Niccolò Machiavelli

Lore & Background

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence, the third child and first son of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli, on 3 May 1469. The Machiavelli family were a second rate elite Florentine family in the late 13th to 14th centuries, likely descended from minor feudal nobility in the Val di Pesa. His father, Bernardo, was born illegitimately and thus could not become a full citizen of Florence, which affected Niccolò's own citizenship rights. Machiavelli was eight years old when the Pazzi conspiracy aimed to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici; only Giuliano was killed, and Machiavelli witnessed the resulting violence. As a young man he listened to the sermons of Girolamo Savonarola but was not swayed by them. He was taught grammar, rhetoric, and Latin by his teacher, Paolo da Ronciglione. Machiavelli served as secretary to the second chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He was also made secretary of the Dieci di Libertà e Pace, the Florentine council responsible for diplomacy and warfare. His appointment at age 29 remains a mystery to scholars. He married Marietta Corsini in 1501 and had seven children: Primerana, Bernardo, Lodovico, Guido, Piero, Baccina, and Totto. His first diplomatic missions occurred in 1499 to the courts of Iacopo di Appiano and Caterina Sforza. His first major mission was to France to placate King Louis XII. He witnessed Cesare Borgia's brutal retribution on his rebellious commanders at Sinigaglia on 31 December 1502, an event he chronicled in The Description. In 1503 he was dispatched to Rome to observe the papal conclave that selected Julius II. When the Medici retook power in Florence in 1512, Machiavelli was expelled from his duties, mistakenly suspected of treason, and sent into exile. A year later, he took up the life of a political writer.

Reader's Guide

Machiavelli's significance rests primarily on his political treatise The Prince, written around 1513 and published posthumously in 1532. In it, he stated that rulers will have to take on unsavory policies in the furtherance of their political society, in contradiction to classical political thought. He advised rulers to engage in evil when political necessity requires it, for example stating that successful founders and reformers of governments should be excused for killing their political enemies. The Prince has been surrounded by controversy since it was published, with many commentators viewing it as a manual that aims to teach would-be tyrants how to seize authority and establish an absolute regime. Even into recent times, scholars such as Leo Strauss have restated the traditional opinion that Machiavelli was a 'teacher of evil'. Beyond The Prince, scholars also give attention to the exhortations in his other works of political philosophy. The Discourses on Livy (composed c. 1517) has been said to have paved the way for modern republicanism. His works were a major influence on later Enlightenment-era political authors, among them Jean-Jacques Rousseau and James Harrington. Machiavelli's philosophical contributions have influenced generations of philosophers, academics, and politicians, with many of them debating the nature of his ideas.

Did You Know?

• Machiavelli was appointed to the second chancery at age 29, a mystery to scholars as he had no experience in law or public office.
• He witnessed Cesare Borgia's brutal retribution on his rebellious commanders at Sinigaglia on 31 December 1502.
• Machiavelli's father Bernardo was born illegitimately and could not become a full citizen of Florence, which affected Niccolò's own citizenship rights.
• He had seven children with his wife Marietta Corsini, whom he married in 1501.
• Machiavelli's The Prince was written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death.

Composition and the Long Road to Publication

The Prince emerged from Machiavelli's diplomatic career and personal hardship. A draft was underway by 1513, bearing the Latin title De Principatibus, yet the work would not see print until 1532—five years after its author's death. What makes this timeline remarkable is that controversy surrounded the text long before any printed edition existed. From the moment the manuscript first circulated among readers, debate swirled around its contents. Machiavelli himself framed the book in a prefatory letter to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, describing himself as a humble servant offering knowledge drawn from political experience, "hardships and dangers," and the "actions of great men." The gap between writing and publication thus encapsulates both the work's controversial nature and the precarious position of its author in the political world of early sixteenth-century Italy.

A Break with Classical Political Thought

Machiavelli deliberately set The Prince apart from the tradition of classical political philosophy. He regarded earlier works as overly fixated on ideal regimes, and his approach reflected a fundamentally different priority: practical effect mattered more than any abstract ideal. This stance placed him in direct tension with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of his era, particularly their teachings on politics and ethics. His categorization of political regimes was notably simpler and, as scholars have observed, "un-Aristotelian." Where Aristotle's Politics divides regimes into monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—and further distinguishes good from corrupt forms—Machiavelli largely ignored such classical distinctions. Instead, he drew on remarkable comparisons spanning classical, biblical, and medieval history, and pointedly highlighted the murderous yet politically effective career of Cesare Borgia, a figure from his own diplomatic experience. Many commentators now regard The Prince as one of the founding texts of modern political philosophy precisely because of this radical reorientation toward what actually works in governance rather than what ought to be.

Structure and the Problem of New Power

Although styled in the familiar "mirrors for princes" format, The Prince pursues a distinctly unconventional subject. Machiavelli distinguishes between hereditary princedoms, which he dismisses quickly as comparatively easy to govern, and new princedoms—the central concern of the text. A hereditary ruler, he argues, can expect natural goodwill from subjects unless extraordinary vices breed hatred. The real challenge, however, belongs to a new ruler who must establish himself in defiance of custom. New princedoms are further subdivided into wholly new states and "mixed" ones, where a new acquisition is grafted onto an older territory. In discussing how to hold such conquests, Machiavelli draws on Roman republican practice: establishing colonies, managing lesser local powers, suppressing dominant ones, and preventing foreign influence from gaining a foothold. He also stresses forward-looking prudence, warning against complacency in the present moment because time can bring as much evil as good. Notably, he weaves discussion of republics throughout the work, treating them as a variant of princely rule with particular strengths, a treatment that overlaps with his longer Discourses on Livy.

Legacy and the Invention of 'Machiavellian'

No other work of Machiavelli's has shaped public perception as profoundly as The Prince. It is the text most responsible for the pejorative sense of "Machiavellian" that persists in everyday language, and it has contributed significantly to the negative associations that "politics" and "politician" carry in Western cultures. The treatise's insistence that immoral acts can be politically necessary—its emphasis on practical effect over moral abstraction—has made it a perpetual provocation. Centuries later, scholars continue to examine its chapters, and it still poses what Machiavelli himself framed as age-old questions about the nature of power and the difficult decisions rulers must make to preserve it. In this way, The Prince sits at the intersection of philosophy, history, and political practice, and its afterlife in language and thought shows no sign of diminishing.

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