In the spirit of accuracy, I have not provided long historical notes to explain Machiavelli’s examples. The Prince is not a history book. It was written, we believe, in 1513, and it was dedicated, we know, to Lorenzo de’ Medici. But it was written for the future and addressed above all others, including Lorenzo, to “whoever understands it” (Chapter 15). This does not mean that readers who want to understand The Prince can ignore Machiavelli’s examples and merely make a list of his sensational assertions. On the contrary, those assertions are always modified, sometimes even contradicted, by the
...more
