Plutarch’s Caesar: Why Did He Cry Over Alexander?

So, when Caesar read about Alexander’s life, he burst into tears. Perhaps the more ambitious of us ought to cry with him.

“His friends were surprised, and asked him the reason of it. ‘Do you think,’ said he, ‘I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?’”

Like Alexander, Caesar was ambitious from a young age and had every intention of making something of himself. Caesar’s success, like Alexander’s, seems to have come from the proper mixture of boldness, charisma, intelligence, and luck.

Like Alexander, Caesar was bold, right from the beginning. As a young man, he was taken hostage by pirates, who demanded 20 talents for his ransom. He said he could raise fifty and spent the rest of his captivity essentially hanging out with the pirates and joking with them that he would hang and crucify them after he got free.

Well, Caesar’s ransom came, he was released, and he went home. Then he got a flotilla of ships together, hunted down the pirates, and crucified them just as he promised.

Caesar rose from being an adventurous youth to a military commander who had great success in the provinces to become the first Roman emperor. The civil war that he fought with Pompey marked the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the empire. Plutarch cross references Caesar’s life with the life of Pompey and Brutus, showing us that he is not trying to write a straightforward history, but more of an heuristic biography. 

In his war with Pompey, we see evidence of all of his traits and how they played out. Caesar was bold to make the war in the first place and in his marches and attacks on Pompey’s army. He was charismatic in that his soldiers remained loyal to him in the direst of circumstances, and in the way he forgave Pompey’s officers and soldiers and incorporated them into his own army. He was intelligent in making plans and knowing what tactics to employ against Pompey. He also showed his intelligence in turning a weakness into a strength. Finally, he was lucky in that Pompey’s nerve failed him at critical moments, and his men found sustenance when they needed it most.

Pompey was not an aggressive opponent, and it leads one to wonder what might have happened had he been.  In a battle near Brundisium, Pompey nearly had the best of Caesar’s army.

“Caesar’s affairs were so desperate at that time that when Pompey, either through over-cautiousness or his ill-fortune, did not give the finishing stroke to that great success, but retreated after he had driven the routed enemy within their camp, Caesar, upon seeing his withdrawal, said to his friends, ‘The victory to-day had been on the enemies’ side if they had had a general who knew how to gain it.’”

Looking at Caesar’s intelligence, we can see how he turned weaknesses into strength. For example, we are told that Caesar “was a spare man, had a soft and white skin, was distempered in the head and subject to an epilepsy….” When he was trying to secure his hold on power after the civil war and made a political misstep in the Senate that could have cost him power, he blamed his behavior on the “epilepsy.” This appearance and illness also served him well in winning the loyalty of his soldiers because he bore many of the same hardships and they were ‘astonished’ by his endurance, Plutarch tells us.  This was also an example of how he blended charisma with intelligence to build loyalty among his troops.

 His boldness was evidenced in his work against the pirates and in his military campaigns. He marched into Macedonia with starving troops after his near-defeat by Pompey. There he took Gomphis, a town in Thessaly.

“But after he took Gomphi, a town of Thessaly, he not only found provisions for his army, but physic too. For there they met with plenty of wine, which they took very freely, and heated with this, sporting and reveling on their march in bacchanalian fashion, they shook off the disease, and their whole constitution was relieved and changed into another habit.”

Caesar’s boldness shows up in nonmilitary ways as well. He had plans to divert the Tiber river to create a new channel for merchants who traded with Rome, drain marshes for more arable land, build sea walls on the shore nearest Rome, and remove rocks and shoals at Ostia to make it safe for ships.

While these things did not come to fruition, one of his boldest aims was one of the most long-lasting, affecting everything that came after it. He remade the calendar “in order to rectify the irregularity of time….” That is quite an undertaking, to change time.

“Caesar called in the best philosophers and mathematicians of his time to settle the point, and out of the systems he had before him formed a new and more exact method of correcting the Calendar, which the Romans use to this say, and seem to succeed better than any nation in avoiding the errors occasioned by the inequality of the cycles.”

 Even with all of his attributes, Caesar still feared pale, skinny guys like himself.

“Nor was Caesar without suspicions of him and said once to his friends, ‘What do you think Cassius is aiming at? I don’t like him, he looks so pale.’ And when it was told to him that Antony and Dolabella were in a plot against him, he said he did not fear such fat, luxurious men, but rather the pale lean fellows meaning Cassius and Brutus.”

 As we all know, Brutus and Cassius murdered Caesar and then later took their own lives in the civil war that resulted. In describing the end of Caesar’s life, it seems Plutarch almost has a ‘be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it’ message. He tells us that Caesar constantly sought glory, even from a young age.

“Caesar died in his fifty-sixth year, not having survived Pompey above four years. That empire and power which he had pursued throughout the whole course of his life with so much hazard, he did at last, with much difficulty compass, but reaped no other fruits from it than the empty name and invidious glory.”

 Next Time: Reading the Bible – The Gospel According to Saint Mathew, The Acts of the Apostles [Hey, these books aren’t in the set!]

Interlude: Alexander and Aristotle

So, last time I wrote about Alexander the Great and how he chased around the world conquering places.

But I feel like I ought to mention that he did study with Aristotle and kept up a correspondence with him while out on his adventures.

