On Kingship

Chapter 2: Counsel for the King

Cyrene sends me to you to crown your head with gold and your spirit with philosophy. Cyrene is a Greek city with an ancient and holy name, celebrated in a thousand odes by the wise men of the past. Now she is poor and dejected, a vast ruin, in need of a king if she is to accomplish anything worthy of her ancient history. You can remedy this need whenever you wish. It is for you to decide whether I shall bring you a second crown from my great city, happy by then.

The city does not now lack words with which to speak freely and dare to address its sovereign boldly. Truth is the nobility of language. No word ever became more shameful or more honorable because of where it was spoken. Let us advance, then, with God, and attempt the finest speech, or, more truly, the finest deed. For the man who cares for one person, the king, and considers how to make him as virtuous as possible, has taken the shortest path toward restoring every household, city, and nation, great or small, near or far. All must necessarily benefit from the condition of their king’s soul.

Shall we begin in this way, then, so that you may bear with my discourse to the end? It would be wise not to frighten the quarry beforehand. Let us set out what a king should and should not do, contrasting the base with the noble. Attend to the things on each side. Whenever you recognize something worthy, rejoice in it as the portion Philosophy has awarded you. Reject the other, and resolve always to do the one and never again the other.

But if, during this address, some deed of yours appears among those we know to be wrong, and which you yourself recognize as wrong, direct your anger at yourself. Blush because something unworthy of you has come to light. That blush promises the virtue that comes from a change of mind, for this shame is divine, as Hesiod too believes. But a man who persists in his faults and is ashamed to admit an error learns nothing from repentance. He does not need healing words. A wise man would say that he should be punished. Thus, from the outset, philosophy seems rough and unyielding.

Chapter 3: What Makes a True King

I see that some of you are already disturbed and offended by my freedom of speech. Let them remember that I announced my intention beforehand. As men who had been warned, they should have armed themselves for defense and stood their ground against my attacks. Still, you may rejoice in what you are about to hear, for everyone proclaims it. I too agree with you that no one man has been granted so great an empire, such accumulated wealth, surpassing even that of Darius of old, or so many tens of thousands of horses, archers, and armored cavalry. If only these men are fortunate enough to find a leader, every attack against them is powerless.

Moreover, countless cities bow before you. Most have never seen you, nor even hope to behold a sight beyond their aspirations. We should state these truths to you more than anyone else. What, then, distinguishes us from the others? They weave praises for you out of these very things and proclaim you happy. I would never praise you for such things. I would offer you my warmest congratulations.

But congratulation and praise are not the same. Each differs from the other. A man is congratulated on possessions outside himself, but praised for the gifts within him, where happiness has her throne. The former is an uncertain gift of fortune; the latter is a virtue of his own character. Virtue is therefore trustworthy in itself, but good fortune deceives and often changes into its complete opposite. To guard it requires God himself, intelligence, skill, opportunity, and indeed many undertakings of every kind in many places. One has no experience of these things, and even those who try do not easily gain it. A fortunate condition is not preserved as easily as it comes to men.

Consider the kinds of lives in which tragedies are set. They do not concern the sufferings of private citizens and the poor, but those of the powerful, the mighty, and monarchs. A modest house has no room for the greatness of disaster, nor poverty for the burden of misfortune. But a man conspicuous in his good fortune is destined to become conspicuous in his dangers too, and in the other spheres where the demon acts.

Yet virtue has often been the beginning of good fortune, and the approval it wins has led men to happiness, as though Fortune were ashamed not to bear witness to conspicuous virtue. If examples are needed to make this truth convincing, we need not look elsewhere for proof. Consider your father, and you will see that his empire was given to him as a reward for virtue. Fortune does not produce virtue, but virtuous deeds have perhaps before now drawn fortune along with them.

May you be associated with such deeds, my king, so that philosophy does not speak here in vain! May rule be a sacred possession for you because it has trained and brought forward your virtue, which needs material equal to its inborn greatness and could not have been contained in a way of life below that of a king. You must therefore train yourself to maintain a spirit worthy of a king. You must defend Fortune against the charge of acting without reason, since your father’s life and yours have not advanced from similar beginnings.

