“We have heard what ruin Nero wrought
when Rome was burnt and senators were slain.
We know how savagely he did to death
his brother,
how he was stained by the spilling of
his own mother's blood,
and how he looked upon her cold body
and yet no tear fell upon his cheek;
yet this man was judge of the morals of
those who were dead.
Nay, he was ruler of the peoples whom
the sun looks upon
from the time he rises in the east
until he hides his rays beneath the
waves,
and those whom the chilling northern stars
overrule,
and those whom the southern gale burns
with its dry blast,
as it heats the burning sands.
Say, could great power chasten Nero's
maddened rage?
Ah! heavy fate, how often is the sword
of high injustice
given where is already most poisonous
cruelty!”
—from
Book 2, Poem 6
We are
so easily impressed by wealth, fame, and power, even as they are never what
will make us good. Like any nation, Rome had its great leaders, and its
terrible leaders. All the emperors had power, but the great ones were defined
by their virtue, and the terrible ones by their vice. You may give a man
dominion over everything outside of him, but it is the qualities of the heart
and mind within him that will determine how he exercises that dominion.
Perhaps
Nature permits brutal tyrants to come our way to remind us where true value lies,
and that power is never an assurance of excellence. Every generation will have
its fair share of despots and oppressors, sometimes so many of them that we
have a hard time finding anyone who will rule with benevolence.
Though
it can sometimes be difficult to unravel the facts from the legends, the name
of Nero stands out as one of those warnings of what happens when you mix great
power with a crooked soul. Few things can be more horrifying than overwhelming
strength combined with depraved cruelty. We can see it in ancient Rome, just as
we can see it around us today, constant proof that authority and influence do
not make a good man.
The autocrats
and bullies come in many shapes and sizes, and the small ones can sometimes be
just as frightening as the big ones. I once had the misfortune of working with
an administrator who took a sinister delight in inflicting suffering on those
he disliked. He seemed to take special pleasure in making women cry. He had the
ear of a superior, and was a master of manipulation, so his position was
virtually unassailable. I did my best to avoid him at all costs, because he
made my skin crawl. The most frightening thing about him was the way he would
flash a sinister little grin and rub his hands together whenever he got his
way. We have surely all known the sorts of people who make us want to run for
the hills.
I’m not
sure that power makes men evil, because I have known those who will rule with
justice and kindness, but I do suspect that power makes bad men even worse. It
gives them the tools they crave to impose their wills, and becomes an
opportunity for them to acquire the sense of importance they think they deserve.
For some, the craving for greater and greater influence becomes like a sort of
addiction to feed their vanity.
And yet
we still so often admire power, we still think it somehow worthy, and we still
wish to possess it for ourselves, forgetting that it is in itself of no real
merit at all. It is the character of the man who wields it that will make it
good or evil, and so I am well advised to pay far greater attention to building
virtue than acquiring power.
Written in 9/2015
IMAGE: Alphonse Mucha, Nero Watching the Fire of Rome (1887)
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