional anticlericalism, Machiavelli contrasts favorably the fiercely civil and militaristic pagan religion of ancient Rome with the humble and otherworldly Christian religion.

The Mandragola, the finest comedy of the Italian Renaissance, is not unrelated to Machiavelli's political writings in its comic indictment of contemporary Florentine society. In a well-knit intrigue the simpleton Nicia contributes to his own cuckolding. Nicia's beautiful and virtuous wife, Lucrezia (so named by the author with an eye to Roman history), is corrupted by those who should be her closest protectors: her mother, her husband, and her unscrupulous confessor, Fra Timoteo, all pawns in the skillful hands of the manipulator Ligurio.

Although not equaling Guicciardini as a historian, Machiavelli in his History of Florence nevertheless marks an advance over earlier histories in his attention to underlying causes rather than the mere succession of events as he tells the history of the Florentines from the death of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1492.

Machiavelli closely adhered to his maxim that a servant of government must be loyal and self-sacrificing. He nowhere suggests that the political morality of princes is a model for day-to-day dealings between ordinary citizens. His reputation as a sinister and perfidious counselor of fraud is largely undeserved; it began not long after his death. His works were banned in the first printed Index (1559). In Elizabethan England, Machiavelli was represented on the stage and in literature as diabolically evil. The primary source of this misrepresentation was the translation into English by Simon Patericke in 1577 of a work popularly called Contre-Machiavel, by the French Huguenot Gentillet, who distorted Machiavelli and blamed his teachings for the St. Bartholomew Night massacre of 1572. A poem by Gabriel Harvey the following year falsely attributed four principal crimes to Machiavelli: poison, murder, fraud, and violence. Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta (1588) introduces "Machiavel" as the speaker of an atrocious prologue; Machiavellian villains followed in works by other playwrights.

Many of Machiavelli's authentic values are incorporated into 19th-century liberalism: the supremacy of civil over religious power; the conscription of citizen armies; the preference for republican rather than monarchical government; and the republican Roman ideals of honesty, work, and the people's collective responsibility for values that transcend those of the individual.

Further Reading

Recommended translations of Machiavelli's works are The Prince and the Discourses, translated by Luigi Ricci, E. R. P. Vincent, and Christian E. Detmold (1940); Mandragola, translated by Anne and Henry Paolucci (1957); Literary Works, edited by J. R. Hale (1961); and The Chief Works and Others, edited and translated by Allan Gilbert (3 vols., 1965). Among the many works about Machiavelli are Pasquale Villari, Life and Times of Niccolò Machiavelli (2 vols., 1877-1883; trans., rev. ed. 1892); Federico Chabod, Machiavelli and the Renaissance (1926; trans. 1958); Mario Praz, Machiavelli and the Elizabethans (1928); Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance (1933); D. Erskine Muir, Machiavelli and His Times (1936); Leonardo Olschki, Machiavelli the Scientist (1945); J. H. Whitfield, Machiavelli (1947); Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli (1954; trans. 1963); and Giuseppe Prezzolini, Machiavelli (1966).

(1469-1527) Florentine political adviser and historian, often regarded as the first modern political theorist. After the fall of Savonarola's administration, Machiavelli became head of the Second Chancery of Florence at the age of 29. As a member of Florentine diplomatic delegations, Machiavelli became acquainted with the chief political actors of his region and time—notably, Cesare Borgia, Maximilian (the Holy Roman Emperor), and Pope Julius II. Following the invasion of Florence and restoration of the Medici family, Machiavelli was sacked and imprisoned for conspiracy. Upon his release in 1513 he sought employment as a political adviser to the new Medici Pope (Giovanni), to whom he dedicated The Prince. Political ambitions frustrated, Machiavelli turned to scholarship in the company of a group of ‘literati’ at the ‘Orti Oricellari’. During this period he wrote (among other works) three Discourses on the first ten books of Livy's history of Rome (completed in 1519). From 1521 until his death, Machiavelli devoted his attention to writing a commissioned history of Florence.

Machiavelli's main contributions to political science are to be found in The Prince and the Discourses. Both works can be seen as expounding the requirements for the maintenance of political stability in two different regimes (principalities in The Prince, republics in the Discourses), addressing similar themes, and offering similar counsel to political leaders. The primary goals of political leaders must be to sustain government, and to acquire glory, honour, and riches for the rulers and their people. The bulk of the discussion in these works is concerned with what is required of those in power in order to secure these goods. Machiavelli's answer rests on the interplay of two key classical concepts—fortune and virtú.

