[4] 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
1
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
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for sleeping; and the enemies of Pompey the Great, observing that he scratched his head with one finger, reviled him for it.
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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:
and again, when he makes the People ask for a basin and a feather in order to vomit and then say,
Take, take my hand as quickly as you can;
I’m going to choose Agyrrhius general
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;
Beside my platform Mantias takes his stand,
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and
It feeds foul Cephalus, most hateful pest.
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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. Praecepta gerendae reipublicae. Plutarch. Harold North Fowler (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1936.
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