“Good has but one style, evil a thousand”

Honoré de Balzac, A Treatise on Elegant Living, II.4

It is a common error among the ambitious, or the self-conscious, to confuse elegance for luxury.

To assume that what looks expensive must look good, and conclude therefore that in order to look good, we must spend extravagantly. On the other hand, there are those who are fearful of their own status, and exaggerate roughness through language or clothing to signal that they are ‘one of the people’.

We all know tackiness or scruffiness when we see it, but how can we avoid both and actually embody elegance?

For the answer, we must turn to one of the most popular writers of 19th century France, who achieved the rare feat of being highly conservative, highly eccentric and highly charismatic all at once. In 1830, Honoré de Balzac indeed began his Treatise On Elegant Living to both lampoon the tackiness of post-revolutionary France’s new elites, while also reflecting on why they were getting this so wrong.

So, here is how to stop trying to look elegant, and start being elegant, from the father of ‘elegantology’ itself…

Can You be Elegant?

Balzac was not one for soft openings. “Civilisation has distributed men among three basic types”, he begins.

Society in the wake of the French Revolution, he recounts, in seeking to be egalitarian had simply created a new hierarchy — of men who think, men who work and men who do nothing. Balzac himself, as not merely a devout royalist but a Legitimist1, resented this faux hierarchy and the “triple aristocracy of money” that rules over it. The search for elegance, ultimately, is a search to evoke the romantic style of the old nobility, without having the courage to restore the actual system which produced this style organically.

Removing the aristocratic hierarchy, therefore, has removed the core soul of elegance, and forced men into a semi-chaotic race to try and emulate its superficial trappings, with decidedly mixed results. It cannot be emphasised enough that the core point of Balzac’s treatise is that elegance is not achieved through a simple list of concrete suggestions. What he seeks to do therefore is to explain the je ne sais quoi (the ‘inexplicable quality of what is appealing’) behind elegance, to try and improve your odds of success in that race.

Modern society, he argues, has funnelled these three kinds of men into three possible lifestyles, and not all of them are compatible with elegance:

1 - The Busy Life

Essentially, the ‘Busy Life’ is practised by he who lives to work. The man whose sole concern is enduring the grind of an unfulfilling job in the vain hopes of a better tomorrow for his children:

“If they don’t hoard money like tacticians in order to assure bed and board in their old age, the hope of their bee’s life barely goes any further than that: the possession of a very cold room on the fifth floor, rue Boucherat; then a bonnet and percale gloves for the woman; a grey hat and a demitasse for the husband; a Saint-Denis education and a partial scholarship for the children; boiled meat with parsley twice a week for everyone. Not quite zeros and not altogether numerals, these creatures are perhaps decimals”

Honoré de Balzac, A Treatise on Elegant Living, I.1.1

It should be noted that Balzac does not intend to denigrate the people who are ‘busy’. He acknowledges that such professions are essential to the functioning of society, and that mockery of those who practise them is in poor taste. What he does say however is that for such a lifestyle, true elegance will always be beyond reach. The simple reason is that under such conditions, luxury is only ever a wishful investment, and by the time you have reached the “age of rest”, it will be too late to incorporate it organically into your life.

Elegance, as he maintains, is the “art of animating repose”, and for that to occur you need to have repose, or a lifestyle which permits a more melodic approach to life and leaves room for adventure and leisure.

2 - The Artist’s Life

To be an artist, that is someone who produces beautiful things that are desired for their own merit, not merely as tools for something else, is of course romanticised even today.

The reason, as Balzac suggests, is that an artist is one of the few professions which can get away with never appearing busy. An artist can spend hours considering an inanimate object, simultaneously taking the time to appreciate it and studying it for the benefit of his professional skill. We romanticise the artist because we view it with envious eyes as the perfect marriage of passion, talent and profession. To make a living as an artist is to crack the code of life, for even in failure, an artist in poverty is an object of fascination:

“The artist lives as he wishes… or as he can”

Honoré de Balzac, A Treatise on Elegant Living, I.1.2

The artist, therefore, is assigned elegance by default, and can only really lose it through coarse and un-aristocratic behaviour which actively undermines either his own craft, or the messages he wishes to share through his art.

3 - The Elegant Life

Not all of us of course can be artists. Hearing that we cannot be elegant because we are crushed by a menial job either is of course a bitter pill to consider, let alone swallow. Balzac’s unspoken point however is that just because your present state may be incompatible with elegance does not mean it needs to be so in the future.

The lifestyle you should be aiming for, both for your own happiness and for the achievement of organic elegance, is actually Balzac’s majestic definition of elegance itself:

“Elegant living is the perfection of outer and material life; or: the art of spending one’s income as a man of wit; or even: the science that teaches us to do nothing like anyone else, while appearing to do everything just like them; but perhaps even better: the development of grace and taste in everything that belongs to us and that surrounds us; Or more logically: Knowing how to honour oneself with one’s fortune.”

Honoré de Balzac, A Treatise on Elegant Living, I.1.3

So how do we achieve it?

Elegance is Unified or Not at All

The paradox that underscores Balzac’s treatise is that the chaos unleashed by the wrecking of the traditional hierarchy has ironically gifted you an easier ‘way in’ to elegance. With the absence of executive nobility, which is bestowed with innate elegance, and the arrival of power structures who are ideologically incapable of replicating that elegance, it is up to you.

Anyone who cultivates “exquisite tact” can be elegant and unlock the elegant life, and the failure to understand this core foundation is how luxury becomes vulgarity:

“The moment that two books of parchment no longer stand for everything, when the natural son of a millionaire bath attendant and a man of talent have the same rights as the son of a count, we can no longer be distinguished by anything but our intrinsic value. Differences have vanished in our society: all that remain are nuances. Consequently, good breeding, elegant manners, the je ne sais quoi, the fruits of a complete education— these form the only barrier separating the man of leisure from the busy man. If privilege exists, it stems from moral superiority”

Honoré de Balzac, A Treatise on Elegant Living, I.2

The key sign of somebody who has understood this is unity, distilled by Balzac into “cleanliness, harmony and relative simplicity”. It is living in a manner whereby your intention, your aesthetic, your speech and your actual financial means are all in agreement with each other.

It is inelegant, therefore, for a man who lives in an unremarkable house on an average wage to spend months of that salary on a single luxury item. While the item may be attractive, it is not in unity with the rest of his life. It indeed merely draws attention to this incongruence, and the result is tackiness. His energies would therefore be better invested in a way to improve the overall, even if that increase is more modest than what a single luxury would represent.

A modern example of this is the man who spends a fortune on a luxury car, only to live in constant terror of scratching the paintwork or somebody clipping it. The anxiety it has introduced is outweighing the benefit, and the anxiety is what others will see. “The man of taste must enjoy everything he owns”, as Balzac beautifully puts it, and furthermore, must be seen to be enjoying it.

The logic behind this is the real reason why luxury actually impresses in the first place. It is partially the object itself, but mostly the illusion that said object could be easily replaced by its owner. As Balzac writes, the elegant man therefore “is not afraid of flaunting his splendour on a daily basis: he can reproduce it”. Anything which breaks this illusion therefore undermines your elegance. An elegant man does not get angry if something is spilled on his shirt. For if the cost of replacing it is so high compared to his means that it generates an emotional outburst, then the shirt was not in unity with his life.

These, then, are the essential conditions for elegance. However, as Balzac then points out, you can easily destroy that elegance if you do not heed the following warning…

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We all wish to be remembered for our grandest achievements. The vast majority of us, however, will be remembered for how we handled the everyday. You may dream of saving civilisation, but can you hold a good conversation?

It is certainly frustrating to think how much of our reputation rides on the mundane. But it is also encouraging to know therefore how much of your reputation can, with little effort, be easily secured.

One man who identified this was Jonathan Swift, the colourful author of one of the English language’s most colourful classics — Gulliver’s Travels. As both a clergyman and a satirist, Swift was blessed with a sharp understanding of human nature. One thing that bothered him in particular was how easily ambitious men were undone through poor social skills.

So in 1713, Swift penned these thoughts in an entertaining treatise called Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation. In it, he details eight common mistakes which ruin a conversation, and damage other’s perception of you.

We have all witnessed these mistakes. You may even be making them yourself without realising it. So here are eight ways to stop alienating listeners, and start engaging them…

1 - Never Assume the Listener’s Interest

“Nothing is more generally exploded than the folly of talking too much; yet I rarely remember to have seen five people together, where some one among them hath not been predominant in that kind, to the great constraint and disgust of all the rest.”

Jonathan Swift, Toward an Essay on Conversation

One of the key motivators behind Swift’s drive to write this treatise was his realisation of how common these mistakes are, yet how rarely we acknowledge them consciously.

Who, after all, has not found themselves in the above situation, trapped in a conversation where they have no point of entry or escape? Instinctively, we feel a rush of dislike or even anger to our conversational prison warden, as we are torn between the desire to escape and the social need to appear polite.

The problem of course is that this situation is rarely intentional on the part of the speaker. It results from a presumption of interest. Indeed a typical example of this phenomenon, which Swift relates in amusing style, is when a speaker starts talking about something as if it were an exciting piece of news, when the listeners already knew about it:

“But among such as deal in multitudes of words, none are comparable to the sober deliberate talker, who proceedeth with much thought arid caution, maketh his preface, brancheth out into several digressions, findeth a hint that putteth him in mind of another story, which he promiseth to tell you when this is done; cometh back regularly to his subject, cannot readily call to mind some person’s name, holding his head, complaineth of his memory; the whole company all this while in suspense; at length says, it is no matter, and so goes on. And, to crown the business, it perhaps proveth at last a story the company hath heard fifty times before; or, at best, some insipid adventure of the relater”

Jonathan Swift, Toward an Essay on Conversation

Needless to say, this situation is compounded by poor oratory, from stumbling over words to taking an excessive amount of time to reach the punchline.

The first rule, therefore, is to never assume the audience is as interested in your topic as you are. Better to inspire curiosity than smother with context…

2 - Avoid Talking About Yourself Too Much

There are of course many ways in which one can ‘digress’ in conversation, many of which risk boredom for the listener. One surefire route to distaste, however, is to digress by talking about yourself:

“Some, without any ceremony, will run over the history of their lives; will relate the annals of their diseases, with the several symptoms and circumstances of them; will enumerate the hardships and injustice they have suffered in court, in parliament, in love, or in law”

Jonathan Swift, Toward an Essay on Conversation

This phenomenon, too, can take many directions. It may of course not be out of pure self-love. It could well be that you saw the question ‘How are you?’ as the sincere opportunity to tell someone how you actually are, rather than resigning yourself to the customary ‘Fine thanks, and you?’.

In any case however, what makes this habit unforgivable is an unwillingness on your part to reciprocate and show the patience to others you rhetorically demand of them:

“Of such mighty importance every man is to himself, and ready to think he is so to others; without once making this easy and obvious reflection, that his affairs can have no more weight with other men, than theirs have with him; and how little that is, he is sensible enough”

Jonathan Swift, Toward an Essay on Conversation

Therefore, avoid talking about yourself unless the situation directly calls, in a non-superficial way, for you to do so. Let interest in you generate organically, instead of forcing it…

3 - Beware Excessive Focus on Perceived Peers

An extremely common cause of conversational awkwardness is when two or more participants are already familiar with each other, or discover they share a common uniting experience or profession which the rest do not.

“Where company hath met, I often have observed two persons discover, by some accident, that they were bred together at the same school or university, after which the rest are condemned to silence, and to listen while these two are refreshing each other’s memory with the arch tricks and passages of themselves and their comrades”

Jonathan Swift, Toward an Essay on Conversation

Perhaps somebody starts talking about a film they have just seen. Another pipes up with sudden enthusiasm, and off into the rhetorical sunset they go. But you have not seen that film, and are therefore instantly thrown into an excruciating social prison.

We of course are all eager to talk about what enthuses us. But this does not invalidate the wisdom of knowing thy audience. As per the first rule, do not assume that all present share your interest. But more to the point, it is uncharitable to prolong a discussion which others who are lending you their company have no possible means of contributing to…

4 - Stop Feeling You Have To Say Something Important

When entering a conversation with those we wish to impress, it is easy to create an unhealthy pressure upon ourselves. Convinced that our own contribution to the conversation must be memorable or profound in some way, we end up being the author of our own awkwardness:

“If they have opened their mouths, without endeavouring to say a witty thing, they think it is so many words lost: It is a torment to the hearers, as much as to themselves, to see them upon the rack for invention, and in perpetual constraint, with so little success. They must do something extraordinary, in order to acquit themselves, and answer their character, else the standers-by maybe disappointed and be apt to think them only like the rest of mortals”

Jonathan Swift, Toward an Essay on Conversation

We forget that while spectacular flourishes of language can impress, it is generally over the relatable things that men bond. The ‘higher the stakes’ of the meeting, generally the more this is true. The higher the status of a man in society, the more cut off from the relatable he becomes, as those who surround him constantly try to impress him.

Swift here recounts the “the worst conversation I ever remember to have heard in my life”, which he endured at Will's Coffee House — a popular venue for the most renowned intellectuals in London. There he sat through a group of such ‘wits’ pontificating as if “the fate of kingdoms depended on them”. In attendance were a humble group of university students, who left that meeting “with great contempt for their law and philosophy, their heads filled with trash, under the name of politeness, criticism and belles lettres”.

Conversation is never made important by trying to be, and nor is it guaranteed to be so by the mere virtue of who is present. It is made important by spontaneous revelation, and is indeed often made so retroactively, by the thoughts stimulated after the conversation has ended.

But moderating your own contribution to the conversation is only half the battle. As Swift reveals, your attempts to involve others in the conversation will backfire spectacularly unless you avoid the remaining four errors…

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What, it may be asked, is the use of keeping two people together if they are no longer in love?

C.S. Lewis, Christian Marriage, Mere Christianity, III.6

As C.S. Lewis acknowledged, the traditional Christian doctrines on marriage are “extremely unpopular” for many people.

After all, nobody likes to be told how they should live, and we are caught at a deadly crossroads of history. We disdain ‘organised’ marriage, and romanticise ‘chaotic’ love. We yearn for ‘happily ever after’, yet insist that marriage be transactional and temporary.

We insist, too, that there is but ‘one true love’, and that a spouse who does not provide us with an everlasting feeling of bliss must simply be the ‘wrong person’, and we are therefore justified in leaving them. Love conquers all, until it doesn’t.

But as C.S. Lewis argues in his extraordinary essay on Christian Marriage, the increasing dysfunction of modern marriages stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and therefore why those “unpopular” doctrines existed in the first place.

Today therefore, we take a detailed look at Lewis’s essay and discover the “extremely unpopular” truths that underpin a healthy and lasting marriage…

Being ‘in Love’ is Temporary

“The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of our own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs”

C.S. Lewis, Christian Marriage, Mere Christianity, III.6

An especially corrosive consequence of popular fiction is our blurring of ‘infatuation’ and ‘love’.

To a certain degree, this is an inevitable result of the manner in which fairytales are structured. The hero falls for the maiden, rescues her, and invariably marries her. The end. It is the classic Disney model, but it operates on a deception. Were it reality, the conclusion of the film would in fact be the prologue of their lives. The story invests us in the beginning of their path, but the rolling of the credits denies us its midway, and less still its end. As a result, we are left to subconsciously assume that they indeed ‘lived happily ever after’.

Being a time-honoured and lucrative template for a compelling story, the model has of course been copied in all manner of books and films, from the highest epic to the most routine comedy. It has consequently spilled over into real world expectations of what marriages should become, particularly as the primary consumers of such stories are children who then grow up with them.

