The inner life
Virtù and Fortuna
Direct answer
Virtù and Fortuna: Virtù and fortuna are the two forces Machiavelli sets against each other in The Prince: virtù is a ruler's skill, energy and nerve, and fortuna is chance and circumstance.
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At a glance
- Also called
- virtu, fortuna machiavelli, virtu machiavelli, machiavelli fortune
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Machiavellianism, Will to Power, Pyrrhic Victory
Virtù and fortuna are the two forces Machiavelli sets against each other in The Prince: virtù is a ruler's skill, energy and nerve, and fortuna is chance and circumstance.
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What does virtù mean in Machiavelli?
Fortuna, for Machiavelli, is everything a person does not control: the times, accidents, other people's moves. He compares it to a river in flood, which sweeps all before it, and adds that in calm weather men can build dykes and channels. He judges that fortune decides about half of what we do and leaves the other half to us.
Virtù is what fills that half. It is not moral virtue. It is ability: foresight, boldness, energy and, above all, the readiness to change one's manner as the times change. His deepest worry is that people cannot change their nature, so that a man suited to one season is ruined by the next.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Power and influence.
What sets Virtù and Fortuna apart
Machiavelli gives fortune two faces in a single chapter. First she is a river that can be banked in advance, an argument for prudence. Then she is a woman who favours the young and bold, an argument for audacity, and he does not reconcile them. His measure of virtù is equally unsentimental: he praises it in Cesare Borgia and in the generals of ancient Rome alike, because it means effectiveness. The pair is his way of asking how much of any success was earned.
- Text: The Prince, chapter 25, written 1513
- His estimate: fortune rules about half of our actions and leaves the rest to us
- Image of fortuna: a river in flood, to be met with dykes built in fair weather
- Latin roots: virtus, 'manliness, valour', from vir, man; Fortuna, the goddess of chance
- Example he gives: Cesare Borgia, raised by fortune and undone when it turned
Often mistaken for something else: Virtue in the moral sense means goodness; Machiavelli's virtù means capacity to act well for one's purpose, and he allows that it may require acts a moralist condemns.
The story behind Virtù and Fortuna
Both words are Roman. Virtus meant manliness and valour, and Fortuna was a goddess shown with a wheel or a rudder. Christian writers such as Boethius made fortune the servant of providence. Machiavelli, in chapter 25 of The Prince (1513), returned to the older contest and gave it his image of the river. His contrast of Cesare Borgia, who rose by fortune and fell by it, with rulers who made themselves runs through the book.
Why Virtù and Fortuna matters
The pair is the working core of The Prince; without it the book reads as a list of tricks and not as an argument about chance.
How to read Virtù and Fortuna
Readers apply the pair to a setback or a plan, asking which part was circumstance and which part lay within their own skill and readiness.
Virtù and Fortuna in practice: an example
A reader who lost a job in a downturn can sort the story into two columns: what the times did, and what was theirs to prepare.
Where readings of Virtù and Fortuna go wrong
Virtù in this sense is competence, not goodness, and Machiavelli does not claim it can master chance entirely.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- virtu, fortuna machiavelli, virtu machiavelli, machiavelli fortune, virtu and fortuna meaning
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does virtù mean in Machiavelli?
It means the qualities that let a ruler act effectively: skill, courage, energy and adaptability. It comes from the Latin virtus and does not mean moral virtue in the Christian sense.
What is fortuna in The Prince?
It is chance and circumstance, all that lies outside a person's control. Machiavelli pictures it as a flooding river and says it governs roughly half of human affairs.
How does virtù relate to fortuna?
Virtù is the human answer to fortuna: preparing in calm times, acting boldly when the moment comes, and changing course when conditions change. He thinks most people fail at the last.
