The Prince’s Two Bodies: The Machiavellian Hero as a Literary Character Between History and Invention

Abstract

This article discusses how in De principatibus Machiavelli defines the status of the treatise main character (the Prince) through the intersection of three levels: (a) history (as a character born from the symbolic fusion of traits and characteristics of historical personalities who actually existed); (b) politics (as a character who is the sign of an abstract political function); and (c) literary invention (as a fictional character constructed according to the rhetorical and logical strategies of literary invention). This case study shows how rhetoric, historiography, oratory, and political analysis are mixed together in a coherent organism, thanks to the creation of a character (the Prince) who constantly oscillates between historical–political reality and literary fiction. The analysis, both theoretical and historical, of the status of the protagonist of De principatibus is accompanied by the study of the critical readings of Francesco De Sanctis, Antonio Gramsci, and Luigi Russo, whose reception is strongly conditioned by the ambiguous nature of the character of the Prince, both in terms of critical categories and argumentative strategies.

1. Gramsci and the Dramatic Form of the Prince

At the beginning of Quaderno 13 (1932–1933), the Noterelle sul Principe di Machiavelli, Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci 2014, p. 2217) sets out to comment on the political science of De principatibus, as well as the various historical ramifications of Machiavellism, without ever losing sight of the connection between the Machiavellian lesson and the practical and theoretical problems that the present imposed on the mind of the communist theorist. Indeed, it is precisely the urgency of present problems that suggests to Gramsci the striking definition that opens Quaderno 13:

Il carattere fondamentale del Principe è quello di non essere una trattazione sistematica ma un libro «vivente», in cui l’ideologia politica e la scienza politica si fondono nella forma drammatica del «mito».

This definition is as clear as it is problematic: De principatibus1 is in fact a treatise, and it is possible to divide it into parts that demonstrate its systematic nature. Its belonging to the literary genre of the treatise is so evident that it could not naturally have escaped Gramsci. However, he believes that it is another aspect that makes Machiavelli’s work memorable: that mythical form or dimension that arises from the fusion between the conception («l’ideologia politica») and the analysis of political power. In this way, the treatise accesses the dimension of myth: a narrative that is situated in a generically ahistorical past and that, by virtue of its peculiar relationship with time, has a paradigmatic value (the myth precedes, or exists beyond, history, and for this reason, it possesses the capacity to illuminate it).2

But why emphasize the «forma drammatica» of the myth? What is Gramsci referring to? Immediately after, the Italian philosopher adds the following:

Tra l’utopia e il trattato scolastico, le forme in cui la scienza politica si configurava fino al Machiavelli, questi dette alla sua concezione la forma fantastica e artistica, per cui l’elemento dottrinale e razionale si impersona in un condottiero, che rappresenta plasticamente e «antropomorficamente» il simbolo della «volontà collettiva». Il processo di formazione di una determinata volontà collettiva, per un determinato fine politico, viene rappresentato non attraverso disquisizioni e classificazioni pedantesche di principii e criteri di un metodo d’azione, ma come qualità, tratti caratteristici, doveri, necessità di una concreta persona, ciò che fa operare la fantasia artistica di chi si vuol convincere e dà una piú concreta forma alle passioni politiche».

(Gramsci 2014, p. 2217). [my emphasis]

Gramsci suggests that Machiavelli carries out a revolution in the history of literary genres dedicated to politics (utopia, treatise) because, unlike his predecessors, he introduces the fundamental principles of the art of politics into the living body of a fantastic invention that has all the characteristics of a literary character: qualities, traits, character, behavior, and so forth. Machiavelli therefore unites, according to Gramsci, the qualities proper to literary genius, that is, the capacity to give a «forma fantastica e artistica» to his ideas with the depth of thought of the political analyst and, in general, with that conception of politics that is embodied («impersona») in a concretely described human figure. This is what he meant by dramatic form: the Machiavellian treatise gives life to a myth, a narrative (mythos, plot) that is dramatic, that is, marked by dramatis personae: characters who aspire to the tangibility of real life and are not mere abstractions. All this complex critical analysis is powerfully contained under the lapidary and summary definition of De principatibus as a «libro vivente» (living book). Gramsci does not mean that Machiavelli is trivially contemporary, but that the characteristic literary form of the treatise, founded on the narration around a character who has fantastic concreteness, makes De principatibus perpetually alive for the reader, because it speaks to their «fantasia artistica» and excites their passion. The Machiavellian treatise, therefore, is not current but, in a literal sense, lives in the moment in which it manages to activate a passionate–emotional response in the reader.3 This is its aim for Gramsci, and it is achieved thanks to Machiavelli’s construction of the character of the protagonist of the treatise: the Prince.

My thesis is that Gramsci’s critical intuition opens an original and fertile path for a deeper understanding of the De principatibus not merely as a foundational work of political theory but as a literary text in its own right. By foregrounding the book’s mythic–dramatic form, Gramsci draws attention to the rhetorical and literary architecture of the treatise: a construction designed to persuade, to move, and ultimately to incite the reader to action. This literary dimension is far from ancillary to the political one; rather, it constitutes a vital element of the text’s discursive efficacy. Indeed, the literary strategies of the De principatibus—its formal composition, rhetorical structure, and narrative devices—serve to intensify, rather than diminish, the epistemic and theoretical ambitions of the work. Far from being at odds, the literary and political dimensions advance in concert, reinforcing one another in pursuit of a shared objective.

For Gramsci, this objective is explicit: Machiavelli conjoins theory and praxis, knowledge and action, because he envisions a reader who will employ the political science embedded in the De principatibus to found and sustain a new state. To this Machiavellian project, Gramsci appends his own ideological aspiration: the modern heir to the prince is, for him, the «partito»—the Communist Party—envisioned as the essential instrument for the formation of a new state and the emergence of a transformed human society (in Gramsci’s words, «il compimento di una forma superiore e totale di civiltà moderna», the realization of a higher and total form of modern civilization (Gramsci 2014, pp. 2219, 2222)).

