Hiero II of Syracuse

Hiero II of Syracuse serves as one of Niccolo Machiavelli’s clearest examples of a ruler who transforms Fortune’s opportunity into stable authority through his own merit. Chosen by the Syracusans when they were oppressed, he rose from private citizen to army captain and then to King of Syracuse. His achievement lies not merely in attaining power, but in making power his own: he replaced the old army, abandoned existing alliances, created new ones, and established a military and political foundation that enabled him to preserve what he had acquired with little difficulty.

Identity and Rise

Hiero II of Syracuse begins from a private station rather than an inherited throne. His opportunity came from the political distress of the Syracusans, who selected him as their Captain while seeking relief from oppression. The appointment therefore originated in Fortune, but Machiavelli insists that Fortune alone cannot explain the result. Hiero’s conduct in office displayed such conspicuous merit that the captaincy became a kingship. A writer cited by Machiavelli judged that, even before receiving the crown, Hiero lacked nothing required of a King except the Kingdom itself.

This movement from private citizen to King illustrates the distinction between opportunity and capacity. The crisis gave Hiero access to authority, but his ability to command converted temporary confidence into sovereignty. Unlike rulers who receive States suddenly through another Prince’s favour and then struggle to maintain them, Hiero used the opening created by circumstance to construct an independent basis for rule.

Foundations of Rule

Hiero’s decisive measures were institutional as well as personal. He did away with the old army and organized a new one, refusing to let the military structure inherited from the previous order determine the security of his own regime. He also abandoned existing alliances and assumed new allies. These changes severed dependencies that might have limited his freedom of action and replaced them with forces attached to the political order he was building.

Machiavelli presents the result as a foundation on which Hiero could raise whatever political superstructure he chose. The sequence matters: Hiero did not first enjoy secure power and then reform the State from a position of comfort. He accepted trouble during the acquisition and used that period to establish the means by which later authority could be preserved. His success therefore rests on the conversion of military, diplomatic, and personal authority into a coherent foundation.

Native Arms and Military Judgment

Hiero reappears in the discussion of arms as an especially forceful advocate of self-reliance. After becoming Captain of the Syracusan armies, he immediately recognized that a force of mercenary soldiers, supplied by men resembling Italian condottieri, was not serviceable. Because he would neither retain nor disband them in the ordinary way, he caused them all to be cut to pieces and thereafter made war with native soldiers alone, without other aid.

The severity of this decision expresses Machiavelli’s broader rule that a Prince must depend on his own arms. Mercenaries are unreliable because their loyalty is purchased rather than rooted in the Prince’s State; auxiliary troops are even more dangerous because they remain united and under their own officers. Hiero’s action removes both forms of dependence at once. His native army becomes not simply a battlefield instrument but the military expression of his independent rule.

Hiero’s example is paired with that of Cesare Borgia. Cesare Borgia first entered Romagna with French auxiliary troops and captured Imola and Forli. He then hired the Orsini and Vitelli, only to find those mercenaries fickle, false, and treacherous, before finally falling back on troops of his own raising. Cesare Borgia’s reputation increased as he moved from foreign assistance to forces under his personal control. Hiero represents the same principle in a more uncompromising form: the ruler’s security improves when victory depends on arms that are his own rather than on the uncertain strength of others.

Comparisons with Other Rulers

Hiero’s significance becomes sharper through Machiavelli’s comparisons among kinds of principality. The opening classification divides States into Republics and Princedoms, and Princedoms into hereditary and new forms; new Princedoms may be wholly new, like Milan to Francesco Sforza, or attached to a ruler’s hereditary possessions, like the Kingdom of Naples to the dominions of the King of Spain. They may also have lived under a Prince or in freedom, and they may be acquired through a ruler’s own arms or those of others, by Fortune or by merit. Hiero is important because his career joins opportunity supplied by Fortune to rule secured by merit and self-created resources.

Machiavelli contrasts him with Alexander the Great’s conquest of Asia. Alexander could hold the dominions of Darius because Darius’s kingdom was governed by a sole Prince and servants dependent on him. Once Alexander defeated Darius utterly and Darius died, no powerful native lords remained with enough credit to organize resistance; the only disorders troubling Alexander’s successors arose from their own ambition and jealousy. The ease of preserving the acquisition thus depended on the character of the conquered State, not simply on the conqueror’s personal excellence.

Hiero’s case differs because it concerns the construction of authority within Syracuse rather than the occupation of a uniformly centralized empire. Yet it confirms the same general proposition: durable rule depends on foundations suited to the political conditions at hand. Machiavelli also places Hiero beside Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia. Francesco Sforza rose from privacy to become Duke of Milan through suitable measures and singular ability, preserving with little trouble what he had gained through infinite efforts. Cesare Borgia, by contrast, obtained his Princedom through the favourable fortunes of his father and lost it with those fortunes, despite using every prudent expedient available to a capable man. Hiero belongs with Sforza as a ruler whose capacity made opportunity durable, while Cesare Borgia demonstrates how even excellent preparation may be defeated by extraordinary Fortune.

Political Meaning and Narrative Role

Hiero is less a fully dramatized personality than a compact political example, recognizable through a single governing idea: the ruler who makes borrowed opportunity his own. His actions are presented as a sequence of deliberate substitutions—new army for old, new alliances for existing ones, native soldiers for mercenaries. Each substitution reduces dependence and increases the Prince’s control over the instruments of power.

His story also gives concrete force to Machiavelli’s distinction between acquiring and preserving a State. Hiero had “trouble enough in acquiring, but none in preserving what he had acquired.” The contrast is not accidental. Acquisition requires the courage and capacity to act under unstable conditions; preservation becomes easier when military loyalty, political alliances, and administrative authority have been deliberately reorganized. Hiero therefore embodies a central lesson of The Prince: Fortune may open the road to power, but only merit, disciplined judgment, and independent arms can keep that power standing.