Nicolo? Machiavelli 1469 was born in Florence, Italy. His family used to be a noble family in Florence for a long time, but it had declined when he was born. Influenced and guided by his parents and family, Machiavelli got a good education. As a teenager, he read a lot of works by Cicero, Horace and Levi, mastered profound Latin through self-study, and cultivated the temperament of independent thinking and advocating freedom.