This fusion of knowledge and action into a «libro vivente» is enabled above all by the distinctive status of the work’s central figure—the prince—who, like the protagonist of a narrative, traverses the text as a dynamic character, gradually acquiring defined moral and intellectual traits. The De principatibus, in this light, is not only a political treatise or a testament to Machiavelli’s acumen as historian and strategist, but also a singular narrative: a literary construction that recounts the genesis, attributes, triumphs, and failures of its main figure.

My aim is to trace, through a close reading of the work’s chapter-by-chapter progression, the emergence of the prince as a literary character and to argue that it is precisely through the literary configuration of its protagonist that the De principatibus succeeds in articulating a synthesis of rhetoric, historiography, and political analysis in the distinctive form of a «libro vivente».

2. Portraying Character and Representing Action

The study of the literary character may be conducted from a variety of analytical vantage points: ontological, epistemological, linguistic, moral, or, more broadly, narratological. Irrespective of the chosen framework, the scholar initiating such an inquiry invariably confronts a fundamental bifurcation: one path leading to character as the privileged locus of investigation, the other directing attention to action, conceived as that which the character enacts or undergoes from the perspective of plot construction. While the existence of a literary character, however rudimentary or intricate, whose inner life, or character, cannot be delineated is scarcely conceivable, the analogous notion of a character devoid of action presents a significant quandary for the scholar. The absence of actions challenges the very concept of plot and, consequently, the foundational premise of narration itself. It is, naturally, plausible to posit, and indeed to observe within the historical trajectory of literature, the presence of characters whose actions are circumscribed to the domain of thought, consciousness, or, more generally, internal sensibility, even extending to the extreme boundary of a purely mental rather than concrete praxis. One might readily identify a modern progenitor of this characterological type in Huysmans’ Des Esseintes (Ercolino 2017, p. 18). Nevertheless, even within this paradigm, which roughly corresponds to the historical juncture in the evolution of the novel marked by the transition from the robust realism of the nineteenth century to the modernist and subsequent twentieth-century novel, the character performs actions, albeit actions that may consist solely of sensations, spiritual impulses, and states of consciousness that unfold in a manner oscillating between clinical reportage, the depiction of an oneiric experience, and essayistic digression. The issue appears to admit of a more facile resolution in instances where the character in question does not feature within a narrative work but rather within a treatise, as exemplified by Machiavelli’s De principatibus. In such cases, the author and the scholar following in their intellectual wake adhere to the traditional methodology of the moral portrait or, in the conventional terminology of ancient rhetoric, ethopoeia. In actuality, the segregation of moral attributes from the character’s actions, whether pertaining to concrete praxis or, as previously defined, the mental sphere, proves to be a problematic endeavor for the author and an unproductive avenue for scholarly inquiry, or perhaps, more accurately, an inherently infeasible one. Indeed, whenever one undertakes to describe a character in abstracto, delineating its constitutive elements (the qualities), the resultant construct is an assemblage of vices and virtues, a constellation of inclinations that permit the formulation of hypotheses regarding a given character’s potential modes of action and reaction. In other words, the portrait, the ethopoeia, is coterminous with that which precedes and succeeds the narrative, understood in Aristotelian terms as a mimesis of action executed4 by characters, and without which, in verity, it could not merely fail to exist but could not even be conceptually formulated. Indeed, upon considering the earliest exemplars within the literary genre of ethopoeia, such as Theophrastus’ Characters, it becomes immediately apparent that the concise definition of the human type (the irascible individual, the timorous one, et cetera) is invariably followed by a descriptive passage constituting a micro-narrative, however generalized. Similarly, Aristotle himself, when directly addressing the explication of diverse character types, as in the Nicomachean Ethics or the Rhetoric, invariably juxtaposes the typological definition with a consideration of a narrative nature: such a character will act in this manner, or it is permissible to presuppose such behavior, and so forth. The inherent inseparability of ethopoeia and action, of moral portraiture (whether potential or realized) and plot, finds its philosophical grounding in the concept of ethos, which precisely denotes human action imbued with moral significance.5 Recent scholarship that has profitably re-centered Aristotelian Poetics within its narratological reflections, offering a re-evaluation thereof, proceeds along these lines (Mazzoni 2011, pp. 54–57; Tortonese 2023, pp. 15–56; Scarfone 2024, pp. 21–60). Machiavelli himself, therefore, in De principatibus, almost inadvertently from the reader’s perspective, introduces throughout the course of the treatise, chapter by chapter, a series of elements that permit the observation of the moral portrait of the Prince in dynamic engagement, or rather, depicted within a mimesis of action that bears a resemblance to a veritable narrative plot.

3. Still Life and Narrative Discourse

[…] non ho trovato in tra la mia suppellettile cosa quale io abbia più cara o tanto essistimi quanto la cognizione delle azioni delli uomini grandi, imparata da me con una lunga esperienzia delle cose moderne e una continua lezione delle antiche; le quali avendo io con gran diligenzia lungamente escogitate e essaminate, e ora in uno piccolo volume ridotte, mando alla Magnificenzia vostra.

[my emphasys] (Machiavelli 2014, p. 4).

The figure of the Prince is introduced within the Dedication as the subject of exposition in a generalized and plural form («la cognizione delle azioni delli uomini grandi»), thereby alluding to the dual analytical register (Inglese 2013, pp. 74–83) that the author will deploy throughout the entirety of the work (Holman 2018, pp. 75–127). The primary register is practical («lunga esperienza delle cose moderne»), intrinsically linked to the author’s direct engagement as Secretary of the Florentine Republic, and is oriented towards a contemporary object of inquiry, predicated upon comprehension derived from sustained direct observation over time, subsequently assimilated into memory. The secondary register is theoretical, associated with intellectual endeavor, and is directed towards a past object, entailing the apprehension of the Prince, understood as the political actor, through the study of ancient historical exempla («lezione delle [cose] antiche»).

The Prince, as a character, does not manifest directly but rather through what may be termed a metaliterary prolegomenon. The relationship obtaining between the character and its historical referents is akin to that between act and potency, on the one hand, or, in a Platonic sense, between the idea and its instantiation. Indeed, the Prince as a literary construct exists virtually and concurrently as both an atemporal abstract ideal and a tangible historical personage, for while he is undeniably fashioned as a Platonic idea, perfect and unadulterated, historically embodied in certain extant political figures; on the other hand, within the readerly engagement, particularly with certain ideal readers, the protagonist of the Prince functions as a paradigm of political perfection, instigating emulation and thus inviting the transmutation of the model into praxis, that is, the translation of the example’s potentiality into actuality.