Characters say things like “I love you” while in a state of infatuation, and so the word has become identified with the state. But as Lewis points out, infatuation is a feeling, and feelings do not have permanent stimuli:

“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called “being in love” usually does not last. If the old fairytale ending “They lived happily ever after” is taken to mean “They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,” then it says what probably never was nor ever could be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were”

C.S. Lewis, Christian Marriage, Mere Christianity, III.6

The extreme danger of this is clear. While the sources of this influence now extend far beyond childhood Disney films, the end result is the same. An expectation has taken root that marriage will render the ‘prologue’ permanent, and therefore when that expectation is inevitably shattered, so too is the marriage:

“People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on “being in love” for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change — not realising that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one”

C.S. Lewis, Christian Marriage, Mere Christianity, III.6

A person who fails to distinguish being ‘in love’ with their spouse from loving their spouse therefore is doomed to be a Tantalus condemned to Tartarus, eternally reaching for a fruit that will always dangle beyond their grasp. Old age will come, and embrace a burned-out, resentful and regretful soul.

But this is where one “unpopular” Christian doctrine enters the fray to spare us this dread fate — the doctrine that marriage is for life. This may of course sound utterly counter-intuitive. If I am no longer ‘in love’ with my spouse, how can spending the rest of my life with them be anything but a tyranny?

As C.S. Lewis reminds us, it is all in the marriage vows…

Lasting Love is Peace, Not Thrill

Marriages, especially those conducted within churches, are explicitly forged through spoken vows. The precise wording may vary, but invariably, such vows involve an unambiguous promise by both man and woman to honour and support one another, and stand by each other until death.

There is a tendency perhaps to view such vows today as a pleasant piece of poetry, recited to shore up the romantic architecture of the wedding day. The beauty of true marriage vows, however, is that at the same time as declaring a promise of marriage, we are also reciting instructions on how to make the marriage work. Let us consider a typical vow:

Do you promise to be faithful to [him/her] in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love [him/her] and to honour [him/her] all the days of your life?’

We have in it all the guidance we need for a successful marriage, and indeed referring to our vows periodically can go a long way to ensuring we keep to them. You may be thinking, however, that there is a weak link in the chain here — I am promising to love my spouse, but what if a day comes when I am no longer in love with them?

Lewis indeed conceded that “What we call “being in love” is a glorious state, and, in several ways, good for us”. It alerts us to another soul, and is the gateway to a shared life with them. But just as a flashy television advert ceases to awe us once we possess the actual product, so too in the matter of marriage must we understand that the substance of love is not going to be held together by the marketing material that is infatuation:

“But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from “being in love” is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else. “Being in love” first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it”

C.S. Lewis, Christian Marriage, Mere Christianity, III.6

Infatuation is like a shot of sugar. Love on the other hand is a muscle that requires exercise, but once it is built up, it fuels a satisfaction that reveals the destructive side of a sugar addiction. In the other words of Lewis, rather than trying to recapture your childhood memory of paddling at the beach, a whole new world will open if you now learn to swim.

Indeed as his close friend J.R.R Tolkien similarly argued, getting married is not a crowning achievement, but the beginning of a partnership. That muscle of love is exercised not through random feelings, but through the active work of everyday acts of patience, attention and kindness.

“The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and becomes a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening”

C.S. Lewis, Christian Marriage, Mere Christianity, III.6

This, then, is the virtue of lifelong marriage. It compels both husband and wife to embrace true adulthood, by recognising that the exaggerated image which infatuation creates of a person is ungrounded in reality, and allowing both to finally, and truly love each other for who they actually are. That is why we traditionally promise to have and to hold our spouse ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health’. It prevents us from casually throwing in the bin what could, in fact, be repaired. It is a guarantor that the stability of your life is not wholly hostage to your spouse’s instinctive perception of you at your lowest moment, any more than it is at your highest.

As a result, despite many other doctrinal disagreements, many Christian denominations hold that breaking a marriage is “more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership or even deserting a regiment”. If you approach marriage as an unbreakable bond, your subconscious will stop looking for ways to break it.

But, you may be thinking, doesn’t this all assume that we will just ‘get on’ with each other? How do I manage the moments when I disagree with my spouse? It is here that Lewis boldly declares that “something else, even more unpopular, remains to be dealt with”.

Here is how the most maligned marriage doctrine of all actually holds the key to making a lifelong marriage work, and ensuring both partners’ happiness…

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To commission great monuments and works of art is not merely an aristocratic pastime. It is the central driving force behind the construction — or reconstruction — of civilisation itself.

At its core, patronage is somebody, or a group of people, realising that something is missing from their community, and working to fill that gap. Even if done out of a cynical desire for fame, it is a win-win situation. The town receives something beautiful, and the people who made it happen are recognised and remembered.

But while we typically associate patronage with nobility and royalty, committed yet otherwise ‘ordinary’ citizens can play a central part too. We at INVICTUS indeed stand in support of The Culturist and Evan Amato’s new project to patronise talented artists today. Today however let us consider another, especially grand, example of ‘citizen patronage’ from history — the monumental Olympic Theatre of Vicenza, which in 1585 became the first permanent theatre to be built in the West since the days of Ancient Rome.

Remarkably this theatre, A UNESCO World Heritage Site which still today hosts theatrical productions, was not commissioned by a government, but ‘crowdfunded’ into existence by private citizens.

So in a special piece today, we consider how a small group of visionary men were able to translate a dream into reality, and therefore how you too can do the same…

At INVICTUS, our mission is to explore the practical wisdom you can learn from the greatest leaders, thinkers, and artists of the past, through their own words and deeds.

If this resonates with you then subscribe below to receive an in-depth article every week exploring how influential figures were able to achieve what they did, and how you can start following in their footsteps…

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Networking

The city of Vicenza was not a major centre of Europe in the mid-16th century. Indeed it was not even a capital city, but little more than a frontier town of the expanding Republic of Venice, who had lost her political autonomy over two hundred years earlier. Compared to her Venetian overlord, as well as nearby Padua and Verona, Vicenza was a dwarf among giants. But she did have one particular asset — an ambitious resident who loved learning yet had failed in politics.

Indeed Gian Giorgio Trissino’s involvement in state affairs was such a disaster than in 1509 he had been briefly exiled as a traitor for siding with the Holy Roman Empire against Venice. But giving up his wilder and more unrealistic personal ambitions would be his making, as he began to focus on what actually mattered more to him. With the Italian Renaissance now in its full bloom, Trissino was fascinated by ancient literature, and grew eager to seek out others who shared this passion.

Over the decades which followed, Trissino’s house doubled as Vicenza’s ‘book-club’, where the curious were guaranteed an interesting conversation, on subjects much of the population cared little about. It was where many would go to lament how far things had fallen since Classical Antiquity, and how impoverished the Italy of their times was compared to that of the Caesars. Trissino’s altruistic sacrifice, however, was that while he himself was not directly responsible for the Olympic Theatre, he wove the network which was.

In particular, it was Trissino who launched the career of the man who almost single-handedly revived the built aesthetics of the West to their ancient glory — Andrea Palladio. For in 1538, the aging scholar took a chance on the then unknown young stonemason, and paid for him to go to Rome to study the emerging ruins. The long-term results of that investment speak for themselves, as the ‘Palladian’ style would go on to become the dominant aesthetic of aristocratic villas, monuments and government buildings from Germany to Virginia.

But in the short term, Vicenza itself would experience an astonishing cultural blossoming. In 1555, five years after Trissino’s death, 21 Vicentine citizens from his circle — including Palladio — together founded the Accademia Olimpica. Dedicated to promoting a love of the arts and sciences, the ‘Olympic Academy’ was unusual in that it was open to anybody passionate about these fields and distinct in them, irrespective of social status.

Soon enough, the Academics became fascinated by the plays of Ancient Greece, and frustrated that such drama was no longer performed in Europe. They had the texts, but not the venue. So they decided to build one…

Preparing

We take for granted today that cities have theatres. But for the men of 16th century Italy, they were a distant memory. While drama had flourished in Ancient Greece and Rome, following the collapse of the Western Empire theatres increasingly became associated with a now-discredited pagan world. Saint Augustine, after all, famously denounced the venues of his own day as "gratuitously fanning the flame of human lust" (City of God, II.14).

For much of the medieval era therefore, the construction of theatres was near universally prohibited in Western Europe. Ironically, this merely resulted in the de facto censorship of 'sophisticated' productions, encouraging the spread of amateurish and bawdy 'undertheatre'. The men of the Accademia Olimpica, deploring this decay, resolved to reclaim theatre for dignified society, and resolved to use their own money to do it.

On the 15th February 1580, the Academics submitted an application to the city authorities for a plot of land. What they received was far from what could be called prime real estate. It was indeed a run-down patch on the eastern extremity of the city where the “prigioni vecchie” (“old prisons”) stood. Fortunately, the Olympic Academics were just as much concerned with revitalising their city as they were broader civilisation.

With the funds raised and a site secured, the Academics did not have to look far for the man to take the next step. Though he was now seventy two years old, Andrea Palladio was still an active member of the Accademia, and readily took up the challenge of his peers to design a civic monument the likes of which Italy had not seen for over a thousand years.

What followed however is a potent reminder of how collective will is just as important as individual talent when it comes to achieving grand things…

Sowing

Ever since Trissino had first sent him to Rome, Palladio had been dumbstruck at how the buildings of his own day paled in comparison to those of Ancient Rome, and was determined to ‘re-normalise’ such vision and quality. But Palladio did not simply copy — he sought to capitalise upon what innovation had occurred since Antiquity to improve upon the ruins he saw. Two qualities above all others therefore graced his plans - a tightly mathematical approach to proportions, and an awareness of the surrounding landscape and how it could complement architecture.

Over the course of his long career, Palladio would apply these principles to scores of buildings across the Veneto and in Venice herself, immortalising the essence of the Renaissance in stone. No fewer than 23 of the villas he designed — also UNESCO World Heritage Sites — still grace the hinterlands of Vicenza. In 1570, Palladio recorded his learned wisdom for posterity in The Four Books of Architecture’, a seminal treatise that would have profound implications for European architecture for centuries to come.

When the time came to design the Olympic Theatre therefore, Palladio had a bedrock of unrivalled experience to draw upon. It could all have come crashing down, therefore, when just six months later, Palladio died of old age. It is indeed in moments like these when many great ambitions of the past died in the cradle, condemned to remain forever a dream and never a reality.

Fortunately for posterity however, the Accademia had not pinned all of their cultural hopes on one man alone, as the cultural blossoming they had triggered in Vicenza was beginning to produce a new generation of talent. Thus a young local architect, Vincenzo Scamozzi, himself inspired by the work of Palladio and enthused by his own studies of the classical world, stepped in to take up the project with enthusiasm, alongside Palladio's son Silla. The Academics, likewise, remained fully committed in spirit and financial backing.

The death of Palladio therefore was an emotional, but not terminal blow to the project. Scamozzi’s own contribution indeed is a marvel in its own right. With a production of Oedipus Rex planned as the inaugural performance of the Theatre, Palladio’s successor reproduced the seven streets of the city of Thebes, unfurling in wood behind the triumphal arch of the scaenae frons (stage background). A masterpiece of perspective, the streets appear to vanish into the distance, yet the stage is only seven metres deep. It is an ingenious solution for maximising available space, and also the oldest surviving theatre scenery in the Western world, having miraculously survived centuries of fire and war.

As a result, barely five years after work began, the interior was ready for its first performance, on the 3rd March 1585…

Reaping

One need only look at it to understand what a spectacular achievement the Olympic Theatre is. What the Olympic Theatre represents, however, is just as magnificent as what it is.

Palladio’s design is a love letter to the classical world, but one that uses ancient knowledge instead of lazily imitating any one edifice he had seen. Moreover, the Theatre is a monument to a deeply encouraging feat — that in less than a single human lifetime Vicenza had been transformed from an impoverished backwater into a laboratory of civilisational reconstruction, by means of a citizen rather than government-driven initiative. The statues which adorn the colonnade behind the spectators (visible on the right of the article cover image), depicting the Accademia members who had made the Theatre possible, are indeed a fine reminder of this.

From the moment of its triumphant inauguration, the fame of the Olympic Theatre spread to Venice and beyond, enduring even centuries later. Visiting in 1786, Germany’s most famous man-of-letters, Goethe, gushed with praise when he saw it:

“The Olympic theatre is a theatre of the ancients, realised on a small scale, and indescribably beautiful. However, compared with our theatres, it reminds me of a genteel, rich, well-bred child, contrasted with a shrewd man of the world,
who, though he is neither so rich, nor so genteel, and well-bred, knows better how to employ his resources”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 19th September 1786

Once the site of dilapidated prisons, it was now a venue so prized that it would host the highest ceremonial occasions of state, receiving Pope Pius VI in 1782, as well as Emperors Francis I of Austria in 1816 and Ferdinand I in 1838.

Almost half a millennium on from its completion, the Theatre may be a World Heritage Site, but it still hosts performances, and the Accademia Olimpica still meets in Vicenza. What was once a strictly local project would organically become a watershed moment in Europe. With the bar set by the Olympic Theatre, over the centuries to come the concept of a great European city lacking a permanent theatre of her own would indeed be unthinkable. Monuments of entertainment, once considered scarcely better than brothels, were now objects of prestige and inseparable from the highest of culture.

Through the Olympic Theatre, the Accademia and its illustrious members therefore, the Vicentines reclaimed the dignity of their city, and of broader civilisation itself, and it all began with a niche book-club…

‘I need to start reading more’. How many of us have told ourselves this? Moreover, how many of us tell ourselves this on a regular basis, yet do so with an air of quiet resignation that that our wish is already doomed?

After all, almost every aspect of modern life conspires to ruin our attempts to read more. Whether it is through ever expanding ‘commitments’ which rob us of leisure time in the first place, or the continual presence of distractions when we do get it. It is all the more critical therefore to ensure that what time we can spend reading is used well — to ensure that we truly are reading, and not merely skimming.

But an unhealthy skimming culture concerns more than merely darting your eyes across the page. It concerns your entire relationship to knowledge.

One man who can help you cultivate a healthier relationship to books and knowledge is the philosopher and imperial advisor Seneca the Elder, whose many letters form a rich source of Roman practical wisdom. Two in particular — On Discursiveness in Reading, and On the Futility of Learning Maxims — contain critical advice for anyone eager to read more, or those who think they do not need to.

So if you are accumulating books but somehow never get round to reading them, or if you only ever find yourself ‘dipping in and out’ of books to hunt for references, here is how Seneca can help you to stop skimming, and start reading…

Avoid ‘Library Stuffing’

Nobody wants to be seen as ‘unintelligent’. Nobody wants to feel that the knowledge of the world is passing them by either, and thus the sensitive soul may understandably look around his house with horror if he sees empty bookshelves staring back at him, or no bookshelves at all.

After all when receiving guests, particularly for the first time, following the décor of our dwelling the first thing which generally catches their wandering eyes are the spines which jut out of our shelves. One can judge a man by what he reads, can he not?

Or can we? In truth, all this visual exercise reveals is what books the master of the house has purchased, inherited or received as a gift. It does not in fact tell us which ones he has read. Particularly when the mere possession of books can itself be a social statement or psychological crutch. The ignorant man may have barren shelves, but the wise man — or the man who thinks himself wise — may overcorrect by overburdening his shelves with rows upon rows of carefully catalogued tomes he purchased with pride yet never consults.

