Italian political phil­osopher, pro­ponent of unscrupulous government, d. 1527

Usage examples of machiavelli.

Machiavelli's report and description of this and subsequent embassies to this prince, shows his undisguised admiration for the courage and cunning of Cæsar, who was a master in the application of the principles afterwards exposed in such a skillful and uncompromising manner by Machiavelli in his Prince.

When, after the battle of Ravenna in 1512 the holy league determined upon the downfall of Pier Soderini, Gonfaloniere of the Florentine Republic, and the restoration of the Medici, the efforts of Machiavelli, who was an ardent republican, were in vain.

It was during his retirement upon his little estate at San Casciano that Machiavelli wrote The Prince, the most famous of all his writings, and here also he had begun a much more extensive work, his Discourses on the Decades of Livy, which continued to occupy him for several years.

These Discourses, which do not form a continuous commentary on Livy, give Machiavelli an opportunity to express his own views on the government of the state, a task for which his long and varied political experience, and an assiduous study of the ancients rendered him eminently qualified.

And as in the Principe, as its name indicates, Machiavelli is concerned chiefly with the government of a Prince, so the Discorsi treat principally of the Republic, and here Machiavelli's model republic was the Roman commonwealth, the most successful and most enduring example of popular government.

Much that Machiavelli says in this treatise is as true to-day and holds as good as the day it was written.

It was Lord Bacon, I believe, who said that Machiavelli tells us what princes do, not what they ought to do.

When Machiavelli takes Cæsar Borgia as a model, he in nowise extols him as a hero, but merely as a prince who was capable of attaining the end in view.

And Machiavelli has laid down the principles, based upon his study and wide experience, by which this may be accomplished.

And will anyone contend that the principles set forth by Machiavelli in his Prince or his Discourses have entirely perished from the earth?

Of the other works of Machiavelli we may mention here his comedies the Mandragola and Clizia, and his novel Belfagor.

Whatever his faults may have been, Machiavelli was always an ardent patriot and an earnest supporter of popular government.

See also La Vita e gli scritti di Niccolo Machiavelli nella loro Relazione col Machiavellismo, by O.

Having recovered power, created a new balia, and filled the principal offices according to the pleasure of a few individuals, in order to commence that government with terror which they had obtained by force, they banished Girolamo Machiavelli, with some others, and deprived many of the honors of government.

Living in evil times, described by an Italian as times when in Italy the source of every noble feeling was dried up, family life corrupted, virtue mocked, the Church heathen, and faith dead, Machiavelli dealt directly, in the world and in the study, with the life, and with what seemed to him the pressing need, of his own time and country.