On Kingship

Must it be, then, that unless someone comes from a city great and wealthy, and brings proud and luxurious speeches, such as rhetoric and poetry beget — popular arts,

popular offspring — such a man, when he comes here, must hang his head, as having no freedom of speech in the palace, unable to boast of the grandeur of his country or to furnish the pleasure of charming and familiar recitals that would win over the emperor and those who sit in council with him? Or will you also cast off philosophy when she visits you, and will no one recognize her, appearing here after so long a time, but rather act as her host and say something good of her to those to whom it is worth saying? For she needs these things, I think, not for her own sake but for yours, lest, being despised, she should become of no use. She herself will provide speeches — not these cheerful ones that put young men into a state of pleasure, dissolute in character and dressed up in diction for the display of a bastard beauty, but of another sort, for those able to reach them: weighty and inspired, manly and dignified, and refusing, for the sake of servile flattery, to buy the favours of the powerful

with them. These speeches are so unbending, so wholly daring, and so out of place in a palace, that they say it will not be enough for them if someone allows them not to praise everything about the emperor and the emperor in every respect; but, if occasion offers, they even threaten to give pain, and promise to bite the heart, not on the surface only but to the middle, in case someone, being pained, might be helped. Worth much indeed to an emperor's hearing would free speech be; but praise given for everything, harming with pleasure, seems to me like those poisons which people steep in honey and hold out to those who are to perish. Do you not know that cookery, with its sauces and its calling forth of bastard appetites, maims bodies, while gymnastics and medicine both save, though at the moment they cause pain? I want you, then, to be among those who are saved, even if you are going to be annoyed at being saved. For meat is not allowed to rot by

the bite of salt; and the mind of a young emperor, inclined by his power to walk wherever it may chance, is held together by the truth of words. Bear, then, with this foreign kind of speech; and let not these words be convicted among you of boorishness and be silenced before they have advanced even a little, because they are not servants of persuasion, pleasant to the young and their playmates, but tutors of a sort, plain correctors, and heavy to meet. But if you prove strong enough to bear such company, and your ears have not been wholly spoiled by the praises you are used to hearing — “here indeed within am I myself.” Cyrene sends me to you, to crown your head with gold and your soul with philosophy: a Greek city, an ancient and venerable name, and in song

by countless wise men of old; now poor and downcast, a great ruin, and in need of the emperor if it is to do anything worthy of its ancient story. This want of mine you will heal whenever you wish, and it will rest with you, if you so will, that I bring you a second crown from my country, great and prosperous by then. But speech now needs no city in order to speak freely and be bold before an emperor; for truth is the nobility of speech, and no speech has ever become baser or more glorious because of its place. Let us set out, then, with God, and take in hand the finest of speeches — or, to speak more truly, of works. For he who has taken care of one man, the emperor, that he may be the best, has gone the shortest way to setting right all households, all cities and all nations, small and great, near and far, all of which must enjoy the emperor's soul, whatever its condition may be. Do you wish, then, that we begin thus, so that you may also follow

the speech? For it would be wise not to scare away the quarry. Let us say, then, what an emperor ought to do and what he ought not, setting the shameful beside the noble. And you, standing over what comes from each side, when you recognize something fitting, love it as approved by philosophy, and reject the other with abhorrence, and resolve to do the one always and the other never again. But when, in the course of the speech, we come to the things that ought not to be done, of which both we and you yourself know you are guilty, show yourself displeased with yourself and blush, because something has appeared to be yours that is not worthy to be yours. Such a colour promises the virtue that comes of repentance; and this shame seems divine even to Hesiod. But the man who is obstinate in his faults, ashamed to confess ignorance, gains no knowledge from repentance, nor has he any use for healing words; a wise man would say that he needs punishment. So rough from the very prelude, and harsh, is philosophy in coming forward. For I perceive that some of you are already disturbed and count freedom of speech a terrible thing. But I promised to do this, and it was for those who foresaw it

to brace themselves stoutly and hold out against the assaults. Now, you rejoice to hear these things, and everyone sings them, and I agree with you: that so great a greatness of rule is yours as is no one else's, and heaps of wealth beyond the Darius of old, and horse by many tens of thousands, and those who use them, archers and men in breastplates, against whom, when they have a leader, all resistance is weak; and cities beyond number do you homage, most of them without seeing you, and not even expecting to see the sight that is better than any prayer. These things would be said of you by us more truly than by anyone. What, then, is the point on which we do not agree with those others? They weave praise for you out of these things and call you happy; but I would least of all praise you for them, though I would most of all count you fortunate. For being counted fortunate and being praised are not one nature, but each is different from the other. One is counted fortunate

for things outside oneself; one is praised for things within, in which happiness has its seat. The one is still an uncertain gift of fortune, the other the proper good of the will. So, too, the one is steadfast of itself, while good fortune wanders, and often turns round into its very opposite. For guarding it there is need of God himself, need of mind, need of skill, need of the right moment, need of many deeds in many places and of every kind, of which there is no experience, and which do not come easily to those who try. For good fortune is not kept safe for human beings without effort, as it comes to them; you see indeed from what lives the stages of the tragedians have been furnished: not from the misfortunes of private men and the poor, but from those of the strong and the powerful and of tyrants. For a small house has no room for the greatness of a calamity, nor poverty for a mass of misfortunes. But the man who is brilliant in his fortunes is the one who may become conspicuous in danger

and in the other portion of fortune. But often virtue has begun good fortune, and praise has led the way to good fortune for human beings, as if fortune were ashamed not to bear witness to manifest virtues. If this must be confirmed by examples, let us not fetch it from outside: recall your father, and you will see that rule was given him as a reward of virtue. Fortune is not the cause of virtue; but some before now have drawn fortune along with deeds done in accordance with virtue. May you be numbered among these, O emperor, so that philosophy may not speak here in vain. May kingship be venerable to you for this reason, that it exercised and advanced your virtue, which needs material sufficient for its own greatness and could not find room in the setting of any life smaller than kingship. You must train, then, to have a kingly soul, and make a defence on fortune's behalf, lest it be prosecuted for unreason because your life and your father's did not proceed from like beginnings. For him military service procured the kingship; for you, kingship is your military service, and you owe virtue to fortune. He acquired good things by toil

