There is a moment in George Eliot's fictional portrayal of Machiavelli in Romola when she imagines him responding to a criticism of his seemingly wicked beliefs. ‘My doctrine’, he is made to reply, ‘is the doctrine of all men who seek an end a little farther off than their own noses.’ As Eliot implies, the question of how far the realisation of our purposes may require us to behave immorally is never far from Machiavelli's mind. This is particularly true in The Prince, in which he repeatedly scrutinises the relationship between the moral virtues and the powers by which – by virtue of which – political leaders can attain their highest goals.

To understand how Machiavelli thinks about this question, and hence about the concept of virtù in The Prince, we need to begin by considering his views about the goals that rulers should set themselves. The highest end to which they should aspire is that of doing great things that will bring them honour and praise, and eventually lead to glory and fame. Chapter XXI of The Prince is devoted to considering ‘What a prince should do in order to be thought outstanding’. Machiavelli lays it down that ‘above all else a prince should strive in all his actions to give himself the reputation of being a great man’. By way of illustration he singles out Ferdinand of Aragon, who is said ‘to have become, for fame and glory, the first king in Christendom’ in consequence of ‘having always done and ordered great things’. Machiavelli returns to the topic in the closing Exhortatio of The Prince, in which he optimistically concludes that there has never been a more propitious time in Italy ‘for a prudent and virtuoso prince to introduce a new form of government that will bring honour to himself and good to the body of his subjects’.

No ruler, however, can hope to tread the paths of glory unless he has first succeeded in achieving a more prosaic goal. To cite the formula that echoes through the central chapters of The Prince, he must manage mantenere lo stato, to maintain his status and standing as a prince, and at the same time to preserve the stability of the stato or state.