The best mr viroli

No, Machiavelli does not diligently follow Cicero, who was a Platonist.

Leo Strauss did NOT claim that Machiavelli was evil or that he was a teacher of evil. Strauss merely suggested that the traditional view in question was not altogether unfounded or misguided, arguing further that M's patriotism was an Epicurean mask, standing at the dawn of modernity's Age of Ideology (involving secularism's abstraction/alienation of politics from all metaphysical QUESTIONS, or "Platonism"). As for "knowing the person," well, "the person" is a mask, a façade. The same applies to M's distinguished student, Spinoza. Raskolnikov knew something about it. ps M "enters into evil" from the clouds of Epicurean contemplation.