Directions: pick ten passages--any ten passages you want--from the selections in your text taken from Machiavelli’s The Prince (from chapters 7, 15, 25 and 26). Discuss each of the ten passages in a 100-word-minimum response. The passages can be as long or short as you wish. Copy the passage of your choice; then give your discussion. Your discussion should focus on one, or several, aspects of the text you’ve selected: what you like; what you dislike; something that surprised or shocked you; something that filled you with admiration; or wonder; or that you found intriguing but hard to understand; something that just completely threw you for a loop; something that amused you. You can make an interesting and relevant observation. You can ask, then answer, interesting questions.
Please put serious effort into your responses. Your responses should give me a sense of the fact that you are doing the reading, and that you are putting some serious effort into making sense and drawing significance from the readings. Do not have any direct quotes in your response itself. If you do quote verbatim, then subtract it from the minimum number of words in your response.
The passage you quote can be as long or short as you need; each response (discussion) should be a minimum of 100 words. Be sure to find a passage that means something to you; you have to be able to say something about it.
I have, below, a sample passage followed by a discussion. Use the format suggested when preparing your responses.
From Chapter 17 of The Prince
…Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that having led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without that...