Amongst Fortune’s Wheel. A Machiavellian Reading of Julius Cesar
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35305/cf2.vi22.280Keywords:
Fortune, Republic, Politics, Tragedy, Julius CaesarAbstract
This article offers a comparative analysis of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince, exploring the Machiavellian framework embedded within this Shakespearean tragedy. Drawing on the concepts of fortune, virtù, and the political realm as presented in The Prince, the article examines how the characters' decisions, tensions, and failures unfold according to Machiavellian political thinking. This approach reveals the play as a tragic meditation on the impossibility of preserving or adapting certain classical ideals—specifically those of the Roman Republic—when confronted with an emerging new political order: the Roman Empire. Beyond this introduction, the work comprises four sections: a conceptual exploration of fortune, virtù, and the political realm as our theoretical framework; an analysis of Marcus Brutus's character in light of these concepts; a comparison between Anthony and Cassius as political alternatives to Brutus's flawed course of action; and finally, concluding thoughts on the relationship between politics and tragedy.
References
Arellano, J. C. (2012). Entre la virtud y la fortuna. Portales en los ojos de Maquiavelo. Ediciones Universidad Católica de Temuco.
Forte Monge, J. M. (2011). Estudio introductorio: Maquiavelo, el arte del Estado. En N. Maquiavelo, El príncipe (pp. IX-CXXIX). Gredos.
Maquiavelo, N. (2019). El príncipe. Losada.
Maquiavelo, N. (2011). El príncipe (J. M. Forte Monge, Estudio introd.). Gredos.
Maquiavelo, N. (2017). De la Fortuna. Revista De Filosofía, 14(2), 133–139. https://doi.org/10.5354/0718-4360.1970.45731
Ortega Calvo, P. (2024). Buenas leyes y buenas armas. Republicanismo, realismo y relaciones internacionales en el pensamiento político de Maquiavelo. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
Padilla, M. C. (2017-8). Los hombres a veces son dueños de su destino, Bruto. Fortuna, ocasión y virtù en Julio César de William Shakespeare. Anacronismo e Irrupción, Revista de Teoría y Filosofia política Clásica y Moderna. 7(13), 11–48.
Rinesi, E. (2011). Política y tragedia. Hamlet, entre Maquiavelo y Hobbes. Colihue.
Shakespeare, W. (2006). Julio César. En Obras completas: Tragedias I. (pp. 256-355). Losada.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
CF2 publishes works under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0). This allows commercial or non-commercial distribution, as long as the work is made available in full and without any modifications, and the original author and first publication in the journal are acknowledged.
By simply submitting a piece of work for evaluation and publication, authors transfer the journal the right to first publication under the aforementioned license. Authors can independently and additionally celebrate other contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the version published in this journal (e.g. to include their work in an institutional repository or publish it in a book) provided that they clearly state their work was first published by CF2.
Text of the license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/legalcode