This dimension—namely, the necessity of drawing upon the historical legacy of civilizations, nations, and exemplary figures in order to construct the prince’s personal history and thereby render him a living and tangible myth, rather than an abstract or mechanical figure—is fully recognized by Gramsci. Envisioning the composition of a modern De principatibus, he insists on the need for «un’analisi storica (economica) della struttura sociale del paese dato e una rappresentazione “drammatica” dei tentativi fatti attraverso i secoli per suscitare questa volontà e le ragioni dei successivi fallimenti. Perché in Italia non si ebbe la monarchia assoluta al tempo di Machiavelli? Bisogna risalire fino all’Impero Romano (questione della lingua, degli intellettuali ecc.), comprendere la funzione dei Comuni medioevali, il significato del Cattolicismo ecc.: occorre insomma fare uno schizzo di tutta la storia italiana, sintetico ma esatto» (Gramsci 2014, p. 2221).

With exceedingly few exceptions, virtually all the chapters of the treatise are structured according to a bipartite schema: a delineation of the protagonist’s character followed by a compendium of historical exempla illustrating in actu the consequences that ensued, given specific circumstances, for princes who possessed, or lacked, those particular attributes. In this manner, Machiavelli conjoins moral–philosophical analysis (the characterological description of the Prince) (Hillman 2000, p. 241), historical reflection (premised on the understanding that past events unfolded in a determinate manner), and narrative epistemology, for it is solely through historical reconstruction, which inherently possesses a narrative quality, that one can ascertain whether the «uomini grandi» of the past attained their objective, invariably the acquisition and maintenance of the state. Consequently, the historical exemplum fully elucidates the characterological description, and the historical narration serves the purpose of demonstrating in praxi that which, if confined to a mere description of character, remains a static representation.

From this analytical juncture, Chapter 3 assumes structural significance within the treatise, serving as both an introduction and a nexus for numerous themes and personages that will resurface later in the work. Extensive in scope, comprising fifty paragraphs in the Inglese edition, it is dedicated to «principati misti». The chapter alternates between theoretical and general disquisitions and historical paragraphs whose function is to demonstrate, through either affinity or contrast, the validity of the overarching principle (namely, that certain outcomes befell those who adhered to the precepts of good governance, while conversely, distinct outcomes befell those who did not). Within the historical paragraphs, multiple figures are cited: the Sultan, Romans, Greeks, and Louis XII. It is the latter who becomes the central figure of a protracted historical excursus, constituting a concise chronicle of the ascent and decline of French power in Italy during the transitional period between the two centuries. Notably, in the transition from one analytical plane to the other, from the theoretical-general to the practical-individual, Louis XII acquires the semblance of a living character to the extent that his actions are, on the one hand, reduced to the universal logic of power, the sphere within which his virtù is assessed qua Prince, and, on the other hand, reconstructed within the historical dialectic among the various political entities of the peninsula, the specific attributes of those territories, the distinctive character of the protagonists, and so forth. In this continuous oscillation between abstract principle and concrete lived history, Louis XII (Inglese 2013, pp. 59–65) appears to accrete the substance of a vivid character, perpetually subject to the weight of judgment: that of his adversaries, poised to undermine him, of his allies, prepared to protect him or exploit his position, and of the historian, who will evaluate his stature in relation to the abstract ideal of the Prince. Indeed, it is the historian, that is, Machiavelli himself, who renders the judgment according to which a particular figure is deemed worthy of inclusion within the pantheon of «uomini grandi» whose «azioni» are narrated and analyzed in De principatibus. At times, one almost gains the impression that the lives of «uomini grandi» constitute an indefatigable struggle to evade the oblivion into which all human affairs will ultimately be drawn: elevation to the rank of Prince signifies the securing of a place within historical memory and the casting of a perpetual luminary in the void where, for all other individuals, there remains only the darkness of non-existence, death. This impression is reinforced by the concluding appearance of Valentino (Cesare Borgia) through a rapid yet chilling citation.

In the structural articulation of the protagonist’s character, Chapter 5 occupies a subsidiary role, being dedicated to cities and provinces that, accustomed to a state of liberty and their own legal frameworks, are subsequently subjugated by a sovereign. Machiavelli underscores the restive, tumultuous, and conflictual disposition characteristic of republican life, which necessitates a decisive choice on the part of the newly instated sovereign: either to obliterate them or to establish personal residency therein. In such instances, the Prince, as the central figure of the treatise, appears to recede from the principal argumentation; however, rather than being diminished, his presence is arguably amplified by this very absence, as his figure accrues even greater allure, charisma, and significance precisely due to his non-participation in the explicit line of reasoning. A comparable phenomenon occurs in those narratives wherein the protagonist, despite being absent from a particular segment of the plot, gains prominence through the contrast afforded by the extensive attention and space accorded to his antagonists (in this context, the republics).