Machiavelli's concept of fortune is very much a Roman rather than a Christian inheritance. Fortune is not a synonym for ‘fate’ or ‘Providence’ in Machiavelli's usage. Rather, it is a ‘force’ with which a state must ‘ally’ itself in order to reap greatness. Machiavelli argues that princes (and in republics the whole citizen body) must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to preserve liberty and earn glory on behalf of the state. This is the quality of virtú. Virtú uses luck and fortune when it can, but princes who possess it can achieve great things even without luck or fortune. In an evil world, Machiavelli warns, the wise prince must recognize that it is not always prudent to act according to conventional maxims of private morality. Nothing other than necessity should dictate a prince's actions. Much of The Prince is devoted to examples (drawn largely from Machiavelli's own diplomatic experience) of the art of political leadership—princes must imitate the cunning of the fox and the brawn of the lion; they must avoid the people's hatred but sustain their awe; they must consistently project an image of nobility and virtue irrespective of their deeds; they must be prepared to be cruel. His name has become associated with the exercise of cunning and expediency.

Whereas The Prince is concerned with the qualities of princes, the Discourses place a greater emphasis on the civic demands on citizens. Machiavelli's central claim in the Discourses is that liberty is a necessary precondition for the accumulation of power and riches. The protection of liberty is therefore the fundamental political task in a republic, and requires first and foremost a citizen body of the highest ‘virtue’. What role should rulers play in a republic? Machiavelli's answer is that they should organize the polity in such a way as to promote the virtue of its citizens, and prevent its corruption (either by the substitution of private for general interests, or by creeping indifference). This requires men of great stature, exhibiting those qualities detailed in The Prince. In addition, a state can only secure its liberty through a perennial quest for dominion over other states (for which a large population, citizen militias, and strong allies are indispensable). Internally, a strong republic is characterized by a wisely designed constitution and basic institutions (ordini) whose chief function is to promote the civic patriotism required to secure liberty. Central to this project is state sponsorship of divine worship in order to inspire individuals to strive for excellence and glory. However, Machiavelli is at his most radical in urging that this utilitarian function is better fulfilled by Roman religion than by Christianity (with its enervating values of piety, humility, and general ‘other-worldliness’). Machiavelli also rejects conventional Christian affirmation of social harmony by emphasizing the instrumental value of preserving the distinction between the ‘orders’ of rich and poor. Fearing the domination of one order by the other, Machiavelli embraced the notion of a ‘mixed constitution’, neither aristocracy nor democracy, but embracing elements of both forms. Similarly, laws should be designed not only to protect the rich (e.g. prohibition on slander) as well as the masses (e.g. limitation of emergency power provisions), but to keep people poor in order to avoid the dangers of factionalism.

Machiavelli remains an impenetrable figure—as Sabine observes: ‘He has been represented as an utter cynic, an impassioned patriot, an ardent nationalist, a political Jesuit, a convinced democrat, and an unscrupulous seeker after the favor of despots.’ His work excites similar controversy. Civic republican commentators (e.g. Skinner, Pocock) see Machiavelli as part of a broader contemporary renaissance of the virtues of classical humanism. Straussians (e.g. Strauss, Mansfield), in contrast, view Machiavelli as a pivotal figure in the history of political philosophy in his elevation of ‘liberty’ above ‘nature’ as the defining object of political inquiry. To these interpreters, Machiavelli is the first modern political philosopher.

— Stewart Wood

Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469-1527) Florentine political philosopher, and a major presence in subsequent political philosophy. His works Il Principe (1512/13, first trs. in its entirety as The Prince, 1640, although excerpts circulated much earlier) and the Discorsi (c. 1516, trs. as Discourses) brought a new realism into the study of politics. Machiavelli's shocking contention was that although the Prince or ruler was supposed to be an embodiment of virtue and honour, yet given the way of the world, the successful ruler is only the one who acts effectively without regard to the conventional morality of actions. By seeing political organizations as organic entities subject to their own laws of development, flourishing and disintegrating in ways that owe nothing to an independent moral order, Machiavelli may also be regarded as the first sociologist.

Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527), political theorist. Niccolò Machiavelli was born on 3 May 1469, the son of a lawyer of modest means from an old Florentine family. He received an excellent humanistic education in the classics, but nothing else is known about his early life until he was appointed head of the foreign policy chancery of the Florentine government in June and July 1498. He spent much of the next fourteen years traveling, negotiating agreements, and reporting to his government. This gave him the opportunity to visit Italian and foreign states and to observe rulers, statecraft, and military actions. He also organized and trained a militia that helped Florence reconquer the neighboring city of Pisa in 1509.

In 1512 the republican government that employed Machiavelli fell, and the Medici family came to power. Machiavelli was dismissed, and he moved to his small farm outside of Florence. Out of office, he wrote in the next fifteen years all the works that made him famous.

Machiavelli gradually worked his way into favor with the Medici by undertaking small tasks and commissions. In 1525 he became friends with the Florentine Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), a statesman and the most important historian of the Italian Renaissance. In 1526, as war neared Florence, the Medici rulers of Florence employed Machiavelli to help defend the city. But in the spring of 1527 the Florentines threw out the Medici and reestablished a republican regime. Machiavelli asked for a position in government but was turned down because of his association with the Medici. He died on 21 June 1527.

The Prince

Machiavelli wrote Il principe (The prince) in the second half of 1513, but it was not published until 1532. It is probably the best-known work in political theory of all time. Machiavelli employed the advice-to-princes genre, which usually advised a prince act honorably and to work for the good of his people and state. The Prince is a manual on how a ruler should gain and hold power. It is based on what Machiavelli had witnessed of politics and war plus reading in ancient history. He wanted to understand politics, what succeeded and what failed, what actions and principles produced a successful ruler.

Several themes dominate the work. Machiavelli believed that politics could be understood through observation, study of the past, and the application of reason to uncover rules. He endorsed the use of force against internal and external foreign enemies to achieve desired ends. He emphasized the importance of the ruler's personal ability or virtù, a combination of manipulation, boldness, and stealth that brought success. He insisted that the prince must base his actions not on what people ought to do but what they were likely to do in the pursuit of self-interest and without concern for what was morally right. He viewed the bulk of the inhabitants of the state as fickle, selfish, and easily duped. But Machiavelli also recognized that rulers were not completely masters of their own destinies, but were at the mercy of necessity and fortune. Necessity was the accumulation of adverse circumstances so great that no ruler or state could withstand it. Fortune was luck, chance, even opportunity, the unpredictable in politics. Machiavelli offered numerous examples drawn from contemporary politics and the ancient world in support of his views.

A great part of Machiavelli's appeal and influence came from his brilliant and memorable language. Numerous phrases (here paraphrased) leap from the pages to drive home his points. "It is better to be feared than to be loved." "A good man will come to ruin among so many who are not good." "The prince must learn how not to be good." "Fortune is a woman who yields to the young and the bold." "A man will sooner forget the loss of a father than the loss of his fortune."

The Discourses

The Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on the first ten books of Livy) was probably written between 1515 and 1517, although some scholars believe Machiavelli began it in 1513, dropped it to write The Prince, then returned to it. He used the first part of the famous history of the Roman Republic from its foundation in 753 B.C.E. to 194 B.C.E. written by Titus Livy (59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) as the starting point. Machiavelli offered analyses of the principles and institutions of successful, enduring republics, that is, states in which the people have greater or lesser participation in government.

In the Discourses, Machiavelli paid less attention to individuals but focused on groups, such as the nobles and the people, and especially the political, religious, and military institutions and laws needed for a successful republic. Using even more examples from the ancient world, especially Rome, and current events than he used in The Prince, he argued that a successful republic must have good laws that the people respect. Indeed governments should engender respect by severely punishing transgressors. He endorsed civil religion with the argument that ancient Roman religion strengthened the state by encouraging its inhabitants to fight for the state. By contrast, Christianity, with its ideals of humility and peace, weakened the state. Machiavelli also criticized the papacy for dividing Italy through its politics and wars.

Other Works

Machiavelli also wrote Dell'arte della guerra (1519–1520; The art of war), which discussed military organization and tactics. Machiavelli believed strongly that states should develop citizen militias, which would be much more reliable than the untrustworthy and fickle mercenary soldiers. His Istorie fiorentine (1520–1524; Florentine histories) used episodes from Florentine history to illustrate political principles and to criticize Florentine factionalism. But he carefully avoided either praising or criticizing the Medici. His play La mandragola (c. 1517; The mandrake root) is a thoroughly amoral and hilarious masterpiece. The best comedy to come from Renaissance Italy, it is still performed in the twenty-first century. He also wrote another comedy, Clizia (c. 1525), the short story Belfagor (written between 1515 and 1520), poetry, shorter historical works, numerous personal letters, plus diplomatic reports during his active political career.

