How to Be a Tyrant 101.
Niccolò Machiavelli. The Prince. Translated with notes by George Bull, introduction by Anthony Grafton. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. For one of the most brilliant, albeit conniving, minds of any century, it is surprising that Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince. Having been a close advisor to the Medici family until the Florentine republic was restored and the Medici were expelled, he began a close relationship with both the papacy and the pope’s son, Cesare Borgia. When trying to get back into the Medici’s good graces, he was instead imprisoned and tortured. Machiavelli wrote The Prince as more of an apology and a last play to regain some position in society. Knowing Machiavelli’s goal with his writing, one can…show more content… The only weakness of the book is that it does not feel as though the thoughts expressed in it are truly Machiavelli’s, it truly feels like “How to Be a Tyrant 101” and that is not the Machiavelli that the world had come to know. His time in exile and his personal need for a station took him away from his original ideals. Machiavelli wrote this book for the Medici but it reached much farther to many princes and their kingdoms. This man is said to have a republic and yet this book is a set of guidelines for how a prince should torture his people and possibly eradicate an entire noble family to keep the current family in power. What Machiavelli wrote is shocking to a degree because he had become a close confidant of Cesare Borgia, the bastard and hated son of Pope Alexander VI. Machiavelli helped Cesare raise fear and helped bring him more favor from his father the Pope. Cesare Borgia and motley group of murders wreaked havoc all over Italy during his father’s papacy and Machiavelli was there at his…show more content… He wrote this book as a way to appease the family that had thrown him aside, imprisoned and tortured him; he was saying whatever he could think of to gain favor with the Medici again. Machiavelli wrote to appease one man and the truths in his book are few and far between, this is very different from the standards that Western society holds writers to in the present day. If an author writes a fallacy: it is all over the news, the author is interviewed on every major television station and is, sometimes, forced to pull said book. Since Machiavelli, the time of Princes and Popes has ended; the world is no longer chained to one family or one man of faith. Society as a whole has changed completely since that brown nosed, people pleaser roamed the Earth. Machiavelli wrote what was necessary to regain a title and the ability to rejoin society at the level he had once