The genesis of the protagonist’s character, situated at the intersection of portraiture and narration, reassumes centrality in Chapters 6–8, which collectively form a distinct triptych. Chapter 6, critical for the definition of the protagonist’s character, functions as an ideal proem to which the subsequent two chapters offer, as previously noted, the corroboration of two exemplary historical-biographical narratives. It is herein, indeed, that the initial clear and elaborated definition of the Prince’s character emerges as that of an exceptional individual who, through his virtù, imparts form to occasione: it is solely on this basis that he merits remembrance. The rhetorical register of the discourse is elevated, enriched by sapiential similes (the archer), just as the enumeration of the great men cited as examples (Moses, Romulus) is illustrious and quasi-epic. The protagonists of the following two chapters are Cesare Borgia (Chapter 7) and Oliverotto da Fermo (Chapter 8). In Chapter 7, dedicated to princes who have attained their status through fortune and the arms of others, is contained the significant historical excursus (exemplum) devoted to Cesare Borgia, of whom a concentrated biographical précis is sketched. The life of Valentino is developed in parallel with that of Francesco Sforza, a contrasting instance of a prince who acquired power through his virtù and his own military forces. In contradistinction to Sforza, who encountered difficulty in the acquisition but maintained power with facility, Valentino acquired the state with ease, as evidenced by the rapid formation of an extensive personal dominion, yet retained it with considerable effort and ultimately lost it with equal rapidity. The prolegomenon dedicated to the theoretical question of how a prince who has acquired the state with the arms and fortune of others ought to conduct himself is notably brief in comparison to the biographical section devoted to Borgia (conversely, the section dedicated to Sforza comprises only two concise paragraphs). The inclusion of Borgia’s biography within the argumentative structure of the treatise is considerably problematic, for while it ostensibly aligns with the very exemplary logic elucidated in the Dedication, given the undeniable greatness of his actions and his possession of the crystalline virtù of the authentic political actor, his case does not, in fact, serve as an exemplar according to the Machiavellian logic established precisely in the Dedication. Valentino’s actions, indeed, fall within the ambit of the «azioni delli uomini grandi», his political conduct serves as a pertinent example for those aspiring to princely status, and Machiavelli avows that he could not adduce «esempi migliori»; nevertheless, the author is compelled to concede that his exceptional virtù proved insufficient to secure the enduring possession of the state. Borgia’s trajectory, discordant with the treatise’s underlying logic (Sasso 1966; Dionisotti 1980, pp. 7–64; Najemy 2022, pp. 148–57), is, however, profoundly valuable from a narrative standpoint, for it imbues the figure of the Prince with a tragic dimension that invests the narrative of which he is the protagonist with pathos. Machiavelli attributes his downfall to an exceptional adversity of fate, an «estrema malignità di fortuna» (Machiavelli 2014, p. 43). This historical consideration casts a cautionary shadow over Borgia’s portrait: not even the purest political virtù can prevail against the extreme violence of which fortune is capable.

At this juncture, it is pertinent for the reader to inquire into the status of the exemplary system that undergirds the entire treatise. In this particular instance, the articulation between the theoretical and practical planes struggles to coalesce into a coherent argumentative logic whereby theory is substantiated by praxis, and praxis, in turn, underwrites the incisiveness of the theoretical propositions. However, it is precisely this dissonance between the praxis exhibited by the historical personages (Sforza, Borgia, et al.) and the theoretical framework that, while potentially rendering De principatibus less persuasive as a didactic treatise, enhances its complexity and richness as a work of dramatic invention. The literary fecundity of the work arises, at least with respect to the aspect under consideration, precisely from the intricate dialogue between these two levels: it is the historical-biographical level, or that of historical praxis as previously designated, that endows De principatibus with the vital spirit of a work that does not definitively resolve the posed problems but which, with tenacity, continues to elaborate incessantly the scenarios opened by the various issues addressed. From the perspective of the Prince as a fictional construct, in this instance it appears evident how the historical-biographical plane, specifically the narrative of Borgia, confers upon the abstract character of the ideal Prince the attributes of a profound and complex literary figure, observed in action rather than fixed within the static and abstract framework of his ideal qualities. Indeed, these qualities are never abstractly deduced but consistently derived inductively from historical exempla. Consequently, the reader who has reached the conclusion of the seventh chapter is left to ponder, with considerable apprehension and trepidation, how that Prince who is gradually being delineated as the protagonist of the work might possibly succeed where even Borgia, the very embodiment of perfect political virtù, has ultimately failed. The individual historical exemplum furnishes the traits of his character, observed in action through the concentrated account of his political biography, to the abstract character of the Prince, endowing him with a pathetic and, by turns, militant, impassioned, utopian dimension precisely because the protagonist of the treatise is constructed as a kind of super-character derived from concrete historical precedents.

4. Is It a Tale of Redemption?

In Chapters 9–13, the treatise does not offer any significant contribution to the construction of the protagonist’s character, who, as the main figure of the work, seems almost to be absent in the face of the emergence of other themes. The sole significant exception is contained in Chapter 12, where mercenary armies are discussed. Here, in fact, while the Prince as a character disappears, Italy obsessively appears in contrast. The latter, vilified and mistreated, is presented through a sexualized personification (she is, in fact, described as a lone, defenseless, and violated woman). Thanks to this sort of reverse shot, Machiavelli further highlights the character of the Prince precisely by excluding him from the scene for the moment. It almost seems like a tragic re-enactment of the narrative action at the palace of Ithaca besieged by the Suitors, with Penelope-Italy awaiting, as will be clearly seen in the last chapter, the return of Prince-Ulysses. Although narratively the chapter offers very little, it is nonetheless important for the delineation of the narrative plot underlying the treatise: a story of decline, absence, and redemption. For this narrative of redemption and return to have a happy ending, the protagonist must not only be endowed with certain necessary qualities, which pertain to the sphere of character and thus of nature, but also with a doctrine, an art to be learned with discipline. The art of war (Fournel and Zancarini 2018, pp. 246–63) is certainly central in this second repertoire of instruments or qualities.

The theme is addressed in Chapter 14, in which Machiavelli asks what knowledge the Prince must possess regarding the art of war and how much space to dedicate to war among the affairs of state. The emerging image is surprising, because while it was reasonable to expect that the Prince should understand everything concerning war and military life (maintaining a camp, keeping troops healthy and in exercise, knowing how to elaborate an adequate strategy, etc.), an extreme affirmation like the following was not «Debbe dunque uno principe non avere altro obietto né altro pensiero né prendere cosa alcuna per sua arte fuora della guerra e ordini e disciplina di essa, perché quella èsola arte che si aspetta a chi comanda» (Machiavelli 2014, p. 104)—A prince, therefore, ought to have no other object or thought, nor acquire anything as his art but war, its organization, and its discipline; for that is the only art which belongs to one who commands. The second part of the chapter, rich in historical examples, is dedicated to princes to be taken as examples for correct conduct in the military sphere (Francesco Sforza and the Achaean Philopoemen). Even more important is the metaliterary character that the argumentation assumes at this point. Machiavelli affirms, in fact, that the Prince, even in times of «pace» (peace), must constantly exercise himself in the thought of war and must do so either practically or theoretically, either «con le opere» (with deeds) or «con la mente» (with the mind). In what does the purely mental «essercizio della guerra»—exercise of war consist? In the historical knowledge of carefully selected examples, accompanied by adequate meditation:

Ma quanto allo essercizio della mente, debbe el principe leggere le istorie e in quelle considerare le azioni delli uomini eccellenti, vedere come si sono governati nelle guerre, essaminare le cagioni delle vittorie e perdite loro per potere queste fuggire e quelle imitare; e soprattutto fare come ha fatto per l’addreto qualche uomo eccellente che ha preso a imitare se alcuno innanzi a lui è stato laudato e gloriato, e di quello ha tenuto sempre e’ gesti e azioni apresso di sé: come si dice che Alessandro Magno imitava Achille; Cesare, Alessandro; Scipione, Ciro. E qualunque legge la vita di Ciro scritta da Xenofonte, riconosce di poi nella vita di Scipione quanto quella imitazione gli fu a gloria, e quanto, nella castità affabilità umanità liberalità, Scipione si conformassi con quelle cose che di Ciro da Xenofonte sono sute scritte.

