Agathocles was cited as from the lowest, most abject condition of life and as an example of “ those who by their crimes come to be princes ” in Chapter VIII of Niccolò Machiavelli ’ s treatise on politics, The Prince ( 1513 ).

Machiavelli goes on to reason that Agathocles ' success, in contrast to other criminal tyrants, was due to his ability to mitigate his crimes by limiting them to those that " are applied at one blow and are necessary to one's security, and that are not persisted in afterwards unless they can be turned to the advantage of the subjects ".

Niccolò Machiavelli cites Cesare's dependence on the good will of the Papacy, under the control of his father, to be the principal weakness of his rule.

Niccolò Machiavelli met the Duke on a diplomatic mission in his function as Secretary of the Florentine Chancellery.

Machiavelli attributes two episodes to Cesare Borgia that were at least partially executed by his father: the method by which the Romagna was pacified, which Machiavelli describes in chapter VII of The Prince, and the assassination of his captains on New Year's Eve of 1503 in Senigallia.

Machiavelli in particular was scornful of writers on politics who judged everything in comparison to mental ideals and demanded that people should study the " effectual truth " instead.

Furthermore, it has been established that a substantial portion of it was taken, without citation, from a 1864 satire on Napoleon III by one Maurice Joly ( his French language work, The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu )-so that it also constitutes plagiarism.

He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River, a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked.

Despairing of the opportunity to remain directly involved in political matters, after a time Machiavelli began to participate in intellectual groups in Florence and wrote several plays that ( unlike his works on political theory ) were both popular and widely known in his lifetime.

As a political scientist, Machiavelli emphasizes the occasional need for the methodical exercise of brute force, deceit, and so on.

Machiavelli presents it as a series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured.

That Machiavelli himself was not evil and indeed intended good, is on the other hand generally accepted.

Strauss concludes his 1958 Thoughts on Machiavelli by proposing that this promotion of progress leads directly to the modern arms race.

Firstly, particularly in the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is unusual in the positive side he sometimes seems to describe in factionalism in republics.

Machiavelli argued against seeing mere peace and economic growth as worthy aims on their own, if they would lead to what Mansfield calls the " taming of the prince.

saw him as a major source of the republicanism that spread throughout England and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries and Leo, whose view of Machiavelli is quite different in many ways, agreed about Machiavelli's influence on republicanism and argued that even though Machiavelli was a teacher of evil he had a nobility of spirit that led him to advocate ignoble actions.

However, the Founding Father who perhaps most studied and valued Machiavelli as a political philosopher was John Adams, who profusely commented on the Italian's thought in his work, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.

* Machiavelli on the Net, a Machiavelli webliography with a short introduction.

* Machiavelli on the Online Library Of Liberty

* Machiavelli and the Italian City on the BBC's In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg ; with Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge ; Evelyn Welch, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London ; Lisa Jardine, Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary, University of London

During the Italian Renaissance, Niccolò Machiavelli established the emphasis of modern political science on direct empirical observation of political institutions and actors.

Only one other contemporary of More's evokes so immediate and direct a response, and only one other contemporary work -- Niccolo Machiavelli and The Prince.

However, many later disapproved of his actions, including to an extent Machiavelli, who claimed " It cannot be called prowess to kill fellow-citizens, to betray friends, to be treacherous, pitiless, irreligious.

* von Vacano, Diego, " The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche and the Making of Aesthetic Political Theory ," Lanham MD: Lexington: 2007.

Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age.

Following an interpretation of power similar to that of Machiavelli, Foucault defines power as immaterial, as a " certain type of relation between individuals " that has to do with complex strategic social positions that relate to the subject's ability to control its environment and influence those around itself.

Machiavelli argued that, had Cesare been able to win the favor of the new Pope, he would have been a very successful ruler.

Machiavelli was at Borgia's court from 7 October 1502 through 18 January 1503.

In The Prince, Machiavelli uses Borgia as an example to elucidate the dangers of acquiring a principality by virtue of another.

This seemingly makes it obvious that Machiavelli admired Cesare Borgia's father but not Cesare himself.

The Education of a Christian Prince was published in 1516, three years after Niccolò Machiavelli ’ s The Prince.

Machiavelli stated that, to maintain control by political force, it is safer for a prince to be feared than loved.

In political and historical writing Niccolò Machiavelli and his friend Francesco Guicciardini initiated a new realistic style of writing.

A second individual of unusually acute insight was Niccolò Machiavelli, whose prescriptions for Florence's regeneration under strong leadership have often been seen as a legitimization of political expediency and even malpractice.

In other words, Machiavelli was a sort of political thinker, perhaps most renowned for his political handbook titled, The Prince, which is about ruling and the exercise of power.

Commissioned by the Medici, Machiavelli also wrote the Florentine Histories, the history of the city.

* Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentines preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times.

To improve the well-being of her subjects she studied architecture, agriculture, and industry, and followed the principles that Niccolò Machiavelli had set forth for rulers in his book The Prince.

* 1469 – Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and author ( d. 1527 )

In the early 16th century, Castiglione ( The Book of the Courtier ) laid out his vision of the ideal gentleman and lady, while Machiavelli cast a jaundiced eye on " la verità effettuale della cosa "— the actual truth of things — in The Prince, composed, humanist style, chiefly of parallel ancient and modern examples of Virtù.

* For translations of excerpts of both the Essai général de la Tactique and De la force publique into modern English, see Beatrice Heuser, The Strategy Makers: Thoughts on War and Society from Machiavelli to Clausewitz ( Santa Monica, CA: Greenwood / Praeger, 2010 ), ISBN 978-0-275-99826-4, pp. 147 – 170.