but you inherited them without toil. There is need, then, of toil to guard them. And this is what I have long been saying, the hard thing that needs countless eyes: lest fortune, as she is wont to do, turn back midway on the road, like bad fellow travellers. To these the wise compare her instability. You see that even in your father's case, although his proclamation came clearly upon his achievements, envy did not leave his old age free of struggle; and so God did not leave him uncrowned either. Having gone against two tyrants and overthrown both, he ended his life at the second trophy, yielding to no human being, but to nature, against which no weapon is strong and no mind resourceful; and he had virtue for his shroud, leaving to you the kingship unchallenged. May virtue preserve it for you, and may God preserve it through virtue. For God is needed everywhere, and not least by those who are not athletes or workers on their own account but, like you, heirs of fortune. He to whom God has allotted most, and whom he has caused to be called great king while still quite a boy, must choose every toil and leave behind all ease,

taking little sleep and the greatest share of cares, if one is to wear the name of king as befits him. For the old saying is right, that it is not the number of subjects that makes a king, any more than a tyrant, since neither does a number of sheep make a shepherd, any more than a butcher, who drives them off to cut them up, both to gorge himself and to sell a dinner to others. …

[who seeks what is] better for them, and is willing to toil so that nothing may be toilsome for them, and to face danger first so that they may live in safety, and to lie awake and keep company with cares so that by night and by day they may be at leisure from troubles — he is a shepherd among sheep, and among human beings a king. But whoever enjoys his leadership for luxury and indulges himself in his power, thinking he ought to fill all his own appetites from what the governed will lament, counting this the profit of ruling many, that the pleasure-loving part of his soul is served by many; in a word, whoever does not fatten the flock but wishes himself to be fattened by the flock — him I call a butcher among cattle, him I declare a tyrant, when the people governed is a rational one. This is your one measure of kingship; and now bring yourself to the touchstone. If you fit, use justly the noble title of the noble thing;

but if you do not fit, try to straighten what is twisted and to grow true to the rule. For I do not despair of your age's being capable of every advance, if only someone would spur it on toward virtue; for youth too is strong in its leaning either way, just as rivers, once given the starting points of their courses, rush on more insatiably. That is why the young emperor needs philosophy to take hold of him early and draw him back from the outflow to either side. For different vices are neighbours of different virtues, and from each virtue the slip is not into some other vice but into its neighbour. And tyranny lies beside kingship, very close to its door, just as rashness lies beside courage and prodigality beside liberality; and the great-souled man, unless he is kept by philosophy within the bounds of virtue, steps over them and becomes a boaster and vulgar in mind instead of great-souled.

Fear, then, and recognize no other disease of kingship but tyranny, using the marks the argument has laid down; and remember that for a king his way of life is the law, while for a tyrant law is his way of life. Power is a material common to both, though their lives are at war. The height of good fortune and happiness, then, belongs to the man whose will all things by nature follow, while the will follows prudence, and, though mistress of things outside, yields rule to its better partner and receives from her the watchwords of what is to be done. For power is not enough for happiness, nor did God place blessedness in strength; but prudence must be present, or rather go before, so that one may use one's power most finely. And this man and this life I proclaim the most perfect, which is complete

from both and does not limp on one: he who, having been allotted to rule, knows how to rule. For it is invincible when strength and wisdom come together; but parted from each other, ignorant force and weak prudence are easily overcome. And I have admired this in the wise Egyptians. The Egyptians make the form of the god Hermes double, setting a young man beside an old one, holding that whoever among them is to watch over things well must be both intelligent and valiant, since either without the other is of no complete use. That is also why they set up the Sphinx at the entrances of their sacred precincts, a holy symbol of the pairing of the virtues: a beast in strength, a human being in prudence. For strength, deprived of intelligent leadership, is carried along senselessly, mixing

and throwing affairs into confusion; and mind is useless for action when it is not served by hands. All the virtues, then, adorn kings, but prudence is the most kingly of them all. Make her, I pray, your assessor; for the other three will follow the eldest of the sisters, and at once you will have them all as tent-mates and fellow soldiers at your side. I shall speak a word that sounds strange at first hearing, but is wholly bound up with the truth. When I set weakness beside power, poverty beside wealth, and the disadvantages in everything beside the advantages in everything, if they were judged against each other bare, apart from prudence, then poverty and powerlessness and a private life, rather than the greatest leadership, are the happier lot for those who have least share of mind and prudence; for they would sin less, since the vice in their will finds no outlet into action. For external goods,

which Aristotle and Plato, my guides, are accustomed to call instrumental, know how to serve vices no less than virtues. For this reason these two men, and all the streams of philosophy that have flowed from them, neither thought them worthy of the better name nor condemned them to the worse, but call them instrumental: now good, now bad, as they take their colour from the dispositions of those who use them. Just as it is worth praying, then, that the bad man may lack the instruments, so that his wickedness may remain inactive, so all, cities and private persons alike, would benefit from their being present to one who will use them well, so that the nature of virtue may not wither away useless, idle and unknown, but spend its power on benefits to mankind. Use the goods before you, then, in this way; for only so would you use them as goods. Let households and cities, peoples and nations and continents, enjoy a kingly forethought and an intelligent care — the care which God himself, having set himself up among the intelligible things as archetype, gives as an image of his providence, wishing the things here to be ordered in imitation of what is above the world. The king here, then, is a friend of the great King, being his namesake, if he does not belie the name; and he does not belie it if the other of God's names is also present in him. Before saying which,

it would not be out of season to discuss here something from philosophy, preparing clarity in advance. No name has ever yet appeared that touches the essence of God; but human beings, failing to grasp its expression, wish to touch him through the things that come from him. Whether you call him father, or maker, or anything else, or principle, or cause, all these are relations of him to the things that come from him. And so, in calling him king, you named him from those he rules, and did not try to grasp his nature directly. Now, then, I come to speak of the remaining one of the names, which I promised you and deferred to this moment. What will this be, that is ranged alongside and joined to the king here, which I said confirms him and shows him to be truly what he is called and not falsely named? Good.

