Machiavelli's Prince is not a practical advice manual aimed at any specific individual - rather it creates a fantastic creature, a kind of armoured colossus bestriding (and in Machiavelli's precocious dream, uniting) Italy. Even today, the description Machiavellian is routinely used to denote any form of political action that challenges our quaint notions of good faith and moral authenticity. For centuries the author and his Prince were seen as antichrists and early editions of The Prince in English come with notes piously refuting his cynicism. In his 1513 work, Il Principe (The Prince), Machiavelli created a monster that has haunted politics ever since. A modern awareness that human affairs are not transparent, but devious, complex and unpredictable, dates from the Italian Renaissance with its mixture of ruthlessness, ambition, fantasy, failure and self-knowledge given voice by the first modern political thinker, Niccolò Machiavelli. T he art of politics is an Italian invention - politics as a self-conscious way of acting and thinking.
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