The Torture of Machiavelli

Power & Florence · Florence, 1513 · Niccolò Machiavelli

TL;DR: The Prince wasn't written by a cynic in power. It was written by a tortured, fired, exiled civil servant at a farmhouse table: a job application to the family that had just had him strung up by the wrists.

What actually happened

When the Medici retook Florence in 1512, Machiavelli, fourteen years the republic's diplomat and militia organizer, was sacked, then implicated by a list found on two conspirators. He was given the strappado: hoisted by wrists tied behind the back and dropped. He confessed nothing and was released in a general amnesty when Giovanni de' Medici became Pope Leo X.

Exiled to his farm, he wrote by day and by candlelight 'entered the ancient courts of ancient men,' his phrase, from the most famous letter in Italian literature, composing The Prince as both distilled experience and a plea for employment from the very family that had tortured him.

The Medici never gave him the job he wanted. The book outlived every prince in it.

The play to remember

The clearest analysis of power tends to come from those who just lost it. Proximity plus loss equals sight.

Sources & fact flags: Machiavelli's letter to Vettori (Dec 1513); Ridolfi and Viroli biographies.

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