Praecepta gerendae reipublicae

This essay is addressed to Menemachus, a young man who has asked Plutarch for advice concerning public life. Nothing further is known of the young man, except that Pardalas of Sardis is mentioned as his fellow-citizen (813 f; 825 d); but some of those to whom Plutarch’s various essays are addressed are known to be real persons, and it is, therefore, probable that Menemachus also actually existed. Plutarch held at different times various public offices, and moreover he was highly regarded by his fellowcitizens and many others as a guide, philosopher, and friend; it is, therefore, not unnatural that a young man who was thinldng of entering upon a political career should appeal to him for advice and counsel, though it is also possible that Plutarch wrote the essay without being asked to do so and addressed it to Menemachus merely as a matter of form.

There is nothing profoundly philosophical and very little purely theoretical to be found here. Greece, like most of the known world, was a part of the Roman Empire, and the exercise of statecraft on a large scale was virtually limited to Romans. The ancient Greek city-states retained, however, their local self-government, subject to the supervision of the proconsul; they could enter into agreements with each other, and could send envoys to Rome if

occasion arose. A man could, therefore, find useful and honourable occupation in public life, as Plutarch himself did. Although he frequently uses the great men of the great days of Greece as examples, Plutarch gives the sort of advice which would be useful to one engaged insuch political activity as was open to a Greek in his time. Some of his advice is applicable only to his own times and its conditions, but the politician or statesman of any age may recognize many of his precepts as common sense, the application of which is limited to no time or place. The essay is, then, of interest, not only because it throws a sidelight upon the conditions in Greece in Plutarch’s time, but also on account of its own inherent value.

The reference to troubles which took place recently under Domitian (815 d, Chapter 19) may indicate that the essay was written not long after a.d. 96, the date of Domitian’s death.

If, Menemachus, it is suitable to apply to anything at all the saying

1. No one of all the Achaeans finds fault with the words thou hast uttered,
2. Nor will oppose them in speech; and yet thou hast reached no conclusion,[*](Homer, Il. ix. 55; cf. Moralia, 795 b.)

it may be applied to those philosophers who urge people to take lessons from them, but give no real instruction or advice; for they are like those who trim the lamps, but fail to pour in oil. Therefore, seeing that the desire has been aroused in you a

Speaker of speeches to be, and also a doer of actions[*](Homer, Il. ix. 443; cf. Moralia, 795 e.)

in your native State, as befits your noble birth, since you have not time to gain an understanding of a philosopher’s life in the open among affairs of State and public conflicts or to be a spectator of examples worked out in deed, not merely in word, and since you ask for some precepts of statecraft, I think it is not at all fitting that I should refuse, and I pray that the result may be worthy of your zeal and of my goodwill; and, as you requested, I have made use of a rather large variety of examples.

First, then, at the base of political activity there

must be, as a firm and strong foundation, a choice of policy arising from judgement and reason, not from mere impulse due to empty opinion or contentiousness or lack of other activities. For just as those who have no useful occupation at home spend most of their time in the market-place, even if there is nothing they need there, just so some men, because they have no business of their own that is worth serious attention, throw themselves into public affairs, treating political activity as a pastime, and many who have become engaged in public affairs by chance and have had enough of them are no longer able to retire from them without difficulty; they are in the same predicament as persons who have gone aboard a vessel to be rocked a bit and then have been driven out into the open sea; they turn their gaze outside, seasick and much disturbed, but obliged to stay where they are and endure their present plight.

1. Over the bright calm sea
2. The fair-faced loves went past them to the mad
3. Outrage of the ship’s oars that plough the deep.[*](Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. iii. p. 396, ascribed to Simonides.)