“It would appear that Alexander received from him not only his doctrines of morals and of politics, but also something of those more abstruse and profound theories which these philosophers, by the very names they give them, professed to reserve for oral communications to the initiated, and did not allow many to become acquainted with.”

Plutarch tells us that when Alexander heard that Aristotle had published some of his philosophy, he wrote to Aristotle to remonstrate him for doing so.

“For when he was in Asia, and heard Aristotle had published some treatises of that kind, he wrote to him, using very plain language to him in behalf of philosophy, the following letter. ‘Alexander to Aristotle, greeting. You have not done well to publish your books or oral doctrine; for what is there not that we excel others in, if those things which we have been particularly instructed in be laid open to all? For my part, I assure, I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion. Farewell.’

“And Aristotle, soothing this passion of pre-eminence, spoke, in his excuse for himself, of these doctrines as in fact both published and not published: as indeed, to say the truth, his books on metaphysics are written in a style which makes them useless for ordinary teaching, and instructive only, int he way of memoranda, for those who have been already conversant in that sort of learning.”

This is educational to us beyond just the life of Alexander because it warns us to be careful when looking at Aristotle’s texts, particularly those on the metaphysics. If they are memoranda only, then we know that there may be crucial points left out, especially if the philosophers had a reputation of deliberately keeping some ideas restricted to those who heard their lectures. While this does raise the question of why Aristotle would then publish anything at all in written form, we cannot ignore the warning signs that it presents.

In reading these ancient texts, we need to remember that they have come down to us through many years, many copies, and many turns of fortune. Many ancient Greek texts were lost during the Dark Ages and returned to the west only after Crusaders brought back Arabic copies for the near east. Others were preserved through repeatedly copying by monks. Manuscript lineage is not an issue for this set, but it is one for anyone who tries to make an in-depth study of these works.

For use as readers, tackling this now, we must remember to read carefully, cross reference when necessary, and be prepaid to accept that there may be things we don’t understand. That could be because we have a corrupted copy, or because we can’t walk with the philosophers themselves.

 

Plutarch’s Alexander: So How Great Was He?

As I read the Great Books and the ancient Greeks and Romans in particular, it strikes me just how much people have not changed over the thousands of years that have passed.

It is oddly fitting that I write this on the forty-sixth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, because the reading this time in Plutarch’s biography of Alexander the Great. Alexander’s rise to power began with the assassination of his father, Phillip, which, even thousands of years later, still has conspiracy theories attached to it.

But much about Alexander the Great remains mysterious, even to Plutarch who wrote several hundred years after his death. An attempt to find the historical Alexander requires any would-be biographer to sift through legends and interpretations of earlier biographers. In his book Alexander The Great, Historian J.R. Hamilton explains this issue and talks about how different modern biographers interpret Alexander as a tyrant or renaissance gentleman, depending on their own station in life and history.

This long introduction, then, is to say that in reading Plutarch’s life of Alexander, we need to be careful what lessons we draw from it. Plutarch himself writes how accounts of Alexander’s life written by his generals vary widely even though they were written shortly after his death.

In thinking over the life of Alexander, I am struck by a couple of points that come through in Plutarch’s narrative. The first is that we see in Alexander the model of someone obsessed by a particular vision of himself and his goals. We can’t argue that Alexander conquered a great amount of territory, but the second thing that comes through is that he just kept campaigning but there was no end to his war. So, we see the danger of ambition and obsession.

Although in this volume there appears to be no introduction or direction from Plutarch as to how we are to read his writings, the tone and phrasing at points shows that he means for them to be instructive. Plutarch definitely subscribes to the “Great Man” theory of history that history is created by great individuals who cause things to happen. In these biographies, it seems Plutarch is teaching us both about history and about how to be successful.

People have told me that Alexander’s father, Philip, was the one who was responsible for Alexander’s success because he laid the foundation by building the army and creating the tactics Alexander used. He also gave Alexander a pretty good foundation. Plutarch seems to have heard this argument, judging by the following paragraph. 

“Alexander was but twenty years old when his father was murdered, and succeeded to a kingdom, beset on all sides with great dangers and rancorous enemies. For not only the barbarous nations that bordered on Macedonia were impatient of being governed by any but their own native princes, but Philip likewise, though he had been victorious over the Grecians, yet, as the time had not been sufficient for him to complete his conquest and accustom them too his sway, had simply left all things in general disorder and confusion.”

Looking at Alexander’s traits, as laid out by Plutarch, we read that his was fixated on becoming a king, and even emperor, from an early age; “when he was asked by some about him if he would run a race in the Olympic games, as he was very swift footed, he answered, he would, if he might have kings to run with him.”  

Plutarch also tells us that Alexander was not always happy about the successes of his father.

 “Whenever he heard Philip had taken any town of importance, or won any signal victory, instead of rejoicing at it altogether, he would tell his companions that his father would anticipate everything, and leave him and them no opportunities of performing great and illustrious actions.”

 Alexander was concerned with a life of action and glory and not riches and pleasures, Plutarch tells us. He was mostly moderate with his food and drinking, though a few drunken arguments and at least one death are part of his life. Alexander was concerned with military accomplishment, and spent his off hours hunting because this was the way to keep his battle skills sharp. Apparently fighting with lions and wild boards required the same skills as fighting barbarians.