It is precisely this phenomenon of ‘library stuffing’ which Seneca warns his friend Lucilius against, in the first of his letters on literature:

“Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read. “But,” you reply, “I wish to dive first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is the sign of an over-nice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish”

Seneca, On Discursiveness in Reading, 3-4

Those of us who love books and love reading are amongst the worst offenders in this regard. We see a charming title, a beautifully illustrated cover, or even the author’s name, and we are sold. This in itself is of course among the most wholesome and harmless of vices, as exemplified by this charmingly relatable post which recently went viral:

This is not to ‘rebut’ Denise’s well-intentioned sentiment at all (particularly as she qualifies it with “immediately”). But to paraphrase Seneca, to terminate our burgeoning relationship with said books the moment we return home is quite like ordering a fine dish at a restaurant only to get up and leave once it arrives. We have not actually gained anything by this exercise, and the book might as well be a paperweight.

An adjacent phenomenon is to splash out on many books and indeed open them, but only to dive in briefly before we are distracted by the next. To the guilty party, Seneca has these words:

“Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner. Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of my books is distraction.”

Seneca, On Discursiveness in Reading, 2-3

“Everywhere means nowhere”. Whether it is because our attention span is simply not up to dwelling upon a single book, or a sense of guilt at our runaway spending which has convinced us that we must constantly draw upon as many corners of our shelves as possible, the result is the same. We order a majestic dish that was prepared with love and devised by the deepest roots of tradition, only to wolf it down and immediately cleanse the palate with the next.

We must not therefore, fall into the subconscious trap which convinces us that simply possessing a book is in some way a shortcut to its wisdom. You may have bought a house with a garden, but unless you take up the trowel and get your fingers dirty, weeds will sprout where you dreamed of flowers.

Here we return to that skimming culture, and arguably its most toxic consequence…

Beware ‘Quote Culture’

In a similar way to the manner in which we arrange our bookshelves to deceive ourselves or our visitors, we are terribly prone to using quotations to artificially ‘prop up’ the image of our wisdom.

In Seneca’s second letter on the subject, he advises Lucilius to beware the phenomenon that is no less common in our own times, particularly among highly educated readers — to treat books as a mine for quotations:

“There is unevenness, you know, when some objects rise conspicuous above others. A single tree is not remarkable if the whole forest rises to the same height. Poetry is crammed with utterances of this sort, and so is history”

Seneca, On the Futility of Learning Maxims, 1

Arguably this is even more pronounced a problem today, when ‘one-liners’ and ‘gotchas’ can elevate or destroy a man in minutes. The problem is when this spills over into our reading, and we find ourselves racing impatiently towards lines we were already looking for. We are, in essence, trying to take a shortcut to wisdom that we have not ‘earned’ by accompanying the author in their argument. We are applying industrial method to art.

An especially serious manifestation of ‘Quote Culture’, however, is when misquotations supplant the original words in the popular imagination. Generally this happens when generations of people who had heard the phrase but are unfamiliar with the source material have, out of a desire to socially impress, awkwardly shoehorned it into incorrect contexts. Even worse is when the actual words themselves have slightly changed yet totally changed the meaning.

To give but one example, you have almost certainly heard the following expression at least once:

It is commonly used as a ‘one-hit wonder’ line to close any conversation about power dynamics, especially in politics. There is one slight problem however.

Let us consider the actual source of this quotation — an 1887 letter by Lord Acton to Archbishop Mandell Creighton:

At first glance, it may not seem that much is different. But there is a critical difference which separates Acton’s line from the cliché. We say that power corrupts. To Acton, however, power tended to corrupt. A conditional, therefore, has been twisted into an absolute. Corruption to Acton was something a man should be wary of, but could avoid through the cultivation of good character. Yet those who misquote him — consciously or not — imply that men are all guaranteed to be corrupted should they aspire to power. A healthy warning has transformed into cynical nihilism.

A proper digestion of Acton would suggest that good men should seek out power to keep the corruptible out. The cliché however would have all men steer clear of authority. So why do we treat the cliché as wisdom worthy of note? Since Acton did not say it, all that is left is ‘Because it’s a famous saying, so it must be correct’. In other words, the ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy. Consider, if you will, just how many times this misquotation has been deployed in modern discourse, and how easily therefore wisdom can be falsified when outsourced to others.

The wise Seneca therefore tells Lucilius that while he can recommend the works of other thinkers and writers, he will not simply supply him with a list of quotations:

“Hence we have no ‘show-window goods’, nor do we deceive the purchaser in such a way that, if he enters our shop, he will find nothing except that which is displayed in the window. We allow the purchasers themselves to get their samples from anywhere they please”

Seneca, On the Futility of Learning Maxims, 3

Just as merely possessing books does not mean we can call ourselves knowledgeable of their contents, we cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that the ability to recite a quotation means we actually understand the wisdom behind it. As with Acton, in some cases skimming for quotations can be worse than not reading at all.

So if accumulating masses of books and skimming them is not the way, what is? You might fear at this point that the ‘right way’ is just going to be more expensive and time-consuming.

Fear not however, for Seneca’s advice will save you time and money, and will ensure your books stop being one-off expenses and start bringing you a lasting return on investment…

Read more

To be both young and virtuous is to navigate a dense minefield of temptation.

When we emerge from childhood and the household of our parents, almost everything appears possible. We are freed from restriction, and the future is ours to shape. But we are also freed from protection, and it is now up to us to judge what will be good for us, and what will be harmful. There will be inspiration, and so too temptation.

But temptation is a slippery slope, and all of us know at least one person who passed through school with great promise, only to go completely off the rails as an adult. Often, all it can take is one bad decision to spiral into ever worsening vices.

It is exactly this danger which forms the subject of William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress — a series of eight paintings which depict the tragedy of a young man who could have had it all, only to throw it all away. Enormously popular with the public of 18th century Britain, the series reached a vast audience when it was published as a bestselling set of engravings in 1735.

So in a special piece today, we explore what the eight iconic scenes of A Rake’s Progress can teach you about the temptations of youth, and how easily you can spiral into ruin if you do not take them seriously…

At INVICTUS, our mission is to explore the practical wisdom you can learn from the greatest leaders, thinkers, and artists of the past, through their own words and deeds.

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I - The Young Heir

The first scene of A Rake’s Progress introduces us to the young man whose fall we are about to witness — Tom Rakewell — and his first stumble towards the slippery slope.

Tom is being fitted for mourning clothes in the wake of his father’s death. But hints abound that more is amiss. The family is wealthy, but as we can see from the man in the background attempting to shore up cracks in the ceiling, the house is in disrepair. The reason why however is indicated by the painting above the mantlepiece, showing a man counting coins. It is made more explicit by the man on the ladder accidentally dislodging a shower of gold coins that had been hidden in the cornice.

We understand that the father was a stingy man who devoted his life to accumulating money, but was terrified of losing it and loathed spending it — even on the essentials. The father’s meanness however has spilled over into his son, who has inherited the money but not the adequate education to receive it responsibly.

Overawed by his new riches, Tom breaks off his engagement to Sarah, the young lady on the right. Doubtless feeling he can now ‘do better than her’, he tries to pay off the distraught girl, whose arm falls to her side in despair, clasping her now voided wedding ring. As if to symbolise Tom’s transgression, letters are spilling from the apron of Sarah’s angry mother. His commitments now are worthless scraps of paper, joining the clutter on the floor. Though he does not know it, this terrible error will come back to haunt him.

Blinded by a stroke of ‘luck’, Tom has failed the first test. He has shown arrogance when humility was needed, and made the fatal mistake of assuming that present success renders him immune to future misfortune. His spiral has begun…

II - The Company We Seek

Relishing his new wealth, Tom gleefully enters high society. More interested in being seen with the ‘right people’ than cultivating his own inner worth, however, he (dressed in orange) begins to copy only the most superficial trappings of aristocracy.

Captivated by the fashion for foreign eccentricities, including the effeminate gait of a French dancer, he is vulnerable to those who have sinister intentions. Whereas a ‘legitimate’ fencing instructor can be seen on the left, Tom’s attention is captured by a roguish and overweight man on the right, who is dressed in black and grasping a sword. By the man’s somewhat thuggish expression, we see that Tom is already falling into bad company, meanwhile the most honourable men in the room, appalled at the degradation of the upper classes, stand behind, looking on disapprovingly and helplessly.

Tom’s money has bought him access, but it has not bought him discernment. He has misjudged which men will make him a better man, and is oblivious to how corrosive bad influences can be…

III - In the Tavern

Tom’s acquaintance with questionable men has opened the door to questionable pastimes.

Doubtless encouraged by those questionable men, or else pushed by their peer pressure, he begins to waste his money and his body by indulging his base impulses. In a bawdy tavern, he is sweet-talked by attractive young women and distracted by their fawning attention. Conquered by his instinct, he is clueless as to the intention of the woman in front of him. Flattered by her apparent attraction, Tom does not notice that she has just picked his pocket, and is quietly handing his gold watch to an accomplice behind him.

Sliding into indulgence, Tom spends his father’s money on frivolous things, but the good men who could have given him the reality check he so sorely needs are not there. In his need to feel accepted by high society, he has consciously or not selected them out of his social circle, mistaking the loudest men in the room for the wisest. Tom is now truly a rake — a man who aspires to status but whose life perverts every ideal of nobility.

He either does not realise, or does not presently care, that all of the attention he is now receiving is false. It is his money, not his person, that is attracting them, and the moment this runs out, so too will their ‘affection’…

IV - The Arrest

Here we see consequence beginning to catch up on young Tom. In his naive belief that carefree days would last forever, he has made no provision for the future, or misfortune.

Halted on the street, he opens the door of his litter to find the stern face of a bailiff, who brandishes a warrant for his arrest. Money, which was his sole blessing, has now become his curse. Debt has overturned his life, as Tom now discovers how quickly affection reveals itself to be false when money is involved. For Hogarth, whose own father had been condemned to a debtor’s jail, this moment surely struck close to home. As John Hoadly’s poetic caption beneath the image puts it:

Yet even now, salvation calls out to our Rake. For a young lady dressed in green reaches out to stop the bailiff. It is Sarah, who he once proposed to and so cruelly cast aside. Out of charity and desperate hope, she moves to rescue the man she still loves from prison.

Now is the moment of redemption, or damnation. The Rake is at the crossroads of life that all of us reach when we realise the habits we have developed are harming us. Does he take the path of humility, and accept his mistakes, or does he take the path of pride, and insist his present plight is all just bad luck?

His choice will decide, and define, his life…

V - The Lost Chance

Unfortunately for Tom and all those around him, he chooses poorly.

By now dependent upon the lifestyle of luxury to which he has tied his inner worth, his spiral into sin veers into personal humiliation. Scorning the lady who could truly turn him to the light, he instead marries a wealthy one-eyed woman, bent with age, so that she may bail him out. As the caption declares:

The ceremony is conducted in the recognisable ambience of Saint Marylebone Church, a venue notorious for discreet weddings that would cause social embarrassment elsewhere. In a further sign of this folly, Tom’s eyes drift over the head of his new spouse, and appear to linger upon the youthful maid. It is a mockery of marriage and the vow he is nonchalantly swearing, and it is already doomed.

Compounding the tragedy, a scuffle in the background reveals that Sarah is fighting desperately to halt this unseemly fall.

But the window is closing, and Tom has chosen ignominy in exchange for hope. Unfortunately for him, this ignominy will long outlive that hope…

VI - The Price of Vice

Our Rake has money again, but the price of gaining it was far higher than its worth.

Since his new wife was a means to an end, he derives no joy from her company, and builds nothing with her. Having acquired a fortune twice now without investing a proportionate amount of his own labour or talent, he has learned nothing. On the contrary, his prolonged exposure to pleasure, and his habituation to indulging it on demand has desensitised him to stimuli and scandal alike. What even he would once have been ashamed to let others see now plays out in the open.

Barely recognisable now, Tom is upon one knee, fists clenched and eyes wide opened as if seized by madness. On the gambling table behind, fortunes built over generations are lost in a single game of dice. Greed, rage, elation and banal indifference surround him, as ‘friend’ preys upon friend, but he no longer hears or sees. His sole companion now is a baying dog.

Yet we can see a fire catching on the distant wall. The body and soul have limits before both are consumed, and judgement is coming…

VII - The Reckoning

Following the very definition of a madman, Tom thought the same path would not result in the same end.

His second chance now utterly squandered, debt has once again swallowed him, only now he has dragged another down with him. His loveless marriage is now aflame, as the deceived wife (clothed in red), thinned by stress and the financial hardship into which her husband has cast them, berates a dejected Tom (in yellow).

Realising far too late that only a productive life is worth living, he has written what he hopes will be the work that earns him fortune and glory once more. But the courier boy has brought him the publisher’s rejection. His last gamble has failed, and there will be no third chance.

Before him, clad in green and fainting from distress, is the girl who could have spared him all of this, and given him a dignified married life. Yet Sarah’s hopes break as she cannot save him from the debtor’s jail this time. The hour of Tom’s reckoning has come, for a man may only debauch himself for so long before a debt of a different kind is called in…

VIII - The Judgement

Driven insane by the consequences of his poor choices, and no longer able to distinguish between the fantasies of his mind and the reality that lives beyond, Tom is committed to the infamous Bedlam Asylum.

Ravaged by guilt, regret and anguish, where once the Rake had delighted in the company of high society, he now knows only the screams of lunatics and mutterings of outcasts. As if to complete his humiliation, unbeknownst to him two aristocratic ladies in the corridor are observing him as if he were a wild beast in a zoo. He desired the attention of the powerful, and now he has it.

Yet even here, divine mercy can never entirely abandon a man. For now at the end, despite all she has endured because of him, Sarah holds Tom in a caring embrace, her heart broken for him.

The Rake craved admiration, and turned to debauchery. Tom could have had it all, and now has nothing but the pity of others, and all that keeps him alive is a goodwill he never earned and is now incapable of recognising…

The Rake’s Redemption

A Rake’s Progress proved so popular that modern copyright law on visual media was a direct consequence of it. It was indeed in response to the sudden spread of cheap imitations of Hogarth’s works that the Engraver’s Copyright Act was passed in 1735, granting British artists the same protections as authors.

But the series struck such a chord in Britain because the country was awash with suspicion that decadence was taking hold in her increasingly mercantile elite. Two generations on from the ‘Glorious Revolution’, traditional aristocracy was beginning to visibly give way to a new tycoon class, one which would indeed go on to dominate the Victorian empire of the 19th century and beyond. With so many families coming into wealth, at a time when London was steadily transforming into the counting house for much of global trade, a growing number of them would witness their sons succumb to their very own ‘Rake’s Progress’.

Yet the heartening element which Hogarth carefully included in the series is that such a decline need not be inevitable. The character of Sarah, after all, is present in each scene that Tom has not intentionally excluded her from. She serves as a continual reminder both of how his spiral began in the first place, and that we should never succumb to the sunk cost fallacy and convince ourselves that we are in too deep to escape.

Indeed, A Rake’s Progress reminds us that if we feel any doubts over the direction our life is taking — be it in the habits we have fallen into or the company we are keeping — then the unease and guilt we feel is actually a good sign.

It is our soul indicating to us that the window of redemption is still wide open. Others might be telling you it is raining outside when it is actually shining, but the decision to close it is only ever yours…

It is an unfortunate truth that even the wisest and most well-intentioned of men can be undone by social stumbles.

No matter how much we may wish to be judged on our words and convictions alone, an astounding amount rides on matters as simple as how we enter a room, how we deal with a pause in conversation, and how we physically stand when either speaking or listening.

One man who understood this well was one of the most colourful personalities of Georgian Britain. Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, was indeed a talented speaker and distinguished statesman. But one problem threatened to undermine his legacy — his son.

As the result of an affair with a French governess the boy was illegitimate, and his father knew he would face an uphill battle to enter aristocratic society. So to try and give him a better chance at life, over many years Lord Stanhope wrote a series of letters to guide him, which in 1774 were published posthumously as Lord Chesterfield’s Advice to His Son on Men and Manners.

