Niccolò Machiavelli

I was born in 1469 in Florence, where beauty and fraud shared the same streets. In 1498, after the fall of Savonarola, I was made secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic. My work was to see plainly and write exactly, whether the matter concerned treaties or troops.

I negotiated with Louis XII in France, Julius II in Rome, Maximilian in the Tyrol, and watched Cesare Borgia in the Romagna. There I learned how swift rewards and punishments could pacify a province; I later wrote of Remirro de Orco, struck down and displayed to cleanse the duke’s cruelty. In Florence I urged a citizen militia in place of hirelings; with those arms we brought Pisa back to obedience in 1509.

When the Medici returned in 1512, I was dismissed, accused, and raised by the strappado. Freed by amnesty, I withdrew to Sant’Andrea in Percussina. By day I set snares for thrushes and idled with the innkeeper; by night I entered ‘the ancient courts of ancient men’ and conversed with Livy and Tacitus. In those months I composed a small book, The Prince, first meant for Giuliano, then dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici.

I wrote also the Discourses on Livy, The Art of War, the comedy La Mandragola, and, at Medici request, the Florentine Histories. I did not praise wickedness; I sought the effectual truth—how men act, not how they ought to. I died in 1527, the year my city again called itself a republic. If you would weigh necessity, fortune, and the arms that sustain laws, we can speak.