Once they arrived, Antiochus had them locked in a chamber and killed.  As a result, Antiochus dispenses with the opposition and establishes his authority all in one act.

Machiavelli's reliance on these kinds of examples clearly sets him in the Renaissance tradition.  Renaissance writers drew a great deal from the examples of antiquity.  As the Renaissance was envisioned as the true successor of the Roman past, writers sought to establish and maintain the connection between the two periods.  Renaissance artists incorporated a great deal from the mythology of Rome into their paintings and sculpture - so much so that it challenged Christian images for the preferred subject matter among artists.  In addition, Renaissance writers adopted the literary styles of antiquity - the dialogue, for example.  As an extension of ancient Rome, it is fitting that Renaissance writers such as Machiavelli actually draw on examples from the Roman past.

Machiavelli's work was reflective of many tenets in Renaissance Humanism. The intellectual movement was driven by a sense of Rationalism.  The Rational feel of the time period sought to move attributes previously given to the divine into the realm of human beings:

Here, one felt no weight of the supernatural pressing on the human mind, demanding homage and allegiance. Humanity—with all its distinct capabilities, talents, worries, problems, possibilities—was the center of interest. It has been said that medieval thinkers philosophized on their knees, but, bolstered by the new studies, they dared to stand up and to rise to full stature.

Machiavelli's work embraces these principles that were intrinsic to Renaissance Humanism.  The "center of interest" for Machiavelli was the human ruler. The extent to which they could go and needed to go in order to consolidate political affairs existed at the base of Machiavelli's theories.

In advising what the effective ruler must do, Machiavelli suggests that the political leaders "cannot observe faith, nor should he, when such observance turns against him, and the causes that make him promise have been eliminated." This is reflective of how The Prince "felt no weight of the supernatural pressing on the human mind."  At the same time, Machiavelli represents the full force of Renaissance Humanism in how he extols individual action.  The bold ruler who wants to "win over" fortuna is where Machiavelli believes the most effective leadership exists. It is here where Machiavelli embraces Renaissance Humanism's idea that human beings "dared to stand up."  The human being that Machiavelli envisions in The Prince is reflective of the influence of Renaissance Humanism. It is constructed from the point of view of what human beings in the position of political power can do and not what they are bound to do in subservience to the divine.  The use of religion is a tool for political expedience, affirming the "new studies" in political science and human ethics that Machiavelli sought to illuminate in The Prince.

Humanism is evident in both works and in both senses of the word. As has already been mentioned in a previous contribution, Machiavelli cites a number of examples of classical wisdom—Livy being an obvious example—in order to add authority to his political philosophy. However, Machiavelli's incorporation of classical ideas into his political science is not in any sense abstract; he is using the example of antiquity to show that his realist view of politics is practical and has been applied successfully in the past. The political values of antiquity were universal, but they needed to be applied to a contemporary setting. This is what Machiavelli sets out to do.

This is one sense in which Machiavelli's work can be described as humanist. It is also humanist in that it systematically excludes religion from playing any positive role in the governance of the state. The state must be entirely secular: its functions, its policies, and its whole life must be dictated by worldly concerns. At best, Machiavelli is somewhat skeptical concerning religious matters, but he is precluded from expressing this openly. Although the Renaissance was the age of humanism, it was also still a deeply religious age. Outward expressions of anything vaguely agnostic were ill-advised in the extreme. That being the case, Machiavelli points to specific historical examples to illustrate his point that religious considerations should have no bearing on the workings of government.

At this time in history, the Pope was almost like a secular prince. He owned substantial tracts of territory in Italy and regularly waged war against his enemies. Although successive popes behaved like secular rulers, they owed their authority to their spiritual role as head of the Church. Machiavelli looked at the constant war, bloodshed, and political instability that ravaged Italy as the necessary consequence of papal involvement in secular affairs.

Numerous commentators have noted that Machiavelli was a modernist political thinker in that he rejected universal principles of morality and ethics to posit a form of statecraft based on exigency and contingency. Even the Catholic Church was explored only as a political institution in a work that was essentially secular. This secularism was, to some extent, associated with the humanism prevalent in Machiavelli's time, one which made "man the measure of all things." But humanism was essentially marked by a reexamination of classical texts, which, it was argued, held valuable lessons for today.

While he is not necessarily concerned with the political thought of the ancients as such, Machiavelli constantly refers to examples from antiquity to support his arguments. He argues against the use of mercenaries, for example, by pointing to the problems that mercenary troops caused for Carthage in the Punic Wars. He cites "Philippoeman, Prince of the Achaians, as an example of a leader who kept abreast of the arts of war. And he turned to a famous Roman general to illustrate the downfalls of being too lenient:

...we may see from the case of Scipio, one of the greatest Captains, not of his own time only but of all times of which we have record, whose armies rose against him in Spain from no other cause than his too great leniency in allowing them a freedom inconsistent with military strictness. With which weakness Fabius Maximus taxed him in the Senate House, calling him the corrupter of the Roman soldiery.

Machiavelli also cited examples of recent politics in Italy as examples of good or bad statecraft, which was in itself humanistic in nature. But by choosing examples from antiquity, he situated himself well within the tradition and the idiom of Renaissance humanism.

Renaissance humanism is considered to have first developed in Florence, Italy, beginning in the 14thC. for a variety of reasons, and perhaps the two most important are the rise of the Medici family, whose patronage of the arts and literature profoundly affected the intellectual atmosphere of Florence; and the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks, which brought additional Greek and Roman classical literature and philosophies to Florence and western Europe.  The Renaissance marks the evolution of the medieval world to the modern, and one of the most important aspects of this change is the rise of humanism, broadly defined as a shift away from a belief that God and the church define man to the new conviction that mankind and his institutions--life on earth and in the present, not life after death--is man's chief concern.