But in all of this campaigning and establishing cities and extending his empire, there is never a point where Alexander says “enough.” Instead he keeps pushing east trying to keep his Macedonian soldiers and his newly conquered and absorbed “barbarian” troops loyal and marching forward. Ultimately, he ends up on the edge of India and takes part of the subcontinent, but stops when he hears that large armies backed by elephants are waiting for him if he presses any further. His troops also had been worn down by this point, and many of the Macedonians just wanted to go home. Alexander, in the classic military bravado, “attacks in another direction down the Arabian peninsula, near the modern Persian gulf, and loses a large number of men to famine.

Short after returning to familiar lands, which as near as I can tell would be modern-day Iraq, he fell sick and died. He conquered lands were divided among his top men, and no real “Alexandrian empire” remained thereafter.  So, what was the point of all the campaigning and fighting? 

That’s not clear to me, but there were some side-effects that are interesting (though these don’t appear in the Plutarch biography). Alexander sent back information about the lands that he discovered and brought along geographers and scientists with him. (Alexander had been educated in part by Aristotle and kept a copy of the Iliad that Aristotle had annotated as one of his prized possessions.) His troops also seems to have introduced Greco-wrestling into India, and there is a long lineage of this kind of wrestling there that lasts through the present day.  But Alexander himself seems to have left little but legend and examples of his own battle prowess behind, which may have been all he wanted.

That said, the extent of his conquests do show us the value of being bold and focused in the direction of our goals. His willingness to expose himself to risk in battle and hunting caused his men to trust and follow him and led him to victory. Perhaps there is something there to take into our own lives when we set a direction and take action in pursuit of our goals. Knowing that Alexander did these things, suffered wounds, and went onto better things can help us face our own setbacks, which are likely less sever than a spear in the thigh.

 Next Time: Plutarch’s Caesar: Why Did He Cry Over Alexander?

Comparing the Spartans – Plutarch Has Lycurgus and Numa Go Head to Head

Plutarch writes our midterm paper for us by comparing Lycurgus and Numa directly right after he tells us about both of their lives. He starts with a quick look at their likenesses: moderation, religion, capacity for government and discipline, and their both deriving laws and constitutions from the gods. Also, both appear to have been Spartans, as Numa was a Sabine, who claimed to be a colony of the Lacedaemonians.

In comparing them both, Plutarch seems to think that Lycurgus was the better lawgiver because the Spartans carried on his government and his plans after Lycurgus was gone, while Numa’s peace lasted only as long as he did, and the Romans needed to reverse course to build an empire by throwing open the gates of Janus and going to war.

While it might seem that this is a value statement on the merits of a military versus a civil society, I would argue that Plutarch’s comparison is more one of method than value. He says that Lycurgus was a better lawgiver, but more because of the duration of his laws than the value of them.

“One benefit among many that Lycurgus obtained by his course was the permanence which it secured to his laws.”

“But Numa’s whole design and aim, the continuance of peace and goodwill, on his death vanished with him; no sooner did he expire his last breath than the gates of Janus’s temple flew wide open, and , as if ware had, indeed, been kept and caged up within those walls, it rushed forth to fill all of Italy with blood and slaughter, and thus that best and justest fabric of things was of no long continuance, because it wanted that cement which should have kept all together, education. “

Here we see that Plutarch says Numa’s city was better, if shorter lived. He called it “that best and justest fabric.” He writes that Numa was a great deal more humane than Lycurgus and nicer overall to women, though I suppose this may be a point of contention depending on the kind of woman who looks at both systems. Plutarch says Lycurgus made his young women more masculine while in Rome “matrons received from their husbands all that high respect and honor which had been paid them under Romulus as a sort of atonement for the violence done to them.”

“Wine they were not to touch at all, nor to speak except in their husband’s company, even on the most ordinary subjects” – hardly an example of women’s liberation.

Still, Plutarch makes much of the similarities between the aims of the two lawgivers.

“In general, it seems that both aimed at the same design and intent, which was to bring their people to moderation and frugality; but of other virtues, the one set is affection most on fortitude, and the other on justice; unless we will attribute their different ways to the different habits and temperaments which they had to work upon by their enactments; for Numa did not out of cowardice or fear affect peace, but because he would not be guilty of injustice; nor did Lycurgus promote a spirit of war in his people that they might do injustice to others, but that they might protect themselves by it.”
Ultimately, the difference in the two comes down to how they educated the children of their respective states. Plutarch writes that the rules Lycurgus drew up for raising children and making them wards of the state are what gave his rule a long lasting effect on the state and the world. Plutarch also indirectly points out that Lycurgus educated children to put the state first and to fulfill a role within it.

Numa, on the other hand, simply lets parents decide how to raise their children, allowing them to choose how children might be educated and what jobs they might pursue, “as if it were of no importance for them to be directed and trained up from the beginning to one and the same common end, or as though it would do for them to be like passengers on shipboard, brought thither each for his own ends and by his own choice, uniting to act for the common good only in time of danger upon occasion of their private fears, in general looking simply to their own interest.”

One can only speculate what the results may have been if Numa has instituted some education system designed to perpetuate his vision of what the state should be. I think, on some level, he tried to ensure the perpetuation of his vision for a state by creating the many religious offices and regulations designed to guide the citizens of Rome. He may have been counting on these offices to keep the ship of state on course after his death.

