The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [235]
23. For, just as a mole or a wart on the face is more unpleasant than brand-marks, mutilations, or scars on other parts of the body,
24. 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,
25. Regarding it as a great thing which ought to be clean of all eccentricities and errors.
26. With good reason, therefore, did Livius Drusus the tribune gain in reputation because,
27. When many parts of his house were exposed to the view of his neighbours and an artisan promised to conceal them for only five coins,
28. Drusus replied, ‘Take ten coins and make the whole house open to view, that all the citizens may see how I live.’
29. For he was a man of temperate and well-ordered life.
30. And perhaps he had no need of that exposure to the public view;
31. For the people see through the characters, counsels, acts and lives of public men, even those that seem to be very thickly cloaked;
32. They love and admire one man and dislike and despise another quite as much for his private as for his public practices.
33. ‘But,’ you say, ‘do not states put in office men who live licentiously and wantonly?’
34. They do, but it is just like pregnant women who long for sweetmeats,
35. And seasick persons for salt pickles and the like, which then a little later they vomit up and detest.
36. So the people, because of the luxury of their own lives or through sheer perversity,
37. Or for lack of better leaders, make use of those who happen to turn up, though they dislike or even despise them,
38. Then take pleasure in hearing defamatory and critical things said about them.
39. And remember how the Roman people, when Carbo promised something, unanimously voted that they did not trust him.
40. And at Lacedaemon, when a dissolute man named Demosthenes made a desirable motion, the people rejected it,
41. 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,
42. Thus pouring, as it were, from a dirty vessel into a clean one.
Chapter 17
1. The foregoing shows how great is the importance, in a free state, of confidence or lack of confidence in a statesman’s character.
2. However, we should not on this account neglect the charm and power of eloquence and ascribe everything to virtue,
3. But, considering oratory to be, not the creator of persuasion but certainly its co-worker, we should qualify Menander’s view that ‘The speaker’s nature, not his speech, persuades’,
4. 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,
5. 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,
6. Laying hold of it and directing it, as it were, from the stern, which is the easiest way of turning an animal about.
7. Great kings and emperors of the past dressed themselves in purple robes, carried sceptres, and surrounded themselves with guards and much ceremony,
8. Yet although they enslaved multitudes by this show, as if they were superior beings,
9. They still desired to be orators, and did not neglect the charm of speech,
10. Trying to soften by persuasion and overcoming by charms the fierce hearts of the people,
11. Whenever it was not politic or possible to do it by threat or force.
12. How, then, is it possible that a private person of ordinary costume and mien, who wishes to lead a state,
13. May gain power and rule the multitude, unless he possesses persuasion and attractive speech?
14. Now the pilots of ships employ others to give orders to the rowers,
15. But the statesman needs to have in himself the mind that steers and also in himself the speech that gives orders,
16. That he may not require some other man’s voice and be obliged to say,
17. As Iphicrates