To an Uneducated Ruler (intro-4)

The brief essay To an Uneducated Ruler may have formed part of a lecture, or it may, as its traditional title suggests, have been composed as a letter to some person in authority. There is nothing in it to prove either assumption. No striking or unusual precepts or doctrines are here promulgated, but the essay is enlivened by a few interesting tales and, considering its brevity, by a somewhat unusual number of rather elaborate similes. As usual Plutarch depends upon earlier writers for most of his material. The ending is so abrupt as to warrant the belief that the essay, in its present form, is only a fragment.

Plato was asked by the Cyrenaeans[*] to compose a set of laws and leave it for them and to give them a well-ordered government; but he refused, saying that it was difficult to make laws for the Cyrenaeans because they were so prosperous.

For nothing is so haughty

harsh, and ungovernable

by nature as a man,[*]

when he possesses what he regards as prosperity. And that is why it is difficult to give advice to rulers in matters of government, for they are afraid to accept reason as a ruler over them, lest it curtail the advantage of their power by making them slaves to duty. For they are not familiar with the saying of Theopompus, the King of Sparta who first made the Ephors[*] associates of the Kings; then, when his wife reproached him because he would hand down to his children a less powerful office than that which he had received he said: Nay, more powerful rather, inasmuch as it is more secure. For by giving up that which was excessive and absolute in it he avoided both the envy and the danger. And yet Theopompus, by diverting to a different body the vast stream of his royal authority, deprived himself of as much as he gave to others. But when philosophical reason derived from philosophy has been established as the ruler’s coadjutor and guardian, it removes the hazardous element from his power, as a surgeon removes that which threatens a patient’s health and leaves that which is sound.

But most kings and rulers are so foolish as to act like unskilful sculptors, who think their colossal figures look large and imposing if they are modelled with their feet far apart, their muscles tense, and their mouths wide open. For these rulers seem by heaviness of voice, harshness of expression, truculence of manner, and unsociability in their way of living to be imitating the dignity and majesty of the princely station, although in fact they are not at all different from colossal statues which have a heroic and godlike form on the outside, but inside are full of clay, stone, and lead, - except that in the case of the statues the weight of those substances keeps them permanently upright without leaning, whereas uneducated generals and rulers are often rocked and capsized by the ignorance within them; for since the foundation upon which they have built up their lofty power is not laid straight, they lean with it and lose their balance. But just as a rule, if it is made rigid and inflexible, makes other things straight when they are fitted to it and laid alongside it, in like manner the sovereign must first gain command of himself, must regulate his own soul and establish his own character, then make his subjects

fit his pattern. For one who is falling cannot hold others up, nor can one who is ignorant teach, nor the uncultivated impart culture, nor the disorderly make order, nor can he rule who is under no rule. But most people foolishly believe that the first advantage of ruling is freedom from being ruled. And indeed the King of the Persians used to think that everyone was a slave except his own wife, whose master he ought to have been most of all.

Who, then, shall rule the ruler? The

Law, the king of all,

Both mortals and immortals,

as Pindar[*] says - not law written outside him in books or on wooden tablets[*] or the like, but reason endowed with life within him, always abiding with him and watching over him and never leaving his soul without its leadership. For example, the King of the Persians had one of his chamberlains assigned to the special duty of entering his chamber in the morning and saying to him: Arise, O King, and consider matters which the great Oromasdes[*] wished you to consider. But the educated and wise ruler has within him the voice which always thus speaks to him and exhorts him. Indeed Polemo said that love was the service of the gods for the care and preservation of the young; one might more truly say that rulers serve god for the care and preservation of men, in order that of the glorious gifts which the gods give to men they may distribute some and safeguard others.

Dost thou behold this lofty, boundless sky

Which holds the earth enwrapped in soft embrace?[*]

The sky sends down the beginnings of the appropriate seeds, and the earth causes them to sprout up; some are made to grow by showers and some by winds, and some by the warmth of stars and moon; but it is the sun which adorns all things and mingles in all things what men call the love charm which is derived from himself. But these gifts and blessings, so excellent and so great, which the gods bestow cannot be rightly enjoyed nor used without law and justice and a ruler. Now justice is the aim and end of law, but law is the work of the ruler, and the ruler is the image of God who orders all things. Such a ruler needs no Pheidias nor Polycleitus nor Myron to model him, but by his virtue he forms himself in the likeness of God and thus creates a statue most delightful of all to behold and most worthy of divinity. Now just as in the heavens God has established as a most beautiful image of himself the sun and the moon, so in states a ruler

who in God’s likeness

Righteous decisions upholds,[*]

that is to say, one who, possessing god’s wisdom, establishes, as his likeness and luminary, intelligence in place of sceptre or thunderbolt or trident, with which attributes some rulers represent themselves in sculpture and painting, thus causing their folly to arouse hostile feelings, because they claim what they cannot attain. For God visits his wrath upon those who imitate his thunders, lightnings, and sunbeams, but with those who emulate his virtue and make themselves like unto his goodness and mercy he is well pleased and therefore causes them to prosper and gives them a share of his own equity, justice, truth, and gentleness, than which nothing is more divine, - nor fire, nor light, nor the course of the sun, nor the risings and settings of the stars, nor eternity and immortality. For God enjoys felicity, not through the length of his life, but through the ruling quality of his virtue; for this is divine; and excellent also is that part of virtue which submits to rule.

Now it is true that Anaxarchus, trying to console Alexander in his agony of mind over his killing of Cleitus, said that the reason why Justice and Right are seated by the side[*] of Zeus is that men may consider every act of a king as righteous and just; but neither correct nor helpful were the means he took in endeavouring to heal the king’s remorse for his sin, by encouraging him to further acts of the same sort. But if a guess about this matter is proper, I should say that Zeus does not have Justice to sit beside him, but is himself Justice and Right and the oldest and most perfect of laws; but the ancients state it in that way in their writings and teachings, to imply that without Justice not even Zeus can rule well. She is a virgin, according to Hesiod,[*] uncorrupted, dwelling

with reverence, self-restraint, and helpfulness; and therefore kings are called reverend,[*] for it is fitting that those be most revered who have least to fear. But the ruler should have more fear of doing than of suffering evil; for the former is the cause of the latter; and that kind of fear on the part of the ruler is humane and not ignoble to be afraid on behalf of his subjects lest they may without his knowledge suffer harm,

Just as the dogs keep their watch, toiling hard for the flocks in the sheepfold,

When they have heard a ferocious wild beast,[*]

not for their own sake but for the sake of those whom they are guarding. Epameinondas, when all the Thebans crowded to a certain festival and gave themselves up utterly to drink, went alone and patrolled the armouries and the walls, saying that he was keeping sober and awake that the others might be free to be drunk and asleep. And Cato at Utica issued a proclamation to send all the other survivors of the defeat to the seashore; he saw them aboard ship, prayed that they might have a good voyage, then returned home and killed himself; thereby teaching us in whose behalf the ruler ought to feel fear and what the ruler ought to despise. But Clearchus, tyrant of Pontus, used to crawl into a chest like a snake and sleep there, and Aristodemus of Argos would mount to an upper room entered by a trap-door, then put his bed on the door and sleep in it with his mistress; and the girl’s mother would take the ladder away from below and set it up again in the morning. How do you imagine he must have shuddered at the theatre, the city hall, the senate - chamber, the convivial feast, he who had made his bedchamber a prison cell? For in reality kings fear for their subjects, but tyrants fear their subjects; and therefore they increase their fear as they increase their power, for when they have more subjects they have more men to fear.