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　　The Prince and Other Writings, by Niccolo Machiavelli, is partof the Barnes Noble Classics series, which offers qualityeditions at affordable prices to the student and the generalreader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages ofcarefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable featuresof Barnes Noble Classics:
　　New introductions commissioned from today's top writers andscholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporaryhistorical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes andendnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems,books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired bythe work Comments by other famous authors Study questions tochallenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographiesfor further reading Indices Glossaries, when appropriateAlleditions are beautifully designed and are printed to superiorspecifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.Barnes Noble Classics pulls together a constellation ofinfluences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich eachreader's understanding of these enduring works.

The Prince and Other Writings, by Niccolo Machiavelli, is part
of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality
editions at affordable prices to the student and the general
reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of
carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features
of Barnes & Noble Classics: 
　　New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and
scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary
historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and
endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems,
books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by
the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to
challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies
for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll
editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior
specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.
Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of
influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each
reader's understanding of these enduring works. 
　　One of history’s greatest political philosophers, Niccolò
Machiavelli is notorious for his treatise The Prince, which has
become a cornerstone of modern political theory. Written in 1513
and published in 1532, after Machivelli’s death, The Prince
immediately provoked controversy that has continued unabated to
this day. 
　　Defining human nature as inherently selfish, Machiavelli proposes
that social conflict and violence are natural phenomena that help
determine the ablest, most versatile form of government. Asserting
that idealism has no place in the political arena, The Prince
primarily addresses a monarch’s difficulties in retaining
authority. Considered the first expression of political realism, it
has often been accused of advocating a political philosophy in
which “the end justifies the means.” Indeed the emphasis in The
Prince on practical success, at the expense even of traditional
moral values, earned Machiavelli a reputation for ruthlessness,
deception, and cruelty. Many scholars contend, however, that the
author’s pragmatic views of ethics and politics reflected the
realities of his time, as exemplified by the Medici family of
Florence. 
　　Debates about Machiavelli’s theories are as lively today as they
were 450 years ago, but no one questions the importance of his
fundamental contribution to Western political thought. This newly
translated edition also includes Machiavelli’s Letter to Francesco
Vettori, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, and excerpts from the
Discourses on Livy.

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目　　录

The World of NiccolO Machiavelli and The Prince
Introduction by Wayne A. Rebhorn
THE PRINCE
THE LIFE OF CASTRUCCIO CASTRACA)NI
OF LUCCA
A LETTER FROM NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
TO FRANCESCO VETTORI
Excerpts from DISCOURSES ON THE FIRST TEN
BOOKS OF TITUS LIVY
Comments & Questions
For Further Reading
Index

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　　From Wayne Rebhorn’s Introduction to The Prince and OtherWritings
　　All of Machiavelli’s works, and especially The Prince, can beread as a series of responses to the crises he was living through,to the personal crisis he experienced when the Florentine republicfell in 1512, and to the larger crises involving Italian andinternational politics, the theoretical conception of the state,and the vision of the ruler. Or perhaps it would be better to saythat his texts are not just passive responses to those crises, butactive attempts to define, to give voice to, what was happening inthe world around him, and indeed to promote action in that world aswell. In them Machiavelli is asking over and over the samequestions: why are we Italians so weak, so much unlike our Romanancestors? Why have we become the prey of the larger states aroundus? And how can we remedy this situation? What sort of state andwhat sort of ruler will allow us not just to maintain ourindependence, but perhaps to regain some of the glory of ancientRome? Bound up with these questions was Machiavelli’s more personalone: why did I fail, and how can I get back the political role Ionce played in the republic? As he tries to answer these questionsin The Prince, the Discourses, and his other works, he alsograpples with the problem of how to make sense out of history, howto extract useful lessons from it so that we can avoid the mistakesof the past.

