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.

In The Prince, the Discourses, and in the Life of Castruccio Castracani, he describes " prophets ," as he calls them, like Moses, Romulus, Cyrus the Great, and Theseus ( he treats pagan and Christian patriarchs in the same way ) as the greatest of new princes, the glorious and brutal founders of the most novel innovations in politics, and men whom Machiavelli assures us have always used a large amount of armed force and murder against their own people.

They accepted the need for a prince to be concerned with reputation, and even a need for cunning and deceit, but compared to Machiavelli, and like later modernist writers, they emphasized economic progress much more than the riskier ventures of war.

Unlike Machiavelli and Hobbes but like Aquinas, Locke would accept Aristotle's dictum that man seeks to be happy in a state of social harmony as a social animal.

Classical writers like Tacitus, and Renaissance writers like Machiavelli, tried to avoid an outspoken preference for one government system or another.

Xenophon however, like Plato and Aristotle, was a follower of Socrates, and his works show approval of a " teleological argument ", while Machiavelli rejected such arguments.

* Ruin them, like Rome destroyed Carthage, and also like Machiavelli says the Romans eventually had to do in Greece, even though they had wanted to avoid it.

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.

In addressing the question of whether it is better to be loved or feared, Machiavelli writes, “ The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other ; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both .” As Machiavelli asserts, commitments made in peace are not always kept in adversity ; however, commitments made in fear are kept out of fear.

They accepted the need for a prince to be concerned with reputation, and even a need for cunning and deceit, but compared to Machiavelli, and like later modernist writers, they emphasized economic progress much more than the riskier ventures of war.

In medieval Europe, political philosophers like Machiavelli, Bodin, Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Hume, and Rousseau underlined the need for rules to regulate the interaction among emerging sovereign nation states.

In Italy Bodin was seen as a secular historian like Machiavelli.

The writings of Dante, and particularly the doctrines of Petrarch and humanists like Machiavelli, emphasized the virtues of intellectual freedom and individual expression.

Many philosophers from the Renaissance are today read and remembered, even if often not categorized into a single category, but spread into modern philosophy ( if they fit, especially if oriented towards empiricism and rationalism, like Galileo Galilei or Machiavelli ) or instead put back into the Middle Ages, especially if heavily influenced by esoteric traditions ( like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and even Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno ).

The second step of the argument of these neo-Roman writers, like Machiavelli, was that you have to be a member of a free self-governing civil association, a republic, if you are to enjoy individual liberty.

It ’ s like Machiavelli rewriting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

" To these ends, Machiavelli notes in his preface, the military is like the roof of a palazzo protecting the contents.

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.

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.

These authors criticized Machiavelli, but also followed him in many ways.

Niccolò Machiavelli, one of many influential political theorists

wrote: " The Cyrus of Xenophon was a hero to many a literary man of the sixteenth century, but for Machiavelli he lived ".

On the topic of rhetoric Machiavelli, in his introduction, stated that “ I have not embellished or crammed this book with rounded periods or big, impressive words, or with any blandishment or superfluous decoration of the kind which many are in the habit of using to describe or adorn what they have produced ”.

The way in which the word state came to acquire this modern type of meaning during the Renaissance has been the subject of many academic discussions, with this sentence and similar ones in the works of Machiavelli being considered particularly important.

Machiavelli said that The Prince would be about princedoms, mentioning that he has written about republics elsewhere ( possibly referring to the Discourses on Livy although this is debated ), but in fact he mixes discussion of republics into this in many places, effectively treating republics as a type of princedom also, and one with many strengths.

Machiavelli described Moses as a conquering prince, who founded new modes and orders by force of arms, which he used willingly to kill many of his own people.

King Ferdinand of Spain is cited by Machiavelli as an example of a monarch who gained esteem by showing his ability through great feats and who, in the name of religion, conquered many territories and kept his subjects occupied so that they had no chance to rebel.

These authors criticized Machiavelli, but also followed him in many ways.

In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, and not very much after, until Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism that so infuriates scholars of his actual thought.

