MACHIAVELLI, Niccolo, ne-ka-16' mi ke-a-vale or mak-i-a-velli, Italian historian and statesman, possibly the greatest prose writer of the Italian Renaissance: b. Florence, 3 May 1469; d. there, 22 June 1527. Of Nic colo's early life and education we know nothing. No trace of him remains previous to his 26th year. But of his times and the scenes amid which he grew up, we know much. It was the calm but demoralizing era of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Machiavelli was a true child of his time. He too was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance; and looked back, fascinated, on the ideals of that ancient world that was being revivified for the men of his day. But philosophy, letters and art were not the only heritage that the by-gone age had handed down; politics—the building of states and of empires— this also had engaged the minds of the men of that age, and it was this aspect of their activity that fired the imagination of the young Florentine. From his writings we know he was widely read in the Latin and Italian classics. But Virgil and Hor ace appealed to him less than Livy, and Dante the poet was less to him. than Dante the poli tician; for he read his classics, not as others, to drink in their music or be led captive by their beauty, but to derive lessons in statecraft and penetrate into the secrets of the successful em pire-builders of the past. It is equally certain, from a study of his works, that he had not mas tered Greek. Like Ariosto, Machiavelli was in debted for his superb literary technique solely to the study of the literature of his own nation.
With the expulsion of the Medici from Flor ence, Machiavelli, at 30, emerged from obscurity to play a most important role in the Florentine politics of the succeeding decade and a half. In 1498 he was elected secretary to the Ten of War and Peace. and from 1498 to 1512 was ezealous, patriotic and indefatigable servant of the republic. His energy was untiring, his ac tivity ceaseless and many-sided. He conducted the voluminous diplomatic correspondence de volving upon his bureau, drew up memorials and plans in affairs of state for the use and guidance of the Ten, undertook the reorgani zation of the Florentine troops and went him self on a succession of embassies, ranging in importance from those to petty Italian states up to those to the court of France and of the emperor. He was by nature well adapted to the peculiar needs of the diplomacy of that day; and the training he received in that school must in turn have reacted on him to confirm his native bent and accentuate it until it became the distinguishing characteristic of the man. His
first lessons in politics and statecraft were de rived from Livy's history of the not over scrupulous Romans; and when he comes to take his lessons at first hand, it is in the midst of the intrigues of republican Florence, or at the court of a Caterina Sforza, or in the camp of a Cesare Borgia. Small wonder that his conception of politics should have omitted to take account of honesty and the moral law; and that he conceived ((the idea of giving to politics an assured and scientific 'basis, treating them as having a proper and distinct value of their own, entirely apart from their moral value During this period of his political activity we have a large number of state papers and private letters from his pen; and two works of literary cast. These are his : historic narratives, cast into poetic form, of Italian events. The first treats of the decade beginning 1494; and the second, an unfinished fragment, of the decade beginning 1504. They are written in easy terzine, and are natewonthy as expressing the sentiment for a united Italy.
When in 1512 the Medici returned to Flor ence in the train of her invader, Machiavelli was dismissed from his office and banished for a year from the confines of the city. Later, on suspicion of being concerned in a plot against the Medici, he was thrown into prison and tor tured. He was afterward included in a general pardon granted by Leo X. But Machiavelli did not return to public life until 1525; and this interval of enforced leisure from affairs of state was the period of his literary activity. A. number of comedies, minor poems and short prose compositions did not rise above mediocrity. But in one dramatic effort he rose to the stature of genius. His