From Wayne Rebhorn’s Introduction to The Prince and Other
Writings 
　　All of Machiavelli’s works, and especially The Prince, can be
read as a series of responses to the crises he was living through,
to the personal crisis he experienced when the Florentine republic
fell in 1512, and to the larger crises involving Italian and
international politics, the theoretical conception of the state,
and the vision of the ruler. Or perhaps it would be better to say
that his texts are not just passive responses to those crises, but
active attempts to define, to give voice to, what was happening in
the world around him, and indeed to promote action in that world as
well. In them Machiavelli is asking over and over the same
questions: why are we Italians so weak, so much unlike our Roman
ancestors? Why have we become the prey of the larger states around
us? And how can we remedy this situation? What sort of state and
what sort of ruler will allow us not just to maintain our
independence, but perhaps to regain some of the glory of ancient
Rome? Bound up with these questions was Machiavelli’s more personal
one: why did I fail, and how can I get back the political role I
once played in the republic? As he tries to answer these questions
in The Prince, the Discourses, and his other works, he also
grapples with the problem of how to make sense out of history, how
to extract useful lessons from it so that we can avoid the mistakes
of the past. 
　　Although Machiavelli theorizes about politics throughout his
works, he takes pains to separate what he is doing from the work of
pure theorists. Thus, at the start of chapter 15 in The Prince, he
distinguishes himself from those who “have imagined republics and
principalities for themselves which have never been seen or known
to exist in reality.” Instead, he tells us, he writes about la
verità effetuale della cosa, “the effectual truth of the matter.”
By “effectual truth” he means a truth—about politics as well as
about human nature—that has an effect in the real world, rather
than something more purely speculative or contemplative. Although
More’s Utopia might seem to be the sort of work about an imaginary
republic that Machiavelli is objecting to here, it was written in
1515 and 1516, some two years or so after Machiavelli started
working on The Prince. Nevertheless, More’s thought-experiment
about the best of all possible states grows out of a long
tradition, which Machiavelli surely knew, of imagining ideal states
and rulers, a tradition that stretches back into antiquity and that
has Plato’s Republic as one of its clear progenitors. Moreover,
there was a genre of political writing to which both authors are
responding in their books, a genre called the speculum principis,
the “mirror for princes,” in which authors composed idealized
portraits of princes and their duties in order to offer instruction
to rulers and rulers in training. The great Dutch Humanist
Desiderius Erasmus had written just such a volume, the Institutio
principis christiani (The Education of a Christian Prince), for
Charles V, and published it in 1516. Like many works in this genre
that stretch back well into the Middle Ages, Erasmus’s book offers
sober advice stressing the importance of Judeo-Christian morality
as the basis for governing. While More’s Utopia fits quite
comfortably into this genre in many ways, Machiavelli’s Prince can
almost be read as a parody of its idealistic moralizing, for his
book repeatedly underscores the gap between morality and politics,
insisting that a prince who tries to do good in a world full of bad
people will inevitably come to grief. Machiavelli takes the name of
the genre seriously: he tries to reflect in the “mirror” of his
book what real princes really do—and must do—in the real world if
they are to obtain and maintain political power. 
　　In keeping with his preference for an effectual truth that bears
fruit in the real world, Machiavelli stresses the importance of
judging human beings and their deeds in terms of how things turn
out in the end. This is not the same thing as saying that the end
justifies the means, although sometimes Machiavelli is interpreted
that way. Revealingly, in chapter 18 of The Prince, “How Princes
Must Keep Their Word,” he uses a phrase that shows just how
different his thought is on this subject. The phrase occurs just
after Machiavelli has declared that a prince must appear to be “all
mercy, all loyalty, all sincerity, all humanity, all religion,”
although he need not actually have any of these qualities. The
reason is that men in general judge things by appearances and that
the few who may perceive the truth will be overwhelmed by the many
who do not. Moreover, he continues, “in the actions of all men, and
especially of princes, where there is no court of appeal, one looks
at the outcome.” “One looks at the outcome”: si guarda al fine.
Machiavelli’s statement here may seem to suggest he is saying that
the end or outcome justifies whatever means the prince might use to
achieve it—in other words, that a good end makes even the most
wicked means morally acceptable. But what he is really saying is
that people will judge a prince’s means to be good as long as he
succeeds and the outcome is beneficial to them. Machiavelli admits,
both here and in his works generally, that morality may be a good
thing, but it is not what drives people’s behavior in the real
world. What he is not saying, however, is also important, for by
not declaring that the end justifies the means for the prince, he
is not offering the prince a convenient way out of the moral
dilemma he faces, which results from the fact that if he wants to
gain and keep political power, he has to do despicable things that
cannot really be justified morally by the end he pursues. If one
could argue that a prince who does evil does it simply in order to
bring about some greater moral good—defined as, say, political
stability or economic welfare— then this problem would vanish. Such
a move was precisely the one made by political theorists in
Machiavelli’s wake who came up with the idea of ragione di stato or
raison d’état—namely, that some serious and morally unimpeachable
“reason of state” could justify the most criminally culpable acts.
By contrast, what Machiavelli is saying is harder, more
uncomfortable, more thought-provoking, and more cynical: sometimes
the prince must do evil simply because he cannot gain or preserve
power otherwise, but as long as he succeeds and people benefit from
it, they will not be upset.

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