El Agatocles de Maquiavelo, tres versiones: virtù y ejemplaridad en El Príncipe

Hugo Tavera Villegas

doi:10.3989/isegoria.2024.70.1342

Authors

Hugo Tavera Villegas Escuela de Gobierno y Ciencias Sociales. Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. Universidad La Salle https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7104-5658

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2024.70.1342

Keywords:

Exemplarity, Virtu, Imitation, Machiavelli, Agathocles

Abstract

In The Prince, the political prescriptions that Machiavelli offers his readers are presented predominantly in the form of reflections on particular examples. In this essay I expound three different interpretations of Agathocles (those of Victoria Kahn, John McCormick, and Erica Benner), who appears in the book as the main example of the criminal prince, then textually separated from the group of “excellent men” who are called to imitate by new princes. Despite their differences, these different interpretations show that the prince’s virtù is for Machiavelli inseparable from the ability to judge examples and extract from them the truth.

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