Machiavelli's The Prince

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The main idea in The Prince is how a prince should properly govern people in the best ways and the qualities a prince should posses. I think that when Machiavelli wrote this he was being serious. He gave a lot of examples to back up what he believed a prince should entail. In order to have a successful government there are three methods you should choose from. First you must destroy the government, then you must live there and finally you must keep the laws already in place in tact however subject it to the idea of new ones and change. The examples of these methods come from the Spartans and the Romans. They too had to destroy many cities in order to keep them and it worked. Machiavelli writes that “the wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great.” What he is saying is …show more content…

What he means is that a man can be feared and not hated. In order to do so one must not interfere with property or women of citizens. The most important thing of all is that he must “abstain from the property of others.” However when it comes to a prince and his army it is neccesray for him to instill fear because it will help keep the soldiers unified. In this situation he should not worry about the idea of cruelty. Machiavelli seems to drift away from humanism when he discusses Hannibal. He describes how Hannibal’s men feared him and saw him as terrible due to his cruelty, which is thought to have been inhuman cruelty. All in all Machiavelli states that being loved depends on the subject while being feared depends on the prince. A wise prince will do as he see right not based on what others say, all the while doing so by doing whatever it takes to escape being

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