Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, the third child and first son of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli. The Machiavelli family is believed to be descended from the old

Amongst commentators, there are a few consistently made proposals concerning what was most new in Machiavelli's work.
Empiricism and realism versus idealism
Machiavelli is sometimes

Political and historical works
• Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa (1499)
• Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati (1502)

• Florentine military reforms
• Francesco Guicciardini
• Francesco Vettori

The Prince
Machiavelli's best-known book Il Principe contains several maxims concerning politics. Instead of the more traditional target audience of a

Commentators have taken very different approaches to Machiavelli and not always agreed. Major discussion has tended to be about two issues: first,

To quote Robert Bireley:
...there were in circulation approximately fifteen editions of the Prince and nineteen of the Discourses and French translations of each before they were placed on the Index of Paul IV in 1559, a measure which nearly stopped publication