<P> The Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci argued that Machiavelli's audience for this work was not the classes who already rule (or have "hegemony") over the common people, but the common people themselves, trying to establish a new hegemony, and making Machiavelli the first "Italian Jacobin". </P> <P> Hans Baron is one of the few major commentators who argues that Machiavelli must have changed his mind dramatically in favour of free republics, after having written The Prince . </P>

When was the prince by niccolo machiavelli written