Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli served the Florentine republic for fourteen years as secretary and diplomat, was dismissed, tortured and exiled to his farm when the Medici returned in 1512, and wrote The Prince that winter to win their favour. It failed, and made his name a byword for cunning. The Discourses on Livy, longer and less read, show the republican he really was, and the two together founded political science on how men behave rather than how they should. He wrote comedies, a history of Florence and letters, and told a friend that in the evenings he put on court dress to converse with the ancients.