— for God, I suppose, is hymned as good by all men everywhere, by wise peoples and unwise; and in this they all concede to one another and agree, who in other respects stand apart in their notions of the divine and divide his pure and indivisible nature among differing opinions. Yet even this undisputed name, “good,” does not yet reveal God's seat in being, but is borrowed from the things that come after him. For “good” does not reach the hearing in an absolute sense, but as good for those for whom it is effective and who are able to enjoy it; for this is what the meaning of the name intends, to interpret God as the cause of good things. And the sacred prayers of our fathers in holy rites, crying out to the God over all, do not glorify his power but adore his care. Since, then, God is the giver of the things that befit God, of life and

mind, and of anything else among the things after him that is not unworthy to come from the First, it would befit you not to desert the post at which you were stationed, nor to shame the name you share, but to set yourself to the imitation: to flood the cities with all good things, and to pour out happiness on each of your subjects, as far as each can receive it. So we would truly call you great king, not giving the title from habit, not serving our need, not begging off your anger, but assenting with the very judging part of the soul and using the tongue as a guileless interpreter of the mind. Come, then, let me paint the king for you in words, like a statue; and do you show me this statue moving and come to life. I shall take into my workshop, if need be, some of the thoughts that came to the minds of ancient and blessed men; and you should love them no less than the rest, but rather more, as indisputably fitting for a king, since about them the wise of old and of today think alike. Let piety first be laid as a safe foundation, on which the statue will stand firm; and never will

a storm overturn it while it holds to the foundation. Piety will also rise with it and appear in many places, and not least at the summit. Starting from here, I say that, with God as leader, the king must first be king of himself and establish monarchy in his own soul. For know this well: a human being is no simple thing, nor of one form; God has settled together, in the structure of one living creature, a crowd of powers of every mixture and every voice; and we are, I think, a beast stranger than the hydra and somehow more many-headed. For surely it is not with the same part that we think and desire, nor with the same that we are angry and grieve, and that by which we feel pleasure and fear; but you see that there is in these a male and a female, both bold and

cowardly; there are in it things opposed in every way; and there is a certain nature running through all of them in the middle, which we call mind, and which I deem worthy to reign in the king's soul, after putting down the mob rule and democracy of the passions. For so, starting from his own hearth, he would reign, using the rule of leadership that accords with nature. Whoever has made the irrational parts of the soul tame and submissive and presented them obedient to reason, ordering the multitude under one intelligent leadership, he is the divine man, whether private citizen or king — rather a king, because he shares his virtue with whole nations, and many human beings reap the benefit of the goods of one. Such a man must lead an inner life free of strife, with a godlike calm reaching even to his face; and he is not a fearful but an exceedingly august sight, in a disposition of unfeigned reverence, striking with wonder his friends — which is the same as saying the good — and dismaying his enemies and the wicked. Regret does not set foot in this man's soul. For whatever he does,

he does as resolved by all the parts of his soul, because all have been ordered under one principle, and the parts have not refused to be parts and have converged into one whole. But whoever scatters the forward thrust of these parts, letting them be many in action and wishing to persuade the creature part by part, you will see him now lofty in mind, now laid low; troubled now by impulse, now by flight, and by pains and pleasures and strange appetites. Such a man never agrees with himself. “I understand what evils I am about to do, but passion is stronger than my counsels,” said someone who recognized the otherness and discord of powers of equal strength. This, then, is the first and a very kingly thing: to reign over oneself, setting mind over the many-formed beast that lives with it, and not to claim to rule many tens of thousands

of men while being himself the slave of the most shameful mistresses, pleasure and pain and all the kindred beasts that make their home in the creature. From here, then, going out from himself, the king will first meet those near him, his friends, with whom as companions he will take counsel about the whole. These he will call friends, not using the name ironically, nor like those who disguise the harshness and arrogance of despotism under a name kinder than the reality. For what possession is so kingly as a friend at one's side? What sharer of good fortune is sweeter? Who is surer for bearing with one a worse turn of fortune? Who more guileless in praise? Who less painful in stinging admonition? And what plainer proof of a kindly king could the multitude have than if he is seen always making his companions enviable? For so he would be loved even by those far off, and good men would pray to obtain a king's friendship. The opposite of all this holds for tyrants,

which is why the clever proverb, “far from Zeus and his thunderbolt,” said of one who treats his companions as plotters, declares that safety with obscurity is less fearful than the dangers of a conspicuous life. For no one was sooner counted fortunate for the tyrant's friendship than he was caught by his enmity. But the king knows that self-sufficiency belongs to God, since God is a primal being set above those he rules; but for a man ruling many men like himself, nature is not sufficient for planning every task. Healing, then, nature's deficiency, he joins himself to his friends, multiplying his power. For so he will see with the eyes of all, hear with the ears of all, and deliberate with the judgments of all brought together into one. But one must be on guard with all one's mind — and, if we can, use all the weapons in the courts for this — lest flattery slip in unnoticed, wearing the mask of friendship. By this alone, even while the bodyguards are awake, kingship is plundered; for it makes its way, unless it is very firmly kept out,

deep within the treasuries and attacks the most precious of the king's possessions, his soul itself. For loyalty to companions is not the least of a king's virtues. It was this that made the famous Cyrus and Agesilaus the most renowned of kings among Greeks and barbarians. He will know, then, what must be done, and will confirm a resolution among his friends; but for it to become deeds he needs many hands. The argument, proceeding, now leads the king out of the palace, and after his friends hands him over to the soldiers, friends of the second rank, and, bringing him down to the plain, makes him review men and horses and arms. There he will ride with the horseman, run with the foot soldier, serve as a hoplite with the hoplite, act as a peltast with the peltast, and throw the javelin with the light-armed, drawing each into living comradeship by sharing in the work, so that here too he may not speak ironically when he calls them fellow soldiers, but they may recognize him as one who speaks to them as one of themselves, and bear witness that the name is spoken from deeds. Perhaps you are annoyed that we bid you toil; but, take my word for it, toil touches a kingly body least.

