Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince has been one of the most extensively studied works of political theory since its original publication. The reason for the ongoing interest in this work is its radical modernity. This paper analyses an important dimension of this aspect which has been overlooked thus far, namely the author’s attitude towards his prince and the means he used to express it, by comparing Machiavelli’s attitudes with those of Guillaume Budé and Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Published for the fi rst time in 1721, Persian Letters has been relatively underestimated as a source of knowledge about Montesquieu’s philosophy of liberty. This paper analyses one of the main story lines of the novel, namely the relations between Usbek, the Persian traveller, and the wives remaining in his seraglio. It is demonstrated that these wives are in fact the fi gures of subjects — the fl attering and scheming subject of an absolute ruler, the law-abiding subject of a monarch, and the rebel who questions the very legitimacy of the lord’s authority. It is also demonstrated that the story of the seraglio wives’ rebellion explains why subjects rebel and how the rulers who abuse their power lose it.