(Machiavelli 2014, p. 108)

This passage (Biasiori 2017, pp. 57–68) has a programmatic value for the entire treatise because it concerns both the value that historical knowledge has for the elaboration of effective political conduct in the present, and because it illustrates the way in which, in general, De principatibus itself must be understood: the ideal reader presupposed by the book coincides with the protagonist of the narrative of redemption that runs through the treatise. The true protagonist of this narrative of rebirth is not the Prince as an abstract function of government, as an ideal type of charismatic political leader, but the virtù that is incarnated in men and, like all human events and the actions of men, great or small, is destined to follow the unpredictable and troubled fortunes of human affairs, in a constant alternation of affirmations, defeats, and returns (Anselmi 2018, p. 77 in Cutinelli-Rendina and Ruggiero 2018). It is even more surprising that the immediately following chapter (Chapter 15) is a firm indictment against the naive and idealistic writings that have described states and princes that do not exist, describing them not as they are but as men would like them to be.

Resta ora a vedere quali debbino essere e’ modi e governi di uno principe o co’ sudditi o con li amici. E perché io so che molti di questo hanno scritto, dubito, scrivendone ancora io, non essere tenuto prosuntuoso, partendomi maxime nel disputare questa materia dalli ordini delli altri. Ma sendo l’intenzione mia stata scrivere cosa che sia utile a chi la intende, mi è parso più conveniente andare dreto alla verità effettuale della cosa che alla immaginazione di essa. E molti si sono immaginati republiche e principati che non si sono mai visti né conosciuti in vero essere. Perché gli è tanto discosto da come si vive a come si doverrebbe vivere, che colui che lascia quello che si fa per quello che si doverrebbe fare impara più presto la ruina che la preservazione sua, perché uno uomo che voglia fare in tutte le parte professione di buono, conviene che ruini in fra tanti che non sono buoni».

(Machiavelli 2014, p. 110)

After Chapter 14, the treatise has taken on the guise of an analysis of the political combined with a narrative device, all organized in a persuasive rhetorical form (Viroli 2013, pp. 92–118) aimed at stimulating the rebirth of virtue, Machiavelli surprises the reader by launching into the famous condemnation of utopian theories, idealistic constructions, and narratives animated by good sentiments: in politics, as in general (as post-Machiavellians might affirm in every field of science and knowledge), the principle according to which exact knowledge has as its object the «verità effettuale della cosa» (effectual truth of the thing) prevails, and the art of government, as well as everything concerning praxis (society, education, the government of individuals as well as of cities and states), is built starting from the solid concrete reality that can be experienced through the senses, direct observation, and knowledge mediated and supported by experience. It would seem an incontrovertible indictment against every utopian discourse that tolerates no exceptions. And yet, even in this chapter, the author continues to fuel the utopian tension that runs through the entire treatise and that rests above all on the construction of the Prince as a character, as appears in the second part of the chapter. Here, Machiavelli presents a long list of qualities considered, by unanimous consensus, as virtues and vices, respectively. The conclusion of Chapter 15 illustrates, perhaps better than in any other place in the work, the qualities of the protagonist’s character. He must not possess a fixed patrimony of qualities, if not one alone, «prudenza» (prudence), which must serve as a compass that allows him to orient himself successfully among the dangers of life and government, using now one quality, now another. Prudence, which in ancient times was the capacity to foresee the future based on what the past has taught, becomes for Machiavelli a sort of proteiform principle, a tonic of the soul capable of providing the Prince with any character according to necessity. The only fixed point to adhere to is to avoid those qualities, whether vices or virtues, that harm the state and to follow those that preserve it. The portrait of the Prince is therefore not crystallized in a fixed set of qualities; on the contrary, his character seems singularly devoid of qualities,6 as if his face possessed a plastic power capable of assuming any trait.7 In this case, the Machiavellian Prince does not anticipate the rhetoric of dissimulation nor, much less, can his characterizable indeterminacy be condemned as political opportunism; on the contrary, this extreme versatility appears as an essential super-quality of the Prince’s character: he possesses a protean personality (Scuderi 2018, pp. 45–104) that allows him to enter and exit the territories of good and evil at his pleasure, guided by the good of the state as the end and aided by prudence as the instrument. In the game of politics, everything is or could be different from how it appears.

5. Essence and Appearance

The dialectic between appearance and being (Bodei 1992, pp. 388–91), the subject of Chapters 16–19, is initially treated (Chapter 17) with attention to the themes of piety and cruelty, subsequently explicated as love and fear. Machiavelli offers the example of Borgia, who succeeded in establishing a vast personal principality partly due to his deserved reputation as a cruel prince. In the second part of the chapter, when the question is posed whether it is better for the Prince to be loved or feared, Machiavelli illustrates a further aspect of his pitiless anthropology: «li uomini hanno meno rispetto a offendere uno che si facci amare che uno che si facci temere: perché lo amore è tenuto da uno vinculo di obligo il quale, per essere gli uomini tristi, da ogni occasione di propria utilità è rotto, ma il timore è tenuto da una paura di pena che non ti abbandona mai» (Machiavelli 2014, p. 119). It is better to be feared than loved, because love creates a bond, and since men are wicked, they will attempt in every way to free themselves from this bond born of another’s love. The Prince will take good care not to be universally loved because this reputation harms the governance of people, who, as soon as possible, will seek to break free from the chains in which his love has placed them. Conversely, fear (Pedullà 2018, pp. 84–116) is a perpetual condition from which those who experience it can never free themselves, because they fear the Prince’s violence. The criterion that governs the choice is therefore the strictly political one of the greater and more secure condition of subordination, of bond or moral and practical obligation, to which being loved or being feared leads. What is surprising is that love «obbliga» (obligates), that is, binds subjects in a relationship of interdependence, and this is naturally positive in politics, but it is a bond that can harm the Prince because it is a bond that stimulates in subjects the search for freedom (from the bond), while fear is a persistent chain in the human soul. This aspect of Machiavellian anthropology gives rise to what could be defined as a theory of anti-compassion. It is therefore necessary that he be more feared than loved, often at least, and in military matters, it is certainly better that the Prince be feared.