For whoever toils in the sight of others is least overcome by toil. When a king trains his body, lives in the open, and is busy with arms, the peoples everywhere are his theatre. He turns the eyes of those present, and no one can bear to look elsewhere when the king is doing something in full view; and every deed of the king, turned into song, rings in the ears of the absent. This habit — the king's not being a rare sight to the soldiers — can create in the soldiers' souls a very strong goodwill toward him. And what kingship is more secure than one walled by love? What private man, doing small things, is more free from fear and less plotted against than that king whom his subjects do not fear, but fear for? The military class

— the fighting class — [Plato] likens most of all to the dog, an animal that distinguishes friend and foe by knowledge and ignorance. What could be more shameful for a king than that those who fight in his defence should know him only through the painters? Not only will this benefit come from frequent mingling, that the army surrounds him like a single body grown together, but also many of the things that happen at such times: some are exercise in the works of war, others the first rites and preparations of generalship, which rouse one to greater and more serious things. For it is no small thing, in the need of war, to name a general, to name a lieutenant-general, a cavalry commander, a battalion commander and a standard-bearer, if so it happens, and to call some of the veterans by name, with recognition, and to en-

-courage them — I mean those in command in each cavalry squadron and infantry unit. For Homer, setting one of the gods beside the Achaeans in battle, says that with a blow of his sceptre he filled the young men with mighty strength, so that their souls were roused the more to war and fighting, and they could not bear to keep either their feet or their hands still; for “and their feet below and their hands above were eager” means that they dart of their own accord to the work of battle. To my mind the king would do this same thing by calling men by name: he would rouse even one whom no trumpet stirs to ambition, and spur on the fighter. For everyone wishes to toil with the king as witness.

This, it seems, is how the poet judges, that it is a very great help to a king in peace and in war. Perceiving first this very thing, that it weighs most for men's courage that not even the common soldiers be unknown to the king, he made Agamemnon not only call the soldiers by name, but has him also admonish his brother, besides the address, “to name each man by his father and his lineage from of old, and to honour all, and not be proud.” And to “honour” is to speak well of someone, if he knew of some good thing done by him or achieved. Do you see how Homer makes the king the praiser of a commoner? And who would not be lavish of his blood when the king had praised him? This good, then, will come to you from associating often with soldiers; and you will know beforehand their

characters and lives, and what post befits each man at each moment. Consider this too. The king is a craftsman of wars, as the cobbler is of shoes. The cobbler is ridiculous when he does not know the tools of his craft; and how will the king know how to use soldiers as tools if he does not know them? But now that we have come to this point, if I bring the general argument down to the present matter, perhaps I would not shoot wide of the mark: “Who knows if, with heaven's help, I may stir his spirit by my counsel? Good is the counsel of a true man.” For I say that nothing before now has made the affairs of the Romans worse

than the stage-setting and ceremonial around the emperor's person, which they perform for you in secret, as though conducting sacred rites, and the barbaric display of your state. For show and truth do not usually keep company. But do not be annoyed: this is not your doing; the evil was begun by those who started the disease and handed it on to the succession of time. So this solemnity, and the fear of being made merely human by becoming a familiar sight, keeps you shut in, besieged by yourselves, seeing as little as possible and hearing as little as possible of the things from which practical wisdom is gathered, delighting only in the pleasures of the body, and of these the most material, those which touch and taste provide, living the life of a jellyfish. So long, then, as you disdain the human being, you do not attain even the perfection of a human being.

For those who keep you company at table and elsewhere, and who have readier access to the palace than generals and captains, these you furnish yourselves as charming companions: the small-headed and small-witted, whom nature, erring, has struck false, as dishonest money-changers do the coinage; and a crack-brained man becomes a gift for the emperor, all the greater the more crack-brained he is. These, wanting to laugh and to weep at once for no purpose, playing the buffoon with gestures and noises and every means they can, help you waste your time, and console the fog of your soul, which you have from not living according to nature, with a greater evil. Their stunted thoughts and words fit your ears better than a mind formed by philosophy on a clear and well-rounded tongue. As for what you have reaped from this wonderful life indoors — suspecting the sensible part of the people and holding yourselves aloof from them, while bringing in the senseless and baring yourselves before them — you ought to have known well that each thing grows and is held together by the same means [by which it was made].

But if you run over in your mind the empire that at any time has stretched over the earth — whether of the Parthians, or of the Macedonians, or of the Persians, or of the most ancient Medes, or the one in which we live — it was men of the people and soldiers, who for the most part lived in the open and slept on the ground with those in the ranks, having no less share of toil and no greater share of pleasure, who brought each dominion to greatness. Men who acquire good things through diligence and become enviable would with difficulty still …

… [their happiness] guarded [by the opposite means]: this is what follows from reason. For each thing is destroyed by the opposites of what established it. And I ask that the emperor of the Romans should not transgress the ancestral ways. Count as ancestral to the Romans not what came in yesterday and the day before into a constitution already corrupted, but the ways by which they acquired their empire. Come now — by the god of kings, try to bear with me, for what follows stings the heart — when do you think the affairs of the Romans were in better condition: since you have been clad in purple and gold, and bind on stones from the mountains and seas of the barbarians, some on your heads, some on your feet, some around you, some hung from you, some pinned on you, some to sit on? And so you have become

a most varied and all-golden spectacle, like peacocks, drawing upon yourselves the Homeric curse, the tunic of stone. And for you not even this tunic is enough: for it is not permitted to enter the council chamber of your peers, when you hold the office that gives its name to the year — whether they are holding elections or sitting on any other business — unless you have wrapped yourselves in such a robe. And indeed you are gazed at by those who are permitted to see you, as alone of the senators happy, alone of the senators bearing burdens; yet you even delight in the burden, as if someone bound with gold, and with fetters of many talents' weight at that, should then perceive nothing of the

evil, nor think he suffers anything terrible in being numbered among prisoners, trodden down by the costliness of his misfortune. Yet he will move no more freely than those in the stocks, the meanest of woods. And for you not even the floor may be seen, nor would you walk on the earth as nature made it; gold dust must be spread over it, which wagons and merchant ships bring you from the continents beyond, and there is no mean army of those who sprinkle the dust. For you do not think it kingly unless you luxuriate even in the leather of your shoes. Now, have you fared better since this ceremonial grew up around the emperors, and you live shut in your chambers like lizards, scarcely peeping out, if at all, into the sunlight, lest men should find you out to be men? Or did you fare better then, when men who lived in public view led the armies, black-

-ened by the sun and in all else simple and self-equipped — not dithyrambic and tragic — in Laconian felt caps, which the youngsters laugh at when they see them in the pictures, and which not even the old people think were the dress of fortunate men, but, compared with you, of utterly wretched ones? Yet those men did not wall off their own land, shutting out neither the Asian nor the European barbarians; rather, by what they did they taught those barbarians to wall off their own, often crossing the Euphrates against the Parthian and the Ister against the Getan and the Massagetan. But these, now taking other names instead, and some even altering their faces by art, so that a new and outlandish race might seem to have sprung from the earth, frighten you by crossing over in their turn, and demand to be paid the price of peace — “unless you put on your strength.”

