SSXV2
Of Those Things for Which Men
And Especially Princes Are
Praised or Blamed
8117
It remains now to see what the modes and government of a
prince should be with subjects and with friends. And be-
cause I know that many have written of this, I fear that in
writing of it again, I may be held presumptuous, especially
since in disputing this matter I depart from the orders of
others. But since my intent is to write something useful to
whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting
to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the
imagination of it. And many have imagined republics and
principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in
truth; for it is so far from how one lives to how one should
live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be
done learns his ruin rather than his preservation. For a man
who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must
come to ruin among so many who are not good. Hence it is
necessary to a prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to
learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it
according to necessity.
Thus, leaving out what is imagined about a prince and
discussing what is true, I say that all men, whenever one
speaks of them, and especially princes, since they are placed
higher, are noted for some of the qualities that bring them
either blame or praise. And this is why someone is consid-
ered liberal, someone mean (using a Tuscan term because
avaro (avaricious) in our language is still one who desires to
have something by rapine, misero (mean] we call one who
refrains too much from using what is his); someone is con-
sidered a giver, someone rapacious; someone cruel, some-
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out any
one merciful;1 the one a breaker of faith, the other faithful;
the one effeminate and pusillanimous, the other fierce and
spirited; the one humane, the other proud; the one lascivi-
ous, the other chaste; the one honest, the other astute; the
one hard, the other agreeable;2 the one grave, the other
light; the one religious, the other unbelieving, and the like.
And I know that everyone will confess that it would be a
very praiseworthy thing to find in a prince all of the above-
mentioned qualities that are held good. But because he
cannot have them, nor wholly observe them, since human
conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be so
prudent as to know how to avoid the infamy of those vices
that would take his state from him and to be on guard against
those that do not, if that is possible; but if one cannot, one
can let them go on with less hesitation. And furthermore
one should not care about incurring the fame+ of those vices
without which it is difficult to save one's state; for if one
considers everything weil, one will find something appears
to be virtue, which if pursued would be one's ruin, and
something else appears to be vice, which if pursued results
in one's security and well-being.
liberal, hurts' you. For if it is used virtuously and as it should
be used, it may not be recognized, and you will not escape
the infamy of its contrary. And so, if one wants to maintain a
name for liberality among men, it is necessary not to leave
kind of lavish display, so that a prince who has done
this will always consume all his resources in such deeds. In
the end it will be necessary, if he wants to maintain a name
for liberality, to burden the people extraordinarily, to be
rigorous with taxes, and to do all those things that can be
done to get money. This will begin to make him hated by his
subjects, and little esteemed by anyone as he becomes poor;
so having offended the many and rewarded the few with this
liberality of his, he feels every least hardship and runs into
risk at every slight danger. When he recognizes this, and
wants to draw back from it, he immediately incurs the
infamy of meanness.
Thus, since a prince cannot, without damage to him-
self, use the virtue of liberality so that it is recognized, he
should not, if he is prudent, care about a name for meanness.
For with time he will always be held more and more liberal
when it is seen that with his parsimony his income is enough
for him, that he can defend himself from whoever makes
war on him, and that he can undertake campaigns without
burdening the people. So he comes to use liberality with all
those from whom he does not take, who are infinite, and
meanness with all those to whom he does not give, who
are few. In our times we have not seen great things done
except by those who have been considered mean; the others
have been eliminated. Pope Julius II, while he made
of a name for liberality to attain the papacy, did not think of
maintaining it later, so as to be able to make war. The pres-
ent king of France? has carried on many wars without
imposing an extraordinary tax on his subjects, only because
1. pietoso has a connotation of “pious.”
2. lit.: easy.
3. Or honestly.
4. Some manuscripts have infamia, "infamy."
OS XVIZA
Of Liberality and Parsimony
Beginning, then, with the first of the above-mentioned
qualities, I say that it would be good to be held liberal;
nonetheless, liberality, when used so that you may be held
I. lit.: offends.
2. Louis XII.
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use it; and you become either poor and contemptible or, to
escape poverty, rapacious and hateful. Among all the things
that a prince should guard against is being contemptible and
hated, and liberality leads you to both. So there is more
wisdom in maintaining a name for meanness, which begets
infamy without hatred, than in being under a necessity,
because one wants to have a name for liberality, to incur a
name for rapacity, which begets infamy with hatred.
the extra expenses were administered with his long-
practiced parsimony. If the present king of Spain' had been
held liberal, he would not have been able to make or win so
many campaigns.
