How to Read The Prince: Themes, Structure and Questions to Ask

What is The Prince, and why is it still read?

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) served the Florentine Republic for fourteen years as a senior official and diplomat, meeting Cesare Borgia, the king of France and the pope on missions. When the Medici family returned to power in 1512 he lost his post, and in 1513 he was imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of conspiracy before being released. Retired to his farm outside Florence, he wrote The Prince that year and dedicated it to Lorenzo de' Medici, most readers agree in the hope of returning to public service. It circulated in manuscript and was printed only in 1532, after his death.

It is still read because it says plainly what earlier advice books for rulers avoided: that a ruler who tries to be good in everything will come to ruin among so many who are not. That claim made "Machiavellian" a byword for cunning, and the Catholic Church placed the book on its Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. Students of politics, history and leadership return to it because its questions, about power, reputation, force and luck, have not gone away.

How The Prince is structured

The Prince is a dedicatory letter followed by 26 short chapters, each with a Latin title although the text is in Italian. Machiavelli never labels parts, but the chapters fall into four clear groups, and seeing them makes the argument easy to follow.

Chapter 15 is the hinge. Machiavelli says he will follow the effectual truth of things rather than imagined republics and principalities, a swipe often read against idealized states such as Plato's Republic. The chapters on conduct that follow are where most of the book's notoriety lives.

Main themes in The Prince

Five themes organize the book. Each is tied to particular chapters, so cite chapter numbers whenever you write about one.

Key figures Machiavelli argues from

The Prince is not a story, but it is crowded with people. Machiavelli argues by example, setting ancient and recent cases side by side, so knowing who these figures were tells you what each chapter claims.

• Cesare Borgia (chapter 7): son of Pope Alexander VI, who won the Romagna with his father's backing and lost it after his father's death; Machiavelli's model new prince, undone by fortune and by backing Julius II's election.
• Remirro de Orco (chapter 7): Borgia's harsh governor in the Romagna, whom Borgia had executed and displayed in the square at Cesena once his severity had done its work.
• Agathocles of Syracuse and Oliverotto da Fermo (chapter 8): men who seized power through crime, which Machiavelli says can win power but not glory.
• Moses, Cyrus, Romulus and Theseus (chapter 6): founders who rose by their own ability, with fortune giving them only the opportunity.
• Girolamo Savonarola (chapter 6): the Florentine friar who fell because he was an unarmed prophet.
• Louis XII of France (chapter 3): who took Milan and lost it, after mistakes Machiavelli lists one by one.
• Pope Julius II (chapter 25): impetuous in everything and successful because the times suited him.

How to read The Prince: a five-session plan

The book is short, but each chapter compresses an argument into a few pages. Read it over five sessions, and use the habits from our guide on how to do a close reading on the chapters that carry the most weight: 7, 8, 15, 17, 18 and 25.

1. 1Read the dedication and chapters 1–3. Sketch a tree of the kinds of principality listed in chapter 1 and fill it in as later chapters cover each branch.
2. 2Read chapters 4–11. For each, note the type of state, the example and the rule Machiavelli draws; reread chapters 7 and 8 side by side.
3. 3Read chapters 12–14 quickly, then 15–19 slowly, marking each place where he contrasts what a prince should seem to be with what he should be.
4. 4Read chapters 20–26. Decide whether the river image in chapter 25 fits the confidence in virtù elsewhere, and whether chapter 26's patriotism fits the cool tone before it.
5. 5Return to chapter 15 and write a one-page answer to one question below, citing a chapter number for every claim.

Questions to ask about The Prince

Use these for discussion or as essay prompts; our guide to writing an argumentative essay shows how to turn one into a thesis you can defend.

• Is The Prince political analysis, advice for one ruler, or a job application?
• Why does Machiavelli hesitate to call Agathocles' success virtù?
• Why does Cesare Borgia fail if, as Machiavelli says, he did almost everything right?
• Does Machiavelli separate politics from morality, or propose a different morality for rulers?
• What limits does chapter 17 put on the advice to be feared rather than loved?
• How does chapter 9, on the people and the nobles, change the picture of Machiavelli as a friend of tyrants?
• Can a ruler change with the times, as chapter 25 says he should, or is character fixed?
• Does the patriotic final chapter belong with the analysis before it?
• How should The Prince be read alongside Machiavelli's republican Discourses on Livy?
• Rousseau called it a book for republicans. Is that reading convincing?
• Which of its rules would a modern leader still follow, and which would backfire?

Which translation of The Prince to choose

Translation matters for a few key words. Virtù has no single English equivalent: some translators keep the Italian, while others vary it by context (ability, prowess, skill, virtue), which hides how often the same word recurs. Lo stato can mean the state, a ruler's position or his territory. A good edition explains these choices in its introduction or notes.

Widely used translations include Harvey Mansfield's (University of Chicago Press), which stays close to Machiavelli's wording; George Bull's for Penguin Classics, which reads smoothly; and Quentin Skinner and Russell Price's in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, with notes on context and vocabulary. Whichever you choose, make sure it has notes identifying the historical figures, because the argument depends on them.