But let us leave off, if you will, comparing the old with the new, lest we seem to reproach you under the guise of exhortation, by showing that as far as the emperor's state has advanced in haughty show, so far has it been robbed of truth. But if the speech, which has lingered amid your finery, were to allot some share of itself to the old ways of kings — whether we call them rusticity or you prefer simplicity — extravagance and frugality would be well stripped for a contest against each other; and seeing them thus naked you would fall in love with the true beauty of a king, letting go of what is merely apparent and artificial. The one we painted mostly from its colours; but the other cannot be drawn from these, but from elsewhere; for it has nothing superfluous, since it does not busy itself with such things, and its habits would rather be its images. And at once some deed comes forward along with the displays of lives lived according to nature. It is worth recalling one

example of a king's character and deeds; for any one is enough to draw all the rest along with it. It is said that one of the emperors — not a very ancient one, but one whom the grandfathers of today's old men would have known, if they had fathered their children young and become grandfathers through children who were young — it is said, then, that one of them was leading an expedition against the Arsacid who had wronged the Romans. When he had reached the heights of the Armenian mountains, before attacking enemy country, he felt like having his dinner, and ordered the army to use the good things from the baggage train, since they would find supplies close at hand if need be — and he pointed to the fields of the Parthians. While they were at this, an embassy arrived from the enemy, expecting first to meet those who held power beside the king, and after them

certain dependants and ushers, and that the king would deal with the embassy many days later; but as it happened they came upon the king himself at his dinner. For there was not yet such a body of guards as now — an army picked out of the army, all young, all tall, with fair and abundant hair, “ever sleek of head and fair of face,” with golden shields and golden spears, by whose appearance we know the emperor is near, as we know the sun, I suppose, by the rays that rise before it. Rather, the whole phalanx, doing its own part, was the bodyguard of the king and the kingdom. And the kings were simple in themselves, being kings not by their trappings but by their soul; they differed from the multitude in what was within, but in what was outside they looked like the common soldiers. So, they say, the embassy saw Carinus: in a tunic of purple dye, reclining on the grass; his dinner was a day-old pea soup, with some pieces in it

of salted pork that had seen some age. When he saw them, it is said, he neither jumped up nor changed anything, but called the men to him where he was, and said he knew they had come to him, for he himself was Carinus; and he told them to report to the young king that very day that, unless he came to his senses, he should expect every grove and every plain of his to be barer within a single month than Carinus's head. And as he spoke, they say, he took off his cap and showed his head, no hairier than the helmet lying beside him. If they were hungry, he let them dip into the pot with him; if they had no need, he ordered them to leave at once and be outside the Roman palisade, since their embassy had reached its end. It is said, then, that when this was reported to the multitude and to the leader of the enemy — what they had seen and what they had heard — there fell upon them all, as was likely, shuddering and fear at the thought of fighting such men, whose king is ashamed neither of being a king [in such a dress] nor of being bald, and, setting out a pot,

invites them to dinner; and that the boastful king, he of the tiara and the robe, came in terror, ready to yield everything to the man in a tunic of cheap wool and a felt cap. Another story, more recent than this, you know, I think; for it is not likely that anyone has not heard of the emperor who gave himself up to go into enemy country when reconnaissance was needed, disguised as an embassy. For then to lead cities and armies was a public service, and many even swore off such office. And one of them, having grown old in reigning, renounced the toils and of his own will became a private man. I will show you, too, that the very name of king came late, having lapsed among the Romans from the time the people drove out the Tarquins. From then on we for our part think you worthy of the title and call you kings and write so; but you, whether knowingly or not, yielding to custom, seem to shrink from the weight of the title. At any rate, when you write to a city, or to a private man, or to a prefect,

or to a barbarian ruler, you have never prided yourselves on the name of king, but are content to be emperors. And “autokrator” is the name of a generalship, one empowered to do everything. Iphicrates and Pericles sailed from Athens as generals with full powers (autokratores), and the name did not offend the people, who tolerated no overlord; the people themselves elected to the generalship, as a lawful office. At Athens, indeed, one called “king” did small things and was answerable to the people — the people, I think, playing with the name, since it was free and undiluted — but their autokrator was not a monarch, and both the thing and the name were serious. How, then, is this not a clear sign of the sober policy of the Roman constitution, that, though it plainly became a monarchy, it is wary through hatred of the evils of tyranny and touches the name of kingship sparingly? For tyranny brings monarchy into disrepute, but kingship makes it enviable, and Plato calls it a divine good among human beings. This same Plato deems that the one who has received a share of the divine

portion should be wholly free of vanity. For God does not tread the stage or work marvels for show, but, “going by a noiseless path, leads mortal things according to justice,” and is ready to be present everywhere to everything that by nature can share in him. So I deem that the king should be a common good and free of vanity. If tyrants work wonders, hiding themselves and appearing amid amazement, no one grudges them, for want of true dignity, their refuge in pretence; for one who has nothing sound in him and knows it, what means has he but to flee being seen, and so flee contempt? But no one to this day has ever despised the sun; and what sight is more familiar? A king too, if he is confident, being genuine and in no danger of exposure, let him be most accessible; for he will be no less,

if not even more, admired. Nobody laughed at the lame king whom Xenophon praises in a whole book — neither those he led, nor those through whose land he led them, nor those against whom he marched. And yet he lodged in each city in the most public places, where everything he did was in plain view of anyone who cared to see the leader of Sparta. Yet he crossed into Asia with a small army and came near to bringing down from his rule the man whom countless nations worshipped — from his pride, indeed, he did bring him down; and when the authorities at home recalled him and he was robbed of his achievements in Asia, he won many victories in Greece, and was defeated in battle by one man only, the one man of all by whom it was likely that Agesilaus would be beaten, a man who strove even in frugality. This was Epaminondas, whom the cities, each crowning him,

