![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In watching their manoeuvres on screen we, like their victims, can’t help being a little seduced by their warped ingenuity. These Machiavellians are scoundrels, but subtle ones. Along with our daily news, popular culture has brought legions of Machiavellian figures into our homes and made them both human and entertaining: Tony Soprano, Frank and Claire Underwood in House of Cards, Lord Petyr Baelish from Game of Thrones. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the adjective has come to mean “cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics”. Most people today assume that Machiavelli didn’t just describe their methods, he recommended them – that he himself is the original Machiavellian, the first honest teacher of dishonest politics. But why did Machiavelli write a whole book about them, peppering it with men who soared to power by greasing palms and exploiting weaknesses: Julius Caesar, Pope Alexander VI, Cesare Borgia? Minus television and Twitter, it seems the techniques of ambitious “new princes”, as he calls them, haven’t changed a bit. The book is The Prince, its author Niccolò Machiavelli. ![]()
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