A Note on the Translation

This is a complete translation of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe, made directly from the Italian. No earlier English version was used as its basis. The source is a public-domain digital edition of the text established by Luigi Firpo (Turin, 1972). One paragraph missing from that digital text, the second of chapter XV, has been translated from the Italian edition of 1814.

The book consists of a dedication and twenty-six chapters. Machiavelli wrote his chapter headings in Latin; they are translated here, with Roman numerals. Each of Machiavelli’s 129 paragraphs appears as one paragraph, neither split nor merged. His paragraphs are long and his sentences often longer; we have kept their drive, the “I say,” the “therefore,” the hard either/or, rather than cutting them into tidy pieces.

Two words carry the argument of the book. Fortuna is “fortune” throughout: chance, circumstance, the force that gives and takes away. Its partner virtù is not Christian virtue but the capacity to act: skill, energy, foresight, nerve. We have rendered it “ability,” so that the book’s recurring alternative reads “by fortune or by ability,” and so that Agathocles, a man of great virtù and no goodness, does not seem to be praised for being good. Where Machiavelli sets virtù against vice as a moral quality (chapters XV–XIX), it is “virtue.” Stato is usually “state,” but “power” or “position” where it means a ruler’s hold on power. The famous verità effettuale of chapter XV is “the effectual truth,” the truth of things as they actually work out.

Names of Italians are given in Italian; popes, kings, and ancients in their usual English forms. Spelling and punctuation are American. Latin quotations are translated in the text, with the Latin in a note. The notes are short and factual: they identify the people and events Machiavelli names without explanation, give the sources of quotations, and point out the few places where his memory slipped. They offer no interpretation.