Machiavelli attributes the Italian city states ’ weakness to their reliance on mercenary armies.

The Machiavelli family are believed to be descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany and to have produced thirteen Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice, one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months, who formed the government, or Signoria.

Aside from that, Machiavelli believed that public and private morality had to be understood as two different things in order to rule well.

Machiavelli divides the subject of new states into two types, " mixed " cases and purely new states.

Machiavelli breaks this case into two basic types, depending upon which section of the populace supports the new prince.

The two activities Machiavelli recommends practicing to prepare for war are physical and mental.

Machiavelli compares two great military leaders: Hannibal and Scipio Africanus.

Regarding two warring states, Machiavelli asserts it is always wiser to choose a side, rather than to be neutral.

Drawing on Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince, and trying to understand why there had been no Communist revolution in Western Europe, whilst there had been in Russia, Gramsci conceptualised this hegemony as a centaur, consisting of two halves.

" Machiavelli advised in The Prince " never to attempt to win by force what can be won by deception ," and Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan: " In war, force and fraud are the two cardinal virtues.

The two books entitled La Tirannide and the Essays on Literature and Government are remarkable for elegance and vigour of style, but are too evidently imitations of the manner of Machiavelli.

Guicciardini was friends with Niccolò Machiavelli ; the two maintained a lively correspondence until the latter's death in 1527.

* Observations on Machiavelli's Discorsi, which bring into relief the views of Italy's two great theorists on statecraft in the 16th century, and show that Guicciardini regarded Machiavelli somewhat as an amiable visionary or political enthusiast ;

The piece used the literary device of a dialogue between two diabolical plotters in Hell, the historical characters of Machiavelli and Montesquieu.

Machiavelli dedicates the Discourses to two friends, Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai, both of whom appear in Machiavelli's Art of War.

Machiavelli justifies dedicating the Discourses to his two friends because they deserve to be princes, even if they lack principalities, and he criticizes the custom ( which he had adopted in the Prince ) of dedicating works to men who are princes but do not deserve to be.

Ritter describes two sorts of values as generated by two different types of polities: one traditionally Anglo-Saxon and the other continental, as personified by More and Machiavelli.

The piece used the literary device of a dialogue between two diabolical plotters in Hell, the historical characters of Machiavelli and Montesquieu, to cover up a direct, and illegal, attack on Napoleon's rule.

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

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

Julius features prominently in The Prince of Niccolò Machiavelli, both as an enemy of a leading protagonist of The Prince, Cesare Borgia, and as an example of an ecclesiastical prince who consolidates authority and wisely follows Fortuna.

Machiavelli cites Cesare Borgia as an example of a lucky prince who escaped this pattern.

* Daedalus, a play by David Davalos recounting Leonardo da Vinci's time as a military engineer to Cesare Borgia, in the company of Lucrezia Borgia and Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince and Discourses on Livy, served under him as second chancellor and as ambassador to Cesare Borgia, Rome and France.

* Niccolò Machiavelli: Historically a political theorist and an admirer of Cesare Borgia, in the manga he is a sorcerer with the ability to change into a moth.

* The Ground is Burning by Samuel Black explores the intersection of Leonardo's life with those of Niccolò Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia.

* David Davalos's 2002 play Daedalus tells a fantasized story of Leonardo's time as a military engineer in the service of Cesare Borgia, in the company of Lucrezia Borgia and Niccolo Machiavelli.

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

Machiavelli suggested they should treat the church as a princedom, like the Borgia family had, in order to conquer Italy, and found new modes and orders.

Many of its characters were real people, including Niccolò Machiavelli, Duarte Brandão and members of the Borgia Family.

Believing that people were motivated by self-interest, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513 as advice for the city of Florence, Italy.

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.

Others have argued that Machiavelli is only a particularly interesting example of trends which were happening around him.

While Xenophon and Plato also described realistic politics, and were closer to Machiavelli than Aristotle was, they, like Aristotle, also saw Philosophy as something higher than politics.

He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that his works were the " Koran of the courtiers ", that " he is of no reputation in the court of France which hath not Machiavel's writings at the fingers ends ".

While Bruni and Machiavelli used the term to describe the states of Northern Italy, which were not monarchies, the term res publica has a set of interrelated meanings in the original Latin.

His personal favorites were the writings of French President Charles de Gaulle, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli.

Forty-four years after his death, on 7 June 1871, his remains were brought to Florence, and with all the pride, pomp and circumstance of a great national mourning, found their final resting-place beside the monuments of Machiavelli and Alfieri, of Michelangelo and Galileo, in the church of Santa Croce, the pantheon of Italian glory he had celebrated in Dei sepolcri.

The types of political behavior which are discussed with apparent approval by Machiavelli in The Prince were perceived as shocking by contemporaries, and its immorality is still a subject of serious discussion.

On the other hand, notes that " even if we were forced to grant that Machiavelli was essentially a patriot or a scientist, we would not be forced to deny that he was a teacher of evil ".

Machiavelli generalizes that there were several virtuous Roman ways to hold a newly acquired province, using a republic as an example of how new princes can act:

Machiavelli discusses the recent history of the Church as if it were a princedom that was in competition to conquer Italy against other princes.

This chapter shows a low opinion of flatterers ; Machiavelli notes that “ Men are so happily absorbed in their own affairs and indulge in such self-deception that it is difficult for them not to fall victim to this plague ; and some efforts to protect oneself from flatterers involve the risk of becoming despised .” Flatterers were seen as a great danger to a prince, because their flattery could cause him to avoid wise counsel in favor of rash action, but avoiding all advice, flattery or otherwise, was equally bad ; a middle road had to be taken.

Niccolò Machiavelli attempted to address Vegetius ' defects in his L ' arte della Guerra ( Florence, 1521 ), with heavy use of Polybius, Frontinus and Livy, but Justus Lipsius ' accusation that he confused the institutions of diverse periods of the Roman Empire and G. Stewechius ' opinion that the survival of Vegetius ' work led to the loss of his named sources were more typical of the late Renaissance.

The " Ancients " were the Socratic philosophers and their intellectual heirs ; the " Moderns " start with Niccolò Machiavelli.

Niccolò Machiavelli attempted to address Vegetius's defects in his L ' arte della Guerra ( Florence, 1521 ), with heavy use of Polybius, Frontinus and Livy, but Justus Lipsius ' accusation that he confused the institutions of diverse periods of the Roman Empire and G. Stewechius ' opinion that the survival of Vegetius ' work led to the loss of his named sources were more typical of the late Renaissance.

Venetian theologians were described as followers of Machiavelli and Bodin by Giovanni Amato.

In fifteenth-century Italy, the condottieri were masterful lords of war ; during the wars in Lombardy, Machiavelli observed:

The Swiss, with their head-down attack in huge columns with the long pike, refusal to take prisoners, and consistent record of victory, were greatly feared and admired — for instance, Machiavelli addresses their system of combat at length in The Prince.

Historian Mark Phillips states that all subsequent Florentine accounts of the tyrannical regime of Walter VI of Brienne — including those by Leonardo Bruni and Niccolò Machiavelli — were based upon the primary source of Villani's Cronica.

Montesquieu and Machiavelli were also of this opinion.

Both were innovative in their approach to history: " Machiavelli and Guicciardini are important transitional figures in the development of historical writing.

It was for Florentine public celebrations that Intermedii came into their own ; several were organised by Machiavelli when he was part of the government of the Republic of Florence in the early 16th century, and the returning Medici adopted a policy of keeping the aristocracy occupied by involving them in productions.