“What? Am I to be beheaded now, and I alone?”
Why? Would you have had all beheaded, to give you consolation? Will you not stretch out your neck as Lateranus did in Rome when Nero ordered his beheading? For he stretched out his neck and took the blow, and when the blow dealt him was too weak he shrank up a little and then stretched it out again.
Nay more, on a previous occasion, when Nero's freedman Epaphroditus came to him and asked him the cause of his offence, he answered, “If I want to say anything, I will say it to your master.”
What then must a man have ready to help him in such emergencies? Surely this: he must ask himself, “What is mine, and what is not mine? What may I do, what may I not do?”
I must die. But must I die groaning? I must be imprisoned. But must I whine as well? I must suffer exile. Can anyone then hinder me from going with a smile, and a good courage, and at peace?
I’m afraid that, not being a gifted historian, I can find very little about the life of Plautius Lateranus, but what little I can find is full of meaning, leading me in all sorts of directions I would never have expected.
This Roman senator was apparently not always the man of unblemished virtue we would all like to admire, or the sort of man we would all like to think that we can be.
Tacitus says that Lateranus had an affair with the wife of the Emperor Claudius, and only escaped execution because of the influence of his family.
That sounds so very familiar, from so many times and places. Even so, the Romans were surely the masters of social and political intrigue, doing it far better than any soap opera or Hollywood drama could ever manage.
I hope I am not mixing things up, but this also seems to be the same Lateranus who later plotted against the Emperor Nero. The plan, it is said, was for Lateranus to beg the Emperor for assistance, and while kneeling before him, drag Nero down and hold him while the other plotters took his life.
That story doesn’t fill me with very much confidence in his character either, though perhaps I am just too squeamish when it comes to murder and assassination. I would prefer the exile of growing turnips to the vice of regicide.
So what might Lateranus have actually been worth? What is Epictetus getting at here?
It is hardly my place to say it, but sometimes the worst of us become the best of us. I know of no saint who was not at first a sinner, and of no man who managed to do what was right before struggling to overcome what was wrong.
For all else he may have done poorly, when Lateranus faced the music, he quite literally stuck his neck out. Yes, he faced the executioner with complete acceptance.
There is, at the very least, a great courage in that, the sort of courage all of us pansy intellectuals could learn a lesson from.
Even the tough big boys can learn a lesson from it, since they only fight when they are firmly in charge. They are merely as strong as the bravado of the goons who have their backs.
So Nero killed Lateranus, and took his properties. I think it quite suitable that his family home eventually became the Lateran Palace, a place for the Popes to play their own Roman games.
Has trouble come my way? Indeed, it has.
Who was to blame? The pointing of fingers does not change the nature of the hardship.
How can it be resolved? In only one way, the complete acceptance of responsibility for myself.
Did I get myself into this mess? Yes, I did. Now is the moment to stand up.
Death without groaning. Imprisonment without whining. Exile with a smile.
Inner peace in all things, however intimidating the outer things.
Written in 8/2000
IMAGE: The Lateran Palace
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