Lehal Library

xxvii Introduction Lorenzo, or indeed any other ruler, have wanted to employ a diplomat who had gone on record as saying that trickery was largely the name of the game and that though it wasn’t important to have a religious faith it was absolutely essen- tial to appear to have one? Machiavelli should have been the first to understand that as an instrument for furthering his diplomatic career, rather than a literary and philosoph- ical achievement in its own right, the book’s honesty would be ­self-­defeating: the two goals were never compatible. Surprised and disappointed by The Prince’s failure, Mach- iavelli went back to womanizing. Aside from routine whoring, he fell in and out of love easily, pursuing passion without discretion or restraint. And just as he had more luck with romance than diplomacy, he had more success when he wrote ironic, s­ ex-­centred comedies rather than candid but dangerous political analyses. In 1518 the first performance of his play The Mandragola, in which a young man invents the most absurd subterfuges to get a married woman into bed, won Machiavelli immediate celebrity; some years later Clizia, which this time has an older man ­hell-­bent on having his way with a very young woman, confirmed his talent. But literary success was not enough for Machiavelli. It was active politics that interested him, and, though he laboured for ten years or so on his Discourses on Livy, then on a long history of Florence and finally on a short work entitled The Art of War, it was his old job as the city’s prin- cipal ambassador that he always yearned for. Finally, in xxviii