Was Machiavelli teaching tyrants, or setting a trap for them?

Scholars still argue about it, and the argument is the best way into the book. Machiavelli's The Prince advises rulers that a prince should not shrink from being cruel if it keeps his subjects in line, and it is the work most responsible for the pejorative use of the word "Machiavellian". Gentillet, a Huguenot, accused him of atheism in 1576 and said politicians treated his works as the "Koran of the courtiers".

But look at the author's situation. Machiavelli had been secretary to the second chancery of the Florentine Republic from 1498 to 1512, and was expelled from his duties when the Medici retook power. The Prince was written in 1513, the year after the Medici regained control and a few months after his arrest, torture and banishment by the incoming regime. It was not printed until 1532, five years after he died, and it is not certain that any Medici read it before then.

So was it satire? Rousseau thought so: he said Machiavelli, attached to the Medici court, could not help veiling his love of liberty, and that choosing Cesare Borgia as hero revealed his hidden aim. Garrett Mattingly called it in some ways a "diabolical burlesque" of the Mirrors of Princes. Maurizio Viroli rejects this, saying the "book of Republicans" idea comes from Rousseau's wish to rescue Machiavelli's reputation.

A subtler view comes from Mary Dietz, who argues that Machiavelli gave carefully crafted advice, such as arming the people, designed to undo the ruler if taken seriously. By her account the trap never worked because the book's dedicatee, Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent), a suspicious prince, never read it. Others, such as John Scott and Vickie Sullivan, think she identified the wrong plot.