These men cast the greatest discredit upon public life by regretting their course and being unhappy when, after hoping for glory, they have fallen into disgrace or, after expecting to be feared by others on account of their power, they are drawn into affairs which involve dangers and popular disorders. But the man who has entered upon public life from conviction and reasoning, as the activity most befitting him and most honourable, is not frightened by any of these things, nor is his conviction changed. For neither is it right to enter upon public life as a gainful trade, as Stratocles and Dromocleides and their set used to invite each other to come to the golden harvest (for so they called the orators’ platform in jest); nor ought we to enter upon it as if wTe were suddenly seized by an onset of strong emotion, as Gaius Gracchus did, who, when his brother’s misfortunes were still fresh, withdrew so far as possible from public affairs and then, inflamed by anger because certain persons insulted and reviled him, rushed into public life. And although he was quickly satiated with public affairs and fame, yet when he tried to stop and wished for a change and a quiet life, he found that his power was too great to be laid down but before he could lay it down he perished. And those who make themselves up for political competition or the race for glory, as actors do for the stage, must necessarily regret their action, since they must either serve those whom they think they should rule or offend those whom they wish to please. On the contrary, I believe that those who, like men who fall into a well, stumble into public life by mere chance and unexpectedly must be cast into confusion and regret their course, whereas those who enter into it quietly, as the result of preparation and reflection, will be moderate in their conduct of affairs and will not be discomposed by anything, inasmuch as they have honour itself and nothing else as the purpose of their actions.

So, after thus determining their choice in their own minds and making it invariable and unchangeable, statesmen must apply themselves to the understanding of the character of the citizens, which shows itself as in the highest degree a compound of all their individual characters and is powerful. For any attempt

on the part of the statesman to produce by himself at the very outset a change of character and nature in the people will not easily succeed, nor is it safe, but it is a matter that requires a long space of time and great power. But just as wine is at first controlled by the character of the drinker but gradually, as it warms his whole body and becomes mingled therewith, itself forms the drinker’s character and changes him, just so the statesman, until he has by his reputation and by public confidence in him built up his leadership, must accommodate himself to the people’s character as he finds it and make that the object of his efforts, knowing by what things the people is naturally pleased and led. For example, the Athenian populace is easily moved to anger, easily turned to pity, more willing to suspect quickly than to be informed at leisure; as they are readier to help humble persons of no reputation, so they welcome and especially esteem facetious and amusing speeches; while they take most delight in those who praise them, they are least inclined to be angry with those who make fun of them; they are terrible even to their chief magistrates, then kindly even to their enemies. Quite different is the character of the Carthaginian people; it is bitter, sullen, subservient to their magistrates, harsh to their subjects, most abject when afraid, most savage when enraged, stubborn in adhering to its decisions, disagreeable and hard in its attitude towards playfulness and urbanity. Never would these people, if a Cleon had asked them to postpone the meeting of the assembly on the ground that he had made sacrifice and had guests to entertain,[*](The story of the adjournment of the assembly is told by Plutarch in the Life of Nicias, chap. vii. p. 527.) have adjourned the meeting amid laughter and the clapping of hands; nor would they, when a quail escaped from Alcibiades’ cloak while he was speaking, have joined eagerly in hunting it down and then have given it back to him[*](See Life of Alcibiades, chap. x. p. 195.); no, they would have put them both to death for their insolence and their flippancy, seeing that they banished Hanno on the charge of aspiring to be tyrant, because he used a lion on his campaigns to carry his luggage! And I do not believe that the Thebans either, if they had obtained control of their enemies’ letters, would have refrained from reading them, as the Athenians, when they captured Philip’s mail-carriers with a letter addressed to Olympias, refrained from breaking the seal and making known an affectionate private message of an absent husband to his wife. Nor, on the other hand, do I believe that the Athenians would have borne with good temper the contemptuous pride of Epameinondas, when he refused to reply to the accusation against him but rose from his seat and went out from the theatre through the assembly to the gymnasium. And I think, too, that the Spartans would have been far from enduring the insolence and buffoonery of Stratocles, who persuaded the Athenians to make sacrifices on the ground that they had won a victory, and then, after a true report of their defeat had been received, when they were angry with him, asked the people what wrong he had done them seeing that, thanks to him, they had been happy for three days.[*](Cf. Life of Demetrius, chap. xi.) Now court flatterers, like bird-catchers, by imitating the voices of kings and assimilating themselves to them, insinuate themselves deeply into their good graces and decoy them by deceit; but for the statesman it is fitting, not to imitate the character of his people, but to understand it and to employ for each type those means by which it can be brought under his control. For ignorance of their characters leads to no less serious mistakes and failures in free States than in the friendships of kings.

