For this section, students should read Chapters 15-20 of The Prince.
Content Summary for Teachers
Chapter 15: The Things for Which Men, and Especially Rulers, Are Praised or Blamed
In Chapter 15, Machiavelli turns to the subject of how princes should behave with respect to their allies and subjects. Machiavelli breaks quite a great deal with his more idealistic predecessors here and tries to enumerate some practical rules about what kinds of practices work best for rulers. "There is such a great distance between how we live and how we ought to live," he says, "[that] a man who wishes to make a profession of doing good in all things will come to ruin among many who are not good." There...
