As we have seen, the crucial importance of this insight was first put to Machiavelli at an early stage in his diplomatic career. It was after conversing with the cardinal of Volterra in 1503, and with Pandolfo Petrucci some two years later, that he originally felt impelled to record what was later to become his central political belief: that the clue to successful statecraft lies in recognizing the force of circumstances, accepting what necessity dictates, and harmonizing one’s behaviour with the times. A year after Pandolfo gave him this recipe for princely success, we find Machiavelli putting forward a similar set of observations as his own ideas for the first time. While stationed at Perugia in September 1506, watching the hectic progress of Julius II’s campaign, he fell to musing in a letter to his friend Giovan Soderini about the reasons for triumph and disaster in civil and military affairs. ‘Nature’, he declares, ‘has given every man a particular talent and inspiration’ which ‘controls each one of us’. But ‘the times are varied’ and ‘subject to frequent change’, so that ‘those who fail to alter their ways of proceeding’ are bound to encounter ‘good Fortune at one time and bad at another’. The moral is obvious: if a man wishes ‘always to enjoy good Fortune’, he must ‘be wise enough to accommodate himself to the times’. Indeed, if everyone were ‘to command his nature’ in this way, and ‘match his way of proceeding with his age’, then ‘it would genuinely come true that the wise man would be the ruler of the stars and of the fates’ (73).
Writing The Prince seven years later, Machiavelli virtually copied out these ‘Caprices’, as he deprecatingly called them, in his chapter on the role of Fortune in human affairs. Everyone, he says, likes to follow their own particular bent: one man proceeds cautiously, another impetuously; one forcefully, another cunningly. But in the meantime, ‘times and circumstances change’, so that a ruler who ‘does not change his methods’ will eventually ‘come to grief’. However, Fortune would not change if one learned ‘to change one’s character to suit the times and circumstances’. So the successful prince will always be the one who moves with the times (85–6).
By now it will be evident that the revolution Machiavelli engineered in the genre of advice books for princes was based in effect on redefining the pivotal concept of virtú. He endorses the conventional assumption that virtú is the name of that congeries of qualities which enables a prince to ally with Fortune and obtain honour, glory, and fame. But he divorces the meaning of the term from any necessary connection with the cardinal and princely virtues. He argues instead that the defining characteristic of a truly virtuoso prince will be a willingness to do whatever is dictated by necessity — whether the action happens to be wicked or virtuous — in order to attain his highest ends. So virtú comes to denote precisely the requisite quality of moral flexibility in a prince: ‘He must be prepared to vary his conduct as the winds of fortune and changing circumstance constrain him’ (62).
Machiavelli takes some pains to point out that this conclusion opens up an unbridgeable gulf between himself and the whole tradition of humanist political thought, and does so in his most savagely ironic style. To the classical moralists and their innumerable followers, moral virtue had been the defining characteristic of the vir, the man of true manliness. Hence to abandon virtue was not merely to act irrationally; it was also to abandon one’s status as a man and descend to the level of the beasts. As Cicero had put it in Book I of De Officiis, there are two ways in which wrong may be done, either by force or by fraud. Both, he declares, ‘are bestial’ and ‘wholly unworthy of man’ — force because it typifies the lion and fraud because it ‘seems to belong to the cunning fox’ (I.13.41).
To Machiavelli, by contrast, it seemed obvious that manliness is not enough. There are indeed two ways of acting, he agrees at the start of chapter 18, of which ‘the first is appropriate for men, the second for animals’. But ‘because the former is often ineffective, one must have recourse to the latter’ (61). One of the things a prince therefore needs to know is which animals to imitate. Machiavelli’s celebrated advice is that he will come off best if he learns to imitate ‘both the fox and the lion’, supplementing the ideals of manly decency with the beastly arts of force and fraud (61). This conception is underlined in the next chapter, in which Machiavelli discusses one of his favourite historical characters, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus. First he assures us that the emperor was a man of very great virtú (68). And then, explaining the judgement, he adds that Septimius’s great qualities were those of ‘a very fierce lion and a very cunning fox’, as a result of which he was ‘feared and respected by everyone’ (69).
Machiavelli rounds off his analysis by indicating the lines of conduct to be expected from a truly virtuoso prince. In chapter 19 he puts the point negatively, stressing that such a ruler will never do anything worthy of contempt, and will always take the greatest care to avoid becoming an object of hatred (63). In chapter 21 the positive implications are then spelled out. Such a prince will always stand boldly forth, either as ‘a true ally or an outright enemy’. At the same time he will ensure, like Ferdinand of Spain, that he presents himself to his subjects as majestically as possible, doing ‘great things’ and keeping his subjects ‘in a state of suspense and amazement as they await their outcome’ (77).
In the light of this account, it is again easy to understand why Machiavelli felt such admiration for Cesare Borgia, and wished to hold him up — despite his obvious limitations — as a pattern of virtú for other new princes. For Borgia had demonstrated, on one terrifying occasion, that he understood perfectly the paramount importance of avoiding the hatred of the people while at the same time keeping them in awe. The occasion was when he realized that his government of the Romagna, in the capable but tyrannical hands of Rimirro de Orco, was falling into the most serious danger of all, that of becoming hated by those living under it. As we have seen, Machiavelli was an eyewitness of Borgia’s cold-blooded solution to the dilemma: the summary murder of Rimirro and the exhibition of his body in the public square as a sacrifice to the people’s rage.
Machiavelli’s belief in the imperative need to avoid popular hatred and contempt should perhaps be dated from this moment. But even if the duke’s action merely served to corroborate his own sense of political realities, there is no doubt that the episode left him deeply impressed. When he came to discuss the issues of hatred and contempt in The Prince, this was precisely the incident he recalled in order to illustrate his point. He makes it clear that Borgia’s action had struck him on reflection as being profoundly right. It was resolute; it took courage; and it brought about exactly the desired effect, since it ‘left the people both satisfied and amazed’ while at the same time removing the cause of their hatred. Summing up in his iciest tones, Machiavelli remarks that the policy not only deserves to be ‘known about’ but also to be ‘imitated by others’ (26).