ABSTRACT
The appearance of a new modern library edition of The Prince and The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius provides a welcome opportunity to consider the ever fascinating subject: what is Machiavellianism? There are few enough occasions when an individual merits an "ism" after his name, and fewer still when the ideology has come to stand for duplicity and secrecy while the person actually stands for morality and nationality. Machiavelli was a complicated figure standing at the gateway of modern thought. The complexity of his writings mirrored more accurately than any other sixteenth-century Italian the dilemmas of that period. All struggles were to be bent on uniting the country, and the Prince would be allowed the use of any means to secure this end. The state was to be the instrument, the people the raw material, the citizen-army the legal authority.
