“Fortune favours the brave.” In the light of this statement, discuss Machiavelli’s concepts of ‘virtue’ and ‘fortune’. (2026, 15 Marks)
The proverb is Roman — fortes fortuna adiuvat in Terence’s Phormio, echoed by Pliny the Elder as he sailed towards Vesuvius in 79 CE and by Virgil’s audentes fortuna iuvat (Aeneid X.284). Niccolò Machiavelli gives it its most famous political form in Chapter XXV of The Prince (written 1513). Yet his pairing of virtù and fortuna teaches something subtler: fortune favours the bold only when boldness is joined to foresight and fitted to the times.
Fortuna: The Share of Chance
- Fortuna is everything beyond the actor’s control — accident, timing, other men’s choices. Against contemporaries who thought events governed by fortune and God, he judges that fortune is “the arbiter of one-half of our actions”, leaving the other half to us.
- The river in flood: no one can stop the torrent, but in calm weather prudent men build dykes and embankments. Italy fell to invasion after 1494 because it had none, unlike Spain, France and Germany.
Virtù: The Share of Skill
- Virtù is not moral virtue but energy, foresight, courage and above all adaptability — the capacity to shape circumstance and win glory.
- Occasione: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus and Theseus owed fortune nothing but opportunity; without their ability the chance would have been wasted, without the chance their ability (Chapter VI).
- Necessità spurs it: men do good only under necessity (Discourses on Livy, I.3).
- Cesare Borgia had virtù in abundance yet fell through “extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune” — his father’s death in 1503 while he himself lay ill (Chapter VII).
- In the Discourses (II.1) virtù becomes collective: Rome’s empire owed more to the virtù of its citizens and institutions than to luck.
How Far Does Fortune Favour the Brave?
- The case for the proverb: it is “better to be impetuous than cautious”, since fortune, “a woman”, yields to the young, who are less cautious and command her “with more audacity”. Pope Julius II’s rash campaigns succeeded.
- The qualification: Julius prospered because the times suited impetuosity. Quintus Fabius Maximus‘s caution saved Rome when delay was needed (Discourses, III.9). The real maxim is that fortune favours those who vary with the times — and since natures rarely change, no one succeeds forever.
- Boldness without embankments is recklessness; preparation is the precondition of daring.
- Feminist critique: Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (Fortune Is a Woman, 1984) shows that mastery-by-force imagery codes political agency as masculine and tames uncertainty through domination.
A Contemporary Illustration
Odisha, devastated by the 1999 super cyclone, built shelters and early-warning systems; when Cyclone Fani struck in 2019, the state evacuated more than a million people and deaths numbered in the dozens, against about 10,000 in 1999. That is the river-and-embankment argument as public policy: virtù as institutional foresight, not individual daring.
Conclusion
Machiavelli accepts the proverb only in part. Fortune rewards audacity that is prepared, timely and adaptable; bravery without prudence is merely another gift to fortune. His lasting insight is that human agency, though never sovereign, is never negligible.