Lehal Library

liii Translator’s Note is that just as the word ‘virtù is rarely used in a strictly moral context, so the word ‘riprendere’, ‘reproach’, refers not to moral behaviour, but to the question: did the duke get something wrong, did he make a mistake? A key to reading the word comes at the opening to the next paragraph where we have: ‘Solamente si può accusarlo nella creazione di Iulio pontefice, nella quale lui ebbe mala elezione’, which, more or less literally, gives us: ‘The only thing Bor- gia can be accused of is his role in the election of Pope Julius, where he made a bad choice’ (that is, as far as his own interests were concerned, he backed the wrong man). Here we approach the subtler scandal of Machiavelli’s text: it is not that the author is insisting that Borgia’s immoral acts should not be censured, rather that Machi- avelli is just not interested in discussing the moral aspect of the question at all, or not from a Christian point of view. For him it is a case of shrewd or mistaken choices, not of good or evil. When he proposes Borgia as a model, neither morality nor immorality come into it, only the fact that this man knew how to win power and hold it and build a strong state. Finally, one can’t help noticing a certain Victorian bashful- ness in previous translations. Machiavelli was a notorious womanizer and in writing The Prince he believed he was addressing an audience of men who had no worries about political correctness. When he says ‘la fortuna è donna, et è necessario, volendola tenere sotto, batterla et urtarla’ – liv