Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) was an Italian statesman and political philosopher. He was employed on diplomatic missions as defense secretary of the Florentine republic, and was tortured when the Medici returned to power in 1512. When he retired from public life he wrote his most famous work, The Prince (1532), which describes the means by which a leader may gain and maintain power. I enjoyed the book. I believe it defines the characteristics and qualities that a leader …
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…At the end he encourages Lorenzo de' Medici to finish what Borgia had started and challenges the prince to save Italy from the control of the barbarians. He concludes by quoting a line from a poem by Petrarch that takes glory in Italian might. " Virtue against fury shall advance the fight, And it i' th' combat soon shall put to flight: For the old Roman valour is not dead, Nor in th' Italians' brests extinguished."