Machiavelli criticizes Plato’s explicit celebration of the contemplative philosophic life over the active political life as harmful both to politics and to philosophy, he praises Homer as an effective teacher of political leaders or "princes," and he follows the example of Homer by hiding his own philosophic life under the guise of one who exclusively leads and admires the active political life. Machiavelli, however, responding to the Platonic and also Christian legacy of radically depreciating the political life during his own times, departs from Homer’s portrayal of the political life of virtue as tragic and therefore pointing beyond itself to the contemplative philosophic life, by portraying the political life of virtue, if properly understood, as one that leads to happiness and therefore does not so clearly point beyond itself to the contemplative philosophic life.

Homer plays an important but overlooked role in the history of political philosophy. Plato criticizes the philosophic tradition founded by Homer and establishes a new one in its place; Machiavelli and Nietzsche, two leading philosophic critics of Plato, invoke Homer in their arguments against Plato and his legacy.

Homer first presents as a model of human excellence the hero Achilles, who lives a life of political and military virtue to the fullest, who becomes painfully aware of the limits of that way of life, and whose example as a tragic, suffering, questioning hero points to the contemplative singer Homer as the true model of human excellence in the Homeric poems. Through his explicit, skeptical judgments concerning gods and heroes; his scientific but compassionate accounts of death; and his similes, Homer points to himself as a philosophic thinker, but he deliberately hides his philosophic life in the poems to avoid incurring popular hostility and to encourage the most thoughtful members of his audience to discover the independent-minded life of philosophy on their own and for themselves.