Unusually, the Earl’s advice begins with the subject of social embarrassment, and a focus on three specific “odd tricks, ill habits, and awkwardnesses”.

Today therefore we take an in-depth look at how Lord Stanhope can help you identify the cause of your awkwardness, and overcome it…

The Three Forms of Awkwardness

Lord Stanhope immediately clarifies to his son why he considers this subject to be such a priority:

“No man is, in any degree, fit for either business or conversation, who does not command his attention to the present object, be it what it will. When I see a man absent in mind, I choose to be absent in body; for it is almost impossible for me to stay in the room, as I cannot stand inattention and awkwardness”

The 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Advice to His Son on Men and Manners

The clear implication therefore is that awkwardness is either a consequence of, or gives the impression of, a lack of attention. The injustice of this of course is that our bearing may well be betraying us. Perhaps we are engaged in a conversation, but if it looks like we are not, then it ultimately does not matter. The effect is either repelling or unsettling, and other parties in the conversation are going to start feeling uncomfortable.

As a result, Lord Stanhope urges us to recognise three behaviours which indicate inattention and foster awkwardness:

1 - Awkwardness of Manner

First impressions of course are crucial. But the first impression has already been made before you speak. It was not based on your words, but on your manner, or Gait.

Lord Stanhope gives an extensive list of common physical stumbles that are off-putting to observers, and difficult to recover from. These range from the most obvious and ‘cartoonish’…

“When an awkward fellow first comes into a room, it is highly probable, that his sword gets between his legs, and throws him down, or makes him stumble, at least; when he has recovered this accident, he goes and places himself in the very place of the whole room where he should not…”

The 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Advice to His Son on Men and Manners

…to the more subtle:

“His hands are troublesome to him when he has not something in them, and he does not know where to put them; but they are in perpetual motion between his bosom and his breeches…”

The 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Advice to His Son on Men and Manners

Into this category falls any physical habit or tic that the passage of years has normalised to us, our family and longstanding friends, but which will be noticed by anybody new and likely distract them. How we cough or blow our nose, for example, or how we respond to accidentally spilling something on our clothes.

For the Earl of Chesterfield however, this is “not in any degree criminal; but it is highly disagreeable and ridiculous in company, and ought most carefully to be avoided by whoever desires to please”. Paradoxically, the most ‘obvious’ awkwardness is usually the one that is easiest to forgive, though that does not mean we should neglect it.

Indeed Lord Stanhope hints at the solution in his discussion of the second form of awkwardness….

2 - Awkwardness of Expression

The Awkwardness of Expression, as Stanhope calls it, is more nuanced. It is a stumble that may well go entirely unnoticed by many observers. But for those who do see it, it tends to be a particular pet peeve:

“THERE is, likewise, an awkwardness of expression and words most carefully to be avoided; such as false English, bad pronunciation, old sayings, and common proverbs; which are so many proofs of having kept bad and low company. For example: If, instead of saying, that tastes are different, and that every man has his own peculiar one,” you should let off a proverb, and say, that what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison;” … every body would be persuaded that you had never kept company with any body above footmen and housemaids”

The 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Advice to His Son on Men and Manners

The use of bad language is obviously repelling. But as Stanhope points out, ‘bad language’ encompasses more than just swearing. It is ‘poor language’, with lazy grammar, limited vocabulary, bungled pronunciation and the treatment of clichéd phrases as though they were pearls of original wisdom.

The truth is that everybody likes words and can appreciate when they are used well. Every cliché exists because the first time it was uttered, all those who heard it marvelled at how this novel combination of words had captured a complex sentiment so beautifully. Repetition however has divorced the words from the creativity which birthed it. An excessive reliance on cliché therefore indicates much time invested in reading, but little in reflection. It has an ‘immersion-breaking’ effect not dissimilar to hearing poorly written dialogue in a film, or realising that a text was written by AI.

However, note that Stanhope uses the word ‘company’ here twice. We will be returning to that shortly…

3 - Awkwardness of the Mind

Awkwardness of the Mind is often the most immediately repelling, for the simple reason that it gives the strongest impression of either intentional or accidental disrespect:

“THERE is likewise an awkwardness of the mind, that ought to be, and with care may be, avoided: as for instance; to mistake or forget names; to speak of Mr. What-d’ye-call him, or Mrs. Thingum, or How-d’ye-call her, is excessively awkward and ordinary. To call people by improper titles and appellations is so too; as, my Lord, for Sir; and Sir, for my Lord. To begin a story or a narration when you are not perfect in it, and cannot go through with it, but are forced, possibly, to say, in the middle of it, I have forgot the rest,” is very unpleasant and bungling”

The 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Advice to His Son on Men and Manners

Let us take heart for a moment that even in the 18th century our ancestors were fumbling around and referring to people as “What’s-His-Name”. But three hundred years have changed nothing as regards the social dynamics. If we are introducing somebody to the conversation only to then scramble trying to remember the name, intrigue rapidly degrades to awkwardness, and the listener is going to be frustrated.

Worse is forgetting to call someone who is actually in front of you by the respectful address to which they are entitled. A ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ goes a long way even and especially in 2026. So too does telling an anecdote coherently, rather than interrupting the flow of it with uncontrollable laughter or by realising partway through that you have forgotten key details essential for a third party to follow it.

Now that we have identified the three forms of awkwardness, Lord Stanhope directs us to that word ‘company’ again:

“Now, awkwardness can proceed but from two causes; either from not having kept good company, or ſrom not having attended to it”

The 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Advice to His Son on Men and Manners

Simply knowing what habits to avoid and trying to dodge them in the moment, after all, is a remedy and not a solution. So how can you prevent yourself from even being vulnerable to social stumbles in the first place, and how is the company you keep the key to it?

Here, the Earl of Chesterfield lets us in on an aristocratic secret. He reveals an incredibly common mistake that people make, but which always makes things worse. He also reveals a simple strategy to ensure you are never awkward, or afraid of being awkward, ever again…

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“To boast unseasonably is to play an accompaniment to madness”

Pindar, Olympian Odes, IX

You have surely been there. Felt that creeping dread, when somebody starts to praise your successes, or wants you to talk about them.

Perhaps it was a well-meaning friend. Perhaps a potential employer. Even worse, perhaps it was in front of a crowd. Perhaps the praise was sincere, perhaps it was a throwaway social courtesy. Either way, you sense the trap, and wish you were anywhere else, praying for the subject to change and the spotlight to shift.

After all, you know that people admire and envy success, but judge harshly anyone who acknowledges their own success, let alone promotes it. It is an impossible situation, to be escaped as quickly as possible, no?

But it doesn’t have to be. On the contrary, it is a test Man subconsciously sets to determine how worthy you are of your success. Failing it through awkwardness or arrogance tarnishes both you and your success. Passing it, however, can enhance them enormously. One man who can help you pass that test is Plutarch, who once wrote an exceptional essay appropriately titled How One Can Praise Oneself Without Exciting Envy.

Today therefore, we explore how Plutarch can help you achieve the impossible, and master the art of dignified self-promotion…

Beware Vainglory

Plutarch begins by taking the proverbial bull by the horns. There is no getting around it — praising yourself is extremely risky. Very few people are good at it, and getting it wrong is guaranteed to backfire spectacularly. What is more, people inherently dislike feeling pressured to praise somebody else, and will be even more alert to how you respond to that praise as a result:

“To others a man's self-praise is most nauseous. For first we think those impudent who praise themselves, since modesty would be becoming even if they were praised by others; secondly, we think them unjust in giving themselves what they ought to receive from others; thirdly, if we are silent we seem to be vexed and to envy them, and if we are afraid of this imputation, we are obliged to heap praise upon them contrary to our real opinion, and to bear them out, undertaking a task more befitting gross flattery than honour”

Plutarch, How One Can Praise Oneself Without Exciting Envy, I

After all, people generally fall into one of two camps. The first includes those who would happily elbow others out of the way and boast of their achievements, either unaware or uncaring of how repelling this is to an observer. Adherents of the second on the other hand are sensitive to human nature and aware of ‘how things look’. Fearful of being perceived as a man of the first camp, they seize up at the thought of praise, and exchange arrogance for awkwardness. Ultimately, while the first is generally more damaging, both are ‘social misses’.

According to Plutarch, both indeed stem from the same error — misunderstanding the proper place for self-praise. A man of the first camp has succumbed to vainglory, or an excessive love of one’s own virtue. He refuses to let his success speak for itself, and fails to understand that people will organically connect his success to him if it is sufficiently admirable. He does not need to make explicit his own role, or claim the achievement as solely his own:

“That is vainglory then, when men seem to praise themselves that they may call forth the laudation of others; and it is especially despised because it seems to proceed from ambition and an unseasonable opinion of oneself… But when, not merely content with praising themselves, they vie with the praise of others, and pit their own deeds and actions against theirs, with the intent of outshining them, they add envy and malignity to their vanity”

Plutarch, How One Can Praise Oneself Without Exciting Envy, III

If your words are selling yourself, rather than the success, they will therefore rarely land well. He cites the example of Cicero, whose tiresome boasting of his role in suppressing the Conspiracy of Catiline was not only off-putting to Romans but actively fed rumours that he had in fact exaggerated the extent of the conspiracy for political gain.

Yet the second camp errs by assuming that self-promotion is never virtuous. As Plutarch points out, standing up for your own qualities is not the same as celebrating them:

“But self-praise cannot be blamed, if it is an answer to some charge or calumny… As then we esteem those persons vain and without sense who in walking hold themselves very erect and with a stiff neck, yet in boxing or fighting we commend such as hold themselves up and alert, so the man struggling with adversity, who stands up straight against his fate, “in fighting posture like some boxer,” and instead of being humble and abject becomes through his boasting lofty and dignified, seems to be not offensive and impudent, but great and invincible”

Plutarch, How One Can Praise Oneself Without Exciting Envy, IV-V

But actually praising yourself directly is the most blunt form of self-promotion possible. It is high risk with low reward. There are other and better ways of going about it which significantly reduce the risk and greatly amplify the reward.

Fortunately, Plutarch begins with one particular strategy that completely circumvents vainglory and virtually guarantees a positive reception…

The Profit of Praising Others

Ego obviously lies at the heart of why self-praise is so unappealing when mishandled. The somewhat overlooked side of this coin however is the effect it has on the ego of the listener.

As mentioned above, the more you extol your achievements, the greater the social pressure you are applying to the listener to congratulate you, particularly if this all happens in the presence of others. The fallout of that social pressure is that the listener in turn becomes anxious that their own reaction will be judged. Being backed into such a corner, and feeling obliged to ‘fake’ a response is unpleasantly close to humiliation — the listener feels socially exploited for the speaker’s gain.

As Plutarch advises, however, there is a simple rhetorical tactic to not only avoid this, but indeed entirely reverse the outcome:

“However it is worth while to notice in his speech that he most artistically inserts praise of his audience in the remarks about himself, and so makes his speech less egotistical and less likely to raise envy…Thus he cunningly insinuates into the audience with his own praises what they will gladly hear, for they rejoice at the enumeration of their successes, and their joy is succeeded by admiration and esteem for the person to whom the success was due”

Plutarch, How One Can Praise Oneself Without Exciting Envy, IX

As before, praise is always more effective when it comes from others. Praise is also infectious. The shrewd speaker therefore can use this knowledge to elicit recognition of his own achievements. In the most Machiavellian sense, praising others in such a situation is a low risk investment with a potentially high reward.

Are you in charge of a team? Praise the team, and then what the team has achieved. Others will then fill in the obvious space, and admire you all the more for it. Oftentimes, showing grace and ‘rhetorically sharing’ your achievements with someone else, provided it is not done in an obviously superficial way — it must be plausible that the third party genuinely played some kind of role, even if just in moral support — triggers a natural reciprocating effect.

Moreover, it creates the conditions for the ideal scenario — when people suspect you are downplaying your role because you are focused on the mission rather than the glory. Curiosity and goodwill are sparked in equal and abundant measure, and respect cascades.

A classic, and indeed classical, variation of this which has been widely used throughout history is for the speaker to attribute their victory to higher powers:

“Well also did Timoleon, who erected a temple at Syracuse to the goddess of Fortune after his success, and dedicated his house to the Good Genius. Excellently again did Pytho of Ænos, (when he came to Athens after killing Cotys, and when the demagogues vied with one another in praising him to the people, and he observed that some were jealous and displeased,) in coming forward and saying, “Men of Athens, this is the doing of one of the gods, I only put my hands to the work.” Sulla also forestalled envy by ever praising fortune, and eventually he proclaimed himself as under the protection of Aphrodite”

Plutarch, How One Can Praise Oneself Without Exciting Envy, XI

The key, as Plutarch suggests, lies in ensuring the audience feels admiration, and not envy. Make it clear that you and your team worked for that achievement, and worked for a cause:

“For as it is with house and farm, so also is it with glory and reputation, people for the most part envy those who have got them easily or for nothing, not those who have bought them at the cost of much toil and danger”

Plutarch, How One Can Praise Oneself Without Exciting Envy, XIV

As Plutarch has shown therefore, praising others is a simple yet potentially powerful strategy for presenting your own quality in an endearing manner. However, this is not always feasible.

What if you did achieve something — either at work or beyond — that actually was all your doing? What if you truly do deserve the sole credit for it, and therefore cannot directly praise others without coming across as fake and fishing for compliments?

Thankfully, Plutarch has you covered, with one secret weapon to rally your audience behind you, and four others to ensure they do not turn against you…

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In 1489 Lorenzo the Magnificent, ruler of Florence, head of the House of Medici and manager of the world’s first truly international bank, made the family’s single most audacious investment.

Wielding his extraordinary influence, he convinced Pope Innocent VIII to make his second son, Giovanni de’ Medici, a cardinal. Since Giovanni was just thirteen years old, he would become the youngest cardinal in the history of the Church. Lorenzo, however, was acutely aware of how bad it could all look, and how easily the family’s reputation could implode, if Giovanni turned out to be a wayward son and shirked the tremendous new responsibilities he now faced.

So when the time came for Giovanni to formally take up his position in Rome in the March of 1492, he was surprised to find a letter waiting for him at his new accommodation. It was from his father, who was by then seriously ill and close to death. In that letter, Lorenzo the Magnificent shared his parting advice to a son upon whom everything now depended.

Lorenzo could not have known then that young Giovanni would one day be elected Pope Leo X, and hold the destiny of Europe within his palm. But his advice in this letter certainly got young Giovanni there.

So whether you are the father of a boy who is on the cusp of adulthood, a new life or new responsibilities, or you are that boy, here is what Lorenzo the Magnificent, godfather of the Renaissance, can teach you about ensuring success and insuring yourself against failure…

Remember Where You Came From

While Lorenzo’s own political machinations may have gotten Giovanni the cardinal’s hat, he was self-aware enough to realise two things. Firstly, that the Medici family had exposed itself dangerously by this. Secondly, that he had placed enormous pressure on his teenage son. Should Giovanni put a foot wrong, after all, then the dubious manner of his elevation would be easy ammunition for any critic.

Lorenzo therefore wisely commences his letter with a swift puncture to his now seventeen year old son’s possible ego. He reminds him that while he has received a great honour, it is not his own merit that has brought him to Rome, and that he owes the great prestige of his new position to others:

Therefore my first recommendation is that you endeavour to be grateful to our Lord God, remembering every hour that it is not by your own merits or solicitude that you have attained the Cardinalate, but by the grace of God. Show your gratitude to Him by leading a saintly, exemplary, and honest life”

Lorenzo the Magnificent to Giovanni de’ Medici, March 1492

Entering a new station of life, be it at workplace or in any broader community, can offer us much. But it also asks of us humility. An understanding that our new rank is not a reward in and of itself, but an opportunity to earn reward.