invited to feast; and he went to them — for a man in high position could not do otherwise without incurring blame — and drank sharp vinegar besides, “so that Epaminondas,” he said, “may not forget his diet at home.” And when an Attic youth mocked the hilt of his sword because it was of cheap and unworked wood, “Well then,” he said, “when we fight you will not try the hilt; but you will not find the iron to blame.” If, then, ruling is a kingly thing, and one must rule by the practices

and ways of life by which those who know how to rule do rule, we see that everything in every way is achieved not by the outlandish and the haughty, but by the moderate and the temperate; so that vanity and extravagance must be banished from kingship, as having no part in what is foreign to it. From this point the speech digressed. Let us now bring the speech back to its proper beginning, and do you bring back that ancient thing, the king. For when lives have been chastened and temperance has returned, the good things of old must return with it, and everything on the opposite side must change places. May you, O emperor, begin the restoration of good things, and give us back the king as servant of the commonwealth. For in our present state there is no longer room for sloth, nor for going further on: now all things “stand on a razor's edge,” and affairs need God and an emperor to forestall the fate that has long been in labour

now for a long time against the empire of the Romans. This fate, as I join the sequence of the speech and fashion the king whom I promised to set up as an all-beautiful statue, I will clearly show to be near, unless a wise and strong kingship prevents it; and, so that you may be the one who prevents it, I will help contrive it with what resources we have. And God is always and in every way the ally and the friend of the good. From where, then, leaving the new fashioning of the king whom the speech was moulding, were we carried round in thought to the present state of things? Philosophy deemed that the king should often keep company with soldiers and not live shut in his chamber; for goodwill, which alone and above all is a king's

strong safeguard, she taught is gathered from daily familiarity. Of what race, then, are the soldiers with whom the philosopher, as a lover of the king, deems he should train his body and live in camp? Clearly of such as the fields and cities, and in a word the land under his rule, provide as champions and enrol as guardians of the commonwealth and of the laws by which they were reared and educated; for these are the men whom Plato likened to dogs. But the shepherd must not place wolves among his dogs, even if, caught as cubs, they seem to have been tamed, or he will trust his flock to them to his cost; for whenever they see some weakness or slackness in the dogs, they will attack the dogs, the flock and the shepherds together. Nor must the lawgiver give arms to those not born and reared under his laws; for from such men he has no pledge of goodwill. For it belongs to a man of reckless

boldness, or of a prophet, not to fear when he sees a great body of youth, reared elsewhere and following its own customs, practising the arts of war in our land. One must either believe that all of them are philosophers, or, despairing of that, think that the stone of Tantalus hangs over the commonwealth by thin cords. They will attack at the first moment they think the attempt will succeed. Of this there are already some skirmishes, and many parts of the empire are inflamed, as of a body, when foreign elements cannot blend with it into a healthy harmony. That the foreign must be expelled from bodies and from cities, the sons of physicians and of generals alike would tell you. Not to build up a force to match them, and, as if that force were our own, to grant exemption from service to the many who ask it, and to let those in the country busy themselves with other things —

what else is this but the act of men hastening to their ruin? Instead of putting up with Scythians bearing arms here, we should ask our beloved farming for men to fight on its behalf, and enlist them to the point of raising even the philosopher from his think-shop and the craftsman from his workbench and the trader from his market; and we shall persuade even the drone people, who from excess of leisure live in the theatres, to be serious at last, before they pass from laughing to weeping — and let neither the worse shame nor the better stand in the way of strength becoming the Romans' own. For as in a household, so in commonwealths, the part that holds the shield is ranked as male, and the part turned to care for what is within as female. How, then,

can it be tolerated among us that the male part is foreign? And how is it not most shameful to yield to others the most manly sphere, the honour that is won in war? For my part, even if they won many victories on our behalf, I would be ashamed to be helped by them. This, however, I know and consider — and it lies near to everyone with sense — that when these two, as we call them, the male and the female, are neither siblings nor otherwise of one race, a small pretext will be enough for the armed to claim to be masters of the citizens; and those unfit for war will one day have to fight those trained in the contest of arms. Before we come to this, then, toward which things are already moving, we must recover the spirit of the Romans and accustom ourselves to win our victories with our own hands, tolerating no partnership but refusing the barbarian in every rank. First let them be driven from the magistracies and cut off from the privileges of the senate, those to whom

the things that among the Romans of old both seemed and were most august have been a disgrace. For now, I think, even Themis of the council and the god of armies veil their faces whenever the man in a skin coat commands those in military cloaks, and whenever someone puts off the sheepskin he wore, puts on a toga, and deliberates with the Roman magistrates about the state of affairs, holding the front seat somewhere beside the consul himself, while lawful men sit behind. But these men, once they have stepped a little way out of the senate house, are back in their sheepskins, and when they are with their followers they laugh at the toga, saying that in it there is no ease in drawing a sword. I marvel at our absurdity in many other ways, and not least in this: every household that does even moderately well has a Scythian slave; the table-setter, the man at the oven, the amphora-bearer, is for everyone a Scythian; and of the attendants, those who carry on their shoulders

the folding chairs on which their buyers may sit in the streets are all Scythians, the race having long since proved fit and most deserving to be slaves of the Romans. But that these fair-haired men, with their hair long like the Euboeans, should be household slaves in private among the same people and rulers in public would be the most paradoxical of sights, being unheard of; and if this is not a riddle, I would not know what the thing called a riddle might be. In Italy, Crixus and Spartacus bore arms ingloriously, to make a spectacle for the people as purifications for the Romans; but when they ran away and held a grudge against the laws,

they organized what was called the Servile War, the most disastrous of the wars of that time for the Romans. Against them the Romans needed consuls and generals and the good fortune of Pompey, and the city came near to being snatched from the earth. And yet those who revolted with Spartacus and Crixus were of the same race neither as those leaders nor as one another; but the common fortune, seizing a pretext, made them of one mind. For everything servile, I think, is by nature hostile when it hopes to overcome its master. Is it, then, the same with us, or have we stored up the occasions of absurdity on a far greater scale? For with us it is not two men, nor men without honour, who would lead a revolt, but great and bloodstained armies, kin to our slaves, which, having burst into the empire of the Romans in an evil hour, furnish generals

held in very high honour among their own people, and among us through our own baseness. Reckon that, whenever they wish, their slaves too, besides the soldiers they have, will be soldiers, very reckless and bold, ready to glut themselves on the more unholy deeds of independence. You must, then, pull down this fortress raised against us, and remove the outside cause of the disease before the hidden abscess shows itself and bursts, before the hostility of those who live among us is exposed. Evils are mastered at their beginning and grow strong as they advance. The emperor must purge the army as one purges a heap of wheat, separating out the darnel and whatever grows up alongside, a bane to the noble and genuine seed. And if I seem to you to advise what is no longer easy, you have not considered what kind of men you are king of, and about what kind of nation I am speaking. Are not the Romans

