In Shakespeare's Henry VI, the deformed and bitter Duke of Gloucester has ambitions on the English Crown. He has a long litany of tricksters whose methods he will emulate towards his objective:
I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;
I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slyly than could Ulysses,
Change shapes with Proteus for my advantage,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
The basilisk was a mythical reptile, hatched, it was said, by a serpent from a cockerel's egg. Its gaze was always fatal; Proteus was a minor Greek sea-god who had the power of assuming different shapes; and Machiavel is Nicolo Machiavelli, the Italian statesman whose amoral but influential writings turned his name into a synonym for cunning duplicity.
Machiavelli was born in Florence on May 3rd, 1469, 530 years ago today. He rose to prominence when the Florentine Republic was proclaimed in 1498. His duties as one of the chief ministers of the new state included missions to all important courts of Europe, giving him an unrivalled insight into power.
But in 1512 Machiavelli fell from favour with the advent of a new regime, and he retired to his estates where he wrote his enduring masterpiece, The Prince.
Much of his advice in that famous work is very practical, though short on ethics. His thesis was that a leader does not become powerful by being gentle, compassionate and just, but by being ruthless and aggressive: "A prince who wishes to maintain his power must know how to do wrong whenever needed." Indeed, the morality of Machiavelli's arguments was so anti-Christian that in time his name came to be identified with the devil in the form "Old Nick".
At one point in his narrative, Machiavelli uses a hydrological metaphor to warn princes to learn from their experience: He says: "Fortune is the arbiter of only half of our actions. I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which, when in flood, overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings and bearing away the soil from place to place; all yield to its violence without being able to withstand it.
"And yet, though the nature of the flood be such, does it not follow that when the weather becomes fair, men shall make provision both with defences and barriers, in such a way that when they rise again, the waters may pass away by canal, and their forces be neither so unrestrained or dangerous?"