The Prince Summary & key ideas explained

Florence, early 1513. A man hangs from a rope by his wrists, which are tied behind his back. His jailers drop him, then haul him up again. They want a confession about a plot against the Medici family, who have just retaken the city. He has nothing to confess. His name simply turned up on a list.

That man is Niccolò Machiavelli. For fourteen years he served the Florentine republic as a senior official and diplomat. He met kings and popes and spent months at the side of one of the most feared men in Italy. Now the republic is gone, and so is his job. When a new pope's amnesty frees him, he retreats to a small farm outside the city.

By day he checks on the woodcutters and plays cards with the locals at the inn. In the evening, as he tells a friend in a famous letter, he changes into courtly clothes and spends hours with the great writers of the ancient world. Out of those evenings comes a short book, written for a Medici prince: a handbook on how to gain power and how to hold on to it.

It wasn't published until 1532, five years after his death. Within a few decades the Church had banned it. His name became an adjective for scheming. And yet rulers, generals and executives have read it ever since.

So what did he say that still makes people so uneasy?