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Introductory Note
Introductory Note
Niccolo Machiavelli, one of the most brilliant and versatile intellects
of the Italian Renaissance, was born at Florence, May 3, 1469. He entered the
public service as a young man, and between 1500 and 1512 he was employed in a
number of diplomatic missions to the other Italian cities, to France, and to
Germany. When the Medici returned to power in Florence in 1512, Machiavelli
lost his positions, and suffered imprisonment and torture. On his release in
the following year, he retired to the country and devoted himself to study and
the composition of his most famous work, "The Prince." Other writings
followed; and in the last year of his life we find him again in active life,
this time as a soldier. He died June 21, 1527.
Machiavelli`s aim in "The Prince" has been very variously interpreted.
His motive was probably mainly patriotic; but the exclusion of moral
considerations in his treatment of politics led, even in his own century, to
his name`s becoming a synonym for all that is diabolical in public and private
policy. Whatever may be the relation of the methods expounded in "The Prince"
to his personal ideals, the book remains a most vivid and suggestive picture
of political conditions in the Italy of the Renaissance.
Machiavelli`s "Discourses on Livy`s Decades" deals on a larger scale with
many of the topics of "The Prince"; his "Art of War" elaborates his views on
the military side; and his "History of Florence," his "Life of Castruccio
Castracani," and his comedy, "Mandragola," are characteristic products of an
accomplished man of letters who one time was diplomat and soldier, at another
historian, poet, and dramatist. Few men represent so thoroughly the
extraordinary versatility of that wonderful age.
"Of all Machiavelli`s writings," says Garnett, "`The Prince` is the most
famous, and deservedly, for it is the most characteristic. Few subjects of
literary discussion have occasioned more controversy than the purpose of this
celebrated book. Some have beheld in it a manual for tyrants, like the memoirs
of Tiberius, so diligently perused by Domitian; others have regarded it as a
refined irony upon tyranny, on the sarcastic plan of Swift`s Directions to
Servants, if so humble an analogy be permissible. From various points of view
it might alternately pass for either, but its purpose is accurately conveyed
by neither interpretation. Machiavelli was a sincere though too supple a
republican, and by no means desired the universal prevalence of tyranny
throughout Italy. . . . His aim probably was to show how to build up a
principality capable of expelling the foreigner and restoring the independence
of Italy. But this intention could not be safely expressed, and hence his work
seems repulsive, because the reason of state which he propounds as an apology
for infringing the moral code appears not patriotic, but purely selfish. . . .
With all his faults and oversights, nothing can deprive Machiavelli of the
glory of having been the modern Aristotle in politics, the first, or at least
the first considerable writer who derived a practical philosophy from history,
and exalted statecraft into science."
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