Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Plato was asked by the Cyrenaeans to write laws for them and to leave them a settled constitution, but he declined, saying that it was difficult to legislate for Cyrenaeans while they were so prosperous, "for nothing is so proud and harsh and hard to govern as a man" once he has laid hold of what seems to be good fortune. This is why it is difficult for rulers to accept a counselor about their rule: they are afraid to admit reason to themselves as if it were a ruler in its own right, lest it curtail their power by enslaving it to duty.
For they do not know the story of Theopompus, king of the Spartans, who was the first at Sparta to associate the Ephors with the kings in the government, and who, when his wife reproached him for handing down to his children a lesser rule than he had received, replied, "No, a greater one, inasmuch as it is more secure." By relaxing its violent and unchecked character, he escaped, along with the envy it provoked, the danger that goes with it.
And yet, though Theopompus channeled off part of his royal power to others as if diverting a great stream, he cut away from his own share exactly as much as he gave to others. But the reason that dwells with a ruler as a companion and guardian from philosophy, removing the precariousness of his power the way one removes the risk of disease from a sound body, leaves what is healthy intact. But most kings and rulers, having no sense, imitate unskillful sculptors, who think their colossal statues will look grand and massive if they make them striding wide apart, straining, and open-mouthed. For such rulers too, by the heaviness of their voice, the harshness of their look, the difficulty of their manners, and the unsociability of their way of life, think they are imitating the weight and dignity of power, though they differ not at all from those colossal statues, which have on the outside a heroic and godlike form, but within are full of earth and stone and lead.
Except that in the statues these weights preserve an upright stability, fixed and unshaken, whereas uneducated generals and rulers, because of the folly within them, are often shaken and overturned; for building a lofty structure of power upon a foundation that is not set straight, they collapse along with it. But it is necessary that, just as the mason's rule itself, once it has become straight and true, corrects everything else by being fitted and set alongside it and making it conform to itself, so too the ruler, having first gained mastery over himself, straightened his own soul, and settled his own character, should fit his subjects to himself in the same way. For it belongs to no one who is himself falling to set others upright, nor to one who is ignorant to teach, nor to one who is disordered to bring order, nor to one who is unarranged to arrange, nor to one who is not ruled to rule.
But most people, thinking wrongly, suppose that the first good thing about ruling is not being ruled — indeed the king of the Persians considered everyone a slave except his own wife, of whom above all he ought to have been master. Who, then, will rule the ruler? Law, "the king of all, both mortal and immortal," as Pindar said — not written outside in books or on tablets of wood, but a living reason within him, always dwelling with him and keeping watch, never allowing his soul to be left destitute of guidance. The Persian king, for his part, kept one of his chamberlains appointed for this very purpose, so that, coming in at dawn, he would say to him, "Arise, O king, and attend to the affairs which the great Oromasdes willed you to attend to."
But in the educated and self-controlled ruler, it is one within himself who says this always and urges him on. Polemon used to say that love is "a service of the gods for the care and preservation of the young." One might say more truly that rulers are servants of god for the care and preservation of mankind, so that of the good things god gives to men, they may distribute some and guard others. Do you see this boundless expanse of air on high, and the earth held round about in its watery arms? God sends down the beginnings of the seeds appropriate to it, and the earth brings them up; and some things grow warmed by rains, others by winds, others by the stars and the moon, while the sun brings order to all things and mingles into everything this very charm that comes from itself.
But of such great gifts as the gods bestow, there is no enjoyment nor right use apart from law and justice and a ruler. Justice, then, is the end of law; law is the work of the ruler; and the ruler is the image of the god who orders all things — a god who has no need of a Phidias to mold him, nor of Polyclitus or Myron, but who fashions himself, through virtue, into a likeness of god, and thereby creates of all statues the one most pleasing to behold and most godlike.
Just as god has set in the heavens the sun and the moon as beautiful images of himself, so a ruler establishes in his cities a like reflection and radiance — one who, being god-fearing, upholds justice, that is, who possesses the reasoning and understanding of god — not a scepter, nor a thunderbolt, nor a trident, as some fashion and paint themselves, making their folly odious through their unattainable pretensions. For god is indignant with those who imitate his thunders and lightnings and rays of light, but on those who emulate his virtue and assimilate themselves to what is good and kind he looks with delight, and he increases them and gives them a share in his own good order and justice and truth and gentleness — things than which nothing is more divine, not fire, not light, not the sun's course, not the risings and settings of the stars, not eternity and immortality itself.
For god's blessedness lies not in length of life but in virtue, and this is what is divine in a ruler; and beautiful, too, is that share of it which belongs to the ruled. Anaxarchus, then, comforting Alexander when he was in agony over the murder of Cleitus, said that Justice and Right sat beside Zeus, so that whatever a king did might seem right and just — not rightly nor helpfully healing Alexander's remorse for his wrongdoing by emboldening him toward similar acts in the future.
