CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ON
HOW A NEW PRINCE MUST MAKE EVERYTHING NEW IN A CITY OR STATE HE HAS
TAKEN
A man who becomes the ruler of a city or state and does not follow the path of a monarchy or republic in establishing a civic life will find that, as a new ruler, the best way to keep this city or state is to make everything in it new. This is even more advisable when his footing is weak. In other words, he must create a new government with new offices that have new names and new powers and are occupied by new men. He must make the rich poor and the poor rich, as David did when he became king: “He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty”90 Furthermore, he must build new cities and demolish those already built, move inhabitants from one place to another, and not leave a single thing intact in all the land. There must be no rank, institution, government, or wealth of which the owner does not acknowledge that it comes from the prince. The prince must take as his model Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, who by these methods turned himself from a small king into the King of Greece. Justinius, writing about Philip, says that he moved men from province to province the way shepherds move their flocks.91 These methods are very cruel and hostile to every way of life, not only the Christian, and a ruler should avoid them and prefer to live as a private citizen rather than as a king who unleashes so much ruin on people. Nevertheless, if he wishes to remain in power, a prince who does not want to choose the good course must choose the course of evil. Men, however, usually take a middle course that is most destructive, because they do not know how to be entirely good or entirely bad, as I will discuss in the following chapter.
90. Machiavelli quotes the Bible, Luke 1:53, in Latin: Esurientes implevit bonis et divites dimisit inanes.
91. In Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, Justin writes (Book VIII, chapter 5): “Just as shepherds drive their flocks at times into winter pastures, at times into summer pastures, so he transplanted people and cities from one place to another.”