If we take as an axiom that education is the key for the continuation of the state, or even for the good governance of the state, we must admit that the military education of Lycurgus is easier to implement and understand than a religious or humane education that would further Numa’s ends. It is simpler to organize people into companies and make them drill, march, and spar, and this way weld them together. But what would the curriculum be for a civic education of a free state? How can you make people free and yet infuse them with a spirit of togetherness?

It has been said that the United States is unique in that being a citizen of the country is a political idea, rather than one of birth. In other words, in the highest conception, a person is a United States citizen because they believe in a constitutional republic that is designed to protect the rights of the minority while bending to the will of the majority. I grant this idea may have been more meaningful at the beginning of the Republic, but it is this idea that allows us to be a nation of immigrants and still cohere rather than balkanizing like early Rome. I think Jefferson’s ideal of a public school system and the idea that all children in the United States should learn how the government works in addition o whatever else they may study is an attempt to answer the question of free people with a sense of political responsibility.

One other thought before I close, Plutarch notes that both Numa and Lycurgus want frugality and moderation. One does it by banning wealth, luxury, and superfluous occupations (though the Spartans do need to bring in outsiders and slaves to accomplish certain tasks), and the other tries to instill these virtues by inculcating religious reverence and fear of the gods.

This puts me in mind of a documentary shown on the BBC called “The Power of Nightmares” which argued that radical Islamism and Neo-Conservativism shared a similar desire to make people good through inventing an enemy and making people band together out of fear and a sense of belonging. Although I found parts of the documentary suspect, nonetheless, the ideas were interesting and I think they relate to the questions faced by Numa and Lycurgus in terms of how do you build and maintain a state where the people are good.

Still, it does leave me wondering, isn’t there a way to build a state based on fun and creating more resources so that frugality does not mean denial of a good life for all? Isn’t there a place where the women and men can drink wine, together even, and still be good people? Well, maybe we’ll find out more as we move through the set.

Next Time: Plutarch’s Alexander: So How Great Was He?

Plutarch’s Lives: Numa Pompilius – The Lawgiver of Rome

Many people know that Romulus and Remus, those wolf-suckled brothers, founded Rome, but what happened between them and the Roman Empire of aqueducts, Caesars, and gladiators? By Plutarch’s account, it was Numa Pompilius who used religion and clever social engineering to lay the foundations of what became the eternal city of Rome.

At the time the Romulus died (or was taken up into the heavens by a whirlwind, according to some accounts), Rome was divided between the group that settled the area with Romulus and the Sabine tribe, which said it was a colony of Sparta. Neither group wanted to be subservient to the other, so after a long discussion, the two decided that each would pick a member of the other tribe to be king. The Romans chose a Sabine, and the Sabines gave their choice to the Romans, because they wanted to have a Sabine king. The man chosen was Numa Pompilius.

Now, in the choice of Numa, we see again the idea of leadership versus command. He was chosen, Plutarch tells us, because he “disposed to virtue, which he had yet more subdued by discipline, a severe life, and the study of philosophy; means which had not only succeeded in expelling the baser passions, but also the violent and rapacious temper which barbarians are apt to think highly of; true bravery, in his judgment, was regarded as consisting in the subjugation of our passions by reason.”

Because of these traits, both groups trusted him to make the right decisions for the future of the state and so picked him to lead, rather than submitting to his command out of fear of some sanction.

On being persuaded to take office, which took some doing on the part of the Romans, Numa began to create a unified state out of Rome by remaking it in accordance with his thoughts about how an individual should lead life. In his speech to the ambassadors who came to offer him the kingship, he says these traits will like not make him a good king.

“The very points of my character that are most commended mark me as unfit to reign, — love of retirement and of studies inconsistent with business, a passion that has become inveterate in me for peace, for unwarlike occupations, and for the society of men whose meetings are but those of worship and kindly intercourse, whose lives in general are spent upon their farms and their pastures. I should by be, methinks, a laughingstock, while I should go about to inculcate the worship of the gods and give lessons in the love of justice and abhorrence of violence and war to a city whose needs are rather for a captain than for a king.”

Still, he took the job of king, and then proceeded to lay the foundations for a much greater city by giving the kinds of lessons he described. Of course, looking at it from modern eyes, it is easy to see Numa as a clever politician as well.

His first step as a king was to make a sacrifice to the gods and wait for an auspicious sign so he could ascend the throne with divine approval. Once he had that, he formally took on the job and first disbanded Romulus’s official guard, saying that he would trust the people that put their trust in him.

To Numa we owe the creation of the vestal virgins. He also created many other religious offices, including the pontifex maximus. He reorganized the Roman calendar, making December the last month, and he decreed that when the city had public processions and sacred prayers, the citizens should stop working and give their full attention to religion “free from all noises and cries that accompany manual labour, and clear for the sacred solemnity.”

“At times, also, he filled their imagination with religious terrors, professing that strange apparitions has been seen, and dreadful voices heard; thus subduing and humbling their minds by a sense of supernatural fears.”

Along with the religious efforts, Numa practiced some social engineering as well to get all the people of Rome to see themselves as Romans. As noted above, when Numa was chosen to be kind, the city residents divided themselves along tribal lines. Numa reorganized people by their trades into companies and guilds and assigned to each of them courts, councils, and religious observances. “In this manner, all factious distinctions began, for the first time, to pass out of use, no person any longer being either though of or spoken of under the notion of a Sabine or a Roman, a Romulian or a Tatian; and the new division became a source of general harmony and intermixture.”

