Lehal Library

related xli Translator’s Note idea or feeling he nevertheless wants to give a positive connotation to the particular qualities he is talking about: this cruelty is aimed at solving problems, retaining power, keeping a state strong, hence, in this context it is a ‘virtù’. Ugly though it may sound, then, I have sometimes been obliged to translate ‘virtù’ as ‘positive qualities’ or ‘strength of character’, except of course on those occasions – b​ ecause there are some – ​when Machiavelli does mean ‘virtues’ in the moral sense: in which case he’s usually talking about the importance of faking them even if you may not have them. Faking, of course, when cunningly deployed for an appropriate end, is another important virtù. The spin doctor was not a notion invented in the 1990s. Related to both these particular problems – ​prince, virtue – ​is the more general difficulty that so many of the key words Machiavelli uses have English cognates through Latin – ​­for­tuna, audace, circospetto, malignità, diligente, etc. In some cases they are true cognates – ​prudente/prudent, for example – ​but even then to use the cognate pulls us back to a rather dusty, archaic style. Aren’t the words ‘care- ful’ or ‘cautious’ or ‘considered’ more often used now than the word ‘prudent’? Something of the same difficulty can occur where there is no cognate in English but a traditional and consolidated dictionary equivalent for an old Italian term. Machiavelli frequently uses the word ‘savio’, which has usually been translated ‘wise’, but again this invites the English version fortune, daring, cautious, malice, diligent etc xlii