The Prince
by Niccolò Machiavelli
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Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor, The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince... a king...a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. The prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion. Today, this small sixteenth-century masterpiece has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics.
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The Prince
2013-12-12, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
in English
1494461943 9781494461942
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The Prince
January 2003, Bantam Dell, Random House
Paperback (Mass Market)
in English
- Bantam Classic reissue
0553212788 9780553212785
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Book Details
First Sentence
"Those who wish to win favor with a prince customarily offer him those things which they hold most precious or which they see him most delight in."
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
This Bantam Classic edition of The Prince includes selections from Machiavelli's Discourses as well as an introduction and notes by the translator, Daniel Donno. In front, there is a map of Italy at the end of the Fifteenth Century showing Florentine growth.
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Work Description
The Prince (Italian: Il Principe [il ˈprintʃipe]; Latin: De Principatibus) is a 16th-century political treatise written by Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli as an instruction guide for new princes and royals. The general theme of The Prince is of accepting that the aims of princes – such as glory and survival – can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends.
From Machiavelli's correspondence, a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus (Of Principalities). However, the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. This was carried out with the permission of the Medici pope Clement VII, but "long before then, in fact since the first appearance of The Prince in manuscript, controversy had swirled about his writings".
Although The Prince was written as if it were a traditional work in the mirrors for princes style, it was generally agreed as being especially innovative. This is partly because it was written in the vernacular Italian rather than Latin, a practice that had become increasingly popular since the publication of Dante's Divine Comedy and other works of Renaissance literature.
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