Hanna Kim

Emery P1
H Euro Lit
20 September 2010
Literary Journal
1. LOGOS is the appeal to logic or reason.

2. 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 cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect. And
shortsighted writers admire his deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal
cause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been sufficient for him may be proved
by the case of Scipio, that most excellent man, not of his own times but within the memory of man,
against whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain; this arose from nothing but his too great
forbearance, which gave his soldiers more licence than is consistent with military discipline.

3. Machiavelli’s provided examples and use of logic leave little room for argument on the reader’s part.
The first example provided is that of Hannibal and his success as a harsh ruler. Machiavelli argues that
Hannibal’s triumphs as a cruel leader were a result of his “inhuman cruelty” and not any of his other
virtues. Machiavelli reasons that cruelty must be the only reliable virtue as the prince of a nation
because of the model of Hannibal’s success and Scipio’s failure. He defends his argument that cruelty
is more important than clemency by contrasting the governing techniques of Hannibal and Scipio and
presenting the outcome of each represented style. The strength of Machiavelli’s examples and the solid
path of his reasoning are enough to persuade the rational human being that cruelty must overcome
clemency. Rationally speaking, there is no visible flaw in Machiavelli’s reasoning and this is
meaningful because to the reader, it suggests that there is no other truth than the one provided. Even
those who are not completely rational would have been convinced that cruelty of the ruler, may not be
morally right, but it is what creates the most stable government. Appeal to logic is an effective tool in
persuasive writing because it relies not on the opinions of different people but rather the flow of one
true statement to another that ultimately ends with a definite conclusion.