Cesare Borgia

"[Cesare] Borgia was a man of considerable guile, daring and psychological acumen. However, his reputation as a fearsome military commander was based more on his ability to move at speed and catch his enemy by surprise, often by means of treachery, than on any valour in battle. On the other hand, his reputation in other fields was richly deserved, and owed little to exaggeration. His behaviour was often that of an inhuman monster, both in his depravities and his pursuit of his vast ambitions: he would stop at nothing. Yet he was also… a superb exemplar of Renaissance man. Charismatic and handsome in his youthful prime, highly intelligent and well versed in the classics, he would cut a superb figure in the courts of Italy and France, when he put his mind to it. Here was a man who could be as magnetic in his charm as he could be terrifying in his evil."
- from The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior by Paul Strathern