Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince while unemployed and hoping for a job. Born in Florence in 1469 to a lawyer of modest means, he was educated in Latin and entered the republic's service in 1498, weeks after Savonarola was burned. He spent fourteen years as second chancellor and secretary to the Ten of War, conducting embassies to Louis XII, the Emperor Maximilian, the papacy and Cesare Borgia, whose methods he observed at close range. He organised a citizen militia to replace mercenaries, whom he regarded as useless, and it took Pisa in 1509. The Medici returned in 1512, the republic fell, and he was dismissed, imprisoned, tortured on the strappado and released. He retired to a small farm outside the city, where he described in a letter putting on court dress in the evening to enter the company of ancient men and ask them why they acted as they did. The Prince, written in 1513 and dedicated to a Medici, examines how power is taken and held, in a register that simply declines to ask what a ruler ought to do. It advises that it is safer to be feared than loved, that a prince must learn how not to be good, and that cruelties should be committed all at once and benefits distributed slowly. The Discourses on Livy, longer and less read, argues for republics and for the value of political conflict. He never regained office. He died in 1527, and the book was placed on the Index. The adjective made from his name entered English within fifty years, and meant what it still means.

• Lived: 1469 CE – 1527 CE
• Nationality: Italian
• Roles: political_theorist, diplomat, historian, writer