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Machiavelli and Xenophon
Machiavelli read Xenophon and was so impressed by him that Niccolo cited Xenophon’s works eight times in The Prince – more times than he cited Plato, Aristotle and Cicero combined.* Xenophon was...
View ArticleMachiavelli and Marx
I started reading Karl Marx’s Capital, vol 1. recently and that got me wondering about what similarities or differences there were with or between these two great political philosophers, Machiavelli...
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Reward or Punishment?
Which works best in compelling behaviour of your subordinates: the carrot or the stick? Machiavelli wrote in Chapter 17 that a Prince who cannot be both loved and feared, is more effective if he...
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A Machiavellian Mis-quote
Whilst perusing the Net for some material for my book on Machiavelli, some time back, I came across this maxim: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” It’s attributed on many,...
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Tim Parks translates The Prince
Is Machiavelli still relevant in the post-truth era? Can he help us understand the rise of modern demagogues like Donald Trump? I believe so, but in great part it depends on the translation. Many...
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The skirt-lifting incident
There’s a famous story about Caterina, the Countess of Sforza, told by Machiavelli in Chapter III of The Discourses. He tells a thinner, less explicit version in Chapter VII of The Florentine...
View ArticleMachiavelli for Mayors is almost complete
My first read/edit of The Municipal Machiavelli and its makeover into Machiavelli for Mayors is almost finished. I have to read through a couple of appendices and the bibliography to complete that...
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Machiavelli’s Prince as satire
There are scholars and readers who have suggested Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a satire, along the lines of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. That he was pointing out how leaders should not...
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A Meeting of the Minds?
Niccolo Machiavelli and Michel de Montaigne never met, nor could they have — Machiavelli died six years before Montaigne was born, and they lived about 1,200 km (800 miles) apart — but imagine the...
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Machiavelli and Sejanus
Niccolò Machiavelli only mentions Lucius Aelius Sejanus (aka Sejanus; 20 BCE – CE 31) once in his works: in a single paragraph found in his Discourses, Book III, Chapter VI—Of Conspiracies. Even then,...
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