Influence

Machiavelli's works had enormous influence from the moment of the printing of most of his works in 1532 through the eighteenth century. Although the Index of Prohibited Books forbade the publication, holding, or reading of all of Machiavelli's works, numerous printings and translations, some of them under fictitious names, appeared in the sixteenth century and the following centuries. And writers responded to Machiavelli because he posed the basic political question, can political success and the moral law be reconciled? The view that they could not was expressed in terms of "reason of state" (an expression Machiavelli did not use), the argument that for the good of the state a ruler or government may commit evil actions, such as killing innocent family members of political rivals, an action Machiavelli endorsed in The Prince.

The French Huguenot Innocent Gentillet (c. 1532–1588) in his Discours contre Machiavel (1576; Discourse against Machiavelli) was the first to condemn Machiavelli for separating politics from morality, although some of his political recommendations were equivocal. The term Machiavellian, meaning the use of immoral means to achieve political power, soon came into use. The English playwrights Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) and William Shakespeare (1564–1616) several times used such expressions as "murderous Machiavel." King Richard III of England (ruled 1483–1485), who lived before Machiavelli wrote, was seen as Machiavellian, because it was believed that he murdered several people in his ruthless ascent to power.

Political theorists tried to come to terms with the issues Machiavelli raised. Giovanni Botero (1544–1617) in his Della ragion di stato (1589; Reason of state), which saw many reprints and translations, argued that rulers could reconcile political ends and Christian morality, especially if the state's actions benefited religion. When in doubt, the ruler should consult his confessor. Some seventeenth-century English Puritan casuists also endorsed the principle that the state's actions in defense of true religion were morally defensible. Frederick II the Great (ruled 1740–1786), king of Prussia, did not completely condemn Machiavelli in his Anti-Machiavel (1767). Machiavelli's republican theories also influenced such English political theorists as James Harrington (1611–1677), Henry Neville (1620–1694), and Algernon Sidney (1623–1683), and perhaps the founders of the American Republic in the late eighteenth century.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Machiavelli, Niccolò. Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence. Translated and edited by James B. Atkinson and David Sices. De Kalb, Ill., 1996. Letters to and from Machiavelli revealing many aspects of his personality.

——. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. Translated by Allan Gilbert. 3 vols. Durham, N.C., 1965; reprint 1989. Good English translation.

——. The Portable Machiavelli. Edited and translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa. Harmondsworth, U.K., 1979, with reprints. Contains complete texts of The Prince, The Mandrake Root, and other works plus substantial selections from The Discourses.

——. Tutte le opere. Edited by Mario Martelli. Florence, Italy, 1971. Best single-volume edition of Machiavelli's works.

Secondary Sources

Bireley, Robert. The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990. Discusses the anti-Machiavellian tradition.

Gilbert, Felix. Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence. Princeton, 1965. Best discussion of Machiavelli's thought in the context of contemporary politics and political thought.

Ridolfi, Roberto. The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli. Translated from the Italian by Cecil Grayson. Chicago, 1963. The standard biography.

—PAUL F. GRENDLER

Quotes:

"Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better."

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."

"Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied."

"The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes."

"Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil."

"Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain."

See more famous quotes by Niccolo Machiavelli

"Machiavelli" redirects here. For other uses, see Machiavelli (disambiguation).

Niccolò Machiavelli

Western Philosophers Renaissance philosophy
Detail of 1500 portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito
Full name	Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
Born	3 May 1469(1469-05-03) Florence, Italy
Died	21 June 1527 (aged 58) Florence, Italy
School/tradition	Renaissance philosophy, realism, classical republicanism
Main interests	Politics, military theory, history
Influenced by Plato, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Xenophon
Influenced Political Realism, Bacon, Hobbes, Harrington, Rousseau, Vico, Cuoco, Greene
Signature

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian philosopher, writer, and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science.^[1] He was a diplomat, political philosopher, musician, and playwright, but, foremost, he was a civil servant of the Florentine Republic. In June of 1498, after the ouster and execution of Girolamo Savonarola, the Great Council elected Machiavelli as Secretary to the second Chancery of the Republic of Florence.^[2]

Like Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli is considered a typical example of the Renaissance Man. He is most famous for a short political treatise, The Prince, written in 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. Although he privately circulated The Prince among friends, the only work he published in his lifetime was The Art of War, about high-military science. Since the sixteenth century, generations of politicians remain attracted and repelled by the cynical approach to power posited in The Prince and his other works.^[3] Whatever his personal intentions, which are still debated today, his surname yielded the modern political word Machiavellianism—the use of cunning and deceitful tactics in politics.