Not all of us of course acquire a princedom in Italy. But almost any kind of promotion can spark envy and sow discord, especially when others believe you too young or unqualified. As Lorenzo remarks, the single best antidote to any such resentment is not to actively fight such allegations, but to set an example by your conduct. Do not, in other words, tell people that you should have this job, but show that you are the right person for it. Only this will blunt criticism and deflect it from ever successfully landing.

A key to achieving this organically is indeed never forgetting where you came from. As a teenager, Giovanni had scarcely left the family household when he entered that of the Church. Lorenzo thus urged him to treat this as a natural progression, rather than an abrupt dislocation:

“It would be indeed most shameful, contrary to your duty, and to my expectations if at a time when others generally acquire more reason and a better understanding of life, you should forget the good precepts learned as a boy”

Lorenzo the Magnificent to Giovanni de’ Medici, March 1492

The simple truth is that the simple lessons we are taught as children — from controlling our temper to social skills — are not rendered obsolete by aging. On the contrary, they are arguably more important in adulthood than childhood, and it is the misfortune of aging that we tend to forget them or downplay their relevance. Lorenzo therefore made sure to praise his son for remembering at least one of those lessons:

“I was greatly pleased last year to learn that without being reminded by any one you had been several times to confession and to communion, for I conceive there is no better way of obtaining the grace of God than by habituating oneself to persevere in these duties. This seems to me the best advice I can begin with”

Lorenzo the Magnificent to Giovanni de’ Medici, March 1492

A father after all should remember that his son needs recognition as well as admonition, and both need the other in order to have meaning.

Beyond this however, Lorenzo understood all too well that as a teenage boy now going to ‘the big city’, young Giovanni was about to face a barrage of people and influences that would try to lead him astray…

Beware Bad Actors

When I myself first left England and moved to Rome at 23, I knew only one person in the Eternal City. So I asked him what advice he would have for somebody wishing to start a new life in Rome, and as a middle-aged professor of art history who had lived there for decades, I knew he was unlikely to reply with a dull cliché. Sure enough, his response indeed remains emblazoned upon my memory.

“Never forget why you came here”, he warned, “because the city will throw everything at you to distract you”. Over the decade which followed, my appreciation for his wisdom only grew. In such a city, where the entire spectrum of human emotion is on full and extravagant display, where meeting one person suddenly explodes your network of acquaintances and friends sixfold, it is enormously difficult to control your time, or even be aware it needs controlling. At the same time, any ‘big city’ has no shortage of unscrupulous souls ready to prey upon the naive, or else those who took the wrong paths in life and are eager to corrupt others into doing the same out of a defiled need for validation.

Before you know it, years can pass as your dreams disappear behind mounting distractions that focus you on the days and blind you to the months. As a result, I am ever grateful that due to the advice I had received at the beginning, the anchor of my own time in Italy was a fear of arriving at the end of it and realising I had wasted too much of it.

It was therefore as inspiring as it was humbling, — not to mention uncanny — to discover that Lorenzo the Magnificent had identified this exact same dynamic over half a millennium earlier:

“I know, as you are now going to Rome, that sink of all iniquities, that you will find some difficulty in following it, as bad examples are always catching, and inciters to vice will not be wanting. Your promotion to the Cardinalate, as you may imagine, at your age and for the other reasons already mentioned, will be viewed with great envy, and those who were not able to prevent your attaining this dignity will endeavour, little by little, to diminish it by lowering you in public estimation and causing you to slide into the same ditch into which they have themselves fallen, counting on success because of your youth. You must be all the firmer in your stand against these difficulties, as at present one sees such a lack of virtue in the College.”

Lorenzo the Magnificent to Giovanni de’ Medici, March 1492

More often than not, evil is a patchwork woven of poor decisions rather than a single and cartoonish will to destroy. “Inciters to vice” may or may not ‘know not what they do’. Regardless, it is in the company of such individuals that it is all the more difficult to stay the course as you are, like the frog in slowly boiling water, drawn into a life which only years later reveals itself as ruinous.

“Never forget why you came here” indeed, and it will be far harder for people to lead you astray. Are you getting that job because you believe in the mission? After the years of office intrigue, power politicking and budget cuts, will that still be the case, or will it degenerate into mere survival and running out the clock until the next role? Are you going to university because you love the subject? Beware those who will lead you into drifting, and will guilt you into thinking you simply must attend this party tonight, despite it breaking your body clock for the rest of the week.

Be vigilant of bad actors, both immediate or potential, and seek out those who genuinely reflect the “reason why you came”, and will actively help you fulfil it or at least passively inspire you:

“I recollect however to have known a good many learned and good men in the College, leading exemplary lives. It will be well that you should follow their example, for by so doing you will be the more known and esteemed as being different from the others. It is imperative above all things that you should avoid as you would Scylla and Charybdis the reputation of being a hypocrite and of evil fame”

Lorenzo the Magnificent to Giovanni de’ Medici, March 1492

It is of course up to you to exercise judgment and seek out such people, but in terms of ‘breaking into’ that circle, once again childhood lessons will go a long way:

“Be not ostentatious, and have a care to avoid anything offensive in conduct and in conversation, without affecting austerity or severity. These are things you will in time understand and practise better, I conceive, than I can write them”

Lorenzo the Magnificent to Giovanni de’ Medici, March 1492

So far, Lorenzo has given sound advice on how to not fumble our entry into a new world. But what do we do when we are in? Especially if we want to not only make a good impression, but actually get ahead in potentially hostile surroundings?

As Lorenzo reveals in the second half of the letter, there are two strategies you must follow if you want to thrive as well as survive in a new environment, and be the proud instead of the wayward son…

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In our divided times, there is perhaps one thing which unites all of us. Arguably, not one of us lives in a country that is governed in the way we wish it were.

Last week, we considered the question of what is and what is not worth worrying about. As Epictetus concluded, it is a waste of time getting anxious about anything you have no control over. Amid his helpful solutions for facing everyday worries, however, there is something missing. If we cannot directly control the wider world and its trajectory, but we still care about it, is there really nothing we can do?

Fortunately, this gap was filled in splendid style on the 8th January 1947, when Pope Pius XII addressed the Roman nobility on how to respond productively to a new world order that was hostile to aristocracy and Christianity alike.

Today therefore, we explore what Pius XII can teach you about how to stop simply lashing out at the world, and start actually changing it…

At INVICTUS, our mission is to explore the practical wisdom you can learn from the greatest leaders, thinkers, and artists of the past, through their own words and deeds.

If this resonates with you then subscribe below to receive an in-depth article every week exploring how influential figures were able to achieve what they did, and how you can start following in their footsteps…

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Do Not Desert

“Uncertainty remains the dominant feature of the present moment, not only in international relations, where we hope for peaceful settlements that are tolerable at the very least, but also in the internal ordering of individual nations. Here too, there is as yet no way to foresee with any certainty what will be the final outcome of the meeting or clash of the various tendencies and forces, and especially of the different and discordant doctrines in areas of religion, politics, and society.”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

Pius began his address by calmly reiterating the reality, and gravity, of the situation. He was, after all, addressing a people in the midst of an unprecedented national trauma.

Over three years had passed since Italy’s surrender in the Second World War, but the true scale of the consequences were only beginning to unfold. Just months earlier the Kingdom of Italy — still under foreign military occupation — had been abolished following an enormously divisive and geographically polarising referendum plagued by widespread evidence of rigging. At the time of the Pope’s address the resulting political regime in Rome was drafting the new constitution, guided by secular republican convictions that were fundamentally at odds with those held by much of the Italian population, as well as the Catholic Church itself.

Since the government had made clear their intention to erase the nobility — and thus centuries of tradition — from formal public life, the noblemen who listened to this address were highly representative of the many Italians who now felt themselves strangers in their own country. In the manner of an ancient Greek philosopher, however, Pius began by warning them what not to do:

“The first of these modes of conduct is unacceptable: that of the deserter, of him who was incorrectly called the “emigré à l’intérieur”; it is the abstention of the angry, resentful man who, out of spite or discouragement, makes no use of his qualities or energies, participates in none of his country’s and his epoch’s activities, but rather withdraws — like Achilles in his tent, near the swift-moving boats, far from the battles— while the destinies of the fatherland are at stake.”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

If one consumes nothing but ‘The News’, particularly when said ‘News’ is delivered through channels controlled by the malintentioned, then it is all too easy to fall into despair.

To do this, however, is to do precisely what they want you to do — to resign yourself to impotence in the face of apparent omnipotence, and take your own piece off the board. A man might do this out of wrath, or else of apathy. Neither are solutions, however while anger might be counterproductive as it misdirects energy, as Pius pointed out it is mildly preferable to indifference:

“Abstention is even less appropriate when it is the result of an indolent, passive indifference. Indeed, worse than ill humor, worse than spite and discouragement, would be nonchalance in the face of a ruin into which one’s own brothers, one’s own people, were about to fall. In vain would it attempt to hide behind the mask of neutrality; it is not at all neutral; it is, like it or not, complicit.”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

Righteous anger can motivate virtue, but wrathful anger does not, for the latter steadily saps motivation until the bearer is no more productive than the indifferent.

If the governing classes are turning towards evil, care but do not allow yourself to be provoked into rash responses which could discredit you and your convictions. Remain conscious and in control, and you have saved your cause from death. Next, you must stabilise the patient…

Bend, But Do Not Break

Each light snowflake falling softly on the mountain’s slope and adorning it with its whiteness plays its part, while letting itself be dragged along, in turning the little clump of snow that breaks away from the peak into the avalanche that brings disaster to the valley, crushing and burying peaceful homes. Only the solid mass, which is one with the rock of the foundation, can victoriously resist and stop the avalanche, or at least diminish its destructive course.”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

Key to avoiding desertion or abstention is indeed knowing the nature of the beast. The noble and courageous man indeed understands that the apparent omnipotence of an immoral order is just that — apparent. He does not succumb to its messaging that would have him believe that he is alone. Armed with this realisation, it is suddenly much easier to bear the provocations of that order with dignity.

To echo the Pope’s splendid metaphor, the destructive power of illegitimate orders is made an avalanche only by the steady fall of snowflakes that are individually fragile. Each man who succumbs to despair, deserting or abstaining from society, adds to the deluge. Yet the man who remains a rock resists the avalanche without even moving, let alone actively fighting back.

In order to change the world therefore, it is vital that your goal is not distracted or derailed by individual outrages of the foe. Bear them with dignity, neither fleeing the field nor retaliating in wrath. Every time you do, your cause gains converts, and its foundations shift from snow to stone. It is indeed precisely by this manner that Christianity itself first flourished — by the martyrs enduring even the most degrading of tortures and deaths as cruel sport for heathen spectators. With each martyrdom, a pillar of the pagan order was knocked out, and one was erected under the Church:

“In this same way the man who is just and firm in his desire for good, the man of whom Horace speaks in a famous ode, who does not let himself be moved in his unshakeable thought by the furor of the citizens who give criminal orders nor by the tyrant’s menacing scowl, but remains undaunted, even should the universe crumble over his head: ‘si fractus inlabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae’”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

The Latin line of Horace that Pius quotes above can be translated as this — “Should the shattered world fall, its ruins will strike him unafraid” (Horace, Carmen Secularae, III, 3). No matter how much damage the vilest regime appears to inflict upon all that you hold dear, and no matter how biting the pain of witnessing it may be to your soul and sentiment, realise that there is nothing they can destroy which cannot be rebuilt after they fall. Furthermore, every outrage they perpetrate which is resisted with dignified nobility hastens that fall. Your duty, therefore, is to simply ensure that your cause outlasts them. Strategic patience is your primary virtue.

The beleaguered Italians of the 6th century AD after all, having witnessed the traumatic fall of Rome in the West and the violation of Italy by uncouth hordes, could so easily have surrendered to despair. Fortunately, enough did not that over the course of the centuries, Italy recovered her place as the fulcrum of civilisation once more. In some cases, the second wind was even greater than the first. Few who visit Florence today, after all, come to admire the ruins of Roman Florentia over the glories of the Tuscan Renaissance.

“And if he cannot contain its destructive force, he will be there again to rebuild the demolished edifice, to sow the devastated field. That is what your conduct should rightly be. It must consist — without having to renounce the freedom of your convictions and your opinions on human vicissitudes — in accepting the contingent order of things such as it is, and in directing its efficiency toward the good, not of a specific class, but of the entire community.”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

In a sense therefore, Pius is reiterating the core message of Epictetus — to not be drawn by what you cannot control. An odious regime will do odious things, and as long as they control the monopoly of force, fighting back in an impulsive manner invariably wastes resources, since any victory is likely to be fleeting unless you have the ground game to consolidate it.

Just stabilising the patient indeed does not guarantee his recovery. It merely affords the opportunity for it. Doing nothing could easily result in a relapse into emergency. So how do you stop merely surviving, and start mounting a winning counter-attack?

Fortunately, Pius XII tells us not what we want to hear, but what anyone who is serious about changing the world needs to hear…

Aim For the Root, Not the Crown

The Achilles’ Heel of almost any movement that wishes to change the world is an excessive focus on grand gestures and dramatic clashes. An obsession, if you will, with ‘getting over the line’ no matter the cost, guided by the dangerous notion of ‘We just need to get in power, then everything will be alright’.

This approach is vulnerable to two key weaknesses. On the one hand, it can easily result in a desensitisation to evil in one’s own ranks, chopping away the roots of the movement even while the foliage might appear to be blooming. The second is that it robs tomorrow to pay today. Once you take power, you have to hold it, and unless solid societal foundations have been erected to support your new order, it will take very little to topple it. As a result, mounting a coup d’état is enormously risky. You could just as easily lose it all, and end up in a worse situation than when you were marginalised, as your movement is now powerless and discredited.

If you are serious about reshaping your country or the world therefore, you must focus on the roots, and not the crown:

“It is quite possible that certain grave events that had been developing over the year just past had a sorrowful echo in the hearts of more than a few of us. Yet those who live in the richness of Christian thought do not let themselves be defeated nor discouraged by human occurrences, whatever they may be, and are always bravely turning their gaze to all that remains, which is indeed great and most worthy of their care. What remains is the country and the people”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

Win the people, and power will follow. Focus on winning power, and you will lose the people. If you were to seize power and pass a sweeping new body of laws, what good would that be if half the people in your own movement viewed them cynically, and much of the population saw no legitimacy in them? You would have become the very thing you professed to despise.

“Besides, what good are the best laws if they are to remain a dead letter? Their efficacy depends in large part on those who are supposed to apply them. In the hands of men who have not the spirit of the law within them, who perhaps in their hearts disagree with what it provides for, or who are not spiritually or morally capable of putting it into effect, even the most perfect work of legislation loses much of its value.”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

Just as you feel disgust at what that odious regime is doing to your country now, what will you do to prevent others feeling disgust at what you would do?

The secret of course is the secret to any well-written story…

Live the Change You Demand

If you want to win over converts, show, don’t tell. If you want to earn power that will be lasting and respected, you need to put in the legwork so that you are not only telling people your way is better, but showing it too.

Do you resent the secular order and its continued outrages against the Faith? Do not just complain about it, Pius advises, but live what it is you would defend. Live your Faith in the true sense. Be loyal to it and its teachings. It is no good being willing to take up the warrior’s sword unless you are also willing to take up the shepherd’s crook. You want to crusade, but do you want to heal the sick and protect the needy?

