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Dedication: To the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De` Medici
Dedication: To the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De` Medici
It is customary for such as seek a Prince`s favour, to present
themselves before him with those things of theirs which they themselves most
value, or in which they perceive him chiefly to delight. Accordingly, we often
see horses, armour, cloth of gold, precious stones, and the like costly
gifts, offered to Princes as worthy of their greatness. Desiring in like
manner to approach your Magnificence with some token of my devotion, I have
found among my possessions none that I so much prize and esteem as a knowledge
of the actions of great men, acquired in the course of a long experience of
modern affairs and a continual study of antiquity. Which knowledge most
carefully and patiently pondered over and sifted by me, and now reduced into
this little book, I send to your Magnificence. And though I deem the work
unworthy of your greatness, yet am I bold enough to hope that your courtesy
will dispose you to accept it, considering that I can offer you no better gift
than the means of mastering in a very brief time, all that in the course of so
many years, and at the cost of so many hardships and dangers, I have learned,
and know.
This work I have not adorned or amplified with rounded periods, swelling
and high-flown language, or any other of those extrinsic attractions and
allurements wherewith many authors are wont to set off and grace their
writings; since it is my desire that it should either pass wholly unhonoured,
or that the truth of its matter and the importance of its subject should alone
recommend it.
Nor would I have it thought presumption that a person of very mean and
humble station should venture to discourse and lay down rules concerning the
government of Princes. For as those who make maps of countries place
themselves low down in the plains to study the character of mountains and
elevated lands, and place themselves high up on the mountains to get a better
view of the plains, so in like manner to understand the People a man should be
a Prince, and to have a clear notion of Princes he should belong to the
People.
Let your Magnificence, then, accept this little gift in the spirit in
which I offer it; wherein, if you diligently read and study it, you will
recognize my extreme desire that you should attain to that eminence which
Fortune and your own merits promise you. Should you from the height of your
greatness some time turn your eyes to these humble regions, you will become
aware how undeservedly I have to endure the keen and unremitting malignity of
Fortune.
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