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.

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.

Machiavelli describes Hannibal as having the " virtue " of " inhuman cruelty ".

On the other hand, and in support of the first idea, Frederick points out the numerous cases in which Machiavelli had ignored or slighted the bad ends of the numerous malefactors he describes and praises.

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.

Cicero also describes anacyclosis in his philosophical work De re publica, as well as Machiavelli in Book I, Chapter II in his Discourses on Livy.

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

Besides being a statesman and political scientist, Machiavelli also translated classical works, and was a dramaturge ( Clizia, Mandragola ), a poet ( Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave, Canti carnascialeschi ), and a novelist ( Belfagor arcidiavolo ).

Machiavelli is generally seen as being critical of Christianity as it existed in his time, specifically its effect upon politics, and also everyday life.

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 ".

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.

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 ".

He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that they treated his works as the " Koran of the courtiers ".

As he began to focus on the human being rather than the natural world, his understanding of psychology and motivation was also influenced by the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, whose analysis helped him to articulate a much darker view of human nature in his later years, and about whom he wrote the article Monsieur Machiavel, ou le coeur humain dévoilé ( 1951 ).

The Renaissance scholars, most prominent among them being Niccolò Machiavelli, looked back on the ancient period with great interest and reverence.

He has written on the early political writers Niccolò Machiavelli and Étienne de La Boétie and explored " the Totalitarian enterprise " in its " denial of social division ... of the difference between the order of power, the order of law and the order of knowledge ".

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.

Della Lingua ( Italian for " Of the Language ") ( 1514 ), a dialogue about Italy's language is normally attributed to Machiavelli.

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.

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.

Hamilton learned from Machiavelli about the importance of foreign policy for domestic policy, but may have broken from him regarding how rapacious a republic needed to be in order to survive ( George Washington was probably less influenced by Machiavelli ).

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.

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 used the Persian empire of Darius III, conquered by Alexander the Great, to illustrate this point and then noted that the Medici, if they think about it, will find this historical example similar to the " kingdom of the Turk " ( Ottoman Empire ) in their time-making this a potentially easier conquest to hold than France would be.

This chapter is possibly the most well-known of the work, and it is important because of the reasoning behind Machiavelli ’ s famous idea that it is better to be feared than loved – his justification is purely pragmatic ; as he notes, “ Men worry less about doing an injury to one who makes himself loved than to one who makes himself feared .” Fear is simply a means to an end, and that end is security for the prince.

Chanakya is often called the " Indian Machiavelli ", although his works predate Machiavelli's by about 1, 800 years.

The historical consciousness that becomes visible in their work is a significant rupture in our thinking about the past ... Human agency was a central element in the historical thought of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, but they did not have a modern notion of individuality ... They started to disentangle historiography from its rhetorical framework, and in Guicciardini ’ s work we can observe the first traces of a critical historical method.

Wells's novel about his affair with Amber Reeves, The New Machiavelli ( 1911 ).

Robert Neelly Bellah has observed that most of the great republican theorists of the Western world have shared Rousseau's concerns about the mutually exclusive nature of republicanism and Christianity, from Machiavelli ( more on which later ) to Alexis de Tocqueville.

Machiavelli, like many people of Florence, was however not a full citizen of Florence, due to the nature of Florentine citizenship in that time, even under the republican regime.

The major difference between Machiavelli and the Socratics, according to Strauss, is Machiavelli's materialism and therefore his rejection of both a teleological view of nature, and of the view that philosophy is higher than politics.

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

Machiavelli however, along with some of his classical predecessors, saw ambition and spiritedness, and therefore war, as inevitable and part of human nature.

Frederick's argument is essentially moral in nature: he asserts that Machiavelli offered a partial and biased view of statecraft.

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 ).

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.

While Christianity sees modesty as a virtue and pride as sinful, Machiavelli took a more classical position, seeing ambition, spiritedness, and the pursuit of glory as good and natural things, and part of the virtue and prudence that good princes should have.

Although the work advises princes how to tyrannize, Machiavelli is generally thought to have preferred some form of free republic.

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.

After first mentioning that a new prince can quickly become as respected as a hereditary one, Machiavelli says princes in Italy who had long standing power and lost it can not blame bad luck, but should blame their own indolence.

Even more unusual, rather than simply suggesting caution as a prudent way to try to avoid the worst of bad luck, Machiavelli holds that the greatest princes in history tend to be ones who take more risks, and rise to power through their own labour, virtue, prudence, and particularly by their ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

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.

The book was dedicated to Prince Charles, who later became Habsburg Emperor Charles V. It was written by Desiderius Erasmus in 1516, the same year as Thomas More finished his Utopia and only three years after Machiavelli had written his antithetical advice book for princes Il Principe.