By John Davis
Special to THE DAILY

Everyone knows Niccolo Machiavelli. His surname, used as an adjective, is equated to duplicity, connivance, underhanded intrigue, the ends justifying the means, and lying in political interactions. But who was he?

Ross King, Canadian doctor of English literature and author of New York Times best-sellers, among which is the renowned “Brunelleschi’s Dome,” tells the story of the immortal author of “The Prince.” King brings us not only a well-written, closely argued and carefully footnoted biography of this diversely skilled man, but also a background of his era. We discover what it meant to be a man of virtue, exhibiting many new characteristics on inquiry, conversation, discretion, diplomacy and valor. These are characteristics we’ve come to collate in the term “Renaissance” man.

Machiavelli is a paradox. At the time of the Renaissance of the 16th century in Florence, Italy, when artistic wonders were being wrought by such masters as Michelangelo and Bernini, another development was under way. The city-state flourished to support grand art, but at the cost of much of its moral underpinnings.

Why? How could a society which sought to learn from the wonders of those newly rediscovered, indeed reborn, classical Roman motifs of sculpture and art also bring about a world-shaking document that seemed to revolt against the very humanist and benign beliefs those artworks brought about? What sort of man and society would bring about “The Prince,” a guide to power?

Machiavelli spent his life on a quest for acceptance. He was at once a courtier, given command of a column of Florentine soldiery, and a diplomat with intercity and international missions. He was allowed the broad latitude of one who was expected to advise his city-state leaders on not only military and civil affairs, but in financial and social actions as well.

Anyone who fixes his star to a current leader usually falls when the leader does. So it was with Machiavelli. Cast aside when another leader came to power, he was to wander in a sort of political limbo for years. Then he hit upon the literary equivalent of the new thinking. He reflected that if the old classics, newly rediscovered, served for art and architecture, a close study of them could serve his future as well.

Thus Machiavelli studied the histories of the ancient rulers of cities such as Rome and concluded that their successes could be emulated by the modern Medici leaders of Florence, the city-state where he spent the majority of his life. So he dedicated his world heritage book, “The Prince,” to Cosimo de Medici, the better to advise him on how to succeed as a leader. This work was complemented by “The Discourses,” which expanded upon the principles outlined in “The Prince.”

Were these methods of leadership really “the end justifies the means”? Had he cast aside an earlier, simpler understanding of the city leader as first, a man of God, then of the people? Was this not rather the first appreciation by a political thinker that the opinion of the people was to be considered at all? Was this, indeed, a book about a sort of liberty? In fact, many of the concepts were his logical deductions from history of past classical era leaders — all of which seemed to be suggestive that it is preferable for a leader to be feared than loved.

How this played out in Machiavelli’s dream to come to financial and social success and acceptance is the rest of his story. Of course, his story has become a significant part of our world today.

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