The results of Numa’s work were that the gates of the temple of Janus, which were only open during a time of war, remained closed for 43 years, and the people of Rome and all of Italy enjoyed peace and prosperity, according to Plutarch. “Festival days and sports, and the secure and peaceful interchange of friendly visits and hospitalities prevailed all through the whole of Italy.”

Plutarch writes, “perhaps, too, there is no need of compulsion or menaces to affect the multitude, for the mere sight itself of a shining and conspicuous example of virtue in the life of their prince will bring them spontaneously to virtue, and to a conformity with that blameless and blessed life of good-will and mutual concord, supported by temperance and justice….”

By Plutarch’s account, Numa lived a life of piety and temperance. He also may have been a friend or student of Pythagoras, the philosopher and scientist who gave us the theorem about the right triangle. (As an aside, we normally think of the ancients as ignorant folk who thought the sun revolved around the earth. Plutarch tells us that the fire in the temple of Delphi was lit with a device made from mirrors that concentrated the rays of the sun, and that the Pythagoreans through that the earth moved and kept a circular motion around “the seat of fire.” In other words, the Earth revolved around the sun.)

Now, there are a variety of other reasons that this peace and goodwill may have reigned over Italy, if in fact it did, and Plutarch is not reporting a past viewed through rose-colored glasses. Crops may have been abundant, the leaders of the various tribes may have felt secure and found more profit in trade than raiding, and Plutarch does point out that as the Roman Empire grew, the gates of war were nearly constantly open. Numa does not seem to have been very interested in the growth of the Empire.

Still, I think it is important to consider the power of context. In the modern book, The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell talks about how the context in which people live can determine their behavior. As examples, he talks about Bernard Goetz, the man who shot three teens on a New York subway and the changes in the crime rate in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s. He also talks about how phenomena like suicide rates can be powerfully affect by context.

Other recent research shows that social networks can affect powerfully obesity rates and whether or not smokers quit smoking.

What this seems to point to, is that Numa may have been using these social tools to affect not only Rome, but also the city’s neighbors. The example that he set, by truly possessing the qualities he sought to inculcate in the populace, and the religious rites and ceremonies he created may have formed a very powerful context in a world devoid of mass communications.

Next Time: Comparing the Spartans – Plutarch Has Lycurgus and Numa Go Head to Head

Spartan Lessons on Comportment, Leadership, and Perseverance

So last time, I talked about the Spartans in rather negative terms, but I did draw some interesting lessons from this reading that I want to share. In amongst the description of Sparta, and Lycurgus are lessons on leadership and perseverance.

The story of Lycurgus himself raises an interesting distinction that I have heard made before and find interesting to read here. There is a difference between leadership and command.

People follow leaders because they trust that leader to make the right decisions and do the right thing.

People obey commanders out of fear of some kind of sanction.

This idea is explored in William McNeill’s The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, and doubtless other places, but it also shows up in the story of how Lycurgus came to be the law giver of Sparta.

Plutarch writes that “A true leader himself creates the obedience of his own followers; as it is the last attainment in the art of riding to make a horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of government, to inspire men with a willingness to obey. “

With that as a general statement, he goes on to say that Lycurgus “thought rather that the happiness of a state, as a private man, consisted chiefly in the exercise of virtue, and in the concord of the inhabitants; his aim, therefore in all his arrangements was to make and keep them free-minded, self-dependent, and temperate.”

We can argue over whether or not he achieved those aims. Certainly “free-minded” is up to debate in a military society, but the approach to the happiness of a state is worth consideration. Let’s take a look at an example or two from the biography of Lycurgus.

First, Plutarch tells us that Lycurgus came to power after the death of his father and older brother, but once he found that his sister-in-law was pregnant, said that the kingdom belonged to her child and that he was only the king for the time being. Even though his sister-in-law offered to abort the child and marry him, he refused. Her brother offered to arrange for the death of the child, and he turned this down as well. He left town to prevent anyone from doing these things and planned to remain gone until the child was old enough to take over. But Sparta called him home.

“Lycurgus was much missed at Sparta, and often sent for, “for kings indeed we have,” they said, “who wear the marks and assume the titles of royalty, but as for the qualities of their minds, they have nothing by which they are to be distinguished from their subjects”; adding that in him alone was the true foundation of sovereignty to be seen, a nature made to rule, and a genius to gain obedience.”

Lycurgus came back and began to institute changes such as making everyone equal in possessions and wealth. This naturally stirred up some trouble, and in a protest, a wealthy young man hit him with a stick and by some accounts cost Lycurgus an eye. When this Alcander was given to Lycurgus for punishment, Lycurgus took him in and made him wait upon him at his table. “The young man, who was of an ingenuous temper, without murmuring did as he was command; and being thus admitted to live with Lycurgus, he had an opportunity to observe him, besides his gentleness and calmness of temper, an extraordinary sobriety and indefatigable industry, and so, from and enemy became one of his most zealous admirers, and told his friends and relations that Lycurgus was not that morose and ill-natured man they had former taken him for, but the one mild and gentle character of the world.”

Thus Lycurgus made an ally out of an enemy and used that ally to get others to trust him. It is the old maxim of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, practiced by leaders from Lycurgus to Lincoln.

There is one other leadership lesson I want to draw from the Spartans before I close. Lycurgus made a law that Sparta should not make war “often, or long, with the same enemy, lest that they should train and instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves.”