Therefore, so as not to have to rob his subjects, to be
able to defend himself, not to become poor and
contempt-
ible, nor to be forced to become rapacious, a prince should
esteem it little to incur a name for meanness, because this
one of those vices which enable him to rule. And if someone
should say: Caesar attained empire with liberality, and many
others, because they have been and have been held to be
liberal, have attained very great rank, I respond: either you
are already a prince or you are on the path to acquiring it: in
the first case this liberality is damaging; in the second it is
indeed necessary to be held liberal. And Caesar was one of
those who wanted to attain the principate of Rome; but if
after he had arrived there, had he remained alive and not
been temperate with his expenses, he would have destroyed
that empire. And if someone should reply: many have been
princes and have done great things with their armies who
have been held very liberal, I respond to you: either the
prince spends from what is his own and his subjects' or from
what belongs to someone else. In the first case he should be
sparing; in the other, he should not leave out any part of
liberality. And for the prince who goes out with his armies,
who feeds on booty, pillage, and ransom and manages on
what belongs to someone else, this liberality is necessary;
otherwise he would not be followed by his soldiers. And of
what is not yours or your subjects' one can be a bigger giver,
as were Cyrus, Caesar, and Alexander, because spend-
ing what is someone else's does not take reputation from
you but adds it to you; only spending your own is what
harms you. And there is nothing that consumes itself as
much as liberality: while you use it, you lose the capacity to
XVIIS
Of Cruelty and Mercy,' and
Whether It Is Better to Be Loved
Than Feared, or the Contrary
Descending next to the other qualities cited before, I say
that each prince should desire to be held merciful and not
cruel; nonetheless he should take care not to use this mercy
badly. Cesare Borgia was held to be cruel; nonetheless his
cruelty restored the Romagna, united it, and reduced it to
peace and to faith. If one considers this well, one will see
that he was much more merciful than the Florentine people,
who so as to escape a name for cruelty, allowed Pistoia to be
destroyed.? A prince, therefore, so as to keep his subjects
united and faithful, should not care about the infamy of
cruelty, because with very few examples he will be more
merciful than those who for the sake of too much mercy
allow disorders to continue, from which come killings or
1. Or piety, throughout The Prince.
2. From 1500 to 1502 Pistoia, a city subject to Florence, was torn
by factional disputes and riots. NM was there as representative of the
Florentines on several occasions in IgoI.
3. Ferdinand the Catholic.
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OS
robberies; for these customarily hurt’ a whole community,"
but the executions that come from the prince hurt one
particular person. And of all princes, it is impossible for the
new prince to escape a name for cruelty because new states
are full of dangers. And Virgil says in the mouth of Dido:
“The harshness of things and the newness of the kingdom
compel me to contrive such things, and to keep a broad
watch over the borders.” 6
Nonetheless, he should be slow to believe and to
move, nor should he make himself feared, and he should
proceed in a temperate mode with prudence and humanity
so that too much confidence does not make him incautious
and too much diffidence does not render him intolerable.
From this a dispute arises whether it is better to be
loved than feared, or the reverse. The response is that one
would want to be both the one and the other; but because it
is difficult to put them together, it is much safer to be feared
than loved, if one has to lack one of the two. For one can
say this generally of men: that they are ungrateful, fickle,
pretenders and dissemblers, evaders of danger, eager for
gain. While you do them good, they are yours, offering you
their blood, property, lives, and children, as I said above,
when the need for them is far away; but, when it is close to
you, they revolt. And that prince who has founded himself
entirely on their words, stripped of other preparation, is
ruined; for friendships that are acquired at a price and not
with greatness and nobility of spirit are bought, but they are
not owned and when the time comes they cannot be spent.
And men have less hesitation to offend one who makes
himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is
held by a chain of obligation, which, because men are
wicked, is broken at every opportunity for their own utility,
but fear is held by a dread of punishment that never forsakes
you.
