The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli

Written in Italian, published in 1532, meant to be a rallying cry for Italy to overcome its former oppressors, a political treatise on how to best maintain power directed towards the princes and their principalities. Think the "Mirror of Princes," a genre that became popular in the medieval period, in instructing (most often through examples - thus histories like Bede's were popular for this mode) how a prince should conduct himself.

The examples were a good mix of contemporary and ancient. It rarely goes to any matter outside of either the current context or the ancient one, and I don't recall it using any biblical examples; by ancient, I mean Greece and Rome.

We know it today as a justification of rule that justifies itself by maintaining itself. Vices, in such a paradigm, are sometimes necessary for the ruler. The trick is to know when to use vices and when to use virtues, and to appear virtuous in any case. Only such practices - those of contingent virtue - can preserve a state with any likelihood. Any other actions are bound by fortune, which can shift to favor one set of actions over another depending on the circumstances. (Indeed, fortune here is much akin to "circumstance.")

There's another side that proscribes incorrect actions. A prince has to keep his people and his armies on his side. While in ancient times keeping armies on his side was sufficient (while checking their excesses), today keeping the people on his side is necessary. Most notably, don't take away their arms, arm them (to ensure their allegiance to you), don't mess with their property, and don't mess with their women. Other forms of advice have to do with relying on one's own arms - don't hire mercenary or auxiliary forces, because they have no reason to be loyal to you. Don't rely on other people too much, since overreliance implies that they can gain much more by getting power themselves. At the same time, keep aside the flatterers and solicit for some targeted advice, while being intelligent enough yourself to know what to ask, and to know what advice is sound. In other words, keep other balances of power in your favor.

(Wow, how tempting it is to fall into second person.)

There were some tantalyzing descriptions, especially in the sections on arms, when the animal comes in. It's necessary for a prince to be both like lion and fox, part force/virtue and part tricks. It's also necessary to be like a centaur, half-man (law) and half-beast (arms). This monstrous version of human nature is quite intriguing, since a lot of what Machiavelli works against is succumbing to baser vices by trumping them with well-guided, and therefore intentionally human, vices.

I'm nearly out of time, but I finally want to mention Fortune one more time. Towards the end, Machiavelli says that Fortune is like a woman. In order to be subdued, it sometimes has to be beaten and knocked about. This is very alarming to me personally, and I wonder what it does to make Fortune into, not allegorical woman (oh, there's a category that needs specification), but Machiavellian woman. The gender dynamic here is quite fraught.