Contents 1 Life 2 Works 2.1 Il Principe 2.2 Discorsi 2.3 Other works 3 Revival of interest in the 19th and 20th centuries 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

Life

Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, the third son of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli, and his wife, Bartolommea di Stefano Nelli. The Machiavelli family are believed descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany, and to have produced thirteen Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice.^[4], one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months, who formed the government, or Signoria.

Statue at the Uffizi

Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era — Popes waged war, and the wealthy Italian city-states might anytime fall, piecemeal, to foreign powers — France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire — and political-military alliances continually changed, featuring condottieri who changed sides without warning, and weeks-long governments rising and falling.^{[citation needed]}

Rigorously trained to manhood by his father, Machiavelli was taught grammar, rhetoric and Latin. He did not learn Greek, even though Florence was at the time one of the centers of Greek scholarship in Europe. In 1494, he entered Florentine government service as a clerk and as an ambassador; later that year, Florence restored the republic — expelling the Medici family, who had ruled Florence for some sixty years. He was in a diplomatic council responsible for negotiation and military affairs, undertaking, between 1499 and 1512, diplomatic missions to the courts of Louis XII in France, Ferdinand II of Aragón, in Spain, and the Papacy in Rome, in Italy proper. Moreover, from 1502 to 1503, he witnessed the effective state-building methods of soldier-churchman Cesare Borgia(1475 – 1507), who was then enlarging his central Italian territories.

Between 1503 and 1506, Machiavelli was responsible for the Florentine militia, including the City’s defence. He distrusted mercenaries (cf. Discourses, The Prince), preferring a politically-invested citizen-militia, a philosophy that bore fruit — his command of Florentine citizen-soldiers defeated Pisa in 1509; yet, in August of 1512, the Medici, helped by Pope Julius II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato; Piero Soderini resigned as Florentine head of state, and left in exile; then, the Florentine city-state and the Republic were dissolved. For his significant role in the republic's anti-Medici government, Niccolò Machiavelli was deposed from office, and, in 1513, was accused of conspiracy, and arrested. Despite torture "with the rope" (the prisoner is hanged from his bound wrists, from the back, forcing the arms to bear the body's weight, thus dislocating the shoulders), he denied involvement and was released; then, retiring to his estate, at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, near Florence, he wrote the political treatises that earned his intellectual place in the development of political philosophy and political conduct. ^[5]

Machiavelli's cenotaph in the Santa Croce Church in Florence

In a letter to Francesco Vettori, he described his exile:

When evening comes, I return home [from work and from the local tavern] and go to my study. On the threshold, I strip naked, taking off my muddy, sweaty work day clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and, in this graver dress, I enter the courts of the ancients, and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world. ^[6]

As a writer, Machiavelli identified the unifying theme in The Prince and the Discorsi:

All cities that ever, at any time, have been ruled by an absolute prince, by aristocrats, or by the people, have had for their protection force combined with prudence, because the latter is not enough alone, and the first either does not produce things, or when they are produced, does not maintain them. Force and prudence, then, are the might of all the governments that ever have been or will be in the world. ^[7]

Machiavelli died in 1527. His grave site is unknown, but a cenotaph honouring him was erected at the Church of Santa Croce, in Florence. The Latin legend reads: TANTO NOMINI NULLUM PAR ELOGIUM (No eulogy would be adequate to praise so great a name).

Works

See also: Category:Works by Niccolò Machiavelli

Il Principe

Main article: The Prince

Bust of Machiavelli in the Palazzo Vecchio

The Prince's contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between political Realism and political Idealism. Niccolò Machiavelli’s best-known book exposits and describes the arts with which a ruling prince can maintain control of his realm. It concentrates on the "new prince", under the presumption that a hereditary prince has an easier task in ruling, since the people are accustomed to him. To retain power, the hereditary prince must carefully maintain the socio-political institutions to which the people are accustomed; whereas a new prince has the more difficult task in ruling, since he must first stabilize his new-found power in order to build an enduring political structure. That requires the prince being a public figure above reproach, whilst privately acting amorally to achieve State goals. The examples are those princes who most successfully obtain and maintain power, drawn from his observations as a Florentine diplomat, and his ancient history readings; thus, the Latin phrases and Classic examples.