“Thus does the voice of your fatherland, prompted by the severe upheavals of recent years, call for the collaboration of all honest men and women in whose families and in whose persons reigns the best of the spiritual vigor, the moral categories, and the old and still living traditions of our country. That voice is exhorting them to make themselves available to the State with all the force of their most heartfelt convictions, and to work for the good of the people!”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

Are you appalled at the globalisation of power and the steady asset stripping of local communities? What do you do to support your local community? Do you know your own neighbours? Do you volunteer in your evenings or on the weekend? You criticise the likes of Amazon in public and denounce the death of the local shop, but in the quiet of the evening do you succumb to hypocrisy? Do you truly embody the ideals you would demand of the world?

This of course is not an easy matter to confront. We all of us face a daily struggle of balancing our integrity with practical reality. Pope Pius did not sugarcoat this, and said as such to the nobility:

“Your task is therefore far from being a negative one. It presupposes much study, much work, much self-abnegation, and above all, much love. Despite the rapid evolution of the times, it has not lost its value, it has not reached its end. What it also requires of you — something that ought to be the salient feature of traditional and family-oriented upbringing — is the noble sentiment and the will not to take advantage of your station — an often solemn, austere privilege nowadays — except to serve.”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 8th January 1947

If you want to lead by ideals, you must first learn to serve those ideals. It is this of course which separates the ‘wheat from the chaff’. It exposes the charlatans and reveals those who are truly committed to changing the world out of selfless conviction over selfish ambition, and therefore those who are far harder for the political machine to take down.

We have each been assigned gifts and talents particular to us. One of us might be a shrewd businessman, another a brilliant painter. Some are born to lead, others to be quietly productive. Each of us has a role to play in guiding our fellow man to righteousness, as Pius would remind the Roman princes two years later:

“Divine Providence has assigned everyone in human society a specific function; it has therefore also divided and distributed its gifts. These gifts and talents are supposed to bear fruit, and you know that the Lord will ask each to account for how they were administered, and according the benefits gained he will judge and separate the good servants from the bad (cf. Matt. 25:14 ff.; Luke 16:2).”

Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Nobility, 15th January 1949

Instead of trying to fight a civilisational war all by yourself therefore, focus on the individual skirmishes within it that you are equipped to win.

After all, you want your order in power. But you want it to last, do you not? You want it to outlive you, and you want to die confident that it will remain strong on its own merits, such that any who attempted to overthrow it would make an enemy army of the population?

Then know that for any victory to be lasting, it must begin in the home before it may triumph in the streets…

If there is a word which could summarise the spirit of our times, it is quite possibly ‘anxiety’.

It manifests in many ways, from lofty fears of geopolitical crises to everyday doubts over work, family and whether we have taken the right decisions in life. Postwar society, and technological innovations masquerading as advances, have of course done much to make anxiety more common, and more draining.

But as the sources of our anxiety grow more artificial, have we taken too much of the bait? Has societal conditioning swindled us out of our energy, and left us worrying about things unnecessarily?

One man who answered these questions with confidence and advice, as far back as the 1st century AD, was the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. More than anything else, Epictetus liked to debate with his students about what is and what is not under our control, and therefore what is worth worrying about. One of his lectures, appropriately titled That We Ought Not to be Affected by Things Not in our Power, was virtually predestined for the anxious modern Man.

Today therefore, we explore how Epictetus can help you identify what is and what is not worth worrying about, and what you can do it about it…

We Are Men, Not Gods

“Of things, some are in our power and others not. In our power are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever are our own actions. Not in our power are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions”

Epictetus, Enchiridion, I

All the teachings of Epictetus spring from this — that we as humans are not the creators of this world, but we were created to inhabit it. As humans, therefore, we are subject to certain logic and laws that we did not write, we do not control, and which we will not be fully able to comprehend at all times.

However, Epictetus does not mean that we should simply throw up our hands and surrender to misery. He intends that just because something is happening which appears unfair in the moment does not mean it is happening for no reason. On the contrary, such things are central to our lives having any meaning at all. The suffering of discomfort may be a universal human certainty, but how you respond to it is not:

“If a man is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault: for God has made all men to be happy, to be free from perturbations. For this purpose he has given means to them, some things to each person as his own, and other things not as his own: some things subject to hindrance and compulsion and deprivation; and these things are not a man’s own: but the things which are not subject to hindrances, are his own; and the nature of good and evil, as it was fit to be done by him who takes care of us and protects us like a father, he has made our own.”

Epictetus, Discourses, XXIV

As his most famous follower in Stoic thought, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, would later put it, “Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear” (Meditations, V.18). If the problem troubling you is man-made, then so too is the solution. If it is not, then it is the business of higher powers. Your energy is wasted worrying about anything that you yourself have no power to influence. Epictetus returns to this point later, and so shall we, but for now he provides a common example of anxiety created by refusing to accept our human nature — worrying about losing others.

A god, by conventional wisdom, is omnipresent. He is everywhere, and can appear to anyone in an instant whenever he pleases. A man of course is not. Our bodies are physical vessels keeping our souls anchored by place and time. But while they are synchronised to a divine nature, since we are mortals we cannot be synchronised to each other in time and place. It is foolish therefore to pretend that we should be:

“You have enjoyed all things in which you took pleasure, as if you would always enjoy them, both places and men and conversation ; and now you sit and weep because you do not see the same persons and do not live in the same places.”

Epictetus, Discourses, XXIV

People are going to enter and depart your ‘anchorage’ in this world, either by birth, death or calling. As a result, worrying about losing somebody in such a manner is an unhealthy anxiety, because you will never have control over this. Moreover, trying to control this is an act of selfish rebellion against the divine order, and one which almost always invites disaster — consider, for example, what the typical outcome is when a parent tries to stifle their child’s dreams indefinitely. There comes a point when you simply have to allow them to go out into the world and learn for themselves.

You are a mortal human, and not an immortal god. If you are worried about something which is an unavoidable consequence of mortality, your human capital is being squandered on a gamble where the house always wins. Similarly, if there is something that you want, be sure that it is actually achievable in the first place, and not a utopic dream:

“To desire then things which are impossible is to have a slavish character, and is foolish: it is the part of a stranger, of a man who fights against God in the only way that he can, by his opinions.”

Epictetus, Discourses, XXIV

No matter what you achieve, therefore, mortal life will always be imperfect. So how do we deal with its ‘imperfections’?

Life is Warfare

Mortal life is defined by two struggles. The one we face as individuals, and the second that our civilisation as a whole confronts. Advances in civilisation, however, are generally the collective result of many individual struggles. As Epictetus puts it, life on Earth is warfare, and each of us are soldiers:

“Do you not know that human life is a warfare? that one man must keep watch, another must go out as a spy, and a third must fight?... But you neglecting to do the commands of the general complain when any thing more hard than usual is imposed on you, and you do not observe what you make the army become as far as it is in your power; that if all imitate you, no man will dig a trench, no man will put a rampart round, nor keep watch, nor expose himself to danger, but will appear to be useless for the purposes of an army.”

Epictetus, Discourses, XXIV

Every time an obstacle is set before you, the general is sounding the battle horn. You may not be aware of the general’s overall strategy, but to reject the call of duty and languish in the tent, bemoaning your plight as Achilles did for a time at Troy, is doubly injurious. Abandoning post in the hope that somebody else will take over from you does nothing for you or for the war effort. It needlessly prolongs the conflict, and prevents fellow soldiers from fulfilling their own duties.

Our anxieties are virtually always caused by a source of stress we are trying in vain to forget about. But if an enemy is lurking outside the tent, and you hide stubbornly inside, he will always dictate the terms of your liberty. Emerge, however, and you may just win it back. Everything pleasant in life is won through toil, and the man who will not till the Earth will never see the harvest.

The more wholesome counter-thought, as Epictetus reminds us, is that “no human creature is an orphan, but that there is a father who always, and without intermission, takes care of all”. God he implies, like a good father, does not force us to be one way or another, but presents us with chances to grow through battles such as these. View life as a war, and even the most mundane of struggles as a skirmish in that war. Whether that be in facing a difficult meeting, preparing to speak publicly or wrestling with frustrating bureaucracy, remember that the general is watching — make him proud.

Warfare, of course, is psychological as much as it is kinetic. The enemy will often try to appear strong where he is weak. So too our worries are often the result of deception, leading us to overestimate the real strength of their source. The general, however, assigned you this task because he knows there is nothing you will face that you have not been trained for. He knows that the task is far less terrifying in reality than it might initially appear to you, and that ‘Well that wasn’t so bad’ is going to pass your lips once you have done it:

“Study therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, ‘You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be’. And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in our own power, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything not in our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.”

Epictetus, Enchiridion, I

That is all well and good, you are likely thinking. Putting on a brave face and saying ‘I can do it’ is one thing, but how do I do it?

Fortunately, Epictetus here turns directly to practical advice on how to overcome our worries, beginning with one simple and reliable solution that continually stares us in the face…

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“Society is of such power, as by it Saints are turned into Serpents, Doves into Devils”

Richard Brathwaite, Youth, The English Gentleman

Passing from boyhood to manhood brings with it opportunity, but so too danger.

The world is ahead of you, but if you are not careful, you will reach old age with a world of regret behind you. Since youth is prone to overconfidence, and vulnerable therefore to arrogance, that road to regret is all too easily paved.

Recognising this, our ancestors considered manners and etiquette to be no less important than mathematics or science when it came to the education of aristocratic men. Many books were therefore written to instruct boys on the art of social dynamics, including one now forgotten jewel that was published in 1630.

Written by the English poet and royalist soldier Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentleman is a goldmine of both wisdom and charm. With the aim of providing “especial rules of direction… tending to the making up of an Accomplish’d Gentleman”, Brathwaite indeed begins his work by focusing on youth, and the specific errors that can undermine a man seeking to enter society.

Today therefore, we explore Brathwaite’s advice on the four essential qualities you need to master if you want to stop looking arrogant, and start being aristocratic…

1 - Gait

Since first impressions are formed before conversation even begins, Brathwaite identifies Gait (or ‘Gate’ as it was spelled in old English1) — or how we physically bear ourselves when standing or walking — as the first priority in controlling our image:

“It is strange to observe how the very Body expresseth the secret fantasies of the minde: and how well the one sympathizeth with the other”

Richard Brathwaite, Gate, The English Gentleman

As Count Baldassarre Castiglione once remarked, “things external often bear witness to the things within”. When meeting somebody new, or merely passing them by, they can and will form a surprisingly detailed assumption about you, your life and your character based on nothing more than your posture.

We can lament the injustice of this all we like, but our Gait betrays our true condition. It can reveal the state of our health, and the strength of our confidence. A man hunched over may spend too much time sitting. He may be ill, or may be shy. Regardless of the actual reason, such gait doth not an appealing impression make. It suggests indeed that the man in question is currently fighting a battle that he is presently losing.

The opposite extreme however, of strutting about with forced overconfidence, is equally damaging to your Gait:

“When Youth is imployed in ushering his Mistresse, hee walkes in the street as if hee were dancing a measure. Hee verily imagines the eyes of the whole Citie are fixed on him, as the very patterne which they esteeme worthy imitation: how neerely then concerns it him to stand upon his equipage. He walkes, as if he were an upright man, but his sincerity consists onely in dimension”

Richard Brathwaite, Gate, The English Gentleman

Poor Gait, therefore, is like a poor choice of words. If your bearing under or oversells your true character and confidence, then you are likely to repel rather than attract. If you wish to be considered a respectable gentlemen, therefore, then your gait should be synchronised to it, otherwise you may never be afforded the opportunity to show others your true qualities.

As Brathwaite suggested, a distasteful Gait is a typical problem of boys who are in the company of girls they either wish to impress or show off to others. Men can instinctively sense when another man’s bearing is inorganic and forced in order to curry favour or popularity, and the instinctive reaction is unfailingly negative:

“First, he is to know, how that which is most native and least affective, deserves choisest acceptance. We were not borne to glory in our feet, the Bases of Mortality: but to walke as children of light, in holinesse and integritie”

Richard Brathwaite, Gate, The English Gentleman

The overconfident man may well ‘impress’ said girl in the first moment. He may not. But he will almost certainly irritate those around him in the second, and that impression will long outlast the first.

Be like Agathocles of Syracuse, Brathwaite advises. For at the height of his fame, the first King of Sicily remained literally grounded even when commissioning a celebratory statue of himself. For while the head was of gold, signifying purity, the arms were of ivory, intimating smoothness, and the body was of brass, implying strength, he insisted the feet were made of earth, reminding the viewer how easily all of the above could collapse without solid foundation.

But Gait is only the first ‘test’. For after judging your body and movement, observers will turn next to your eyes…

2 - Look

“The next Subject wee are to treat of in this Display of youthfull vanity, is his Looke: wherein hee is ever noted to shew a kinde of contempt, expressing by his eye, what he conceives in his heart”

Richard Brathwaite, Looke, The English Gentleman

It is said to the point of cliché that the eyes are the window to the soul. Just like the body, our eyes can indeed betray the truth of our words and thoughts. As a result, eyes have their very own Gait, which Brathwaite simply calls Look.

A man who shoots an arrogant glance, after all, is either openly contemptuous or poor at hiding it. Once again, neither possibility is endearing to a third party observer. As a result, Brathwaite warns that young men need to be aware that when their mouths are silent, their eyes are still talking:

“The eyes (saith a good Father) are members of the flesh, but windowes of the minde; which, Eagle-like, should be ever erected to the beames of righteousnesse, and not depressed by any unworthy object of externall basenesse”

Richard Brathwaite, Looke, The English Gentleman

This of course can be a difficult balance. You do not wish to appear submissive or uninterested, but nor do you wish to spoil an attempt to look dignified by appearing arrogant. It is a particular plague of the successful, and especially the ambitious, to force a ‘superior’ look, or else let one slip through. We do not need Brathwaite to point out how negatively this comes across, but he does offer a curious observation of why it backfires so readily:

“But tell me Young Gallant, what it is that moveth thee to this contempt of others? Is it thy descent? Alas, that is none of thine; thou derivest that glory from this Ancestors, whose honour by thy ignoble life, dieth”

Richard Brathwaite, Looke, The English Gentleman

In other words, trying to look superior will simply draw attention to where and how you are not. People, therefore, respond to arrogance by searching for what could justify it. If they are not impressed by what they find, then there is no chance at all of this look inspiring interest in you.

The truly aristocratic gaze, therefore, is one of affable indifference. One that communicates that you are not ‘flustered’ by what you see and that guards your true feelings, while giving the impression that you are approachable to anyone who might want to ask your opinion:

“We are the conclude, that Humilitie, as it opens the gate unto glory, so Affability, a virtue right worthy every generous minde, cannot bee better planted than in the eyes, those Centinels which guard us, those two Lights which direct us, those adamantine Orbes which attract affection to us”

Richard Brathwaite, Looke, The English Gentleman

In a certain sense then the aristocratic gaze is the wholesome cousin to the ‘thousand-yard stare’. It is the Look of a gentleman who, being also a man of Faith, trusts in the will of Heaven. He therefore remains humble before it, and embraces that all which happens on Earth is simply part of a larger plan. Consequently the gentleman gives the impression that he is a comfortable part of that plan, who does not permit adversity to best him. Evil, after all, begets evil, and in an arrogant glance a man is letting the Devil see him bleed.

A man who cultivates good Gait and Look then is well on his way to self-actualisation, and reliably securing the affection of strangers.

As Brathwaite reveals however, all of this will go to waste if it is not backed up by two more qualities, which are crucial to making sure a good impression lasts…

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Without food, water or air, a man will die quickly. But without purpose, he is condemned to something worse. The slow death of drifting over living.