Plutarch tells us the story of Agesilaus, a Spartan leader who made war on the Thebans so many times that he made the Thebans a match for the Lacedaemonians (Spartans). Antalcidas (another Spartan statesman) saw Agesilaus wounded after a fight with the Thebans and said to him that he was paid for making the Thebans into good soldiers whether they wanted to be or not.

There are two lessons from this. The first is that you can learn from your enemies and they can learn from you. One should draw lessons from their defeats. So, in every encounter, you should draw lessons from it.

The second lesson is one of perseverance. If you learn from your past defeats you can prove victorious in the long run.

I read this story at a time when I was doing a lot of competitive fencing and often taking a beating on the strip. It helped me reframe my experience and think to myself that my opponents would eventually turn me into a better fencer.

Next Time: Plutarch’s Numa Pompilius – Looking at the Lawgiver of Rome

Plutarch’s Lives: Lycurgus – The Spartans Were Totally Gay!

So the most recent reading has been Plutarch’s lives, and the Britannica editors suggest reading four : Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius, Lycurgus and Numa compared, Alexander, Caesar. Well, I started in on this reading and realized that trying to take it as one reading would be far too extensive and complicated for a single entry. So, I am starting with Lycurgus.

Lycurgus was “the lawgiver of Sparta,” according to Plutarch, and the one who made Sparta into what we know it as today – a formidable, military state. Much of this entry is really about Sparta more so than about Lycurgus the man, but in ascribing all the Spartan institutions to Lycurgus, Plutarch seems to follow the theory that most history is as a result of the actions of great men.

The Spartans have an image of being tough, hardcore warriors, and it seems that plenty of people think they might be worthy of emulation. The graphic novel 300 and the film of the same name led to a lot of interest in the Spartans recently. The Michigan State University mascot is the Spartan.

A more telling example might be an interview from “Fighting on Guadalcanal,” a 1943 booklet produced for the troops heading to the Pacific Theater in World War II, in which one Marine sergeant who served in the Army says he likes the Marines better because they are “more Spartan-like.”

The historical record seems pretty clear that the Spartans were tough guys, but I don’t think we want to emulate the Spartan state, which was essentially, if we take Plutarch’s view of it, essentially a large, permanent military camp.

“No one was allowed to live after his own fancy; but the city was a sort of camp, in which every man had his share of provisions and business set out, and looked upon himself not so much born to serve his own ends as the interest of his country.”

Sparta was a place where infants were thrown into a gorge if they a committee decided they looked to weak, a practice which led mothers to bathe their infants in wine to give them a more robust appearance. When Spartan boys turned seven, they were taken away from their families and enrolled in a military company for their education, in which their elders would provoke fights between the kids to see who was the strongest. The military education continued throughout their lives, and even as men, they lived as soldiers and subjects of the state, rather than free men. There was virtually no ornamentation or luxury.

Now, I admit that I am probably a softie, but I have to say, I would not have liked living in Sparta or any state like it. I don’t think the Spartans would have much use for a guy interested in hanging out and reading the great books. (How much our own society cares for this thing is a whole different debate.)

And what about this “totally gay” part? Okay, I admit I did that in part for the ratings. But seriously, one of the reasons I am tackling this is that there seems to be some potentially interesting precendent from the Spartans on this.

In the film 300, the Persian king was portrayed as gay, because, according to the director, Zack Snyder: “What’s more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?” (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20014479,00.html)

But the Spartans themselves encouraged boys to have lovers in their cohorts, and when they did marry women, they had a strange custom, according to Plutarch.

“After this, she who superintended the wedding comes and clips the hair of the bride close around her head, dresses he up in man’s clothes, and leaves her upon a mattress in the dark; afterwards comes the bridegroom, in his everyday clothes, sober and composed, as having supped at the common table , and entering privately into the room where the bride lies, unties her virgin zone, and takes her to himself; and after staying some time together, he returns composedly to his own apartment, to sleep as usual with the other men.”

Dressing your wife like a man when you go to be with her seems a little odd to me. But maybe this is more common than I think.

The Spartan also would allow other men to sleep with their wives and sleep with other men’s wives if it looked like that would produce strong children. It was kind of free-thinking of them, but very darwinistic as well. I have heard of other tribes where men who distinguish themselves in some way are allowed to choose, or be chosen by, any woman in the tribe as a way making sure there are strong generations to come.

Thinking about this reading in context of the modern day, it makes me wonder whether the whole gays in the military issue is a fuss over nothing. While I’ve always thought that those in the service would be mature enough to serve with homosexuals, this reading makes me think that if the best warriors from Ancient Greece didn’t have a problem with it, and they had a much harder go of it than our guys do today, then maybe the U.S. military could handle it as well.

Also, if thinking about these bad-ass warriors being unafraid of homosexuality means that it might lessen homophobia elsewhere, then that is a good thing.

Now, even though I wouldn’t want to be a Spartan, that doesn’t mean I find them completely without merit. I will dig into that in my next entry.

Next Time: Spartan Lessons on Comportment, Leadership, and Perseverance

Aristotle’s Politics – What Living With Other People Leads To

In the first book of the Politics, Aristotle begins with the notion that humans are political and social animals who must live together. In living together, humans all have certain roles that they must play, and these roles are determined by whether a person is a man or woman, adult or child, free person or slave.   