The Prince does not dismiss morality, instead, it politically defines “Morality” — as in the criteria for acceptable cruel action — it must be decisive: swift, effective, and short-lived. Machiavelli is aware of the irony of good results coming from evil actions; notwithstanding some mitigating themes, the Catholic Church proscribed The Prince, registering it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, moreover, the Humanists also viewed the book negatively, among them, Erasmus of Rotterdam. As a treatise, its primary intellectual contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between political Realism and political Idealism — thus, The Prince is a manual to acquiring and keeping political power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, a Classical ideal society is not the aim of the prince’s will to power. As a political scientist, Machiavelli emphasises necessary, methodical exercise of brute force punishment-and-reward (patronage, clientelism, et cetera) to preserve the status quo.

As there seems to be a huge difference between Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and tyrannical princes in The Prince and his more republican exhortations in Discorsi, many have concluded that The Prince is actually only a satire. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance, admired Machiavelli the republican and consequently argued that The Prince is a book for the republicans as it exposes the methods used by princes. If the book was only intended as a manual for tyrannical rulers, it contains a paradox: it would apparently be more effective if the secrets it contains would not be made publicly available. Also Antonio Gramsci argued that Machiavelli's audience was the common people because the rulers already knew these methods through their education. This interpretation is supported by the fact that Machiavelli wrote in Italian, not in Latin (which would have been the language of the ruling elite). Although Machiavelli is supposed to be a realist, many of his heroes in The Prince are in fact mythical or semi-mythical, and his goal (i.e. the unification of Italy) essentially utopian at the time of writing.

Etymologically, his sixteenth-century contemporaries adopted and used the adjective Machiavellian (elaborately cunning), often in the introductions of political tracts offering more than government by “Reasons of State”, most notably those of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero; while contemporary, pejorative usage of Machiavellian (anti-Machiavellism in the 16th C.) is a misnomer describing someone who deceives and manipulates others for gain; (personal or not, the gain is immaterial, only action matters, insofar as it effects results). The Prince hasn’t the moderating themes of his other works; politically, “Machiavelli” denotes someone of politically-extreme perspective;^[8] however Machiavellianism remains a popular speech and journalism usage; while in psychology, it denotes a personality type.

Discorsi

Main article: Discourses on Livy

Sebastiano del Piombo,1516,"Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, His Secretary, and Two Geographers." Which is often mistaken for Machiavelli (center right) depicted: (left-right) Cesare Borgia, Pedro Luis de Borja Lanzol de Romaní, and Don Micheletto Corella

The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy comprises the early history of Rome. It is a series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured, including the concept of checks and balances, the strength of a tri-partite political structure, and the superiority of a republic over a principality.

From The Discourses:

• “In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check”. Book I, Chapter II
• “Doubtless these means [of attaining power] are cruel and destructive of all civilized life, and neither Christian, nor even human, and should be avoided by every one. In fact, the life of a private citizen would be preferable to that of a king at the expense of the ruin of so many human beings”. Book I, Chapter XXVI
• “Now, in a well-ordered republic, it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional measures. . . . ” Book I, Chapter XXXIV
• “. . . the governments of the people are better than those of princes”. Book I, Chapter LVIII
• “. . . if we compare the faults of a people with those of princes, as well as their respective good qualities, we shall find the people vastly superior in all that is good and glorious”. Book I, Chapter LVIII
• “For government consists mainly in so keeping your subjects that they shall be neither able, nor disposed to injure you. . . . ” Book II, Chapter XXIII
• “. . . no prince is ever benefited by making himself hated”. Book III, Chapter XIX
• “Let not princes complain of the faults committed by the people subjected to their authority, for they result entirely from their own negligence or bad example”. Book III, Chapter XXIX ^[9]

Other works

Peter Withorne’s 1573 translation of the Art of War

Besides being a statesman (political scientist), Machiavelli also translated classical works, and was a dramaturge (Clizia, Mandragola), a poet (Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave, Canti carnascialeschi), and a novelist (Belfagor arcidiavolo).