Machiavelli in turn influenced Francis Bacon, Marchamont Needham, Harrington, John Milton, David Hume, and many others ( Strauss 1958 ).

Machiavelli very likely read Vegetius and incorporated many of his ideas into his own The Art of War.

There appear to be only three writers who should be distinguished among the many who wrote comedies: Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Giovan Maria Cecchi.

Caterina's solitary resistance was admired throughout all Italy ; Niccolò Machiavelli reports that many songs and epigrams were composed in her honour.

The company has developed many computer games in its history, including Battles of Destiny, Hammer of the Gods, Final Liberation, Machiavelli the Prince, Merchant Prince II, Emperor of the Fading Suns, and Mall Tycoon.

Art of War is divided into a preface ( proemio ) and seven books ( chapters ), which take the form of a series of dialogues that take place in the Orti Oricellari, the gardens built in a classical style by Bernardo Rucellai in the 1490s for Florentine aristocrats and humanists to engage in discussion, between Cosimo Rucellai and " Lord Fabrizio Colonna " ( many feel Colonna is a veiled disguise for Machiavelli himself, but this view has been challenged by scholars such as Mansfield ), with other patrizi and captains of the recent Florentine republic: Zanobi Buondelmonti, Battista della Palla and Luigi Alamanni.

In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, not that politicians telegraph their intentions in writing, until Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism.

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.

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

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

Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era — popes waged acquisitive wars against Italian city-states, and people and cities might fall from power at any time.

Leo Strauss, an American political philosopher, declared himself more inclined toward the traditional view that Machiavelli was self-consciously a " teacher of evil ," ( even if he was not himself evil ) since he counsels the princes to avoid the values of justice, mercy, temperance, wisdom, and love of their people in preference to the use of cruelty, violence, fear, and deception.

For Machiavelli, a truly great prince can never be conventionally religious himself, but he should make his people religious if he can.

As Machiavelli wrote, the distinction between an aristocracy ruled by a select elite and a democracy ruled by a council appointed by the people became cumbersome.

In its use of near contemporary Italians as examples of people who perpetrated criminal deeds for politics, another lesser-known work by Machiavelli which The Prince has been compared to is the Life of Castruccio Castracani.

Machiavelli claims that Moses killed uncountable numbers of his own people in order to enforce his will.

Finally, Machiavelli makes a point that bringing new benefits to a conquered people will not be enough to cancel the memory of old injuries, an idea Allan Gilbert said can be found in Tacitus and Seneca the Younger.

Thus, Machiavelli summarizes that guarding against the people ’ s hatred is more important than building up a reputation for generosity.

Additionally, a prince who does not raise the contempt of the nobles and keeps the people satisfied, Machiavelli assures, should have no fear of conspirators.

Using fortresses can be a good plan, but Machiavelli says he shall " blame anyone who, trusting in fortresses, thinks little of being hated by the people ".

The later Florentine writer Niccolò Machiavelli commented that this was similar to the Florentine ' Ten of War ' that was eventually reinstated once the people realized it was the excessive abuse of authority that was despised, not the title or function of the office itself.

Noble desires prompt man to do works of charity, they make men sober, enlightened and good ; ignoble desires make men to adopt the policy of Machiavelli, to distribute opium, intoxicating liquor, and introduce syphillis and create bastards, and murder helpless people for the sake of rubber, gold and land .... Buddhism condemns ignoble desires and emphasises on the necessity of cultivating noble desires.

Which was the fundamental departure between Machiavelli and Francis Bacon, the former was concerned with governing the prince's principality, the later concerned with ' the people ' as a populace.

Machiavelli says that the first book will discuss things that happened inside of Rome as the result of public counsel ( I 1. 6 ), the second, decisions made by the Roman people pertaining to the increase of its empire ( II Pr. 3 ), and the third, how the actions of particular men made Rome great ( III 1. 6 ).

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

Italian became the language of culture for all the people of Italy, thanks to the prestige of the masterpieces of Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.

Machiavelli recalls a rumour that King Francis cradled his head in his arms as he died, to which Ezio remarked: "' Some people – even Kings – will do anything for publicity '".