Chapter 18, dedicated from its title to «fede» (understood as fidelity to one’s word), continues the argumentation of the previous chapter, with which it forms a compact diptych. The real question is still the relationship between form and content or, better, between face and intention, between (hidden) character and (overt) action. The anthropological presupposition is always that men are «tristi» (wicked), to which is added here the non-contradictory corollary that they are also, for the most part, superficial and rather naive, not out of goodness of heart but due to a vice of ingenuousness stimulated by the anxiety to obtain their own personal advantage. The majority of humanity, therefore, belongs to what Machiavelli calls «volgo» (the common people): an indistinct mass of men of little intelligence, superficial and naive in their judgment.8 In a similar scenario, where great and small, the powerful and the common people, do nothing but think of their own interest and easily break their given word, the Prince must arm himself with the same weapons and govern the state by carefully distinguishing between appearance and being: it would indeed be good for the Prince to have all the virtues, but it is even more useful that he seems to have them without actually possessing them. It is better to enjoy the reputation of a virtuous man, while at the same time making use of the undoubted advantages of an action devoid of moral scruples. The reason is that the virtues unanimously recognized as such (fidelity, goodness of heart, generosity, religiosity, etc.), if truly possessed and practiced, that is, if being and appearing coincided, would easily lead to political ruin, while the opposite occurs if the Prince shows that he has them without truly practicing them. At this point, it is inevitable that the reader asks two questions: whether the split between being and appearing leads the Prince to constantly practice falsehood; whether the detachment between being and appearing can become an occasion for moral conscience for the Prince himself. That is, does there exist in his personality a space that can be imagined filled with questions of a moral nature, in which perhaps a possible crisis of conscience or identity can develop?

The most well-known part of the chapter concerns the bestial qualities of the fox and the lion, belonging to the sphere of the beast and not the human (Esposito 1984, pp. 13–39; Cutinelli-Rendina 2016, pp. 38–39). The discussion on the leonine and vulpine nature of the Prince, fundamental also from our specific point of observation, must be traced back to two very precise questions: the first is always that of the relationship between being and appearing; the second is that of the nexus between the human and the bestial. In the first case, it is important to note that the two qualities are not symmetrical and act in different ways: the vulpine character belongs to being, but not to appearing, while the leonine character also belongs to appearing (because the effect that strength has on enemies also rests on the exhibition of strength; on the contrary, the fox, to implement its cunning, should act covertly). Regarding the second, it is of great importance that the art of politics for Machiavelli foresees, indeed makes necessary, the recovery of a feral part of the human being, an operation that seems contrary to generally humanistic principles. What is the human, and what are its boundaries? The implicit answer in the chapter is that the Prince, and therefore politics, represent one of the culminations of the human experience but, despite seeming a paradox, in this realm of experience qualities that are purely bestial, that is, pre-civil, pre-human, etc., belong to the human, which, strictly speaking, a humanist should exclude from the realm of acting and knowing proper to man. What in ancient fables was a mask behind which the human being hid, and of which it symbolically represented a specific character, here becomes the dark core of being human, hidden behind the reassuring human appearance of the Prince, faithful, virtuous, loyal, generous, pious, and religious. Being and appearing have exchanged roles: the animal masks do not hide human characters, but it is exactly the opposite.

This logic of the reversal of being and appearing seriously endangers the entire treatise. How can such a character still be called human? Machiavelli argues that men are «tristi», that is, wicked because destined by nature to preserve themselves and to procure their own benefit, and, therefore, even the Prince, like any other man, should be such. In reality, however, the ferocity of the Prince acts in a different way and underlies a different logic. The irreducible ferocity of human nature, in fact, entails the general and universal wickedness of the human race; the Prince, on the other hand, elaborates that feral character through a praxis aimed at a specific objective: the conquest and maintenance of the state. The art of politics does not sublimate or purify the bestial malignity innate in man, but subjects it to a cultural process, to an elaborate transformation that makes it an instrument capable of achieving a higher good. The action of the Prince, deceitful, violent, and faithless, is nevertheless a cultural action and not nature. If the qualities of the protagonist are of ambiguous moral value, or rather are entirely pre-moral if observed frankly for what they are, the actions he performs are coherently human, if not even virtuous, because they acquire full and coherent meaning once they are reordered in the plot of the redemption story of virtue of which the Machiavellian Prince is the protagonist. In other words, the description of the Prince’s character is incomplete, imprecise, and ineffective if it disregards the actions he performs along the narrative plot underlying the treatise. If the presence of the underlying narrative is not grasped, even the analysis of the political can be misunderstood.

An interesting confirmation of the peculiar relationship between the feral and the human is found in Chapter 19 (Skinner 1981, pp. 49–50) when Machiavelli argues that «le azioni di costui [Septimius Severus] furno grandi e notabili in uno principe nuovo, io voglio brevemente mostrare quanto e’ seppe bene usare la persona del lione e della golpe, le quali nature io dico di sopra essere necessarie imitare a uno principe». It is noteworthy that the qualities of the fox and the lion are traced back to the realm of innate character, which precedes education and culture, and indeed are called «persone» (persons) and «natura» (nature); however, they are not an instinctive expression of what the Prince is, but are the object of «imitazione» («quelle «nature […] essere necessarie imitare a uno principe»; those natures […] being necessary for a prince to imitate). Implicit in the verb imitare is the feral pedagogy to which the Prince himself must be educated. To be a fox and a lion does not equate to regressing to a feral status, but, on the contrary, is the result of a refined political pedagogy and a conscious culture of government.

