The Prince Analysis

If you've ever been to a Renaissance Festival, you'll know exactly what we are talking about. Actually, you won't. What time period do fairies, mermaids, and meat-on-a-stick come from anyway?Minor...

Machiavelli isn't pulling any Jedi mind tricks on us with this one. The narration of The Prince is pretty straightforward. He's not really telling us a story, but instructing us. Sure, we have some...

Well, it's certainly not the next great American novel. It's not any kind of novel, actually. The Prince is a treatise, which is just a dressy way to say "really long discussion of an idea." Since...

Misanthropic (i.e. Man-hating)Have you noticed that Machiavelli seems to think that most people are idiots? Not us, because we're awesome, but you know, normal people. The way that Machiavelli talk...

We're sorry to come at you with these big words that mean nearly the same thing, when we could have used simple words like "brief," or "concise," but that's just not nearly as fun and you'll thank...

Machiavelli's title is about as generic as can be, but it still needs some explaining. When the book first circulated in Italy around 1513, it was titled De Principatibus, or About Principalities....

The book was originally dedicated to Giuliano de Medici, who took Florence when the Medicis returned in 1512. Unfortunately, Giuliano died just four years later, so Machiavelli decided to switch it...

Virtue against furyShall take up arms; and the fight be short; For ancient valourIs not dead in Italian hearts. (26.8)Machiavelli's little book ends with these four lines from Petrarch's famous Can...

Don't get scared. We have a perfectly good reason for giving The Prince such a high toughness rating. It's not that we wanted to give it a high number, but when we stacked everything on the tough-o...

After The Prince was published, Machiavelli became so hated that he had a lot of "colorful" nicknames including the Devil's partner in crime and Murderous Machiavel.In case you doubted that the Med...

Nada. Zip. Zero. Machiavelli even tells rulers to keep their hands to themselves, so there is no steaminess in The Prince at all.

Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (2.1)Justin (6.8)Pope Leo X (11.5)Tacitus, Annals (13.8)Xenophon, Life of Cyrus (14.5)Virgil, Aeneid (17.1)Livy (26.3)Petrarch (26.7) Francesc...