But if we must speculate on these matters, Zeus does not have Justice seated beside him; rather he himself is Justice and Right, and the eldest and most perfect of laws. The ancients, however, say and write and teach that not even Zeus can rule well without Justice, but rather "she is a virgin," as Hesiod says, undefiled, the companion of reverence and self-control and helpfulness — which is why men address kings as "revered"; for it is fitting that those be revered who have the least cause to be feared. And the ruler ought to fear suffering evil more than doing it, for the one is the cause of the other, and this fear on the ruler's part is a humane and noble one — to fear on behalf of the ruled, lest they come to harm unnoticed, "as dogs keep watch over sheep in the fold on hearing a fierce-hearted beast" — not for their own sake but for the sake of those they guard.
Epaminondas, when the Thebans had given themselves up freely to some festival and its drinking, alone went the rounds of the arms and the walls, saying that he kept sober and watchful so that the others might be free to get drunk and sleep. And Cato at Utica, after the defeat, ordered everyone else to sail away by sea, and after putting them aboard and praying for their safe voyage, returned home and killed himself — thereby teaching for whose sake a ruler ought to make use of fear, and for whose sake he ought to show contempt for it.
Clearchus, the tyrant of Pontus, used to sleep shut up in a chest, like a snake. And Aristodemus of Argos, in an upper room fitted with a bolted door, above which he placed his couch, used to sleep there with his mistress; and her mother would draw away the little ladder from below, and bring it back and set it in place again the next day. How, do you suppose, did such a man shudder at the theater, the magistrate's office, the council chamber, the banquet hall — he who had made his own bedchamber a prison for himself? For in truth kings fear on behalf of their subjects, but tyrants fear their subjects; and so their fear grows together with their power, since those who rule more, fear more.
For it is neither likely nor fitting, as some philosophers say, that god should exist mixed up in matter, which is subject to everything, and in affairs that admit countless necessities and chances and changes; rather, he abides somewhere on high, established, as Plato says, "on holy foundations" amid that which is by nature always constant, "accomplishing his course in a straight line as he moves about according to nature." And just as the sun in heaven displays, as its own most beautiful likeness, a reflection as through a mirror to those able to look upon it through itself, so the light of justice and of the reason concerning himself that a ruler establishes in his cities stands as an image, one which the blessed and self-controlled copy from philosophy, fashioning themselves toward the noblest of things.
And nothing else produces this disposition so much as reason coming from philosophy — lest we suffer the fate of Alexander, who, on seeing Diogenes at Corinth, and loving him for his natural gifts and marveling at the man's spirit and greatness, said, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes" — coming very close to saying that the good fortune, splendor, and power that surrounded him were a hindrance to virtue and a burden, and that he envied the rough cloak and the beggar's pouch, because by these things Diogenes was unconquered and unassailable, not as Alexander was, by arms and horses and long spears. It was possible, then, for Alexander, by philosophizing, to become Diogenes in disposition while remaining Alexander in fortune, and for this very reason to become Diogenes all the more, because he was Alexander — just as a great fortune, having much wind and swell, needs much ballast and a great pilot.
For among the weak, the lowly, and private persons, folly mingling with powerlessness ends in an inability to do serious wrong, just as in unpleasant dreams something disturbs the soul without its being able to rise up together with its desires; but power, once it takes hold of vice, adds sinew to the passions, and what Dionysius said is true: he said he enjoyed his rule most when he could quickly do whatever he wished. Great, then, is the danger for one who is able to do what he wishes, of wishing what he ought not. "Straightway the word was spoken, and the deed was done." Vice, given a swift course by power, drives every passion to its extreme, turning anger into murder, love into adultery, and greed into confiscation.
"Straightway together the word was spoken" — and the man who gave offense is destroyed on mere suspicion, and the man who was slandered is already dead. But just as the natural philosophers say that lightning, although it actually occurs after the thunder, appears before it — the hearing meeting the sound later, the sight meeting the light sooner — so too in the courts of the powerful, punishments outrun the accusations, and condemnations fall before the proofs are heard.
For anger already gives way and no longer holds firm, like a sandy anchorage in a swell, unless a weighty reasoning presses down upon power and restrains it, the ruler imitating the sun, which, when it has reached its greatest elevation, raised up in the northern regions, moves the least, settling its course into safety by a more leisurely pace.
For it is not possible for vices to escape notice in positions of power. Rather, just as epileptics, if they come to some height and are carried around it, are seized by dizziness and vertigo, which exposes their condition, so the uneducated and ignorant, when fortune lifts them up a little with certain riches or reputation or offices and they become elevated, at once show themselves falling — all the more so, just as with empty vessels you cannot tell the sound one from the cracked one, but when you pour something in, the leak becomes apparent; so unsound souls, unable to contain power, overflow with desires, with fits of anger, with boastfulness, with vulgar excess.
And yet why need one even mention these things, when even the smallest failings are magnified by slander when they concern men who are conspicuous and famous? Cimon was slandered for his wine, Scipio for his sleep, Lucullus was ill spoken of for dining too extravagantly.