Who wrote the political treatise 'The Prince'?

Who wrote the political treatise “The Prince”? Niccolò Machiavelli wrote it. The Italian diplomat and political thinker composed an early version in 1513, probably while out of public office after the Medici returned to power in Florence.

Machiavelli presented the work as practical advice for rulers, focusing on how princes acquire, maintain, and strengthen political power. Its realism was striking because it examined reputation, military force, deception, fear, and political necessity rather than describing an ideal virtuous ruler. The work was written in Italian, rather than the scholarly Latin commonly used by many European intellectuals.

Although completed in manuscript decades earlier, The Prince was not printed until 1532, five years after Machiavelli’s death. Its arguments helped create the modern association between political cunning and the adjective “Machiavellian.” A common mix-up is assuming that the book is a general biography or a medieval guide to etiquette; it is instead a compact work of Renaissance political analysis. Machiavelli also wrote the Discourses on Livy, a broader examination of republican government.