Aristotle’s argument is that states exist to provide people with a good life, and he points out that wealth must have limits in order for that good life to be obtained. Merely chasing after money is not useful, according to him, and despite some ideas that may not hold up under the empirical experiences of modern days, he seems to have identified a problem with modern life. Namely, we are too interested in the medium of exchange and trying to develop wealth without limits rather than natural riches.

“For natural riches and the natural art of wealth getting are a different thing; in their true form, they are part of the management of a household; whereas the retail trade is the art of producing wealth, not in every way, but by exchange.”

In considering households as the basic building block of the state, Aristotle devotes considerable time to household management and wealth creation in this first book. He posits that the household exists to provide for essential needs, villages are created to provide for something more than basic needs, and thus societies are formed. Once enough villages come together, then “the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.”

Aristotle begins with the notion that people must live together.

“Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not be mere accident is without a start is either a bad man or above humanity….”

He goes on to show why the state is a creation of nature.

“The proof that that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the while. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part or a state.”

Having convinced us of the necessity of living together, Aristotle wants to understand how states work by breaking them down into their constituent parts. He regards states as a collection of households, and here he begins to lay out the roles that people must play.

Aristotle looks at families, which he says are comprised of master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. The father and man of the house is the one in charge for Aristotle. He says that some people are “from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” 

While slavery is a state of nature for some people, and those people serve as instruments of creating and gathering wealth, others are not meant to be slaves, and to keep them in slavery is a bad idea.

“Hence, where the relation of master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force, the reverse is true.”

Slavery is an odious institution, and I cannot see a strong argument for it in anyway, but then, that stems from my belief that there is no natural relationship that could create a slave. Power tends to corrupt, and we see petty and large tyrannies everywhere that show people who try to create slaves never have a “natural” relationship with them.

Aristotle even talks about how the “meaner sort of mechanic has a special and separate slavery” and that artisans also have characteristics of slavery. If Aristotle were right that masters are sources of excellence in their slaves, the existence of slavery might be more palatable. But even middle managers routinely fail at creating excellence in this society of free people, so I fail to see how someone who is in a position to be abusive and capricious could possibly maintain excellence in themselves, much less in others they consider beneath them.

Aristotle also believes that men should rule over women and children. Even though a woman can be temperate, brave, and just, that does not mean that these qualities are the same in men and women.

“Clearly, then the moral virtue belongs to all of them; but the temperance of a man and of a woman, or the courage and justice of a man and of a woman are not, as Socrates maintained, the same; the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying.”

Now, I find Aristotle an interesting read, but he and I part company here. Although men and women are different, looking at things empirically, as Aristotle would like us to do, I can’t say that this is correct. Perhaps the difference is in my time, women have be involved in all spheres of life, public and private, while in his time their roles were much more limited. It is interesting to think about what Aristotle would say today, faced with the evidence of our modern society.

However he might change his views on slavery and the roles of men and women if he were to visit modern society, I think that Aristotle would find evidence to support his belief that riches should have limits.

He divides the art of “wealth-getting” into two kinds, unnecessary and necessary. The unnecessary kind is that which is just about accumulating coin through retail trade, as he terms it. He says that virtues are corrupted through this. I think here, Aristotle is correct in that in the past twenty to thirty years, we have seen the best and brightest of our country devote themselves to creating money out of money, rather than building true wealth through the creation of valuable objects or tangible resources. Even things once designed to bring us happiness and inculcate virtue have become marketing tools. Why do Christmas decorations come out in stores during October?

Aristotle would say the United States has gotten out of hand with its search for wealth.

“Those who aim at a good life seek the means of obtaining bodily pleasures; and, since the enjoyment of these appears to depend on property, they are absorbed in getting wealth; and so there arises the second species of wealth-getting. For, as their enjoyment is in excess, they seek an art which produces the excess of enjoyment and it they are not able to supply their pleasure by the art of getting wealth, they try other arts, using in turn every faculty in a manner contrary to nature.”

There is a proper reason for gathering wealth, however, and that is to live a good life.

“Of the art of acquisition then there is one kind which by nature is a part of the management of a household, in so far as the art of household management must either find ready to hand, or itself provide, such things necessary to life, and useful for the community of the family or state, as can be stored. They are the elements of true riches; for the amount of property which is needed for a good life is not unlimited….”

One can only wonder what Aristotle would have thought of credit cards and subprime loans.

Next Time: Plutarch’s Lives — Learning About Ourselves Through the Biographies of Others

These Books are Big: Some Thoughts on the Set

I want to take a little time out here to talk about the set and actual books in the Great Books of the Western World. In my set there are 52 volumes and each one is about 9 and ½ inches tall and 6 and ½ inches wide. Their thickness varies, based on the work. You can see from the photo at the top, that they look good on a shelf. The volumes are even color-coded. Yellow volumes has poetry and novels, blue books contain histories and “works in ethics, economics, politics, and jurisprudence” in the words of the editors, green volumes are natural sciences, and red books are philosophy and theology.  (To be fair, my set, being from the 1950s, as near as I can tell, is a little faded.)

 Given the fact that I am reading the set, I think it is obvious that I like it. All the same, I think that the individual books can be a little unwieldy to take on a train or a bus to read on a commute for example. Perhaps the subject matter is a little too weighty for casual commute reading anyway.

