- Title Card: Rome 1492
- Title Card: The center of the Christian world. The seat of the Papacy.
- Title Card: The Pope had the power to crown and un-crown kings. To change the course of empires.
- Title Card: The Church was mired in corruption. Pope Innocent VIII was dying,
- Title Card: And the Papal throne was the prize desired by all.
- Micheletto: It seems someone as pitiless as you...
- Cesare Borgia: Yes... ?
- Micheletto: ...needs someone as pitiless as me.
- [first lines]
- Pope Innocent: [on his death bed] You are afraid to enter, but you must. I am about to meet my maker. I have confessed. And I confess I am very afraid. Colonna. Sforza. Orsini. Borgia.
- Rodrigo Borgia: Your Holiness.
- Pope Innocent: Della Rovere. You will fight like dogs over this corpse I leave for this throne of St. Peter's. But it was pure once. We have all sullied it with our greed and lechery. Which of you will wash it clean?
- Rodrigo Borgia: It shall be cleansed, Your Holiness, with the tears we shed for you. I swear before the Living God.
- Rodrigo Borgia: God will forgive us, my son. But I will not forgive failure from you or your brother.
- Rodrigo Borgia: I am Rodrigo Borgia no longer. I am Alexander Sixtus.
- Cesare Borgia: But you know who you are. My father, still.
- Rodrigo Borgia: I am no longer "I." I am "we." We felt so alone out there. When the crown touched our head. Humbled, even. Even frightened.
- Cesare Borgia: That poison was meant for us.
- Rodrigo Borgia: You don't poison the Pope!
- Cesare Borgia: Do you know what the gossips are calling you? "The mitred ape". Half of Rome is waiting to celebrate your demise.
- Rodrigo Borgia: You would poison a dying dog! Not the heir to Saint Peter!
- Cesare Borgia: The idea offends you, then?
- Rodrigo Borgia: It offends me, it offends nature, it offends God Himself!
- Cesare Borgia: Then God will take his revenge.
- Rodrigo Borgia: Yes he will... with *our* help!
- Woman in Bed: [Finding out Cesare is a cleric] There was nothing ecclesiatical about last night.
- Cesare Borgia: By night? By night I am who I want to be. By day I am thus.
- Giuliano Della Rovere: And what do you do with a monkey that bites you?
- Cesare Borgia: You ring its neck.