When Machiavelli Became Exciting: Hobbes and the 19th Century
The Prince drifted in obscurity until Hobbes's Leviathan hit European thought 'like a truck full of bricks.' Philosophers trying to refute Hobbes went back to Machiavelli as the ancestral monster. Then in the 19th century, newly republican governments needed a political framework without God — and Machiavelli was the only major theorist who didn't plug religion in.