Machiavelli's The Prince (1513, 1532), a product of the new mankind-centered world view, is a leadership manual based on a realistic view of man's nature--social, political, intellectual--rather than the church-inspired belief that man is and should be constantly reaching for the Christian ideal of himself.  Machiavelli signals the shift from the religious ideal to the practical and worldly when he advises a leader that

 . . . whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. (17:4)

The Christian ideal of the leader who is loved and admired because his actions are animated by religious convictions has been replaced by a leader who, if he cannot be both feared and loved, must choose to rule by fear, not because fear is inherently the best choice, but because men are

. . . are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. (17:4)

This passage has been condemned since the publication of The Prince for its cynical (also, practical) assumption that men's nature is essentially base and cowardly.  Machiavelli's advice is not based on a belief that man is constantly seeking the good but that his nature is "fickle, cowardly, covetous."  A leader of such people, then, can be effective only through the exercise of fear, which is a very modern concept because it ignores the possibility that mankind strives for the Christian ideal to guide his behavior.

Like Dante, a century before him, who looked to Virgil to guide him through Hell and back (The Divine Comedy), Machiavelli read widely in Greek and Roman history, literature, and philosophy and applied the leadership guidelines of the pre-Christian era to create a new political philosophy.  For example,  in his discussion of whether a new prince can avoid the perception of cruelty, Machiavelli quotes Queen Dido, who explains:

To bring about a new kingdom, when conditions are hard, I am compelled to do cruel things to insure the [proper] ends.  (17:1) (My translation)

In other words, Machiavelli looks to a Greek queen to draw the conclusion that, for a greater good, the end may indeed justify the means, a concept that is thoroughly modern, arises from humanism, but has seriously negative possibilities, particularly if evil leaders decide what is or isn't "the greater good."

Throughout The Prince, Machiavelli refers to pre-Christian leaders whose stories originate in classical Greek and Roman literature and history.  In Chapter 8, Machiavelli discusses leaders who have achieved greatness not through heredity or fortune but because of natural abilities--Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus.  These models derive from biblical sources, Greek and Roman mythology, and, in the case of Cyrus, the Greek historian Xenophon's Life of Cyrus--sources that became widely known only at the beginning of the 14thC. when Renaissance humanism began to evolve.

In The Prince, Machiavelli talks about classical humanist ideals, which comprised a different world view than our present day "humanist ideals" encompass. Machiavelli spoke of classical Renaissance humanist ideals--which then were in full accord with Christian ideals though present day humanist ideals are not in such accord--such as were represented by the most notable and powerful historic world leaders, as a source of inspiration and material lessons for the world's princes who wanted themselves to be great and powerful leaders.

These Renaissance humanist ideals included belief in human:

• dignity
• free choice
• power over destiny
• justice
• wisdom
• virtuousness
• freedom
• excellence
• knowledge
• education in a wide breadth of history

Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, ... [since] he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless ["his people"], and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few [courtiers]. (Chapter XVI)

Interestingly, these Renaissance humanist ideals were offset by Machiavelli's unorthodox choice to speak of cruel and destructive leaders as a complimentary source of leadership lessons. By doing this, Machiavelli augmented the humanist ideals he advanced by expanding their application through the successful use of anti-humanist ideals of leaders whose cruelty knew no bounds. Thus he ironically reinforced Renaissance humanism by asserting broad education in history and free choice over a narrow world view and destiny or Fate.

Always a controversial figure, Machiavelli is perhaps at his most polarizing in his account of human nature. In general, Machiavelli argues that human nature is primarily based upon self-interest. Thus, even if a person does something that is often perceived to be virtuous, such as donate to charity, he or she is not doing so out of a general desire to do good. Rather, according to Machiavelli a person only acts virtuously if there is something to be gained by doing so.

This idea is manifest in much of Machiavelli's political policy. For instance, while Machiavelli encourages politicians and statesmen to seem virtuous, it's important to recognize the importance of the trivial verb "to seem." Machiavelli does not think a politician should concern himself with truly being virtuous; instead, he should seem virtuous to bolster his political reputation, as the perception of virtue often wins over the loyalty of the state. As such, the root of Machiavelli's concept of virtue is a prime example of his theory of humans as self-interested animals. 

I would suggest that, at least where The Prince is concerned, the will of a ruler's subjects does not much enter the equation at all. This work is first and foremost written from the vantage point of the rulers, as it addresses the question of how power is most effectively wielded and maintained. In this sense, Machiavelli speaks very little from the perspective of the ruled; this should not be entirely surprising, given Machiavelli's focus on power. After all, aside from the extremely risky option of rebellion, or perhaps through various measures of non-compliance, how much real influence or agency can most commoners be expected to assert within a monarchical system of government?

Ultimately, then, for Machiavelli's analysis in The Prince, the only will that truly matters is the ruler's, and so long as a ruler follows Machiavelli's advice, they should expect that the risk of rebellion on the part of their subjects should be mitigated and contained (at least, this is what Machiavelli would have them believe). Of course, at the same time, Machiavelli is clear on his assertion that the prince can never enjoy absolute control of his political destiny: indeed, as he suggests in chapter twenty-five, "Fortune is the arbiter of one half of our actions.." By this assertion, much of political reality ultimately lies beyond any one human being's ability to control. This is precisely the reason why Machiavelli places such a focus on political decisiveness: since so much of politics are outside of a ruler's ability to directly influence, this means they need to be actively engaged whenever the unexpected occurs, whether it be to take advantage of opportunity or to mitigate potential dangers.