The Prince was published posthumously. It contains a dedicatory letter gifting the book to Lorenzo de Medici, who was also dead at the time of publication, and who had died eight years prior to Machiavelli. This is the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who is anything but magnificent. Both because of the oddity of a dead man gifting a book to another dead man, and because the work was published together with the letter, we should read the letter carefully.
Niccolò Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici:
It is customary most of the time for those who desire to acquire favor with a Prince to come to meet him with things that they care most for among their own or with things that they see please him most. Thus, one sees them many times being presented with horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones and similar ornaments worthy of their greatness. Thus, since I desire to offer myself to your Magnificence with some testimony of my homage to you, I have found nothing in my belongings that I care so much for and esteem so greatly as the knowledge of the actions of great men, learned by me from long experience with modern things and a continuous reading of ancient ones. Having thought out and examined these things with great diligence for a long time, and now reduced them to one small volume, I send it to your Magnificence. And although I judge this work undeserving of your presence, yet I have much confidence that through your humanity it may be accepted, considering that no greater gift could be made by me than to give you the capacity to be able to understand in a very short time all that I have learned and understood in so many years and with so many hard ships and dangers for myself I have not ornamented this work, nor filled it with fulsome phrases nor with pompous and magnificent words, nor with any blandishment or superfluous ornament whatever, with which it is customary for many to describe and adorn their things. For I wanted it either not to be honored for anything or to please solely for the variety of the matter and the gravity of the subject. Nor do I want it to be reputed presumption if a man from a low and mean state dares to discuss and give rules for the governments of princes. For just as those who sketch landscapes place themselves down in the plain to consider the nature of mountains and high places and to consider the nature of low places place themselves high atop mountains, similarly, to know well the nature of peoples one needs to be prince, and to know well the nature of princes one needs to be of the people.
Therefore, your Magnificence, take this small gift in the spirit with which I send it. If your Magnificence con siders and reads it diligently, you will learn from it my extreme desire that you arrive at the greatness that fortune and your other qualities promise you. And if your Magnificence will at some time turn your eyes from the summit of your height to these low places, you will learn how un deservedly I endure a great and continuous malignity of fortune.
In life there are two types of gifts: there are gifts the giver wants and appreciates, and there are gifts the receiver wants and appreciates. Which type attests to the sincerity of the gift?