    • The Guardian,   • Jump to comments () Cesare Borgia View
larger picture Cesare Borgia, who contracted syphilis in 1497
when he was 22. Photograph: De Agostini/Getty Images  History
doesn't recount who gave Cesare Borgia syphilis, but we do know
when and where he got it. In the summer of 1497, he was
a 22-year-old cardinal, sent as papal legate by his father, Pope
Alexander VI, to crown the king of Naples and broker a royal
marriage for his sister, Lucrezia. Naples was a city rich in
convents and brothels (a fertile juxtaposition in the male
Renaissance imagination), but it was also ripe with disease. Two
years earlier, a French invasion force including mercenary
troops back from the new world, had dallied a while to enjoy
their victory, and when they left, carried something unexpected
and deadly back home with them.    1. Blood & Beauty   2. by
Sarah Dunant  His work accomplished, Cesare took to the streets.
Machiavelli, his contemporary and a man with a wit as
unflinching as his politics, has left a ch