… the ones who prevailed, from which their very name came to be heard among men, and who rule all with whom they have engaged, both by hand and by judgment, and have gone over the earth, as Homer says of the gods, “watching over the insolence and the lawfulness of men”? But these Scythians, as Herodotus says and as we see, are all held by a “female disease.” For they are the people from whom slaves come everywhere, who have never been masters of land, through whom the Scythian desert has become a proverb, always fleeing their own country. As those who have handed down ancient history tell, the Cimmerians first drove them from their homes, and then others, and once the women, and your fathers, and the Macedonian, by whom

some were driven inward, others outward. And they do not stop until those who drive them hand them over in turn to the peoples opposite. But when they fall suddenly upon people who do not expect them, they cause trouble for a time, as long ago to the Assyrians and Medes and Palestinians. And now this people came to us not to make war but to beg, since they had been uprooted again. Meeting with gentler things — not the arms of the Romans but their customs, as was perhaps right toward suppliants — the ignorant race paid back the expected return: it grew insolent and was ungrateful for the kindness. For this they paid the penalty to your father when he armed himself against them, and were again pitiable suppliants and sat down with their women. And he, victor in the war, was for the most part defeated by pity: he raised them from their supplication, made them allies, thought them worthy of citizenship, gave them a share of privileges, and allotted to those bloodstained men some Roman land — a man who, through the greatness and nobility of his nature, inclined toward mildness

in his dealings. But the barbarian does not understand virtue. Beginning from then, they have laughed at us to this day, knowing what they deserved from us and what they were thought worthy of; and this fame of theirs has already made the road to us for their neighbours. And some foreign mounted archers now come out to these easy-going men, asking for kind treatment, taking those worse men as their example. And the evil seems to be advancing toward what most people call “persuasion by force”; for philosophy should not quarrel about names, if it seeks the service of thought, even if it fetches it from the ground, clear and fitting, for the matter in hand. How, then, shall we not, once we have fought back for our glory, “drive away from here the dogs borne on by the fates”?

… “Great is the wrath of kings.” Let the king, then, be wrathful against these men, and either they will farm under orders, as the Messenians of old laid down their arms and served the Lacedaemonians as helots, or they will flee again by the same road, bringing word to those beyond the river that the Romans' old mildness is no more, but that a young and noble man leads them — “a terrible man, who might even blame the blameless.”

Such a man, then, being warlike, is more peaceful than anyone; for only one who is able to harm the wrongdoer can keep peace. And I would say that for this king all things from every side will contribute to peace; for [he would be besieged] if he will not make war. Yet peace is more blessed than war, because it is for the sake of peace that the things of war are prepared. Being the end, it would rightly be preferred to what exists for its sake. It would be well, since the body of the empire is divided in two, into the armed and the unarmed multitude, for him to give himself to each part in turn, and after the fighting men to be with the cities and the peoples, for whom, through the fighting men, we have secured safety for farming and civic life. He will be with them by visiting as many nations and as many cities as he can; and the part of his realm which he does not reach, this too he will care for by the means that has proved possible and finest. The business of embassies is both sacred in other ways and here worth everything: by meeting them the king will know nothing

less of what is far off than of what is near, nor will he limit his forethought for the empire to what his eyes perceive; he will raise up what has fallen without seeing it, give to those peoples who are in need, relieve of public burdens those long worn out by them, break off a threatened war and end one in progress, and arrange anything else beforehand. These things he will have from the embassies … “who sees all and hears all.” To them let him be easy of access, and “gentle as a father,” to neighbours and those not neighbours alike; for I have heard Homer say this, once and for all, of the peaceful king of his time. And first let the soldiers be commanded and taught to spare the townspeople and the country-dwellers and to be least burdensome to them, remembering for the sake of whose toils

they took up arms. For it is so that the goods of the cities and of the land may be kept safe that the king fights in front of them and enlists those who will fight in front of them. Whoever, then, wards off the foreign enemy from my flock but himself uses it immoderately seems to me no different from a dog that chases the wolves as far away as possible for this very reason, that it may itself ravage the flock at leisure, when it ought to take as the wage of its watch its fill of the milk. Strict peace requires that the soldiers be trained to treat the unarmed as brothers, taking only what they have been assigned. Nor is it kingly to wear out the cities with taxes. For where does a good king need much money? He is neither one who through looseness of mind lets himself into costly works, preferring boastful ambition to sober need, nor one who with a boy's mind lavishes on

the amusements of the stage the sweat of serious men; nor one driven to the need of many wars, which, as the Laconian says, do not feed on fixed rations; for our argument made the good king one whom no one plots against or attacks. With his expenses, then, held to what is needed, he needs nothing superfluous. He can become the gentlest of revenue-raisers, remitting arrears that are unavoidable and content with what is proportionate to the means of those who pay. A money-loving king is more shameful than a huckster; for the huckster relieves the want of his household, but the king's vice of mind has no excuse. For my part, often examining each of the passions and what sort of men it makes of those who are given to it, I think I see even among private persons that this money-making tribe is more ignoble than any other, malicious and thoroughly illiberal, and would find a place not wholly dishonoured only in a diseased commonwealth. They have already been despised even by themselves, because, against the will of

