Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince has been one of the most extensively studied works of political theory since its original publication. The reason for the ongoing interest in this work is its radical modernity. This paper analyses an important dimension of this aspect which has been overlooked thus far, namely the author’s attitude towards his prince and the means he used to express it, by comparing Machiavelli’s attitudes with those of Guillaume Budé and Erasmus of Rotterdam.