The Prince

The teaching

As Machiavelli's The Prince teaches it.

The effectual truth

Machiavelli declares that he will follow the real truth of things and not an imagined one. Many have pictured republics and principalities never seen or known, he writes, but how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live that a ruler who neglects what is done for what ought to be done will sooner bring about his ruin than his preservation. A man who tries to be good in everything comes to grief among so many who are not good.

His knowledge, the dedication says, comes from long experience of present affairs and continual study of ancient ones. He likens himself to those who draw landscapes, who go down into the plain to see the mountains and up the mountains to see the plain: to know the nature of princes, one must be of the people.

Kinds of states

All states are republics or principalities, and principalities are inherited or new. An inherited state is easy to hold, for the prince need only keep the customs of his ancestors. A new one is hard: people change rulers gladly, hoping to better themselves, and find themselves worse off, and the newcomer offends those he has conquered and cannot satisfy those who let him in. To hold an added territory he should end the old ruling line, keep its laws and taxes, and go to live there, or plant colonies, which cost less than garrisons. Men must be either caressed or crushed, because they avenge small injuries but cannot avenge great ones.

A city used to its own laws never forgets its liberty. And troubles must be met early: like a hectic fever, a danger is easy to cure and hard to see at its beginning, and later easy to see and hard to cure.

The armed prophet

Those who rose by their own arms and ability, Moses, Cyrus, Romulus and Theseus, had from fortune only the opportunity. Their hardship was the founding of a new order, and there is nothing more difficult to take in hand or more perilous to conduct, because the innovator has for enemies all who did well under the old order and only lukewarm defenders among those who may do well under the new. So armed prophets have conquered, and unarmed ones, like the friar Savonarola in Florence, have failed.

Those who rise by fortune and by other men's arms must lay their foundations quickly. Cesare Borgia is the model: he sent a cruel and swift lieutenant to pacify the Romagna, then, to clear himself of the hatred it caused, had the man cut in two and left in the square at Cesena. His one great error was to allow the election of a pope he had injured.

Cruelty well used

Some rise by crime, as Agathocles of Syracuse did, and here Machiavelli separates cruelty well used from cruelty badly used. Well used is cruelty done at a stroke, out of the need to make oneself secure, then not persisted in and turned to the subjects' benefit. Badly used is cruelty that begins small and grows with time. Injuries should be done all at once, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits should be given little by little, so that they are savoured more.

The people and the great

In every city there are two humours: the people, who wish not to be oppressed, and the great, who wish to oppress. A prince raised by the people stands more securely than one raised by the nobles, for the people's aim is the more honest and they are too many to make enemies of, whatever the proverb says of building on the people as building on mud. His strength is measured by whether he can field an army of his own or must shelter behind walls.

Arms of one's own

The foundations of every state are good laws and good arms, and there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms. Mercenaries are useless and dangerous: disunited, ambitious, faithless, brave among friends and cowardly before the enemy. Auxiliaries, the armies of a powerful ally, are worse, because if they lose you are undone and if they win you are their prisoner. A prince should have no other aim or thought than war and its discipline, and in peace he should train more than in war, hunting to harden the body and learn the land, and reading history to study how great men acted.

Learning how not to be good

Since a prince lives among many who are not good, he must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge or not as necessity requires. He cannot have every quality that is praised. He should avoid the vices that would cost him his state and not fret over those that would not. On spending, it is better to be thought mean: lavishness to win a name for generosity empties the purse, forces taxes and earns hatred, while thrift lets him defend himself without burdening anyone.

Feared or loved

Is it better to be loved than feared? One would wish to be both, but since they rarely go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two must be lacking. Men, he says, are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly and covetous; while you do them good they are yours, but when need comes they turn away. Love is held by a chain of obligation which men break when it suits them, and fear by a dread of punishment that never fails.

Yet a prince should be feared in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred. This he can do so long as he keeps his hands off his citizens' property and their women, for men forget the death of a father sooner than the loss of their inheritance.

The fox and the lion

There are two ways of contending, by law and by force; the first is proper to men and the second to beasts, and since the first is often not enough, a prince must know how to use both. The ancients taught this, he says, in the story that Achilles was given to the centaur Chiron, half man and half beast, to be raised. Of the beasts the prince should choose the fox and the lion, because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves: he must be a fox to recognise the snares and a lion to frighten the wolves.

A prudent ruler cannot keep his word when keeping it turns against him. He must seem merciful, faithful, humane, upright and religious, because everyone sees what you appear to be and few know what you are, and in the actions of princes people judge by the result.

Hatred, counsel and flatterers

Above all a prince must avoid being hated or despised. He is despised for seeming fickle, frivolous, mean-spirited or irresolute, and the best fortress he can have is not to be hated by the people. He wins esteem by great enterprises and by being a true friend or a true enemy, since neutrality satisfies no one.

The first judgement of his intelligence is the men he keeps about him. Of minds there are three kinds: one understands by itself, one discerns what others understand, and one does neither; the first is excellent, the second good, the third useless. Flatterers he escapes by choosing a few wise men and letting them speak the truth when he asks, for good counsel springs from the prince's wisdom, not his wisdom from good counsel.

Virtù and fortuna

Fortune, Machiavelli judges, is the arbiter of half our actions, but leaves the other half, or nearly, to us. He likens her to a violent river that floods the plain, uproots trees and carries off the soil; no one can stand against it once it rises, but in quiet times men can build dykes and banks so that the next flood is held. Where no virtù, no skill and nerve prepared beforehand, stands against her, fortune shows her power.

Men prosper while their way of acting suits the times and fail when it does not, and since a man rarely changes his nature, the same character that raised him ruins him when the times turn. On balance he judges it better to be bold than cautious, for fortune, in his image, favours the young and the daring. The book closes with an exhortation to a new prince to free Italy from the foreign armies, ending on lines of Petrarch.

Reading him to see the moves

Read for recognition, the book names the moves of anyone who holds power without being bound by it: the harsh measure done at once and blamed on a deputy, the favours handed out slowly, the show of virtue, the care to be feared without being hated. Seen in an office or a family, they are a signal to look beneath the appearance for the effectual truth.