There is something quite extraordinary about the fact that this warning was first issued in the oldest surviving text on practical wisdom in the Western world — Hesiod’s Works and Days.

Hesiod, a somewhat gruff yet poetic Greek farmer, wrote the text sometime in the 8th century BC as advice to his wayward brother Perses, urging him to bring real purpose to his life. So timeless was this ancient advice that two core elements of Works and Days were re-presented in one of the most popular cinema franchises of modern times — The Matrix.

So in a special piece today, we explore what Hesiod’s original words, and their echoes in two scenes of the Matrix films, can teach you about the importance of finding purpose, and why an easy life can actually be the death of you…

It is Purpose That Drives Us

What makes Works and Days so charming is that while it is a piece of epic poetry, it was written by one man simply to chastise his brother for idleness. That said, ‘idleness’ would however be an oversimplification.

What truly rankled Hesiod was his brother trying to profit from the work of others, and enjoy wealth he had not earned through honest means. Caught up in a legal dispute over inheritance, Hesiod implies that Perses has developed an unhealthy taste for litigation, using the “wrangles of the court-house” to “raise disputes and strive to get another's goods”. Hesiod therefore wrote Works and Days to explain to his brother — via epic mythology — why a man can never enjoy a life that is not anchored by healthy purpose.

As was traditional of ancient moral works, Hesiod first considers what not to do, or in this case, misdirected purpose. He introduces this however with the rather profound suggestion that a certain level of darkness is needed to keep men in the light. There are two forms of Strife in this world, he recounts. The first is cruel, and drives men to war and fruitless aggression. But the second is a necessary evil:

“But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel”

Hesiod, Works and Days, 17-27

The spirit of competition, therefore, can be wholesome if it inspires us to better ourselves. It is destructive, on the other hand, if it drives us to feed the first form of Strife, and attempt to bypass our own labour by actively sabotaging others.

Hesiod develops this mythologically by recounting the story of the Titan Prometheus, who stole the arcane knowledge of the gods and shared it with Man, teaching them the secret of fire. The wrath of Zeus, King of the Gods, was then unleashed upon Prometheus for handing Man a gift it had not earned for itself, artificially elevating mortal civilisation through the theft of divine wisdom:

“For the gods keep hidden from men the means of life. Else you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working; soon would you put away your rudder over the smoke, and the fields worked by ox and sturdy mule would run to waste”

Hesiod, Works and Days, 46-49

The crime of Prometheus, then, was corrupting men into seeing their purpose strictly in terms of achieving ends, rather than embracing the means.

Interestingly, the core sentiment of the opening of Works and Days is evoked in a pivotal scene of the second film of the Matrix trilogy, and indeed in some of its most frequently quoted dialogue…

It is Purpose that Defines Us

The scene in question forms the first major confrontation between the hero and the most immediate villain of The Matrix Reloaded. Our hero is Neo, a man who has learned that the entire world he knew was in fact an artificial computer simulation, designed to blind Man from the truth — that Machine is master of Man, not the other way round.

Opposing him is Smith, a sentient computer program within that simulation created to stop humans, with lethal force if necessary, from learning this truth. As an agent of the system, Smith had therefore been an agent of the first form of Hesiod’s Strife. Uncaring, unthinking violence directed against Man purely for the purpose of suppressing him.

Only there is a complication. Smith was an agent of the system, but since Neo ‘destroyed’ his ‘body’ in the climax of the first film, he is no longer bound by his former programming constraints. The ‘purpose’ that the Machines had originally built into him was wiped, so he now finds himself in the world, “apparently free”.

The tension of the scene builds as Smith seems as if he is about to thank Neo for ‘liberating him’ from his preordained purpose. Since both have now been freed from their own form of chains, this could have been a reconciliation between former foes. Yet it rapidly becomes clear that Smith is not in fact grateful for what has happened:

Smith correctly identifies that purpose is central to being. In the first film, Neo had also identified this. What separates them however is how both characters respond to this revelation. Neo realised that to simply return to his former life of unfulfilment was unthinkable, not least as it was an illusory and listless life of servitude. His hero’s journey was his learning and accepting that he was instead called to a higher purpose, and that turning his back on this would betray his proper calling, his friends and broader Mankind itself.

Smith, however, regresses. He does not understand that he now has a choice. He does not have to be an agent of the First Strife any more. From his former conflict with Neo, Smith could have drawn upon the Second Strife, and forged his own new purpose. But he does not. He alas embraces the path that Hesiod warns about, as revealed by his last words before the duel begins:

Refusing to embark on his own journey, he seeks consolation not through a constructive new purpose, but through sabotaging Neo’s. He turns his back on redemption and his crimes spiral, as he proceeds to systematically sabotage the entire world of the Matrix. By hijacking and assimilating all humans and programs connected to it, he forcibly acquires knowledge and abilities he has not earned — and therefore does not understand — until he is a nihilistic abomination that Mankind and the Machines unite to destroy.

Trimmed of the glamour of cinema and epic poetry therefore, both Hesiod and the Matrix emphasise that misdirected purpose is a road to unfulfilment and misery, both for yourself and those around you.

So what is properly directed purpose, and why is happiness impossible without it?

Fortunately Hesiod has the answer in the most famous passage of Works and Days, which another scene in the first Matrix film repackaged almost exactly…

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“Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

Let it never be said that Clive Staples Lewis shied away from the most confronting topics.

Indeed during the Second World War, C.S. Lewis was a regular voice on BBC Radio, broadcasting a series of ten to fifteen minute talks on questions of morality and faith to wartime Britain. The talks proved enormously popular, and would later be adapted into one of his most important works outside of the Chronicles of Narnia — Mere Christianity.

As part of this series, on the 11th October 1942 Lewis spoke on the specific topic of Sexual Morality, in which he presented a remarkably frank case for chastity, and why the modern world has made it even more important to pursue this seemingly archaic virtue.

So today, we explore what C.S. Lewis can teach you about how to remain chaste in an unchaste world, and why you should…

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Chastity or Modesty?

As Lewis states, "Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues”. It flies so completely in the face of what modern Western society promotes that it has made even ostensibly devout Christians feel vulnerable when championing it. It is for this very reason however that it is crucial to stop surrendering this ground, which simply leaves a vacuum that malign actors have already begun occupying.

Lewis begins however by reminding us that while Christian chastity and social modesty are often conflated, they are not the same thing. One is a fixed virtue, and the other is contextual, and confusion over this has needlessly muddied the moral waters. Chastity, after all, is tied to a single specific act. There is no fudging the issue. Modesty, however, is generally tied to mutable perceptions of language and dress, which vary according to era, culture and climate. Lewis asserts that a person’s modesty, therefore, can only really be judged by their intent:

“When people break the rule of propriety current in their own time and place, if they do so in order to excite lust in themselves or others, then they are offending against chastity. But if they break it through ignorance or carelessness they are guilty only of bad manners”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

Consequently, the problem is not when somebody carelessly leaves a button undone, but when somebody purposefully breaks societal rules simply for shock value, to make others uncomfortable or to “excite lust”. In other words, when it is intentional over accidental sin. Being excessively prudish over the latter needlessly undermines the prosecution of the former.

Since chastity is a personal choice of wholly personal responsibility, while modesty is largely dependent on external factors, Lewis advises us to be charitable in judging somebody who may only be passively rather than actively immodest:

“While this confusion lasts I think that old, or old-fashioned, people should be very careful not to assume that young or “emancipated” people are corrupt whenever they are (by the old standard) improper; and, in return, that young people should not call their elders prudes or puritans because they do not easily adopt the new standard. A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

Ultimately, conflating modesty with chastity is unhelpful as it distracts us from the actual virtue of the latter, and what really corrupts it…

The Purpose of Sexuality

Arguably the most contested frontline in the war for the Western soul, especially since the 1960’s, is the question of whether life is sacred. Directly connected to this is its obvious continuation — is the act of creating life sacred too?

“The old Christian rule is, “Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.” Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong.

But I have other reasons for thinking so.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

One of the great virtues of C.S. Lewis, which propelled him into one of the most respected voices in Christianity of the last century, was his ability to translate theology into endearing and everyday language, with highly relatable examples. On sexual morality, he was no different, comparing the sexual appetite to that of food:

“The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined and just as much as we want, it is quite true that most of us will eat too much: but not terrifically too much. One man may eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten. The appetite goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously. But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

Even leaving any theological considerations aside, and looking at the matter with basic practical honesty, “This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function”. Like all appetites, it shifts in scope in response to our conscious decisions and actions:

“The sexual appetite, like our other appetites, grows by indulgence. Starving men may think much about food, but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished, like titillations.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

Again like all appetites, when it is fed beyond what its original purpose calls for, the returns diminish, and the damage spirals. Yet while the glutton’s vice is plainly visible in his physical build, that of the unchaste is not made less serious simply by its concealment to the eye:

“You find very few people who want to eat things that really are not food or to do other things with food instead of eating it. In other words, perversions of the food appetite are rare. But perversions of the sex instinct are numerous, hard to cure, and frightful.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

Which brings us to core of Lewis’s broadcast — addressing the encroaching societal lies that are currently corrupting sexuality, and how chastity can both counter them and make you stronger…

The Lies That Corrupt Sexuality

In unusually direct words, Lewis explains why it is essential to talk about this:

“I am sorry to have to go into all these details, but I must. The reason why I must is that you and I, for the last twenty years, have been fed all day long on good solid lies about sex. We have been told, till one is sick of hearing it, that sexual desire is in the same state as any of our other natural desires and that if only we abandon the silly old Victorian idea of hushing it up, everything in the garden will be lovely. It is not true. The moment you look at the facts, and away from the propaganda, you see that it is not.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

84 years have passed since Lewis spoke these words, and the wisdom behind them has only grown. So too, alas, has the vigour with which sexual immorality has been promoted, which all began with the seemingly innocuous idea that ‘liberalising’ sexuality — and therefore indulging an appetite that struggles to limit itself — would make for a more contented society. But this line of thinking in itself became an appetite, as Lewis describes:

“They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

The more ‘liberalised’ sexuality has become, the more ‘sexual inflation’ has risen. With every decade that has passed, the more mainstream media has resembled the pornography of yesteryear, as if the philosophy were ‘things are out of control, so the solution is to further slacken controls’. This, of course, is charitably assuming that the liberalisation of sexuality has been promoted by political, civic and media pressure out of good intentions, and not out of a deliberate desire by third party actors to corrupt and fragment society.

Lewis, therefore, is invoking G. K. Chesterton’s proverbial fence — the idea that a social norm or custom should never be abolished until the reasons why that custom existed in the first place are properly understood. Pre-world war society did not frown upon unchecked sexuality because it ‘didn’t understand it’. It did so off the back of generations of accumulated understanding of how destructive to both individuals and society unleashed animal instinct could be.

Regardless of the reasons why this is really happening, however, Lewis brings the discussion back to us as individuals:

“I do not say you and I are individually responsible for the present situation. Our ancestors have handed over to us organisms which are warped in this respect: and we grow up surrounded by propaganda in favour of unchastity. There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

A moral lapse risks a cascade. A man who stumbles in sin will almost certainly drown in it without exceptional personal will, or a highly supportive community ready and eager to help. As Lewis points out, an entire moneyed industry is out there ready to pounce on any who have stumbled, and whose business model profits directly from their drowning.

Once again, we do not even need to enter deep theology. On a purely practical and earthly level, succumbing to such pressures as these will make you vulnerable to worse ones, as your appetites spiral into costly addiction.

So how can we ourselves course-correct, and raise a shield against this widening panorama of temptation?

How to Embrace Chastity

“Before we are cured, we must want to be cured”, Lewis reminds us. It is not going to happen if you simply sit back and hope things get better. We cannot know how long the wider war will continue. Decades of worsening societal conditioning could still be ahead of us. So for us individually, it has to begin now, with a conscious decision.

It must of course be a serious decision. Here Lewis invokes one of the grandest examples in history of a wayward man who went on to embrace a life of chastity — Saint Augustine of Hippo. Later in his life, the saint reflected upon his failed attempts to escape temptation in youth, realising that had failed because they were half-hearted, encapsulated by the infamous yet relatable words:

“Grant me chastity and continency, but not yet.”

Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, VIII.7

Three things had stood between Augustine and chastity. As Lewis explains, the same three things stand between us and chastity too:

1 - Reject the Normalisation of Vice

“Our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so “natural”, so “healthy,” and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them. Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humour.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

As suggested above, the proliferation of messaging, teaching and imagery corrosive to sexual virtue in the Western world — which Lewis was already noticing in 1942 — has now continued for so long and to such an extent that it is no longer tenable to simply write it off as innocent, accidental or experimental.

However, it is critical to understand that the primary aim of this propaganda is not to convince you that perversions are right, but that they are normal. The greatest deception of Satan, it is said, lies in convincing the world he does not exist. So too is convincing you, through decades of demoralisation propaganda, that what you are seeing is natural, forcing your animal subconscious to therefore view it as desirable.

The way it works, of course, lies in glamorising the act, yet grafting onto it a false consequence. ‘Find yourself’, it says, encouraging you to share your body with many others. ‘You can settle down later’, it reassures you, quietly muffling the damage this will all do to your ability to effectively pair bond, or ever find contentment with the lone spouse you will need to raise your children.

Understand, therefore, that what is happening is being purposefully guided, and view the sources of it no differently than you would a fraudster trying to clone your credit card. What is being promoted is not normal, and the illusion of normality persists only because the majority, who are in truth as repulsed as you, fear censure for saying it publicly. When the darkness does eventually lift, you will be surprised at how many others had remained awake all along too.

In order to be chaste therefore, you must first stop allowing societal forces which do not have your best interests at heart to tell you what kind of being you are…

2 - Stop Pretending Chastity is Impossible

“In the second place, many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility. Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question, one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

Along with the glorification of vice, virtue is either ridiculed or dismissed as unachievable, to further sell the deception that vice is natural and that it is futile to resist it. Many are the metaphors for this, and that of Lewis — of leaving a difficult exam question blank instead of trying and potentially getting it right — is fabulously quaint.

It should be emphasised again that chastity does not and has never meant total abstinence from sex. It means the moderation of it and the practice of it within an environment that closes off the possibility of long term damage to either the parties directly involved or the broader community, while ensuring only the positive consequences remain. This of course, is perfectly possible — it has been the default lifestyle for much of the arc of our civilisation.

Of course our ancestors sinned. Fornication and infidelity occurred even at the highest strata of society. But it was recognised at the time as scandalous, invited public condemnation, and was never celebrated as a viable life choice. Invariably, it also carried consequence, either in legal or social repercussions.

Our ancestors were tempted, but they married young, and thus their instinct had already been channelled into healthy outlets by the age at which many today begin their years of temptation. The age at which marriage occurs, and the expense it incurs, are social and economic factors, not religious ones. It is precisely the culture of liberalised sexuality that has fed its own appetite, prolonging and deepening temptation by encouraging people to put off marriage.

Practising chastity may be challenging. But as Lewis emphasises, just because something is challenging does not make it impossible, especially if artificial obstacles are inflating the actual difficulty:

“Not only in examinations but in war, in mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, even in fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it. It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

3 - Know that Self Control is Not Repression

It is often argued that chastity is a form of ‘unhealthy suppression’. The final recognition therefore is that you do not, in fact, have to accept a binary choice between absolute denial or wanton profligacy.

As Lewis has already pointed out, sexuality is an appetite, and both starvation and gluttony are equally damaging. The chaste man, therefore, has succeeded in balancing the equation by bringing his desire under control instead of allowing his desire to control him:

“On the contrary, those who are seriously attempting chastity are more conscious, and soon know a great deal more about their own sexuality than anyone else. They come to know their desires as Wellington knew Napoleon, or as Sherlock Holmes knew Moriarty; as a rat-catcher knows rats or a plumber knows about leaky pipes. Virtue — even attempted virtue — brings light; indulgence brings fog.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

To embrace chastity, therefore, is not a ‘self-punishment’. It is an investment in your person to prevent your desires from experiencing runaway inflation.

