Therefore, encourage and toughen your spirit against the mishaps that afflict even the most powerful.
For example, the fate of Pompey was settled by a boy and a eunuch, that of Crassus by a cruel and insolent Parthian. Gaius Caesar ordered Lepidus to bare his neck for the axe of the tribune Dexter; and he himself offered his own throat to Chaerea.
No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him. Do not trust her seeming calm; in a moment the sea is moved to its depths. The very day the ships have made a brave show in the games, they are engulfed.
Reflect that a highwayman or an enemy may cut your throat; and, though he is not your master, every slave wields the power of life and death over you.
I may try to convince myself that if I am just insistent enough, just clever enough, and just charming enough, then I can beat Fortune at her own game. In winning more power, by any means necessary, I might be able to become the king of the world, or at least the king of my own little two-bit corner of the world. I’ll be so mighty that nothing can move me.
Don’t I see that I am already being led by the nose, precisely because I have defined my life by the concurrence of circumstances? Now that is something to be terrified of, an arrangement that is bound to fail. I am no longer my own man, as I am beholden to every other man.
No, I can only be assured a strength over my own judgments, never over the judgments of others, and only with that realization can I be firm in the face of fear.
Loss, betrayal, and death will come to all people, even the most “important” kinds of people.
Pompey, that go-getter of the Roman world, had to run from his former ally, only to die at the hands of the Egyptians he was begging for help.
Crassus, known for his great riches, was killed in a blunder of an expedition against the Persians. A story has it they poured molten gold down his throat in honor of his wealth, and then used his severed head as a prop in the performance of a tragic play.
The arrogant Caligula had many put to death to maintain his dominance, before he too was put to death as a response to his cruelties.
Not all cases are so violent and dramatic in degree, but all falls from grace are much the same in kind. Fortune will lift us up, and then she will pull us down again. If I somehow manage to make it to the end of a life filled with intrigue, suspicion and anxiety, in the hopes of being surrounded by money and friends, I will still die, and I will still die alone.
All those things that mattered will now hardly matter, and all those efforts were wasted, because I was at the mercy of anyone and everyone. I thought I had control over my subjects, and the whole time I was subject to them.
I feared constantly because I lusted for all the wrong things; I would not have feared at all if I had loved only the human dignity that was already mine, and known that I did not need to win in any tournament.
Written in 3/2012
IMAGE: The assassination of Pompey
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