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In Niccolo Machiavelli's 16th century treatise The Prince, he describes a general guideline that any good leader should follow if he wants to be a successful ruler. This advice is certainly applicable to leaders of all times no matter what their background is. But while it may be applicable to any leader, it is dependent upon that leader possessing a certain pragmatic attitude involving complete control of one's emotions to pull off. That attitude requires finding the perfect balance between being cruel but not cruel enough to be hated. It requires being miserly yet not selfish enough to steal your people's possessions. It is because of that strikingly difficult balance that the characters in Homer's Iliad could not be considered Machiavellian. The heroes are too honorable, Agamemnon is too self-indulgent, and all of the characters are too impetuous.
Agamemnon is perhaps the epitome of missed opportunities in the eyes of Machiavelli. He assumes the role of leader of the Achaeans but hardly shows the qualities Machiavelli would claim a good leader would possess. Among the many poor decisions Agamemnon makes, there is one that stands above them all as setting the groundwork for his inevitable demise. This is, of course, the mistake of taking the woman of Achilles in Book 1. This is an act Machiavelli specifically warns against ever attempting to do as a ruler. It can most certainly be said that the Iliad would have been a much different story had Achilles not hated Agamemnon to the point of refusing participation in the battles. The worst part about Agamemnon's mistake in this first book is that although his soldiers may have disliked him for other reasons, it was this single act that threw Achilles off the edge. He very well might have been content with fighting under a foolish leader had it not gotten so personal. For as Machiavelli states in Chapter 19, "As long as he does not rob the great majority of their property or their honour, they remain content" (Machiavelli 59).
One could argue that Agamemnon's attempts to be cruel with his soldiers was a perfect representation of the attitude Machiavelli praises in Chapter 17 when he writes, "…when a prince is campaigning with his soldiers and is in command of a large army then he need not worry about having a reputation for cruelty" (Machiavelli 55). This is beguiling, however, as the most important quality of such a cruel leader is his fearsomeness in the eyes of his soldiers. Of course, it is not easy to be so awesome that Greek heroes would fear you. Agamemnon may have been callous enough to demand the woman of one of his troops but he didn't have the strength to back it up. Although Machiavelli recommends being feared rather than being loved, Agamemnon would most likely have been better off trying for the latter.
This raises a further point: perhaps Agamemnon had taken on too much for a single person to handle when he surrounded himself with so many great heroes to begin with. The heroes in this case can be seen as a sort of parallel to Machiavelli's description of the nobles. Machiavelli describes the nobles as more astute and cunning than the people, which is dangerous for a prince as they will actively try to further their own goals. This is the same as the heroes. Many of them were fighting for their honor and glory, or to simply be recognized for their achievements in the war. They had little interest in Menelaus' and Agamemnon's goal of retrieving Helen.
Indeed, in the eyes of Achilles, Agamemnon was perhaps only arbitrarily in charge of leading them. Any of the heroes might have done his job just as well, and probably without getting arrows rained down upon them by Apollo in the first chapter. More importantly, it may have been apparent to the heroes that Agamemnon seemed to only be in the position that he was because of his family. Coming from a royal family and being the brother of Menelaus, the one person most involved in the cause of the war, he seemed to inherit his position of power rather fortunately. In Chapter 2 Machiavelli discusses inherited states in the same way illustrating how simple it is for a prince who has inherited a throne to keep the people happy. He explains how it requires some extreme iniquity to lose the people's favor at that point saying, "…if he does not provoke hatred by extraordinary vices, it stands to reason that his subjects should naturally be well disposed towards him" (Machiavelli 8). So once again it seems that Agamemnon's profligate decision to take Achilles' woman was his biggest mistake.
The honor and reputation the characters in the Iliad hold is what makes them more irreconcilable with Machiavelli's ideals than any other quality. Machiavelli was a pragmatist; he shunned ethics and morality and instead believed that a leader should do whatever is best for the state's overall success. By contrast, the heroes in the Iliad are optimists who believe that losing honorably is better than winning in opprobrium. Perhaps the best example of this is in the cause of the Trojan War itself. Machiavelli certainly would not have recommended ever starting decade long wars over a single woman. Menelaus and Agamemnon, however, were leaders who were very much concerned more with the disgrace they had been subject to, rather than the well-being of their states.
The voice of rationality is evidently even looked down upon in the Iliad. In Book 2 the man known as Thersites, who Homer describes as "the ugliest soldier at the siege of Troy" (Homer 27) speaks his mind toward Agamemnon. He mockingly points out the corruption of the Achaean leader and suggests they all just go home and leave Agamemnon alone with his prizes. This is immediately followed by scorn and derision from the rest of the Achaeans who simply call Thersites a coward. If Machiavelli were a Greek soldier, he would be the first one to say the same thing that was on Thersites' mind.
A common point in almost all of the chapters of Machiavelli's book is having complete control of your emotions. That being said, the largest offenders of this concept in the Iliad by far are the same ones who should be setting the best example of how a ruler should act. That is, the gods. Each one of the gods acts extremely impulsively, often ending up killing soldiers because of some vague rationale invented to make the story more interesting. Aphrodite, for example, continues the bloody battle between the two armies by transporting Paris away from his battle with Menelaus without any sort of foreshadowing or explanation of her motives beforehand. It's astounding that there are no other characters in the Iliad who are more spontaneously violent and have less self-control than the rulers of everything.
It is somewhat unfortunate, therefore, that the gods are undoubtedly one of the most essential parts of any Greek story. Indeed, it could be said that while the Iliad was ostensibly about Greek heroes, those heroes would most likely have not gotten anywhere without the intervention of a god in some way. In Chapter 25 of The Prince, Machiavelli addresses a belief that Homer seems to agree with regarding fortune. That is, the belief that everything we do is guided by unchangeable forces that we as humans have no choice but to abide by. Machiavelli is hesitant to agree that the achievements of the many successful rulers in history were merely fortuitous blessings and so he compromises that about fifty-percent of all things we do are controlled by ourselves. But if the Iliad is any indicator, it's probably closer to ninety-percent uncontrollable, otherworldly forces and ten-percent human effort. In fact it's a miracle in the Iliad if anyone can do a single thing to a god. Diomedes landing a hit on Ares with his spear is one example. And Homer has to, of course, make note that this spear was guided by Athena because a mortal man shouldn't be able to affect a god that easily, hero or not.
The characters in the Iliad are engaging and well-written however there are some fundamental ideals that are praised in Ancient Greek society but are simply incompatible with Machiavelli's philosophy. The story probably wouldn't have been very interesting if all of the characters were pragmatic, like-minded individuals anyway though.