“Fortune favours the brave.” In the light of this statement, discuss Machiavelli’s concepts of ‘virtue’ and ‘fortune’.

The statement is Machiavelli's own conclusion in Chapter 25 of The Prince (1513), and the two concepts are built to support it.

Fortuna is the domain of chance, circumstance and timing. Machiavelli's estimate is precise and famous: fortune is arbiter of one half of our actions, but leaves the other half, or nearly so, to our own government. He rejects both the Christian providence that makes history God's plan and the fatalism that makes effort pointless.

Virtu is emphatically not Christian virtue. It is the cluster of energy, skill, foresight, boldness and adaptability by which a leader imposes form on circumstance. A prince may have to learn "how not to be good" — cruelty well used, as with Cesare Borgia's employment and then execution of Remirro de Orco, is virtu; Agathocles' gratuitous cruelty is not.

Two images carry the argument. Fortune is a river in flood: it sweeps away everything where no dykes have been built, but where they have been raised in calm weather it is contained. Fortune is also a woman, who yields to the audacious rather than the cautious — the sixteenth-century image that gives the maxim its force.

The limit. Machiavelli concedes that men fail when their nature does not match the times: the cautious man succeeds while caution suits the hour and is ruined when it stops suiting. Since few can change their nature, boldness is the better standing bet, not a guarantee.