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INTRODUCTION.
no doubt be sought in the political circumstances of Italy
from 1513 to 1527; Machiavelli probably felt the advisability
of reserving his book for a suitable conjuncture, when its
general diffusion might have some practical effect upon the
course of Italian politics. But it so happened that the suitable
moment was passing even while Machiavelli was writing, and
it never returned while he lived.
The Prhzce was first printed in the year 1532 by Antonio
Blado, at Rome, with the sanction and favour of the Pope 1: and
it is curious that the first printer to give this famous book to the
world should also have been the first to print the prohibition of
Machiavelli's works in the Index of t5592. When the work had
once been published, the editions followed one another with
remarkable rapidity. Of the earlier editions, by far the most
interesting are the two published at Florence by Bernardo di
Giunta in 1532 and 154o. They contain an introductory letter,
dated May 8, 1532, which supplies valuable evidence for the
history of the opposition to Machiavelli 8. It is significant also
that the Giunta edition should contain the 'Vita di Castruccio
Castracani,' and 'I1 Modo che tenne il Duca Valentino nello
ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, etc.,' and it is perhaps not fanciful
to assume that the connection between these two tracts and The
Prince was reahsed thus early; they are in any case, of all the
nfinor works of Machiavelli, those which are most necessary for
the illustration of The Prince _.
But it was from Venice that the largest number of editions
issuedS, and there is a dramatic appropriateness in the fact
that the knowledge of The Prince should be chiefly diffused
through the world by the one city which endeavoured
to carry on the tradition of the Renaissance after the attempted
reconstitution of the medieval, imperial-catholic idea in Italy:
no early edition appears to have been published at Naples,
a On August 23, i531, Clement VII granted to Antonio ]31ado the privilege of
printing Maehiavelh's works, viz. the Prince, Dlscorsi, and Florentine History.
The Papal privilege is printed m full in Amlco, p. 415, and in the first or ' true '
Testina edition. Bayle's statement that the Prince was printed in 1515 has given
rise to much misunderstanding.
See Introduction, ifi. p. 49. 3 Cf. p. 35.
4 The Giunta edition contains also the _Ritratte delle eose de la Francia, et
de la Alamagna.' The same tracts are included also in Antonio Blado's edition.
The dates are as follows: 1533, 1539, 154o, 1546, 155o, 1554.