Machiavelli, Niccolo ........................ M
(1469–1527)
Diplomat and author, and a central figure
of the Italian Renaissance whose short
workThe Princehas remained a classic of
political philosophy. Born in Florence, Ma-
chiavelli was schooled in classical Latin lit-
erature. He began his career as a govern-
ment clerk in 1494, the year in which the
Medici dynasty fell from power and re-
publican government in Florence was re-
stored. He rose in the ranks of public ser-
vant and was appointed a diplomat. He
traveled on diplomatic missions to the
courts of King Louis XII of France and
King Ferdinand II of Aragon, and to the
headquarters of the Papacy in Rome.
In 1503 Machiavelli became an officer
of the Florence city militia. He observed
with great interest the career of Cesare
Borgia, the ruthless and ambitious son of
Pope Alexander VI. Borgia never hesitated
in using deceit, violence, and all-out war
to further his own goals, which was the
conquest of territory in the name of the
Papacy that he would rule personally.
In 1512, the Medici regained power
and the Florentine Republic came to an
end. Machiavelli was forced out of office,
arrested, and charged with conspiracy.
Subject to torture, he refused to confess to
his crime. He survived this ordeal and re-
tired to his estate in the nearby country-
side, where he took up study of the clas-
sics and setting down his experiences and
his philosophy of government.
InThe Prince,hedrewontheworksof
ancient authors as well as his own experi-
ence of government and of political lead-
ers, giving his opinion that a ruler must
be prepared to act unscrupulously, and in-
spire fear in his rivals, in order to ensure
his authority and the well-being of his na-
tion. Machiavelli’s rather dark view of hu-
man character and the nature of politics is
tempered by his opinion that the ultimate
goal of the actions of a prince should be
the stability of the state he rules. The ends
do not necessarily justify the means, and
power alone does not excuse violence, dis-
honesty, and criminality. In the case that a
ruler must act with violence or cruelty, in
his view, he must act quickly and effec-
tively, strike balance between idealism and
reality, and mitigate harsh actions as soon
as possible.
Machiavelli believedThe Princemight
place him in the good graces of the re-
turning Medici; instead it earned him con-
demnation by the church, which placed
the book on its Index of banned works.
His contemporaries among the Renais-
sance humanists saw the author as an op-
portunistic and cynical politician, a repu-
tation that survived into modern times in
the term “Machiavellian,” meaning to act
unscrupulously in the quest for power.
Machiavelli’s interests led him well be-
yond politics; he was also a poet, musi-
cian, and a scholar of the classics. In this
field he producedDiscourse on the First
Ten Books of Livy, a book describing the
history of the Roman republic. TheDis-