Some of his other works:

• Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa (1499)
• Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati (1502)
• Del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nell’ ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, etc. (1502) — A Description of the Methods Adopted by the Duke Valentino when Murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini
• Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro (1502) — A discourse about the provision of money.
• Decennale primo (1506), a poem in terza rima.
• Ritratti delle cose dell’ Alemagna (1508–1512)
• Decennale secondo (1509), a poem.
• Ritratti delle cose di Francia (1510) — Portrait of the affairs of France.
• Andria (1517), a Classical comedy, translated from Terence.
• Mandragola (1518) — The Mandrake, a five-act prose comedy, with a verse prologue.
• Della lingua (1514), a dialogue about the language.
• Clizia (1525), a prose comedy.
• Belfagor arcidiavolo (1515), a novel.
• Asino d’oro (1517) — The Golden Ass is a terza rima poem, a new version of the Classic work by Apuleius.
• Dell’arte della guerra (1519–1520) — The Art of War, high military science.
• Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze (1520) — A discourse about the reforming of Florence.
• Sommario delle cose della citta di Lucca (1520) — A summary of the affairs of the city of Lucca.
• Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca (1520) — The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca, a biography.
• Istorie fiorentine (1520–1525) — Florentine Histories, an eight-volume history book of the city-state, Florence, commissioned by Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII.
• Frammenti storici (1525) — Fragments of stories.

Revival of interest in the 19th and 20th centuries

Despite remaining a politically-influential writer in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was the 19th and 20th centuries that rediscovered his political science for its intellectual and practical applications. The most reliable guide to this renewed interest is the Introduction to the 1953 (Mentor Books) edition of Il Principe, wherein Christian Gauss, the Dean of Princeton University, discusses, with pertinent historical context, the commentaries on The Prince made by the German historians Ranke (19th c.) and Meineke (20th c.), the Briton Lord Acton, and others. Citing the consensus that Machiavelli was the first political theorist with a practical, scientific approach to statecraft, considering him “the first Modern Man”. The commentators view the political scientist Machiavelli positively — because he viewed the world realistically, thus, such statecraft leads to (generally) constructive results.

See also

• Timeline of Niccolò Machiavelli

Notes

1. ^ Moschovitis Group Inc, Christian D. Von Dehsen and Scott L. Harris, Philosophers and religious leaders, (The Oryx Press, 1999), 117.
2. ^ White, Michael (2007). Machiavelli, A Man Misunderstood. Abacus.. ISBN 978-0-349-11599-3. 
3. ^ S. Anglo, Machiavelli: the first century (Oxford, 2005)
4. ^  "Niccolò Machiavelli". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli. 
5. ^ Donna, Daniel, in the introduction to the Bantam Classic edition of The Prince, Bantam, 1966
6. ^ The Literary Works of Machiavelli, trans. J.R. Hale. (Oxford: 1961), p. 139 D.
7. ^ "Words to be Spoken on the Law for Appropriating Money", in Chief Works and Others [of Machiavelli], trans. Allan H. Gilbert, 3 vols. (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1965), v. III, 1439.
8. ^ In one scholar's assessment, mistakenly so. Writes Anthony Parel: "The authentic Machiavelli is one who subordinates personal interests for the common good . . . If one is to speak of a Machiavellian personality one should mention Moses and Romulus (to use [M's] own examples)." For more on the three sources of historical anti-Machiavellism, see Further Reading, Parel, pp. 14-24, and (in far greater detail): Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli - the First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0199267766, 9780199267767.
9. ^ The Modern Library, New York, 1950, translated by Christian E. Detmold.

References

• Machiavelli, Niccolò (1531). The Discourses. Translated by Leslie J. Walker, S.J, revisions by Brian Richardson (2003). London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-140-44428-9

