THE PRINCE is a political treatise by the Florentine public servant and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. Originally called De Principatibus (About Principalities), THE PRINCE was originally written in 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. THE PRINCE is not representative of the work published during his lifetime, but it is the most remembered, and the work responsible for bringing "Machiavellian" into wide usage as a pejorative term.