Abstract

In the article, I try to refute an old and widespread superstition according to which the new political philosophy created by Niccolo Machiavelli breaks with classical political philosophy by taking a novel position toward the political; that is, that classics were idle “idealists” while Machiavelli is a coldblooded “realist”. To do that, I compare the most explicit part of The Prince (chapters XIV-XIX) with the end of the fifth book of Aristotle’s Politics and attempt to show that in the most pivotal chapters of his most famous work, the Florentine, in fact, often borrows Aristotle’s advice on how to preserve a tyrannical rule.