Further reading

• Anglo, Sydney, Machiavelli - the First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0199267766, 9780199267767
• Baron, Hans (1961). "Machiavelli: the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince". English Historical Review lxxvi (76): 217–253. doi:10.1093/ehr/LXXVI.CCXCIX.217. 
• Bock, Gisela; Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli, ed. (1990). Machiavelli and Republicanism. Cambridge University Press. 
• Constantine, Peter (2007). The Essential Writings of Machiavelli. New York: Random House Modern Library. 
• Donaldson, Peter S. (1989). Machiavelli and Mystery of State. Cambridge University Press. 
• Everdell, William R. (1983, 2000). The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans. University of Chicago Press. 
• Hoeges, Dirk. Niccolò Machiavelli. Dichter-Poeta. Mit sämtlichen Gedichten, deutsch/italienisch. Con tutte le poesie, tedesco/italiano, Reihe: Dialoghi/Dialogues: Literatur und Kultur Italiens und Frankreichs, Band 10, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt/M. u.a. 2006, ISBN 3-631-54669-6.
• Ingersoll, David E. (December 1968). "The Constant Prince: Private Interests and Public Goals in Machiavelli". Western Political Quarterly (21): 588–596. 
• Magee, Brian (2001). The Story of Philosophy. New York: DK Publishing. pp. 72–73. 
• Mattingly, Garrett (Autumn 1958). "Machiavelli's Prince: Political Science or Political Satire?". The American Scholar (27): 482–491. 
• Marriott, W. K. (2008). The Prince. Red and Black Publishers.  ISBN 978-0-934941-003
• Najemy, John M. (1996). "Baron's Machiavelli and Renaissance Republicanism". American Historical Review 101 (101,1): 119–129. doi:10.2307/2169227. 
• Parel, Anthony (1972). "Introduction: Machiavelli's Method and His Interpreters". The Political Calculus: Essays on Machiavelli's Philosophy. Toronto. pp. 3–28. 
• Pocock, J.G. A.. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton. 
• Soll, Jacob (2005). Publishing The Prince: History, Reading and the Birth of Political Criticism. University of Michigan Press. 
• Strauss, Leo (1978). Thoughts on Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226777022. 
• Sullivan, Vickie B., ed. (2000). The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli: Essays on the Literary Works. Yale U. Press. 
• Sullivan, Vickie B. (1996). Machiavelli's Three Romes: Religion, Human Liberty, and Politics Reformed. Northern Illinois University Press. 
• Seung, T. K. (1993). Intuition and Construction: The Foundation of Normative Theory, New Haven: Yale University Press. See pp. 133–43.
• Stefano Zen, Veritas ecclesiastica e Machiavelli, in Monarchia della verità. Modelli culturali e pedagogia della Controriforma, Napoli, Vivarium, 2002 (La Ricerca Umanistica, 4), pp. 73–111.
• von Vacano, Diego, "The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche and the Making of Aesthetic Political Theory," Lanham MD: Lexington: 2007.
• Viroli, Maurizio (2000). Niccolò's Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 
• Whelan, Frederick G. (2004). Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought. Lexington. 
• Wootton, David, ed. (1994). Selected political writings of Niccolò Machiavelli. Indianapolis: Hackett Pubs.. 
• Mascia Ferri, L'opinione pubblica e il sovrano in Machiavelli, in «The Lab's Quarterly»,n.2 aprile-giugno,Università di Pisa,2008, pp. 420–433.
• Giuseppe Leone,"Silone e Machiavelli: una scuola... che non crea prìncipi", Prefazione di Vittoriano Esposito, Centro Studi Ignazio Silone, Pescina, 2003.

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• Machiavelli: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Works by Machiavelli at Project Gutenberg
• Machiavelli at the Marxists Internet Archive, including some of his works
• Works by Niccolò Machiavelli: text, concordances and frequency list
• Machiavelli on the Net, a Machiavelli webliography with a short introduction.
• Works of Machiavelli: Italian and English text
• Machiavelli and Power Politics
• Seven Essential Principals for Managing Power and Politics
• Machiavelli on the Online Library Of Liberty

v • d • e Niccolò Machiavelli General Machiavellianism · Pope Clement VII · Emperor Maximillian I · Louis XII of France · Francesco Guicciardini · House of Medici · Italian Wars · Republic of Florence · Timeline of Niccolò Machiavelli Works Discourse on Pisa • On the method of dealing with the Rebellious Peoples of Valdichiana • A Description of the Method Used by Duke Valentino in Killing Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, and Others • A discourse about the provision of money • Decennale primo • Ritratti delle cose dell’ Alemagna • Decennale secondo • Ritratti delle cose di Francia • Andria • The Mandrake • Della lingua • Clizia • Belfagor arcidiavolo • The Golden Ass • The Art of War • Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze • Sommario delle cose della citta di Lucca • The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca • Florentine Histories • Frammenti storici • The Prince • Discourses on Livy

Persondata
NAME	Machiavelli, Niccolò
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Machiavelli, Niccolo
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Italian politician and political theorist.
DATE OF BIRTH	May 3, 1469
PLACE OF BIRTH	Florence
DATE OF DEATH	June 21, 1527
PLACE OF DEATH	Florence

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