Lehal Library

xxv Introduction On the one hand, as a form of private therapy, he was disinterestedly pursuing the truth about power and politics: to establish how states really were won and lost would give him an illusion of control and bolster his s­ elf-­esteem. At the same time, and perhaps less consciously, he was vicari- ously enjoying, in the stories of Borgia and others, the sort of dramatic political achievements that had always been denied to him. In this regard it’s interesting to see how rapidly he glosses over Borgia’s abject fall from power, his arrest, imprisonment and death, almost as if the author were in denial about his hero’s ultimate fallibility. Therapeutic as this might have been, however, at another level The Prince was clearly written for publication and meant as a public performance. Machiavelli loves to show off his intelligence, his range of reference, his clever rea- soning. Even here, though, his intentions were divided and perhaps contradictory. At his most passionate and focused he was involved in a debate with all the great historians and philosophers of the past and determined to show his contemporaries that his own mind was as sharp as the best. But in a more practical mood Machiavelli was planning to use the book as a passport to get himself back into a job: so evident and compelling, he hoped, would his analytical skills appear, that the ruler to whom he formally gave and dedicated the book would necessarily want to employ him; hence the flattering tone of the opening dedication and the addition of The Prince’s final patriotic pages proposing xxvi