So, then, the statesman who already has attained to power and has won the people’s confidence should try to train the character of the citizens, leading them gently towards that which is better and treating them with mildness; for it is a difficult task to change the multitude. But do you yourself, since you are henceforth to live as on an open stage, educate your character and put it in order; and if it is not easy wholly to banish evil from the soul, at any rate remove and repress those faults which are most flourishing and conspicuous. For you know the story that Themistocles, when he was thinking of entering upon public life, withdrew from drinking-parties and carousals; he was wakeful at night, was sober and deeply thoughtful, explaining to his friends that Miltiades’ trophy[*](Militiades was the victorious general at Marathon, 490 b.c.) would not let him sleep. And Pericles also changed his personal habits of life, so that he walked slowly, spoke gently, always showed a composed countenance, kept his hand under his cloak, and trod only one path - that which led to the assembly and the senate. For a populace is not a simple and easy thing for any chance person to subject to that control which is salutary; but one must be satisfied if the multitude accept authority without shying, like a suspicious and capricious beast, at face or voice. Since, then, the statesman must not treat even these matters carelessly, ought he to neglect the things which affect his life and character,

that they may be clear of blame and ill report of every kind? For not only are men in public life held responsible for their public words and actions, but people busy themselves with all their concerns: dinner, love affair, marriage, amusement, and every serious interest. What need is there, for instance, to speak of Alcibiades, who, though he was most active of all the citizens in public affairs and was undefeated as general, was ruined by his audacious and dissolute habits in private life, and, because of his extravagance and lack of restraint, deprived the State of the benefit of his other good qualities? Why, the Athenians blamed Cimon for wine-drinking, and the Romans, having nothing else to say, blamed Scipio[*](cf. Moralia, 972 f.) for sleeping; and the enemies of Pompey the Great, observing that he scratched his head with one finger, reviled him for it.[*](cf. Moralia, 89 e, with note a in Babbitt’s translation (L.C.L.), where the habit is spoken of as a mark of effeminacy and licentiousness.) For, just as a mole or a wart on the face is more unpleasant than brandmarks, mutilations, or scars on other parts of the body, so small faults appear great when observed in the lives of leaders and statesmen on account of the opinion which the majority has of governing and public office, regarding it as a great thing which ought to be clean of all eccentricities and errors. With good reason, therefore, did Livius Drusus the tribune gain inreputation because, when many parts of his house were exposed to the view of his neighbours and an artisan promised to turn them the other way and change their position for only five talents, Drusus replied, Take ten and make the whole house open to view, that all the citizens may see how I live. For he was a man of temperate and well-ordered life. And perhaps he had no need of that exposure to the public view; for the people see through the characters, counsels, acts, and lives of public men, even those that seem to be very thickly cloaked; they love and admire one man and dislike and despise another quite as much for his private as for his public practices.

But, you say, do not States put in office men who live licentiously and wantonly? They do, and pregnant women often long for stones, and seasick persons for salt pickles and the like, which then a little later they spew out and detest. So the people of democracies, because of the luxury of their own lives or through sheer perversity, or for lack of better leaders, make use of those who happen to turn up, though they loathe and despise them, then take pleasure in hearing such things said about them as the comic poet Plato puts into the mouth of the People itself:

1. Take, take my hand as quickly as you can;
2. I’m going to choose Agyrrhius general[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 652, no. 185; on Agyrrhius cf. Aristophanes, Plutus, 176.);

and again, when he makes the People ask for a basin and a feather in order to vomit and then say,

Beside my platform Mantias takes his stand,[*](From the same play as the preceding.)

and

It feeds foul Cephalus, most hateful pest.[*](From the same play as the preceding.)