The prince should nonetheless make himself feared in
such a mode that if he does not acquire love, he escapes
hatred, because being feared and not being hated can go
together very well. This he will always do if he abstains from
the property of his citizens and his subjects, and from their
women; and if he also needs to proceed against someone's
life, he must do it when there is suitable justification and
manifest cause for it. But above all, he must abstain from the
property of others, because men forget the death of a father
more quickly than the loss of a patrimony. Furthermore,
causes for taking away property are never lacking, and he
who begins to live by rapine always finds cause to seize
others' property; and, on the contrary, causes for taking life'
are rarer and disappear more quickly.
But when the prince is with his armies and has a multi-
tude of soldiers under his government, then it is above all
necessary not to care about a name for cruelty, because
without this name he never holds his army united, or dis-
posed to any action. Among the admirable actions of
Hannibal is numbered this one that when he had a very
large army, mixed with infinite kinds of men, and had led it
to fight in alien lands, no dissension ever arose in it, neither
among themselves nor against the prince, in bad as well as in
his good fortune. This could not have arisen from anything
other than his inhuman cruelty which, together with his
infinite virtues, always made him venerable and terrible in
the sight of his soldiers; and without it, his other virtues
would not have sufficed to bring about this effect. And the
writers, having considered little in this, on the one hand
admire this action of his but on the other condemn the
principal cause of it.
3. lit.: offend
4. lit.: a whole universality.
5. lit.: offend.
6. Virgil, Aeneid I 563-64.
7. See Chapter 9.
8. lit.: blood.
9. lit.: blood.
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And to see that it is true that his other virtues would
not have been enough, one can consider Scipio, who was
very rare not only in his times but also in the entire memory
of things known-whose armies in Spain rebelled against
him. This arose from nothing but his excessive mercy,
which had allowed his soldiers more license than is fitting
for military discipline. Scipio's mercy was reproved in the
Senate by Fabius Maximus, who called him the corruptor of
the Roman military. After the Locrians had been destroyed
by a legate of Scipio's, they were not avenged by him, nor
was the insolence of that legate corrected-all of which
arose from his agreeable nature, so that when someone in
the Senate wanted to excuse him, he said that there were
many men who knew better how not to err than how to
correct errors. Such a nature would in time have sullied
Scipio's fame and glory if he had continued with it in the
empire; but while he lived under the government of the
Senate, this damaging quality of his not only was hidden,
but made for his glory. 10
I conclude, then, returning to being feared and loved,
that since men love at their convenience and fear at the
convenience of the prince, a wise prince should found him-
self on what is his, not on what is someone else's; he should
only contrive to avoid hatred, as was said.
stands. Nonetheless one sees by experience in our times that
the princes who have done great things are those who have
taken little account of faith and have known how to get
around men's brains with their astuteness; and in the end
they have overcome those who have founded themselves
on loyalty.
Thus, you' must know that there are two kinds of
combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is
proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is
often not enough, one must have recourse to the second.
Therefore it is necessary for a prince to know well how to
use the beast and the man. This role was taught covertly to
princes by ancient writers, who wrote that Achilles, and
many other ancient princes, were given to Chiron the cen-
taur to be raised, so that he would look after them with his
discipline. To have as teacher a half-beast, half-man means
nothing other than that a prince needs to know how to use
both natures, and the one without the other is not lasting.
Thus, since a prince is compelled of necessity to
know well how to use the beast, he should pick the fox
and the lion, because the lion does not defend itself from
snares and the fox does not defend itself from wolves. So
one needs to be a fox to recognize snares and a lion to
frighten the wolves. Those who stay simply with the lion
do not understand this. A prudent lord, therefore, cannot
observe faith, nor should he, when such observance turns
against him, and the causes that made him promise have
been eliminated. And if all men were good, this teaching
would not be good; but because they are wicked and do
not observe faith with you, you also do not have to ob-
serve it with them. Nor does a prince ever lack legitimate
causes to color his failure to observe faith. One could give
infinite modern examples of this, and show how many
peace treaties and promises have been rendered invalid and
10. On the comparison between Hannibal and Scipio, see also
Discourses on Livy III 19–21. NM's source is in Livy, XXIX 19, 21.
XVIII
In What Mode Faith Should Be
Kept by Princes
How praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his faith, and to
live with honesty and not by astuteness, everyone under-
1. The formal or plural you.
2. A possible source for this: Cicero, De Officiis I. 11.34; 13.41.
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