The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Friday, April 25, 2025

Dio Chrysostom, On Kingship 4.7


"And now, leaving this spirit, my discourse is eager, as in a contest, to bring in the third spirit, as the herald to bring in a chorus​—I mean the ambitious one. He is not so very eager at present to contest, although he is naturally emulous about everything and demands to be first. However, the present trial is not concerned with the question of any fame or honor that may come to him, but with his abundant and merited dishonor

"So come, what garb and appearance shall we give to the ambitious spirit? Or is it manifest that he shall be winged and buoyant in keeping with his character and ambition, floating along with the breezes like those sons of Boreas​ whom artists have conceived and painted, lightly poised on high and running in company with their father's breezes? 

"But while they used to display a power of their own whenever they pleased, yet for a time they went voyaging with the other heroes on the Argo, serving as their shipmates and performing the regular tasks as much as anyone. But the spirit who presides over men who love glory is always aspiring and never touches the earth or anything lowly; no, he is high and lifted up as long as he enjoys a calm and clear sky or a gently blowing zephyr, feeling ever happier and happier and mounting to the very heavens, but often he is enwrapped in a dark cloud when accompanied by some unpopularity or censure from the many people whom he courts and honors and has appointed to the mastery over his own happiness. 

"As to his safety, this spirit is not at all to be classed with either eagles or cranes or any other feathered species; nay, one might rather liken his flight to the violent and unnatural soaring of Icarus,​ whose father undertook to contrive a device that proved disastrous. So then the lad, moved by the conceit of youth and desiring to soar above the stars, was safe enough for a short time, but when the fastenings became loose and the wax ran, he gave his name from this circumstance to the sea where he fell to be seen no more. 

"Just so with this spirit of ambition: When he also puts his faith in weak and truly airy wings—I mean at honors and plaudits bestowed at haphazard by the general crowd—he floats away on his perilous and unsteady voyage, taking with him the man, his admirer and henchman, who now appears to many to be high and blessed, but now again seems low and wretched, not only to others, but first and foremost to himself. 

"But if there be anyone who does not care to conceive of and portray him as winged, let him liken him to Ixion, constrained to cruel and violent gyrations as he is rapidly whirled round and round on a wheel. Indeed, the comparison of the wheel with reputation would not be unfitting nor far inferior in truth to the clever and brilliant metaphors of the rhetoricians: by its shifting movement it very readily turns round, and in its revolutions forces the soul to assume all kinds of shapes, more truly than the potter's wheel affects the things that are being shaped upon it. 

"Such a man, ever turning and revolving, a flatterer of peoples and crowds, whether in public assemblies or lecture halls, or in his so‑called friendship with tyrants or kings and his courting of them — who would not feel pity for his character and manner of living? I am not speaking of the man, however, who, having managed his own life admirably, endeavours by the persuasion of speech combined with goodwill and a sense of justice to train and direct a great multitude of men and to lead them to better things. 

"Let us, then, come to an end with this spirit, too, for I should prefer at the present time not to provide him with clothing and shape, and his other appurtenances, and thus add a great and endless throng of words. Put briefly, then, he could be characterized as contentious, foolish, and conceited, and a prey to vainglory, jealousy, and all such difficult and savage emotions. For it is quite inevitable that all these unsociable and savage and difficult feelings should accompany the honor-seeking type of soul, and it is natural that he should change his mind often and be inconsistent—inasmuch as he serves and courts so fickle a thing—alternating between joy and sorrow more often and continuously than hunters are said to do. 

"For they say this is their especial and most continuous experience, when they sight the game and then lose it again. So it is with the ambitious: When good repute and praise come their way, their souls are magnified and swell and show a wondrous burgeoning, just like the shoot of the sacred olive​ that they tell of at Athens, which swelled and grew to full size in a single day. 

"But, alas! they soon wither again and droop and die when censure and obloquy overtake them. And Delusion, the most convincing thing imaginable, besets this spirit also. For while the miser's delusion and the hedonist's were not able to promise them definitely a brilliant fruition, and did not open the door for their dupes to exalted and splendid destinies, but merely whispered and suggested to them the names of the blessings in prospect, it is otherwise with the Delusion of ambition. Fascinating her victim with her charms and spells, she tells him he is a lover of all that is good and leads him towards notoriety as to some virtue or fair renown. 

"So I shall be tempted here again to make a second allusion to the same story of Ixion. 'Tis said that in his eagerness for the blissful union with Hera he embraced a dark and dismal cloud and became the parent of a useless and monstrous brood, the curious hybrid race of the centaurs. And in the same way he who has been disappointed in his love for true fame and has then dallied with a lust for notoriety has in reality been consorting with a cloud without knowing it instead of enjoying intercourse with the divine and august. 

"And from such associations and unions nothing useful or serviceable can come, but only strange irrational creations that resemble the centaurs—I mean the political acts of certain demagogues and the treatises of the sophists; for both sophists and demagogues are purely mercenary leaders. But in saying this I distinguish the generals and educators and statesmen from those whom I have just mentioned, all of whom may well be assigned to that spirit of ambition and be counted in its faction and following." 



No comments:

Post a Comment