The soldier’s art brought him control of the empire. In your case, the empire enlists you as a soldier, and you owe virtue to Fortune. He acquired his possessions through toil; you inherited them without toil. Every effort is needed to keep them safe. This is what I have been speaking of all along: the difficult task that needs a thousand eyes, lest Fortune turn back halfway through the journey, as she so often does, like dishonest traveling companions. It is to such companions that the wise compare her inconstancy.

You see this in your own father, so publicly celebrated for his successes. Envy did not allow even his old age to pass without struggles, nor did the Divinity leave it without a crown. After marching against two usurpers and overthrowing both, he raised the second trophy and surrendered his life. No human hand killed him. He yielded to Nature, against whom neither weapons nor intelligence can prevail. He left you the kingdom uncontested, and virtue is his epitaph. May virtue preserve it for you, and may God preserve it through virtue! God is needed everywhere, especially among those who, like you, inherit their fortune rather than struggle for it or build it themselves.

The man whom the Divinity has most richly endowed with fortune, whom he has caused to be called a great king while still a mere boy, must choose every toil and abandon every comfort. He must have little share in sleep and a great share in cares if he is to deserve the crown of the name King. The old proverb rightly says, “it is not the number of subjects that makes a king any more than a tyrant.” The number of sheep no more makes a shepherd than it makes the butcher who drives them before him to slaughter, so that he may eat his fill and sell them for others to feast on.

King and tyrant stand just as distinctly apart, I say, though Fortune gives each the same gifts. Each rules many men. But the man who devotes himself to the clear good of the governed, who is willing to suffer so that they may not suffer, to face danger so that they may live without fear, to keep watch at night and dine with cares beside him so that they may rest from anxiety day and night, is a shepherd among his sheep, a king among men.

But the man who exploits his leadership for luxury, who squanders his resources in revelry, thinking he must gratify all his desires, who considers the suffering of his subjects the reward for ruling many, and takes pleasure in being served by many; in a word, the man who does not fatten his flock but wants to be fattened by it, is, I say, a butcher among his cattle. When those he rules are people endowed with reason, I declare him a tyrant.

Let this be your single principle of kingship, and test yourself against it as against a touchstone. If you find yourself in harmony with it, you may rightfully enjoy the sacred title of a sacred office. If you are not, strive to straighten what is distorted and hold fast to the rule. I do not despair of any progress in youth, provided someone spurs it toward zeal for virtue. Youth tends powerfully in one direction or the other, just as rivers rush most hungrily through the first stretches of their course. The young king therefore needs philosophy either to take hold of him first or to keep him from scattering his strength on either side.

Some vices are close neighbors of particular virtues. From each of these virtues a man can slip, not into another virtue, but into its neighboring vice. Tyranny lives near kingship, indeed next door to it, as recklessness lives near courage and license near liberty. Unless philosophy guards him within the bounds of virtue, the high-minded man will stumble and become a boastful man of weak judgment instead.

Fear tyranny, then, as nothing less than the disease of kingship. Learn to recognize it by the distinctive marks in my discourse, above all this: the king makes the law his rule of conduct, while the tyrant makes his own conduct law. Power is something they share, though their lives oppose each other.

A man reaches the heights of good fortune and happiness when everything naturally follows his desire. But desire must in turn attend upon prudence. Although desire governs what is outside, it yields a share of the kingdom within to its stronger companion and receives from her the orders for necessary action. Power is not enough for happiness. God has not placed happiness in strength. Prudence must be present, indeed must take first place, to use that strength in the noblest way.

I call the man most complete, and his life most complete too, who is perfect in both and deficient in neither: the man whose task is to rule and who knows how to rule. Strength and wisdom united are irresistible. Separated, untrained force and prudence stripped of strength are easily overcome. I have always admired Hermes, that creation of the wise Egyptians. They give their deity a double face, placing a young one beside an old one. They thus require anyone who is to guard them well to be both wise and strong, since either quality would be useless without the other.

In the same way, the Sphinx stands in their temple precincts, a sacred symbol of the union of these virtues: a wild beast in strength, a human being in prudence. Rightly so, for strength without prudent leadership rushes along at random, mixing everything up and throwing it into confusion. Intelligence, on the other hand, is useless in action without hands to serve it. Every virtue adorns a king, but prudence is the most kingly of all. Take her as your companion, I advise you. Her three sisters will follow their eldest, and at once you will have them all as comrades in your tent and on the battlefield.