And the Roman people, when Carbo promised something and confirmed his promise with an oath and a curse, unanimously took a counter-oath that it did not trust him. And at Lacedaemon, when a dissolute man named Demosthenes made a desirable motion, the people rejected it, but the ephors chose by lot one of the elders and told him to make that same motion, in order that it might be made acceptable to the people, thus pouring, as it were, from a dirty vessel into a clean one. So great is the importance, in a free State, of confidence or lack of confidence in a man’s character.

However, we should not on this account neglect the charm and power of eloquence and ascribe everything to virtue, but, considering oratory to be, not the creator of persuasion but certainly its coworker, we should correct Menander’s line,

The speaker’s nature, not his speech, persuades,[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 135, no. 472.)

for both his nature and his speech do so; unless, indeed, one is to affirm that just as the helmsman, not the tiller, steers the ship, and the rider, not the rein, turns the horse, so political virtue, employing, not speech, but the speaker’s character as tiller or rein, sways a State, laying hold of it and directing it, as it were, from the stern, which is, in fact, as Plato says,[*](Critias, 109 c only it was not our bodies that they [the gods] constrained by bodily force, like shepherds guiding ther flocks by stroke of staff, but they directed from the stern, where the living creature is easiest to turn about (ᾗ μάλιστα εὔστροφον ζῷον), laying hold on the soul by persuasion, as by a rudder, according to their own disposition (trans. R. G. Bury in L.C.L.).) the easiest way of turning an animal about. For those great and, as Homer calls them, Zeus-descended kings pad themselves out with purple robes and sceptres and guards and divine oracles, and although they enslaved the multitude by their grandeur, as if they were superior beings, they wished nevertheless to be speakers of words and they did not neglect the charm of speech,

Nor the assemblies in which men make themselves greatly distinguished,[*](Homer, Il. ix. 441.)

and they worshipped not only Zeus of the Council, Ares Enyalius, and Athena of War, but they invoked also Calliopê,

who accompanies reverend monarchs,[*](Hesiod, Theog. 80.)

softening by persuasion and overcoming by charms the fierce and violent spirit of the people. How, then, is it possible that a private person of ordinary costume and mien who wishes to lead a State may gain power and rule the multitude unless he possesses persuasion and attractive speech? Now the pilots of ships employ others to give orders to the rowers, but the statesman needs to have in himself the mind that steers and also in himself the speech that gives orders, that he may not require some other man’s voice and be obliged to say, as Iphicrates did when defeated through the eloquence of Aristophon’s orators, My opponents’ actor is better, but superior my play, and may not often need those lines of Euripides,

Oh that the seed of wretched men were mute,[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 678, no. 987.)

and

1. Ah, would that deeds of men possessed a voice,
2. That clever speakers might become as naught[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 494, no. 439, from the first Hippolytus.);

for these sayings ought perhaps to be granted as a refuge to Alcamenes, Nesiotes, Ictinus,[*](Alcamenes and Nesiotes were sculptors of the fifth century b.c. Ictinus was architect of the Parthenon.) and all artisans and craftsmen if they take an oath that they are no speakers; as once at Athens, when two architects were being questioned with a view to a public work, one of them, a wheedling and elegant speaker, moved the people by declaiming a prepared speech about the construction of it, but the other, who was a better architect but lacked the power of speech, came forward and said: Men of Athens, what he has said, I will do. For, as Sophocles says,[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 309, no. 760, perhaps from the satyr drama Pandora.) only those are servants of the goddess of artistry who on the anvil with a heavy hammer and with blows work the yielding and inanimate material of their art. But the spokesman for Athena of the City and Themis of Counsel,

She who dismisses assemblies of men and who also convenes them,[*](Homer, Od. ii. 69.)

