Cicero's View of Human Nature in the Prince

Machiavelli is not really a philosopher, he wouldn't occur to him to give a programmatic statement of the nature of human nature. But it is true that in the prince, there's a very strange moment in chapter 17 where he's suddenly burst out about men. He says this can be said in general about men: They are fickle, they're ungrateful, they're liars, they're descendants, they're avaricious and cardly. That's what you have to know. It does, of course, affect his politics. And he does so most conspicuously in the two most celebrated chapters in the book.