MACHIAVELLI

Founders who acquire power through talent (virtù) seize states with great difficulty but tend to retain them easily once secured.
Reform is perilous because it threatens entrenched interests:
- Old‐order beneficiaries become zealous enemies.
- Prospective beneficiaries of the new order are lukewarm allies, paralyzed by fear and skepticism.
Success depends on whether the innovator can compel rather than merely entreat.
- Those dependent on others’ consent "invariably succeed ill".
- Armed prophets (Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, Romulus) triumph; unarmed prophets (e.g., Fra Girolamo Savonarola) fail.
People are fickle: easy to persuade, hard to maintain in belief; coercive capacity backs fading persuasion.

Exhibited courage (virtù) and ambition; his only check was Fortune (Alexander VI’s death and his own illness).
Lessons from Borgia’s career for new princes:
1. Neutralize enemies, cultivate friends.
2. Master force and fraud.
3. Inspire both love and fear in the populace; earn soldiers’ loyalty.
4. Eliminate rivals quickly; innovate in institutions.
5. Replace old militias with new ones; manipulate foreign alliances so others "are glad to benefit him and fear to injure him".

Commit all necessary cruelties at once; cease thereafter to reassure subjects.
Injuries: deliver together ("less tasted"); Benefits: dispense little by little ("better enjoyed").
A prince must create a governing posture immune to shocks of fortune: sudden severity too late, or forced generosity, wins no credit.

Prince backed by nobles faces peers who feel his equal ⇒ hard to command.
Populace‐elevated prince stands relatively alone, encountering few who resist obedience.
Nobles seek to oppress; people seek only not to be oppressed.
Hostile nobles pose both desertion and active plots; hostile populace mainly withdraws support.

Utopian writers imagine republics "never seen"; imitating the ideal courts ruin.
Because men are "ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers…", a ruler must learn how not to be good and deploy vice when necessary.

Possession of every reputed virtue is impossible; instead, avoid vices that lose the state.
Some apparent virtues cause ruin; some apparent vices secure safety.
Example: Liberality ⇒ taxation & confiscation ⇒ hatred; better to be branded miser (disgrace without hate).

Ideal: both loved and feared; reality forces a choice ⇒ safer to be feared.
Fear relies on enduring dread of punishment; love rests on fragile obligation.
Yet a prince must avoid hatred:
- Do not touch property or women.
- Kill only with clear justification; deaths fade faster from memory than property loss.

Two modes of combat: law (human) and force (beast) (cf. Chiron myth).
Imitate lion for strength against wolves; fox for cunning to evade traps.
Prudence = mastering both natures.

History favors princes who broke faith when interest shifted (e.g., Alexander VI).
Rule: Keep promises only when it profits; fabricate legalistic excuses when not.
Essential to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious – but be ready to pivot.
Politics judged by appearances and outcomes; "the end justifies the means" in popular eyes.