Comparing Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince And Discourses

Throughout The Prince and Discourses, Niccolò Machiavelli talks in great length, and seems to endorse, power, deception, and cruelty. There is one passage in particular that I found to contradict Machiavelli’s viewpoint on dominance and to support the fact that he is perhaps a classical republican. The way Machiavelli praises Rome in Chapter 2 of Discourses shows that he believes there is a way to make the system work without a “prince” being feared by his subjects. In this passage he starts out by listing the three forms of government; Principality, Aristocracy, Democracy and then goes on to say “those who set up a government in any particular state must adopt one of them” (353). He proceeds to say that while good at first, these can all