You
are a king: I will not bid you go to Croesus for an example, he who while yet
alive saw his funeral pile both lighted and extinguished, being made to outlive
not only his kingdom but even his own death, nor to Jugurtha, whom the people
of Rome beheld as a captive within the year in which they had feared him.
Some people
would like to claim that we don’t have kings anymore, but I will suggest that
they are sadly mistaken.
We may have
different titles and different trappings, but the human temptation to reign
over others is far too strong, and no amount of egalitarian posturing can hide
the fact that there will always be those folks who wish to define themselves by
how they can push other people around. They don’t want to admit it, but they’re
especially fond of all the kowtowing they can get.
In every
single office, or school, or social club I have ever been in, there was always
at least one self-appointed king or queen. Sometimes there were several, and
their rival claims to the throne made for miniature versions of historical
dramas.
And when
they fall, how mightily they do indeed fall, having based everything on their
superiority over others, and then losing everything that gave them a false purpose.
The story of
King Croesus of Lydia, as told by Herodotus, is an ideal example of all this, a
man known first for his incredible wealth and power, and then for his ultimate
insight that it was all as nothing.
Croesus, bragging
about his status, is said to have challenged the Athenian statesman Solon to
find a man happier than himself. Solon reminded Croesus that fortune is unreliable,
and that one can never really judge the value of a man’s whole life until
after his death.
Solon
pointed out that Tellus, who had died heroically in battle, or Kleobis and
Biton, two pious and virtuous sons who were granted a peaceful death in their
sleep after their mother asked the gods to bless them, were surely happier.
Croesus learned
that this was all too true, with the tragic loss of his own son, and when his whole
kingdom fell to the Persian King Cyrus.
In deciding
whether to go to war with Cyrus, Croesus apparently asked the Oracle at Delphi if
he would be victorious. “You will destroy a great empire,” came the reply. You
just can’t make this stuff up.
Cyrus ordered Croesus,
the man who had everything and lost everything,
to be burned to death on a pyre. As the
fire was lit, Croesus called out the name of Solon three times, and Cyrus asked what this could possibly mean. He was told about Solon’s earlier advice,
and Cyrus suddenly also saw himself in his defeated foe, two men who were both seduced
by the fickle nature of circumstances.
Cyrus quickly
ordered the fire put out, but it seemed to be too late. It was only Croesus’
prayer to Apollo that brought rain and drenched the flames. So it is that Croesus
was, as Seneca says, a man who lived through both the passing of his rule as well
as the moment of his appointed death.
The name of
Jugurtha, the King of Numidia, would have been more immediate in the memory of
the Romans. He struggled against the Republic with both political cunning and
military prowess, and for a time it seemed like he might be another Hannibal in
the making. Yet soon he was defeated, paraded through the streets of Rome, and
died of starvation in prison.
Can you
please remind me what I thought was so good about being the king?
Written in 11/2011
IMAGE: Croesus on his pyre
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