he fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Niccolo Machiavelli celebrated this revival in his The Discourses when he argued with those who believed that the people acting collectively were less wise than a single king or prince. Machiavelli found them subject to the same pressures and the same errors:
I say, then, that individual men, and especially princes, may be charged with the same defects of which writers accuse the people; for whoever is not controlled by laws will commit the same errors as an unbridled multitude.
Yet Machiavelli placed his emphasis on the strong king, or prince, as the individual charged with control of government and almost required to take whatever means he deemed necessary to accomplish his goals. As a humanist educator, Machiavelli details the nature, goals, and responsibilities of the Prince, the sovereign whose leadership determines the success or failure of the body politic and of the state over which he rules. In examining this issue, Machiavelli swept away much of the moralistic and theolo
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