NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI TO ZANOBI BUONDELMONTI AND COSIMO RUCELLAI, GREETINGS1
I am sending you a gift which, though it might not correspond to the obligations I owe to you, is without doubt the greatest gift that Niccolò Machiavelli can send you. In it I have gathered all that I know and have learned from my long experience and constant reading about the affairs of the world. No one can ask more of me, and no one can complain that I have not given more. You might be disappointed by the meagerness of my intelligence when what I narrate is weak, or when my judgment is erroneous, or when I may be mistaken in points of reasoning. And yet I am not sure whether you or I have more cause to be obliged to the other: I to you, who have compelled me to write what I would never have written of my own accord, or you to me, who in my writing have fallen short of your expectations. So I hope that you will accept this gift in the spirit in which all things are accepted by friends, where the intention of the giver is more important than the quality of the thing given. But the one satisfaction I have is that though my narration might be mistaken in many of its details, the one detail in which I have definitely not erred is in choosing you above all others to whom to address these Discourses, for in addressing them to you I feel that I am showing gratitude for the benefits I have received. Furthermore, I believe I have managed to avoid the usual practice of writers, who, blinded by ambition or covetousness, dedicate their works to a prince, praising him as if he had every commendable quality when they ought to condemn him for having every shameful attribute. So as to avoid this error I have not chosen those who are princes, but those who have the kind of infinite good qualities that make them worthy to be princes; not those who could heap rank, honors, and wealth on me, but those who would do so if they had the means. Men who want to judge others properly must esteem those who are generous, not those who can be generous—those who know how to rule, not those who rule even though they do not know how. Historians praise Hiero of Syracuse more when he was a private citizen than they do Perseus of Macedon when he was king: because all Hiero was missing to be a prince was a principality, while the only kingly attribute that Perseus of Macedon had was a kingdom.2 Therefore I hope you will enjoy this good or bad work that you yourselves have requested from me, and should you be misguided enough to find these ideas of mine pleasing, I will not refrain from sending you the rest, as I have promised. Farewell.
1. Zanobi Buondelmonti (1491–1527) and Cosimo Rucellai (1495–1519) were young Florentine intellectuals with whom Machiavelli had frequent discussions in the Orti Oricellari, which were the gardens of the Palazzo Rucellai, the magnificent palace belonging to Cosimo’s family.
2. Hiero II of Syracuse (d. 216 BCE). See also The Prince, chapter 6, in which Machiavelli quotes a slightly altered line from Justin referring to Hiero as having “lacked nothing to make him a ruler except a kingdom.” Also Polybius, in Histories (Book I, chapter 8), describes Hiero as always having had “a nature ideal for kingship and the administration of a state.” Perseus of Macedon (d. c. 165 BCE) was the last king of Macedonia. Plutarch writes in Parallel Lives (Aemilius Paulus, 8) that Perseus, though a king, “was incapable of carrying out his designs, as he lacked courage and had a brutal nature that was beset by faults and diseases, among which greed was foremost.”