nature, they think in reverse about what is first and what is last. For nature ordered the body to the service of the soul, and external things to the use of the body, and gave the last the second place; but they subject both body and soul to the third. Having dishonoured themselves and made a slave of what should rule in them, what great and noble thing could they still do or plan? I declare them more ignoble than ants and smaller of mind, and I am not ashamed of the truth; for the ants measure their gathering by the needs of life, while these men think fit to measure life by the need of gathering. Drive away, then, from yourself and from your subjects this grievous plague, so that, being good, you may rule over the good; and let a rivalry in virtue be set up, in which the king himself is both contestant and judge of the games. For it is shameful, someone said, that people compete in public at javelin-throwing and boxing, and that there are crowns for those who win at these, while no one competes in temperance or in virtue. It is likely, surely,

or rather more than likely, indeed altogether necessary, that the cities, following such a disposition in their king, will live the life of old, the golden, the much-sung life, with no leisure for evils and leisure for good things, and above all for piety, in which the king himself will be their leader, asking from God the beginning of every work, lesser and greater. For there is no sight or sound more august than an emperor among his people lifting up his hands and worshipping the King common to himself and his people. And it is reasonable that the divine should rejoice when glorified by the service of a pious emperor, and should make such a man its own by ineffable bonds. From this, then — from being dear to God — he is above all a lover of mankind, showing himself to his subjects such as the King is to him. And with this, what that is needed would not likely be present? And again my speech turns back to what was said a little before.

We set down beneficence as the mark of kingship — the bestower of good things, again, the gracious one — recounting the names the king shares with God. Let these very things, then, and all that was said with them before I promised to mould the king in the speech, now be fitted into their parts and complete the statue. Its chief point was that, being a provider of good things, he will not grow tired of doing this, any more than the sun grows tired of giving its rays to plants and animals; for it is no toil for it to shine, since it has brightness in its essence and is a source of light. Setting himself, then, upon such a form of life, he will through himself bring order to everything his rule reaches; and those who sit near him, who are second to him alone and first of all others, he will order by the kingly adornment of his soul, so that they are benefactors of men each to the measure of the power allotted to him. And so

the first care for human beings advances further, with more people having it in hand. But in an empire of such greatness governors must also be sent out to the provinces. After this, great care must be taken in choosing the magistrates set over justice. For this is a divine and magnificent providence: to wish to know every place and man and dispute oneself requires much going round, and not even Dionysius, who established his rule over a single island and not even the whole of it, would have been able to take care of it. But through a few overseers it is possible to care for the many. This [the wise] called

a godlike and universal care, which, remaining in a steady character and not stooping to whatever parts it chances on, lets none of the parts escape it, whatever they may be. Using this, God does not himself work out in detail each of the things here, but uses nature as his hand, remaining in his own character, and is the cause of good things down to the last, becoming the cause of the causes. In this way the king too should pursue his care of the whole. Let him distribute his rule, as far as possible, among the most just and best overseers; for it is easier for him to know a few than many, and easier to perceive the failures or successes of a few. Let magistrates, then, be chosen by merit and not, as now, by wealth; since we entrust the body to physicians, not to the richest, but to those most skilled in the art, and still more must one prefer, as magistrate, the man who has the science of ruling to the rich man, because more is at stake with him of things being worse or better. What then? If someone has gathered wealth from his very wickedness, is he therefore worthy to rule, and not the man who is poor but

lawful and just, who is not ashamed to live with poverty precisely because he is just? But that rich man, however he became rich, who has bought his office, would not know what sort of dispenser of justice he might become. For such a man, so to speak, would not easily hate injustice and would hardly disdain money, but would surely turn the court into a market for lawsuits; for it is not likely that he would open his eyes wide and look fiercely back at gold. On the contrary, he would be abashed and give in and at last embrace it, being grateful to it for this very reason, that he has exchanged his share of wealth for public office and has hired the cities as he would anything else. He knows, then, that it is because of this that he is venerable and sits on high, gazed

upon by many other people and by the just and poor who come before him. But you, make virtue conspicuous, even when it lives with poverty. Let not a man's prudence escape you, nor his justice, nor the rest of the swarm of the soul's goods, hidden under a poor garment; but draw him into the open and require him to make his virtue public, for it ought not to keep at home but to be in the open air and in the contest. For know well: you will proclaim such men for the moment, but you yourself will be proclaimed for ever, having given to the succession of time an example of a happy kingship. If you do this, you will soon see many ashamed of having made money, and others

priding themselves on voluntary poverty; and men's present opinions on the matter will change, so that to have acquired wealth will be a reproach, and to have kept to poverty will count as dignity. Of the many enviable and blessed things God has given to kingship, one would admire none less than, and perhaps more than all, the power it has in the souls of its subjects, and would sing of it: that a king changes men's opinion of character, burned in by old habit and earliest upbringing, simply by being seen to honour the opposite and to value it most; for whatever a king delights in must at once grow and be practised by more. But having come to this point in my speech, I wish also to pray for my own beloved. May you fall in love,

O emperor, with philosophy and true education; for then, from what has been said, many must become your fellow lovers, and of them there would be some benefit. For now, as it has been neglected, there is danger that it may be put out, and that in a little while not even a spark will be left for those who wish to kindle it. Have I, then, been praying for philosophy? Or is it no loss to her, even if she departs from mankind? For she has her hearth with God, about whom she is mostly occupied even while here, and when the earthly region does not receive her as she comes down, she stays with the Father, and might justly say to us: “I have no need of this honour; I think I am honoured by the portion of Zeus.” But human affairs become worse and better, wholly happy and wretched, as she is present or absent. It is for these, then, and not for philosophy, that I have prayed. And may I obtain the prayer which Plato prayed and did not obtain.

May I see you with philosophy joined to kingship, and no one will hear me speak any further about kingship. But it is now time to be silent, since in this one thing I have summed up everything. If this comes to pass, I have given you what I asked at the beginning: I myself promised to show you in words the statue of a king — for speech is truly the shadow of deed — and to receive it back from you living and moving. And I shall see it before long, and you will render to me the work of a king, if my words do not stay outside around your ears, but enter in and make their home in the recesses of your soul. Indeed I am persuaded that it is not without God that philosophy has been roused to this exhortation, since God, as is easy to guess, is eager to increase your fortunes. And I should rightly be the first to enjoy the harvest of my own seeds, finding you such a king as I fashion, when I give and receive account of what the cities ask.