6. Fortune and Virtue: A Utopian and Dramatic Narrative

Chapter 24 serves as a prolegomenon to the subsequent one, with which it forms a diptych centered on the theme of fortune. In contrast to the more celebrated Chapter 25, here Machiavelli dispels a fallacious judgment held by historians and political observers: Italian princes have lost prestige, power, and their realms not due to fortune, at least not in this instance, but due to their deficient political virtù. To be precise, fortune has played no small part in this ruin, but it cannot serve as an alibi to justify their errors; on the contrary, the more fortune rages, the more a correspondingly great virtù would be necessary to oppose it. It is decisive that at the conclusion of the treatise, after the content of the concept of «fortuna» has been clarified repeatedly, Machiavelli, in Chapter 25, no longer spends time explaining and understanding the «verità effettuale della cosa»—effectual truth of the matter—but focuses entirely on action: not on what fortune is, but on how to combat it. For this reason, fortune is shown here first through a natural simile (the river and the embankments raised to protect against the possible flood) and then personified and shown in a micro-narrative sequence, indeed in an emblem with respect to which the remedy is almost an explanatory legenda (the construction of the embankments, etc.). The Prince appears in the background, almost in second place, fully engaged in the role of one who is called to an extraordinary undertaking in an attempt to oppose the uncontainable force of fate.9

It is important to better understand the nature of the Prince as a character, and to note how, here, he is delineated through an action that is, in reality, a reaction. The first move belongs to Fortune, and this is her greatest resource: she does not depend on man, but, on the contrary, in her action, she is free, creative. It is precisely here that we witness the narrative twist that intervenes almost at the end of the treatise: the reader discovers, in fact, that there is a co-protagonist, or perhaps the true protagonist, of the narrative recounted in the treatise, and this is Fortune; the Prince is, in fact, the heroic antagonist of a tragic struggle almost certainly destined to failure. In this respect, paragraphs 11–17 are important, in which the Prince’s personality and his probability of success in the struggle against fate are defined with extreme clarity, binding his virtù to an inevitably tragic destiny. These paragraphs revolve, on the one hand, around the consideration that the Prince’s personality is not definable as something fixed and given, and therefore valid and effective in terms of a universal law, because it has been seen that different characters have achieved the same goal and vice versa, and, on the other hand, around the so-called theory of «riscontro» (correspondence) (Galli 2014), which at this point in the treatise presents itself as the distillate of Machiavelli’s lengthy reflections on the virtù and nature of the Prince.

Credo ancora che sia felice quello che riscontra il modo del procedere suo con la qualità de’ tempi, e similmente sia infelice quello che con il procedere suo si discordano e’ tempi».

(Machiavelli 2014, p. 178)

The theory of «riscontro» affirms that any nature, whether impetuous or prudent, can be suitable for the Prince, provided that the individual character enters into harmony with the historical situation in which the political actor finds himself operating. This does not mean that the Prince should not have a defined character or personality, but that the good Prince is the one who is willing, almost in a superhuman manner, to renounce his own individual temperament in order to assume the nature necessary to be in harmony with what the current situation requires. Political virtù, the only true virtù that the Prince must possess, thus presents a singular peculiarity: it is tendentially anomic and anonymous, devoid of a defined face; indeed, it requires a remarkable capacity for change and adaptation.

The theory of «riscontro» acts even more profoundly than any technique of systematic lying: we are faced with a divergence between being and appearing far superior to what is foreseen by a phenomenology of falsehood. The true Prince is not the one who deceives others, but the one who is capable of deceiving his own individual nature. This is perhaps the most astonishing of all the «azioni grandi» that the «uomini eccellenti», that is, the Princes, can perform: to be able to annihilate their own individual nature and transform themselves into something else, and even, if necessary, into what is most distant from themselves. A tragic and almost impossible undertaking, as Machiavelli himself affirms in the following paragraphs: «né si truova omo sì prudente che si sappi accommodare a questo, sì perché non si può deviare da quello a che la natura l’inclina». On the other hand, the character that Machiavelli delivers through the Prince to Western culture is a monstrous character in the Latin sense of the term: an astonishing and at times horrifying prodigy, because he surpasses the human and the bestial, placing himself well beyond the common limit of what has a soul, and therefore a character of any kind, since the nature of the Prince is that of a mirror that reflects what the present historical situation (the «occasione»—opportunity) foresees and requires, harmoniously in a sort of plastic and harmonious interlocking, different each time.

7. This Is the End: Narrative Epilogue

The argumentation in the final chapter unfolds between two planes: that of the matter, the gravity of the present crisis afflicting Italy, and that of the form, the virtue of the Prince who must give positive order to the matter, transforming what could unleash «ruina» (ruin) into «occasione» (opportunity) for virtue to assert itself. The theory of «riscontro» reveals here a further aspect: virtue is an active principle that informs matter according to order, neutralizing the root of the evil contained in its opposite, matter, which, left free from the informing principle, would undoubtedly produce chaos, evil, and ruin. The virtue of the Prince, contrary to what emerges from the previous chapter, returns to being animated by an active, indeed informing principle, which is not surprising and has its foundation more in the utopian nature of the last chapter, imbued with hope, than in Machiavellian logic, which has no further developments beyond the bleak conclusion of the preceding chapter. It almost seems as if Machiavelli’s final gaze, the severe and inflexible reasoning intellect educated by history and concrete experience, transforms into a radiography of the possible and fecundates the unhappy present situation of the peninsula with the utopian seed of hope. Indeed, generative-reproductive metaphors are present, and even the religious metaphor of redemption is not without a biological-reproductive aspect. The times are ripe, the situation, despite its extreme gravity, is propitious, the Italian body appears well-disposed to receive the imprint of virtue: it seems that the entire chapter is a vestibule of shadows, of souls, of possible Princes who await a body, a historical opportunity in which to literally incarnate themselves, as if at the end of the treatise the character long described and drawn in the most minute details must finally pass from the potential condition of a possible character to the «effettuale» one of a historical person, from ideal Prince to «redentore»10 (redeemer).

