"[T]he law is ... contriving to produce this condition in the city as a whole, harmonizing the citizens together through persuasion or compulsion, and making them share with each other the benefit they can confer on the community. It produces such men in the city, not in order to allow them to turn in whatever direction each one wants, but to make use of them to bind the city together," (Book VII)

"As a citizen, he decides on peace and war; as [an individual], he is circumscribed, observed, repressed in all his movements,"

Constant, Benjamin, 1819, "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns"

• Italian city-states

• Largely wealthy from trade

• Independent and autonomous republics free from feudal obligations of privileges

  • In practice, self-governing oligarchies

• Frequently at war with one another and external powers, constantly shifting alliances

• Official in Renaissance Florence c.1498-1512

• "Father of modern political philosophy"

• "Machiavellian" adjective for "deceit, deviousness, or realpolitik"

  • "the ends justify the means"

• Public life often thought to be about theological and lofty goals

• One of the first empirical and practical students of politics

• Focus on politics as it actually is, not what it should be

• Practical advice for actual human rulers

• Self-interested rulers

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 1532, The Prince

"[T]here is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers...And therefore voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to [attaining a contented life] differ only in the way [in] which produce the effect desired, (Ch. XVIII).

"In [the state of nature], there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth...no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short, (Ch. XVIII).

"Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind...From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends...And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himself so reasonable as anticipation..to master the persons of all men he can so long till he see no other power great enough to endanger him...[M]en have no pleasure...in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all. (Ch. XVIII).

"And because the condition of man...is a condition of war of every one against every one...it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man...The first fundamental law of nature is: to seek peace and follow it (Ch. XVIV).

"For the Lawes of Nature (as Justice, Equity, Modesty, Mercy, and (in summe) Doing To Others, As Wee Would Be Done To,) if themselves, without the terrour of some Power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our naturall Passions, that carry us to Partiality, Pride, Revenge, and the like. And Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all, (Ch. XVIII).

"It is a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner as ife every man should say to every man: I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition; that thou give up, thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a COMMONWEALTH," (Ch. XVII).