Could
you anywhere find a more miserable city than that of Athens when it was being
torn to pieces by the Thirty Tyrants? They slew thirteen hundred citizens, all
the best men, and did not leave off because they had done so, but their cruelty
became stimulated by exercise.
In
the city that possessed that most reverend tribunal, the Court of the
Areopagus, which possessed a Senate, and a popular assembly which was like a
Senate, there met daily a wretched crew of butchers, and the unhappy Senate
House was crowded with tyrants.
A
state, in which there were so many tyrants that they would have been enough to
form a bodyguard for one, might surely have rested from the struggle; it seemed
impossible for men's minds even to conceive hopes of recovering their liberty,
nor could they see any room for a remedy for such a mass of evil: for whence
could the unhappy state obtain all the Harmodiuses it would need to slay so
many tyrants?
Seneca next turns to a bit of
history, so that we might consider an example of the way a good man might live
well, and be of service to others, even in the most difficult of conditions.
Most teachers will now never tell
their students about the Thirty Tyrants, and, for that matter, they will rarely
discuss anything at all about ancient Athens. If it is not considered relevant
to whatever is politically convenient at the moment, or in accord with the
fashions of the hour, you can expect it to be overlooked.
I recall a conversation with a
colleague, who was complaining about the horrors of the political party in
power at the time. “I need the kids to see how evil these people are, and warn
them about tyranny! I need to convince them that they need to change things!”
“I’m not sure it needs to be so partisan,”
I replied, “but there are so many cases you can talk about: the Terror during
the French Revolution, the purges by Stalin, the repression in Spain by Franco,
the Killing Fields in Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution in China, the fall of
the Roman Republic, the rule of the Thirty in Athens.”
“The thirty who? What the hell is
that? Maybe I’ll just do another sequence about the Nazis and the Holocaust.”
This gentleman had a degree in
history from an Ivy League. The thirty who? I kid you not. Since it was not
applicable to the class, or race, or gender struggles currently in vogue, he
had somehow forgotten about it.
So we look to the here and now, and
we assume that whatever was back then is outdated, old, and stale. We may sometimes
turn to the past when it supports our immediate preferences, or to show how much we hate it, but we ignore it
when it doesn’t fit into our narrow perspective.
“How the heck is history going to
help me make my way in life? Those folks are all dead! Why dwell on the past?
Live in the now!”
No one has demanded dwelling on the past,
or not living in the now. What some of us might suggest, however, is that we
can learn from the triumphs and disasters of others. The scenery changes, but
what makes people tick is still the same.
I may complain that I cannot live in
this terrible world, that it is all too much to bear, that the powers I must
face can never be overcome. I can’t seem to find a decent job. They’re killing
me with all the taxes. I’m not allowed to speak my mind. If I’m not part of the
in-crowd, I suppose I need to die out in the cold, alone.
Hardly. Harmodius and Aristogeiton
had freed Athens from tyranny once before, and then Thrasybulus did it again
when he stood up against the Thirty. Now those men employed force, but that is
not the only path to follow. There as so many ways to practice virtue in the
face of vice, with no need at all for the assassin’s dagger or an army at your
command. There are so many ways to do good for others, even when most everyone
else will do nothing good for you.
Your own actions, with no other
means available at all, will make their mark.
You don’t need to be like a
Thrasybulus to fight the tyrants of any time or place. You could also be like
another sort of man. He was called Socrates. . . .
Written in 8/2011
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