``It is not the well-being of individuals that makes cities great, but the well-being of the community`` Few figures in intellectual history have proved as notorious and ambiguous as Niccolo Machiavelli.
In this carefully argued commentary on Livy\'s history of republican Rom.
But while his treatise The Prince made his name synonymous with autocratic ruthlessness and cynical manipulation, The Discourses (c.1517) shows a radically different outlook on the world of politics. ``It is not the well-being of individuals that makes cities great, but the well-being of the community`` Few figures in intellectual history have proved as notorious and ambiguous as Niccolo Machiavelli