Niccolò Machiavelli, who hailed from Florence, wrote his book "Il Principe" around 1513, but it was not published until 1532, after the author's death. In this work, Machiavelli examines the most effective methods and strategies for acquiring and maintaining princely power, setting aside conventional moral considerations, which led to intense criticism upon the book's release. However, the author did not intend for his book to serve as a manual for the cynical exercise of power; rather, he aimed for an empirically grounded analysis of princely politics - an early Enlightenment approach that establishes Machiavelli as the first representative of modern political philosophy.