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The PrinceNiccolò Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici
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Niccolò Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici

Those who want to win the favor of a prince usually come before him with the things they hold dearest among their possessions, or with the things they see delight him most. So we often see princes presented with horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments worthy of their greatness. Wishing, then, to offer myself to Your Magnificence1 with some token of my devotion to you, I have found nothing among my belongings that I hold dearer or value so highly as my knowledge of the actions of great men, learned through long experience of modern affairs and continual reading of ancient ones. I have pondered and examined these things with great care for a long time, and now, having reduced them to a small volume, I send it to Your Magnificence. And although I judge this work unworthy to come into your presence, I am nonetheless confident that in your kindness you will accept it, considering that I could give you no greater gift than the means of understanding, in a very short time, everything that I have come to know over so many years and through so many hardships and dangers. I have not adorned this work or stuffed it with sweeping sentences, with pompous and magnificent words, or with any other allurement or outward ornament of the kind many writers use to describe and decorate their subjects; for I wanted either that nothing should honor it, or that only the variety of its matter and the gravity of its subject should make it welcome. Nor do I want it to be thought presumptuous that a man of low and humble station dares to discuss the government of princes and lay down rules for it. For just as those who draw maps of the land put themselves down in the plain to study the nature of mountains and high places, and climb up the mountains to study the low ground, so, to know the nature of peoples well, one must be a prince, and to know the nature of princes well, one must be one of the people.

Take, then, Your Magnificence, this small gift in the spirit in which I send it. If you read it and consider it carefully, you will find in it my deepest wish: that you may reach the greatness that fortune and your other qualities promise you. And if Your Magnificence, from the summit of your height, should sometimes turn your eyes toward these low places, you will see how undeservedly I bear a great and unremitting malice of fortune.2

Notes

  1. 1. Lorenzo de’ Medici (1492–1519), grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He governed Florence for the Medici from 1513 and became Duke of Urbino in 1516. Machiavelli first meant to dedicate the book to Lorenzo’s uncle Giuliano, who died in 1516.

  2. 2. When the Medici returned to Florence in 1512, Machiavelli lost his post as secretary of the republic; early in 1513 he was imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of conspiracy, then released. He wrote this book on his small farm outside the city.