employing speech as his only instrument, moulding and adapting some things and softening and smoothing off those which are hindrances to his work, such as would be knots in wood or flaws in iron,[*](cf. Plato, Sophist, 267 e.) is an ornament to the city. For this reason the government in Pericles’ time was in name, as Thucydides says,[*](Thucydides, ii. 65. 8.) a democracy, but in fact the rule of the foremost man, because of his power of speech. For Cimon also was a good man, as were Ephialtes and Thucydides, but when the last named was asked by Archidamus King of the Spartans whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied, Nobody can tell; for whenever I throw him in wrestling, he says he was not thrown and wins by persuading the onlookers. And this brought not only reputation to Pericles but safety to the State; for while it was swayed by him it preserved its existing prosperity and refrained from foreign entanglements. But Nicias, whose policy was the same, but who lacked such power of persuasion and tried to rein in the people with speech as easy as a snaffle, could not restrain or master it, but against his will went off to Sicily on its back and together with it came a cropper. The wolf, they say, cannot be held by the ears; but one must lead a people or a State chiefly by the ears, not, as some do who have no practice in speaking and seek uncultured and inartistic holds upon the people, pulling them by the belly by means of banquets or gifts of money or arranging ballet-dances or gladiatorial shows, by which they lead the common people or rather curry favour with them, tor leadership of a people is leadership of those who are persuaded by speech; but enticing the mob by such means as have just been mentioned is exactly like catching and herding irrational beasts.

The speech of the statesman, however, must not be juvenile and theatrical, as if he were making a speech for show and weaving a garland of delicate and flowery words; on the other hand it must not, as Pytheas said of the speech of Demosthenes, smell of the lamp and elaborate literary labour, with sharp arguments and with periods precisely measured by rule and compass. No, just as musicians demand that the touch upon the strings exhibit feeling,

not mere technique, so the speech of the statesman, counsellor, and ruler must not exhibit shrewdness or subtlety, and it must not be to his credit to speak fluently or artistically or distributively,[*](These seem to be somewhat technical words employed by the rhetoricians.) but his speech must be full of unaffected character, true high-mindedness, a father’s frankness, foresight, and thoughtful concern for others. His speech must also have, in a good cause, a charm that pleases and a winning persuasiveness; in addition to nobility of purpose it must possess grace arising from stately diction and appropriate and persuasive thoughts. And political oratory, much more than that used in a court of law, admits maxims, historical and mythical tales, and metaphors, by means of which those who employ them sparingly and at the proper moment move their audiences exceedingly; as did he who said Do not make Hellas one-eyed,[*](cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii. 1017, p. 1411 a; said by the Athenian orator Leptines, in opposing the destruction of Sparta, one of the eyes of Greece. ) and Demades when he said he was governing the wreck of the State,[*](Cf. Life of Phocion, chap. i.) and Archilochus saying

1. Nor let the stone of Tantalus
2. Hang o’er the head of this our isle,[*](Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. p. 396.)

and Pericles when he bade the Athenians to remove the eyesore of the Peiraeus,[*](Cf. Life of Pericles, chap. viii. The references is to Aegina, whose thriving commerce threatened the prosperity of the Peiraeus.) and Phocion when he said with reference to the victory of Leosthenes that the furlong race of the war was good, but he was fearful about the long-distance race.[*](Cf. Life of Phocion, chap. xxiii.) And, in general, loftiness and grandeur of style are more fitting for political speech; examples are the Philippics and among the speeches in Thucydides that of the ephor Sthenelaïdas, that of King Archidamns at Plataea, and that of Pericles after the pestilence.[*](Thucydides, i. 86; ii. 72; ii. 60.) But as for the rhetorical efforts and grand periods of Ephorus, Theopompus, and Anaximenes, which they deliver after they have armed and drawn up the armies, it can be said of them,

None talks so foolishly when near the steel.[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 441, l. 22; from the Autolycus of Euripides.)