lve a decision to act in some overt way, whereas accepting an advantage conferred by fortune can be done almost passively. Rather, the problem that he sees, for the kinds of political issues he is dealing with, is that a person who falls upward into a position of leadership by mere good fortune will have no resources to sustain himself in that position when his fortune changes, as, Machiavelli assumes, fortune always will.
At the beginning of Chapter VII of The Prince, he says the following:
Those who rise from private citizens to be princes merely by fortune have little trouble in rising but very much in maintaining their position. They meet with no difficulties on the way as they fly over them, but all their difficulties arise when they are established. . . . Such as these depend absolutely on the good will and fortune of those who have raised them, both of which are extremely inconstant and unstable (p. 23).
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