The Prince | Page 7

in the state.
And it is on the literary side of his character, and there alone, that we
find no weakness and no failure.
Although the light of almost four centuries has been focused on "The
Prince," its problems are still debatable and interesting, because they
are the eternal problems between the ruled and their rulers. Such as

they are, its ethics are those of Machiavelli's contemporaries; yet they
cannot be said to be out of date so long as the governments of Europe
rely on material rather than on moral forces. Its historical incidents and
personages become interesting by reason of the uses which Machiavelli
makes of them to illustrate his theories of government and conduct.
Leaving out of consideration those maxims of state which still furnish
some European and eastern statesmen with principles of action, "The
Prince" is bestrewn with truths that can be proved at every turn. Men
are still the dupes of their simplicity and greed, as they were in the days
of Alexander VI. The cloak of religion still conceals the vices which
Machiavelli laid bare in the character of Ferdinand of Aragon. Men will
not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be--and
are ruined. In politics there are no perfectly safe courses; prudence
consists in choosing the least dangerous ones. Then --to pass to a
higher plane--Machiavelli reiterates that, although crimes may win an
empire, they do not win glory. Necessary wars are just wars, and the
arms of a nation are hallowed when it has no other resource but to fight.
It is the cry of a far later day than Machiavelli's that government should
be elevated into a living moral force, capable of inspiring the people
with a just recognition of the fundamental principles of society; to this
"high argument" "The Prince" contributes but little. Machiavelli always
refused to write either of men or of governments otherwise than as he
found them, and he writes with such skill and insight that his work is of
abiding value. But what invests "The Prince" with more than a merely
artistic or historical interest is the incontrovertible truth that it deals
with the great principles which still guide nations and rulers in their
relationship with each other and their neighbours.
In translating "The Prince" my aim has been to achieve at all costs an
exact literal rendering of the original, rather than a fluent paraphrase
adapted to the modern notions of style and expression. Machiavelli was
no facile phrasemonger; the conditions under which he wrote obliged
him to weigh every word; his themes were lofty, his substance grave,
his manner nobly plain and serious. "Quis eo fuit unquam in partiundis
rebus, in definiendis, in explanandis pressior?" In "The Prince," it may

be truly said, there is reason assignable, not only for every word, but
for the position of every word. To an Englishman of Shakespeare's time
the translation of such a treatise was in some ways a comparatively
easy task, for in those times the genius of the English more nearly
resembled that of the Italian language; to the Englishman of to-day it is
not so simple. To take a single example: the word "intrattenere,"
employed by Machiavelli to indicate the policy adopted by the Roman
Senate towards the weaker states of Greece, would by an Elizabethan
be correctly rendered "entertain," and every contemporary reader would
understand what was meant by saying that "Rome entertained the
Aetolians and the Achaeans without augmenting their power." But
to-day such a phrase would seem obsolete and ambiguous, if not
unmeaning: we are compelled to say that "Rome maintained friendly
relations with the Aetolians," etc., using four words to do the work of
one. I have tried to preserve the pithy brevity of the Italian so far as was
consistent with an absolute fidelity to the sense. If the result be an
occasional asperity I can only hope that the reader, in his eagerness to
reach the author's meaning, may overlook the roughness of the road
that leads him to it.
The following is a list of the works of Machiavelli:
Principal works. Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa, 1499; Del modo di
trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati, 1502; Del modo tenuto dal
duca Valentino nell' ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo,
etc., 1502; Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro, 1502; Decennale
primo (poem in terza rima), 1506; Ritratti delle cose dell' Alemagna,
1508-12; Decennale secondo, 1509; Ritratti delle cose di Francia, 1510;
Discorsi sopra la prima deca di T. Livio, 3 vols., 1512-17; Il Principe,
1513; Andria, comedy translated from Terence, 1513 (?); Mandragola,
prose comedy in five acts, with prologue in verse, 1513; Della lingua
(dialogue), 1514; Clizia, comedy in prose, 1515 (?); Belfagor
arcidiavolo (novel), 1515; Asino d'oro (poem in