While Gilbert emphasizes the similarities however, he agrees with all other commentators that Machiavelli was particularly novel in the way he used this genre, even when compared to his contemporaries such as Baldassare Castiglione and Erasmus.

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.

At any rate, Machiavelli presents a pragmatic and somewhat consequentialist view of politics, whereby good and evil are mere means used to bring about an end, i. e. the secure and powerful state.

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.

The Rhetorica ad Herennium, a work which was believed during Machiavelli ’ s time to have been written by Cicero, was used widely to teach rhetoric, and it is likely that Machiavelli was familiar with it.

This makes it an ideal text for Machiavelli to have used.

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.

Richard Beacon in Solon His Follie ( 1594 ), directed towards English colonisation in Ireland, used text derived from the Six livres, as well as much theory from Machiavelli ; he also argued against Bodin the proposition that France was a mixed monarchy.

* Late 15th century In the late 15th century, a dove with an olive branch was used on the seal of Dieci di Balia, the Florentine committee known as The Ten of Liberty and Peace, whose secretary was Machiavelli ; it bore the motto, " Pax et Defencio Libertatis " ( Peace and the Defence of Liberty ).

But in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin pact in August 1939 Stone wrote to a friend saying “ no more fellow traveling ” and used his column in The Nation to denounce Stalin as “ the Moscow Machiavelli who suddenly found peace as divisible as the Polish plains and marshes .”

The term is sometimes used more broadly and considered to have begun in the 1500s with Niccolò Machiavelli, Martin Luther and John Calvin ; to have also included Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Giambattista Vico, Voltaire and Thomas Paine ; and to have ended at the latest in 1804 with the death of Immanuel Kant.

Maurice Joly ( 1829 — 1878 ) was a French satirist and lawyer known for his work titled The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, later used as a basis for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

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

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.

Multitude is a political term first used by Machiavelli and reiterated by Spinoza.

A small museum is dedicated to the great writer ; the villa, now Bossi-Pucci stands close by the Hostelry where Machiavelli used to " let off steam ".

* Chandragupta Maurya captures Magadha: Chandragupta, with the help Chanakya ( Kautilya ), who is also known as the Indian Machiavelli, destroyed the Nanda rulers of Magadha and established the Mauryan empire.

Machiavelli explained that in his time the Near East was again ruled by an empire, the Ottoman empire, with similar characteristics to that of Darius-seen from the viewpoint of a potential conqueror.

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 ).

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.

There is general agreement that Russian-French writer and political activist Matvei Golovinski fabricated the text for Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, as a work of counter-revolutionary propaganda prior to the 1905 Russian Revolution, by plagiarizing it, almost word for word in some passages, from The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a 19th century satire against Napoleon III of France written by French political satirist and Legitimist militant Maurice Joly.

Joly is best known as author of the political satire entitled The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu ( Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ), which attacks the political ambitions of Napoleon III.

One example is Maurice Joly's 1864 pamphlet entitled The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu ( Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ), which attacks the political ambitions of Napoleon III.

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.

Machiavelli mentions that placing fortresses in conquered territories, although it sometimes works, often fails.

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.

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 ".

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

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.

* The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

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

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.

* Il Principe ( 1974 ) ( text by Niccolò Machiavelli ) for 2 mixed choruses, 8 winds, 3 horns, tuba, bass guitar, piano

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

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.

Machiavelli was deprived of office in 1512 by the Medici.

Scholars often note that Machiavelli glorifies instrumentality in statebuilding-an approach embodied by the saying that " the ends justify the means.

In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli insisted that an imaginary ideal society is not a model that a prince should orient himself by.

Machiavelli was critical of catholic political thinking and may have been influenced by Averroism.

Aimed-for things which the Socratics argued would tend to happen by nature, Machiavelli said would happen by chance.

Strauss argued that Machiavelli may have seen himself as influenced by some ideas from classical materialists such as Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius.

Strauss argued that Machiavelli may indeed have been influenced by pre-Socratic philosophers, but he felt it was a new combination :-

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

He estimated that these sects last from 1666 to 3000 years each time, which, as pointed out by Leo Strauss, would mean that Christianity became due to start finishing about 150 years after Machiavelli.