Written in 1513 and circulated in manuscript during Machiavelli's lifetime, The Prince is the most famous — and most notorious — work of political philosophy in the Western canon. Composed after the author's fall from office in Florence, it is a compact, unsentimental manual on how rulers seize power, hold it, and keep their states intact.
Breaking sharply with the classical tradition that treated politics as a branch of ethics, Machiavelli argues that a ruler must be prepared to act against conventional morality when necessity demands it. He weighs whether it is better to be feared or loved, why appearing virtuous can matter more than being virtuous, how fortune must be mastered rather than trusted, and why a prince's first concern must be the strength of his own arms. Drawing on the recent history of Italy's city-states and figures such as Cesare Borgia, he illustrates his maxims with cold, concrete examples.
Published in 1532, five years after his death, The Prince has been read ever since as everything from a cynical handbook for tyrants to a clear-eyed diagnosis of how power actually works.