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Hello. In the Prince, Machiavell is manual of power and politics. He wrote,

since men love, as they themselves determine, but fear as their ruler determines,

a wise prince must rely upon what he and not others can control.

He also advised, one must be a fox in order to recognize traps and a lion to frighten off wolves.

Those who simply act like lions are stupid, so it follows that a prudent ruler cannot and must not honour his word when it places him at a disadvantage.

What times does Machiavell in living through to take such a tough perspective on power?

How did he gain the experience to provide this advice to rulers?

And what's he really, the amoral or even evil figure, that so many have liked to paint him?

With me to discuss Machiavell and the Italian city-states is Avin Welch, professor of a national studies at Queen Mary University of London.

Quentin Skinner, regist professor of history at the University of Cambridge, and Lisa Jardin, director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary University of London.

Quentin Skinner, can we start with some political background and tell us about the era in which Machiavell was born?

Yes, he's born in 1469 into the Florentine Republic, but it's a republic in some difficulties by that time.

That's to say, with the rise of the Medici to informal control under Cosimo, who effectively ruled the city from 1434 until his death in 1464,

and then with the coming of Lorenzo to power in the year of Machiavell's birth, the republic was in effect to sham.

It's controlled by the Medici, who abandoned the Great Council, which had been central to the Old Republic, first replacing it with a council of a hundred,

which they were able to manipulate, and then under Lorenzo by 1480, setting up a council of 70, which is not reappointed.

It becomes a permanent council, and so really the creatures of the Medici.

So he's born into a proud republic, which has nevertheless been suborned from within.

We have the idea of the Republic very much around still, and we have corruption very much into fused,

and we have this great princely, a lot of the word, isn't it, like family at the time, the Medici is about a century wealthy and so in this.

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