Recently, I've been engaged in reading a transcription of a series of lectures by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones during which Dr. Jones lectured on all manner of doctrine, ranging from the doctrine of the Word of God to eschatology. It's a 1200 page tome, and once I got to the section on the fall (200 pages in) I decided to take a break and read something else for a while. I wanted something that kept with the theme of man's fallen nature. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli struck me as a near-obvious choice. The Prince was written in 1513, though not published until almost 20 years later. Machiavelli had been involved in a Florentine government that was opposed to the rise of the Medici family, and once that opposition failed, Machiavelli found himself without a job. A prolific writer, Machiavelli wrote The Prince and dedicated it to the newly empowered ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de Medici (for you Reformation fans, that's Pope Leo X's nephew). "Machiavellian"