The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince
3.84from 399,339 ratingson Goodreads
A short book of advice for a new ruler, written by a diplomat who had spent fourteen years watching how power is actually taken and kept, and who wrote it out of work, tortured and exiled, hoping to be employed again. It asks what a prince must do to hold a state rather than what he ought to do, and it has been read as a scandal ever since.
About the book
Written in 1513, months after the author was dismissed, imprisoned and tortured by the returning Medici, and printed only in 1532, five years after his death, The Prince is a short book of advice on acquiring a state and keeping it. It divides principalities by how they were got, works through mercenaries and auxiliaries, fortresses and colonies, and arrives at the questions it is notorious for: whether a ruler should keep his word, whether it is better to be loved or feared, and what a prince must be prepared to do when necessity requires it. Machiavelli’s break with everything written before him is that he describes how rulers behave rather than how they ought to, and refuses to call the difference a failing. Whether the book is a sincere manual, a job application, or a republican’s exposure of tyranny has been argued for five centuries. Its examples are all real and mostly recent — above all Cesare Borgia, whom the author had watched at work.
Characters
Cesare Borgia — The model
The duke Machiavelli watched at close range, held up as the pattern of a prince who made his own state.
Pope Alexander VI — Cesare’s father
The pope whose money and office built his son’s principality, and whose death took it away again.
Francesco Sforza — Self-made ruler
A mercenary captain who became Duke of Milan by his own arms, the contrast to those who inherit.
Girolamo Savonarola — The unarmed prophet
The friar who ruled Florence by preaching and was burned once the city stopped believing him.
Ferdinand of Aragon — Contemporary king
Cited as the great current example of a ruler who used religion and war to keep his subjects occupied.
Lorenzo de’ Medici — Dedicatee
The young Medici ruler of Florence the book is addressed to, and from whom the author wanted employment.
About the author
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was a Florentine diplomat who ran the republic's second chancery for fourteen years and watched, at close range, how power was actually taken and kept. When the Medici returned in 1512 he was dismissed, accused of conspiracy, tortured on the rack and exiled to a small farm outside the city, and it was there, out of work and writing to get back in, that he produced The Prince. It circulated in manuscript and was printed five years after his death. He also wrote the Discourses on Livy, a history of Florence and a comedy, Mandragola, still performed.