The Prince
Il Principe
EditionTranslated from the original Italian
Machiavelli’s short, unsentimental handbook on how power is won, kept, and lost, translated afresh from the Italian.
Also in the library: the complete Korean translation.
Anyone can read the first chapter. Join free to read to the end and download EPUB and PDF.
DRM-free files. Translation CC BY-NC 4.0; the original work is in the public domain.
About the book
Written in 1513 by a Florentine official who had just lost his post, tortured and sent into exile on his farm, The Prince is a book about power as it actually works. In a dedication and twenty-six short chapters, Machiavelli sets out how principalities are acquired and held, why mercenaries fail, whether it is better to be loved or feared, and how far fortune rules human affairs.
This complete English translation is made directly from the Italian text established by Luigi Firpo. It keeps Machiavelli’s 129 paragraphs one for one and his blunt, fast-moving argument in modern American English. Short notes identify the people and events he names, from Cesare Borgia to the Roman emperors.
Highlights
- So you need to be a fox to recognize the snares and a lion to frighten off the wolves.
- By these methods one can acquire power, but not glory.
- Men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands, because it belongs to everyone to see, to few to touch.
Contents
Anyone can read up to the first chapter. Chapters with a lock are open to free members.
Colophon
Translated from the original Italian. Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.Full colophon
The Prince
Original title · Il Principe (Latin working title De principatibus)
Author · Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
Translator · Ether Library
Written and first published · Written in 1513; first printed in 1532, five years after the author’s death, in Rome (Antonio Blado) and in Florence (heirs of Filippo Giunta).
Source text · A public-domain digital edition of the Italian text established by Luigi Firpo (Turin: Einaudi, 1972); the second paragraph of chapter XV, missing there, from the Italian edition of 1814. Translated directly from the Italian.
Extent · Complete and unabridged · dedication and twenty-six chapters · 129 paragraphs, as in the original · short translator’s notes on persons, events, and quotations
Copyright · The author died in 1527; the original work is in the public domain.
This translation · Translated from the Italian by Ether Library. The English text is © Ether Library and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0): you may copy and share it for noncommercial purposes, with attribution.
Edition · English edition 1.0 · October 2026
Typography · Set in Lora (SIL Open Font License 1.1). Cover painting and design by Ether Library.
Original in the public domain · English translation CC BY-NC 4.0
Ether Library · No. 0012