When I think about the age of the set, I have the image of the 1950s dad coming home, having dinner, talking to the kids about school, and then retreating to his study to read after the kids are in bed. Maybe with a highball. While this is kind of a fanciful notion, I kind of wish I had a study to retreat to, and that I made the time to read more consistently. This is more of an issue of managing all the inputs and distractions of daily life. While it can be done, I have often found much of my best reading was done on the bus or the train, commuting to and from work. It was a time when I could sit and read rather than be caught up in a phone call, taking care of chores, or one of a million other things.

This is why I think about the design of the books. I wonder how much influence the design has on whether or not the books get read. The set should not just be an attractive shelf piece. Does it matter that the books are 9 and ½ inches tall, color coded and with two-column text pages, versus, say, the Harvard Great Books set, which tend to be smaller in the editions I’ve seen.

 As an aside, the Harvard Great Books, which I plan to tackle some day, were created by Charles Eliot, a president of Harvard University, after P.F. Collier & Sons Publishers challenged him to make good on his assertion that he could design a set of books that would educate people who were willing to read for 15 minutes a day. You can read about the set, and one man’s attempt to read them at http://thewholefivefeet.com/home.html.

 On some level, I think that the design of the books just takes some getting used to, and I think I am getting used to them as I go along. On another, though, I wonder about the importance of the design in getting these books read. I think that reading them is incredibly valuable. I have recently had discussions about real life problems that have been based on my most recent reading of Aristotle. So, I think that these books can really change peoples’ lives for the better. Anything that contributes to that is worth considering.  (I have also been asked to post more of the reading lists from the set to give an idea of the what the next nine years of reading would look like and will do so in the near future.)

 Next Time: Aristotle’s Politics – What Living With Other People Leads To.

Aristotle’s Ethics: Learning to Behave and to Be Happy

This week’s reading is the first book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. This is an important reading because it can give us some practical guidance on how we should live our lives. In this book, Aristotle begins to look at the question of what is good, how we know it, and how we should behave.  His premise is that there is some good that every art, action, and pursuit aims to achieve. He goes on to say that the end goal of all the things we do is happiness, and we achieve this by living a virtuous life.

Even an author from 2,000 years ago is prepared to admit that this is something of a cliché. ‘Oh, we just all want to be happy.’ But he argues that all the things humans strive for — health, honor, wealth — aim at this one goal of happiness, and that it is the only thing we seek for its own sake. “Happiness, then, is something self-sufficient, and is the end of action.”

“Presumably, however, to say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is is still desired. This might perhaps be given if we could first ascertain the function of man,” Aristotle says.

The function of man is “an activity of the soul which follows or implies a rational principle,” is how Aristotle defines it. In other words, he is saying we are rational creatures who can define, pursue, and achieve excellence and virtue. Once we do so, then we can live a happy life. 

It is important to note here that Aristotle defines happiness in terms of virtuous activity. Happiness, and virtue, for that matter, are not states of being of Aristotle. You do not achieve these things and have them forever. Instead you act them out throughout your life. Aristotle shows us that we can’t just collect a certain amount of wealth or accolades and call it a day.

“For no function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities…and of these themselves the most valuable are more durable because those who are happy spend their life most readily and most continuously in these….The attribute in question, then, will belong to the happy man, and he will be happy throughout his life; for always, or by preference to everything else, he will be engaged in virtuous action and contemplation, and he will bear the chances of life most nobly and altogether decorously, if he is ‘truly good’ and ‘foursquare beyond reproach’.”

Aristotle here becomes kind of a self-help guru and says that happy men, who are truly good and wise will make the best of circumstances.

Now, I am taking the book in somewhat reverse order, because in the first part of the book, he lays out how we can know what is good. For Aristotle, people know what is good because they are educated in good habits and by getting a good all around education, they become good all-around judges.

Aristotle says that we all learn by example what is good, rather than deducing what is good by comparing examples to some universal knowledge of an absolute good. This separates him from his teacher, Plato, who argued through Socratic dialogs that we know what things are through understanding universal forms, and we know what is good because we have some idea of the ultimate idea of good.

According to Aristotle, we learn through experience rather than revelation. 

“It is hard, too, to see how a weaver or carpenter will be benefitted in regard to his own craft by knowing this ‘good itself’, or how the man who has viewed the Idea itself will be a better doctor or general thereby. For a doctor seems not even to study health in this way, but the health of a man, or perhaps rather the health of a particular man; it is individuals that he is healing.”

Aristotle is talking about finding virtue through induction, as opposed to the deduction used by Plato. The New York Public Library Desk Reference, third edition, defines the two as follows.

Inductive Reasoning: Any process of reasoning from something particular to something general, or form a part to a whole. Inductive reason can be valid or invalid.

Deductive Reasoning: Reasoning from a general statement to a particular or specific example; for example, “All cats are mortal; William is a cat; therefore William is mortal.”

In addition, Aristotle takes pains to say that we need to set limits on our inquiries into these matters. He says that it is too easy to make the inquiries infinite unless we set limits on what we are trying to find out.

Where does this leave us? To start, Aristotle says we need to exercise our judgment and rational faculties to know what is good.

He also says that to achieve happiness we must behave in a good and virtuous way. Happiness is actions, not a state of being. I think this may be why many people are chronically unhappy even after they have gathered things and created a set piece that they think should make them happy.

Happiness is not having; it is doing.

Next Time – These Books are Big: Some Thoughts on the Set