Perhaps, if observed from this precise point of view, the dialectic between universal and particular, between literary character and historical person, between character and action is even more important than the precise identification of the «redentore» with the dedicatee of the treatise (Lorenzo di Piero dei Medici) or, more generally, with an exponent of the Medici House, because this dialectical tension between the character and his actions reveals much more than one might think about the «verità effettuale» of the political and the human. It is the dialectic between the character of the Prince in universal and his possible concrete incarnation that makes the treatise a «living book», far beyond the present capacity of the Florentine house to transform the shadow of the Prince, detailed and elusive, anomic and protean, human and feral, into a determined historical personality, or rather, to make the character become a person.

Such a conclusion would appear, at first glance, to contradict the austere critic of political utopias who, in Chapter 15, famously affirmed the superiority of the «verità effettuale»—however brutal, dramatic, or cynical—over any form of political idealism. And yet, it is precisely Gramsci who offers us a way to reconcile these seemingly divergent dimensions: to interpret coherently the theorist of political realism alongside the utopian thinker who envisions the coming of a redemptive Prince:

Ma il Machiavelli non è un mero scienziato; egli è un uomo di parte, di passioni poderose, un politico in atto, che vuol creare nuovi rapporti di forze e perciò non può non occuparsi del «dover essere», certo non inteso in senso moralistico. La quistione non è quindi da porre in questi termini, è piú complessa: si tratta cioè di vedere se il «dover essere» è un atto arbitrario o necessario, è volontà concreta, o velleità, desiderio, amore con le nuvole. Il politico in atto è un creatore, un suscitatore, ma né crea dal nulla, né si muove nel vuoto torbido dei suoi desideri e sogni. Si fonda sulla realtà effettuale, ma cos’è questa realtà effettuale? È forse qualcosa di statico e immobile o non piuttosto un rapporto di forze in continuo movimento e mutamento di equilibrio? Applicare la volontà alla creazione di un nuovo equilibrio delle forze realmente esistenti ed operanti, fondandosi su quella determinata forza che si ritiene progressiva, e potenziandola per farla trionfare è sempre muoversi nel terreno della realtà effettuale ma per dominarla e superarla».

(Gramsci 2014, p. 2239).

For Gramsci, there thus exists a bad idealism and a good idealism: the former is wishful and erroneous because it rests upon a false understanding of reality; the latter is positive and concrete precisely because it is grounded in a profound comprehension of reality. Machiavellian idealism belongs to this second category: Machiavelli’s aim is to grasp reality in order to transform it. Only through an intimate knowledge of reality can one devise a concrete plan for its transformation—this is the task of the true politician—the Prince depicted by Machiavelli. Without such understanding, one fails to truly engage in politics and merely indulges in an unproductive love with the clouds («amore con le nuvole»). Federico Chabod alludes to the same creative quality inherent in Machiavelli’s political science when he speaks of Machiavelli’s distinctive political imagination, which enables him to conceive political action in the present based on an idea of the future, that is, of what does not yet exist (Chabod 1967, pp. 11–23, 69).

8. Moving from Theory to Praxis, from Literary Character to Person

Shortly after the passage cited at the beginning of this article, Gramsci comments the following:

Anche la chiusa del Principe è legata a questo carattere «mitico» del libro: dopo aver rappresentato il condottiero ideale, il Machiavelli con un passaggio di grande efficacia artistica, invoca il condottiero reale che storicamente lo impersoni: questa invocazione appassionata si riflette su tutto il libro conferendogli appunto il carattere drammatico. Nei Prolegomeni di L. Russo il Machiavelli è detto l’artista della politica e una volta si trova anche l’espressione «mito», ma non precisamente nel senso su indicato.

(Gramsci 2014, p. 2217).

According to Russo,11 cited by Gramsci, it is the figure of Cesare Borgia who plays a fundamental role in the transition of the Prince from an abstract body to a real body, from political theory to myth. In reality, while the role of Borgia remains central to the development of the Prince as a living literary character, as we have seen, this is one element among others. Particular attention deserves the Gramscian formula «forma vivente», which, in its philosophical meaning of an artistic form rich in historical and ideal significance, directly harks back to the master of modern Italian literary history, Francesco De Sanctis. One can trace an interpretive tradition extending from De Sanctis to Gramsci, which, while affirming the revolutionary nature of Machiavelli’s political science—whose autonomy is asserted with particular vigor by Machiavelli himself—nonetheless tends toward a unified vision of the Florentine thinker’s intellectual project. The key lies in the relationship these interpreters discern between science and praxis, between theory and action, in Machiavelli’s work and thought. Though inspired by De Sanctis—albeit with remarkable independence of judgment—and though he in turn influenced Gramsci, Benedetto Croce remains largely outside this tradition. Croce viewed Machiavelli as the founder of modern political science conceived as autonomous from morality, yet he did not seek, nor could he have sought, within the bounds of his own philosophical system, any deeper synthesis.12

De Sanctis, for his part, in the celebrated Machiavellian chapter of the Storia della letteratura italiana (Sasso 2015, pp. 223–41), consistently indicated Borgia as the model of a concrete political ideal to which Machiavelli would have been inspired in the redemption of the Prince and, above all, of the last chapter.

E si comprende come il Machiavelli miri principalmente a ristorare la tempra attaccando il male nella sua radice. Senza tempra, moralità, religione, libertà, virtù sono frasi. Al contrario, quando la tempra si rifà, si rifà tutto l’altro. E Machiavelli glorifica la tempra anche nel male. Innanzi a lui è più uomo Cesare Borgia, intelletto chiaro e animo fermo, ancoraché destituito d’ogni senso morale, che il buon Pier Soderini, cima di galantuomo, ma «anima sciocca», che per la sua incapacità e la sua fiacchezza perdette la repubblica.

(De Sanctis 2013, p. 724).

Why? Not so much for the undoubted political «virtù» of Borgia, but for his «tempra», that is, for his well-tempered character, or rather, solid, certain, and strong, which, before judging him good or bad, allows the observer to call him, simply, a man. Exactly that complex character quality that allows the abstract theoretical body of the Prince to become a concrete character, «forma vivente»13 or, even better, a seductive literary character, «mito», a myth.