The Centre of Moral Gravity?

With all of this said, Lewis concludes his talk with a reassuring note. That despite the tremendous stigmas that surround discussion of sexuality, and the false presentation of Christianity as an overly stern policeman on the matter:

“The centre of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

As before, we must be careful not to judge a man for sins he can yet redeem, especially if our own are in fact more serious. We as humans are defined by the ‘Animal’ and the ‘Diabolical’ selves. A stumble of chastity is an ‘animal’ sin, and a Christian should always be ready to forgive a stumble that is earnestly admitted. Intentional cruelty, spite and arrogance however are ‘diabolical’, and are unambiguously worse, though this does not let the animal sins off the hook:

“That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.”

C.S. Lewis, Sexual Morality, Mere Christianity III.5

Chastity, therefore, is both desirable and obtainable, and it is never too late to take back control of yourself…

2,779 years ago today, the city of Rome was founded, and the principal taproot of the Western world was planted.

Yet as Romulus marked the boundaries of his new city, few present on the 21st April 753 BC could have imagined that the rustic plot of land before them would one day be the seat of an empire widely revered as the apex of civilisation. But it did, and many of the reasons why are due precisely to the character of its founder.

One year ago, we considered the wider story of Rome’s foundation. In a special piece today, we take an in-depth look at Romulus specifically and how the three key virtues that he embodied shaped both his kingship and the character of the Roman people themselves…

1 - Iustitia - The Pursuit of Justice

Both Romulus and Remus may have been born to an exalted lineage, but they grew up in the most humble of settings. Before their eighteenth birthday, as far as either knew they were the sons of a lowly shepherd, and lived accordingly. As a result, Rome’s first and founding king was the living fusion of classes — noble in bearing yet commoner in upbringing:

“When they came to be men, they showed themselves both in dignity of aspect and elevation of mind not like swineherds and neatherds, but such as we might expect those to be who are born of royal race and are looked upon as the offspring of the gods; and as such they are still celebrated by the Romans in the hymns of their country. But their life was that of herdsmen, and they lived by their own labour, generally upon the mountains in huts which they built, roofs and all, out of sticks and reeds”

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, I.79

The boys were not yet aware that they had been cheated out of their royal destiny when they were mere babies, when Amulius had usurped the Alban throne from their grandfather Numitor. Yet the misrule and injustice that had resulted was evident in the rampant crime that stalked the land, and both started to fight back against it:

“The children thus born and thus brought up, when arrived at the years of manhood, did not loiter away their time in tending the folds or following the flocks, but roamed and hunted in the forests. Having by this exercise improved their strength and courage, they not only encountered wild beasts, but even attacked robbers laden with plunder, and afterwards divided the spoil among the shepherds. And in company with these, the number of their young associates daily increasing, they carried on their business and their sports”

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, I.4

Romulus in particular however, who “seemed to exercise his judgement more, and to have political sagacity” (Plutarch, Life of Romulus, 6), was better able to rally the downtrodden of Latium to the cause.

When the boys turned eighteen, Remus was captured in an ambush set by a band of enraged robbers, and taken to Amulius. It was at this moment that the shepherd Faustulus at last revealed to Romulus his true identity and royal lineage. The only reason, however, that Romulus was well placed to do something about it, to rescue his brother and overthrow the usurper, was due to the years of credibility he had built up as somebody prepared to risk his life for the pursuit of justice. All of which had been done before he was presented with the opportunity of greatness.

His followers — the first ‘Roman army’ — were not a legion of professional soldiers, but a band of aggrieved farmers and outcasts who rallied not just to a man, but a cause that he believably championed. Only together were they able to overthrow Amulius.

It is indeed clear that the spectacular popularity Romulus would go on to enjoy with the ordinary people years later was precisely due to the fairness of his justice towards the powerful and powerless alike. During the brief period in which Romulus shared the kingship with the Sabine prince Titus Tatius, the sources are explicit that the former deservedly emerged as sole King of Rome due to his integrity in the face of his colleague’s corruption:

“In the fifth year of the reign of Tatius, some retainers and kinsmen of his, falling in with ambassadors from Laurentum on their way to Rome, attempted to rob them of their money,⁠ and when they would not stand and deliver, slew them. It was a bold and dreadful crime, and Romulus thought its perpetrators ought to be punished at once, but Tatius tried to put off and turn aside the course of justice. This was the sole occasion of open variance between them; in all other matters they acted in the utmost concert and administered affairs with unanimity. The friends of the slain ambassadors, shut out as they were from all lawful redress, through the efforts of Tatius, fell upon him as he was sacrifi­cing with Romulus at Lavinium, and killed him, but escorted Romulus on his way with loud praises of his justice.”

Plutarch, Life of Romulus, 23.1-3

It is clear too, that the justness of Romulus was instrumental in forging a unique Roman identity which stood out against its neighbours and established a moral weight to ‘Romanness’ itself:

“There was yet a third policy of Romulus, which the Greeks ought to have practised above all others, it being, in my opinion, the best of all political measures, as it laid the most solid foundation for the liberty of the Romans and was no slight factor in raising them to their position of supremacy. It was this: not to slay all the men of military age or to enslave the rest of the population of the cities captured in war or to allow their land to go back to pasturage for sheep, but rather to send settlers thither to possess some part of the country by lot and to make the conquered cities Roman colonies, and even to grant citizen­ship to some of them.”

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, II.16

It may seem a basic ethical advance today — to settle and commit to ‘Romanising’ conquered peoples rather than putting them to the sword — but for a ruler of a small city state in the 8th century BC to choose this, at a time when existential tribal wars were commonplace, was truly extraordinary.

Not for nothing therefore did the Romans go on to worship Iustitia (the origin of ‘Lady Justice’) as a goddess. Not for nothing, either, did multiple authors centuries later deplore the rapacious sackings of Carthage and Corinth in 146 BC as heinous acts which fundamentally ruptured the Roman character and fatally tarnished the legitimacy of the Republic. As Velleius Paterculus put it, “The path of virtue was abandoned for that of corruption, not gradually, but in headlong course” (History of Rome, 2.1).

Romulus was just, and at her height, so too was Rome. At the same time, the justice of the Roman state would be rooted in the most basic societal unit of all — the family…

2a - Pietas to Family

One of the chief Roman virtues, pietas, has an easy but misleading translation in English. It is the direct root of piety, but the Roman concept was far broader than pure religious devotion, and therefore far more significant on a societal level.

Pietas is better translated as duty, and with it the Romans intended obligation to the family and country as much as to the gods. Furthermore, by ‘family’ they did not simply mean your immediate relations, but your ancestors too. The image of Aeneas dutifully carrying his elderly father on his shoulders from the burning ruins of Troy is a potent image of pietas in classical mythology. More immediate to the first Romans, however, was the example of Romulus himself.

As mentioned previously Romulus had already distinguished himself before the Foundation of Rome by overthrowing the cruel Amulius from the throne of Alba Longa. A crucial detail that needs to be reiterated is that Romulus did not do this out of a personal quest for power. The uprising swelled due to the general injustice of Amulius, but the catalyst for Romulus taking up arms was the duty he owed to his captured brother, and moreover, his duty to avenge the injustice done to his mother and grandfather:

“When the youth heard every circumstance of their fortune from the beginning, he was touched both with compassion for his mother and with solicitude for Numitor. And after taking much counsel with Faustulus, he decided to give up his plan for an immediate attack, but to get ready a larger force, in order to free his whole family from the lawlessness of Amulius, and he resolved to risk the direst peril for the sake of the greatest rewards, but to act in concert with his grandfather in whatever the other should see fit to do.”

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, I.80

It is also crucial to reiterate that up until this point, Romulus did not know that Rhea Silvia or Numitor were in any way related to him. According to the prevailing accounts, it is only after Remus was captured that the shepherd Faustulus divulged this truth to him. Romulus, therefore, takes up arms not out of any sentiment towards the individuals, but out of pure pietas — duty to family because it is the right thing to do.

Fine, you may counter. But since he is still restoring his family to the monarchy, is this not simply indirect personal ambition?

No, it wasn’t. For a start, once the uprising is successful, and Amulius is slain, both Romulus and Remus immediately submit to Numitor and pledge absolute fealty to him, before removing themselves from the Alban royal succession:

“When the young princes, coming up with their band through the middle of the assembly, saluted their grandfather king, an approving shout, following from all the people present, ratified to him both that title and the sovereignty. Thus the government of Alba being committed to Numitor, a desire seized Romulus and Remus to build a city on the spot where they had been exposed and brought up.”

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, I.6

Romulus and Remus move to found a new city precisely to not intrude upon the governance of the city they had just liberated. There was no earthly reward for their deeds other than restoring the proper balance, and the knowledge that the evil committed against their house had been avenged.

One of the great achievements of Romulus as king was indeed his meshing of family and civic duty, resulting in one of the most characteristic aspects of Roman civilisation — the close bond between clients and their patrons. As Dionysius of Halicarnassus recounted, it was Romulus who first legislated this, establishing an explicitly paternal bond — patron and patrician after all deriving from pater (father) — between elites and their social inferiors:

“It was the duty of the patricians to explain to their clients the laws, of which they were ignorant; to take the same care of them when absent as present, doing everything for them that fathers do for their sons with regard both to money and to the contracts that related to money; to bring suit on behalf of their clients when they were wronged in connexion with contracts, and to defend them against any who brought charges against them; and, to put the matter briefly, to secure for them both in private and in public affairs all that tranquillity of which they particularly stood in need.”

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, II.10

In short, Romulus birthed the concept of noblesse oblige, recasting the cold and inhuman structure of the state into one massive extended and interconnected family. Thus did Romulus elevate pietas into a civic virtue, and needless to say, this played a fundamental role in establishing a uniquely Roman identity built on organic and meaningful social cohesion.

But you may be thinking that there is a large elephant in the room. After all, didn’t Romulus kill Remus? How could the murder of his own brother possibly square with pietas?

Perverse though it may initially sound, the death of Remus actually represents the other side of the pietas coin. Ironically, it reveals the one thing that superseded family duty in the eyes of the Romans…

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I once asked my grandmother a simple question which received a profound answer.

“What would you say was the biggest difference between the world of today, and that of your childhood?”, I ventured. Since she had grown up in the rural Yorkshire of the 1930’s, matured under one world war and outlived the ‘Cold’ one, while witnessing much of the arc of Europe’s decay, I was fascinated to hear what she would choose.

To my then surprise, I was entirely taken aback when she replied almost immediately, with no reference at all to either technology or geopolitics.

“People were more content”, she spoke, with a forthright confidence tempered by a distinct flash of melancholy in her eye that I have never forgotten. It was not really until this moment that I had ever properly considered the meaning of the word ‘content’, and the simple yet critical distinction that separates ‘being content’ from ‘being happy’.

Yet over two millennia ago, one of the favoured poets of the Emperor Augustus wrote an iconic satire on exactly this subject.

So what does it mean to ‘be content’, and what can Horace teach us about the forgotten art of ‘being content’, and achieving a fulfilling life?

Is the Faraway Grass Greener?

Content, adjective - Pleased with your situation and not hoping for change or improvement

Key to the difference between contentedness and happiness is time. We are made ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ by emotional stimuli that tend to be temporary. To be ‘content’, however, is by definition ‘long term’.

A miserable life can be punctuated by happy moments. A content life, however, maintains a positive baseline even in neutral gear. ‘Happy’ or ‘sad’ moments are merely deviations from a life already worth living. It is therefore important to distinguish between a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ day and a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ life. The challenge, of course, is that it is in our rawest nature to assume that we have been dealt the worst hand in life, especially when our judgement has been impaired by a bad day.

One could argue that this is ultimately the primary driver of human ambition, to aspire to a ‘better’ life. Horace indeed begins his Satire, in an address to his patron Maecenas, by aiming at precisely this:

“How come, Maecenas, no one alive’s ever content

With the lot he chose or the one fate threw in his way,

But praises those who pursue some alternative track?”

Horace, Satires, I.1

He proceeds to cite amusing yet timelessly relatable examples of men who wished they had a ‘better’ job:

“‘O fortunate tradesman!’ the ageing soldier cries

Body shattered by harsh service, bowed by the years.

The merchant however, ship tossed by a southern gale,

Says: ‘Soldiering’s better. And why? You charge and then:

It’s a quick death in a moment, or a joyful victory won’”

Horace, Satires, I.1

How many times do we find ourselves thinking ‘If only I had X, life would be better’?

A more common and contemporary incarnation of Horace’s merchant could be the man who looks with envy upon his peer who gets to ‘travel a lot’ with work. How splendid it must be, he understandably reasons, to escape stale rhythm and frequent distant lands, all on the company payroll?

His peer, however, may well return that envy, seeing that the promise of ‘travel for work’ failed to establish a fulfilling baseline to his work. He travels, yes, but has to wake up earlier, loses part of his weekend, and said ‘travel’ consists almost exclusively of the most unpleasant aspects of ‘travel’ — transit between airport and office and hours of waiting in stressful terminals — and finding that evenings are no respite from the working environment. How splendid it must be, he understandably reasons, to have a family home to return to each evening following a brief commute? I just want to relax!

So what if these men could suddenly switch lives? Horace asks that very question:

“Here’s what I’m getting at. If some god said: ‘Here I am!

Now I’ll perform whatever you wish: you be a merchant

Who but now was a soldier: you the lawyer become a farmer:

You change roles with him, he with you, and depart. Well!

What are you waiting for? They’d refuse, on the verge of bliss.

What in reason would stop Jove rightly swelling his cheeks

Then, in anger, and declaring that never again will he

Be so obliging as to attend to their prayers”

Horace, Satires, I.1

Few things indeed demean a man like complaining without correcting. Just how seriously have you considered the consequences, both intended and unintended, of that life you assume to be better than yours? If you would not accept in an instant the opportunity to take it, then that is the soul within you applying the brakes and warning you that you have not yet thought this through properly.

Turning your back on everything and chasing a new life could be the best thing you ever did. It could also be a disaster you will lament until the grave.

So how can we better judge what will bring us a contented life? As Horace declares, “joking aside, let’s turn to more serious thoughts”…

What Are We Working For?

Instead of allowing ourselves to be tempted by individual aspects of otherwise complex lifestyles, Horace advises greater introspection.

After all, how can we be sure that the life you covet is superior to the one you currently possess unless you are clear about what exactly it is you want to be working for?

“The farmer turning the heavy clay with sturdy plough,

The rascally shopkeeper, the soldier, the sailor

Who boldly sails the seas, all say they only do so

So as to retire in true idleness when they are old,

Having made a pile: just as their exemplar

The tiny labouring ant drags all she can together,

Adding what’s in her mouth to the heap she’s building,

Neither ignorant of nor careless of her tomorrow.”

Horace, Satires, I.1

There is perhaps no cliché more tired than ‘Money doesn’t buy happiness’. Not because it is not true, but primarily as we have abdicated genuine consideration of its meaning in favour of merely quoting the phrase. One man who did consider it, in extraordinary depth, was Aristotle, in a text we have previously explored at INVICTUS.

The insight of Horace, however, is no less relatable to the plight of modern man. As per his well-chosen metaphor, the man who is simply enduring a job, saving money in the hope of enjoying retirement, is no better than a worker ant. Arguably, however, it is worse. As humans, we are imbued with qualities which elevate us above the beasts, and forcing the life of an automaton upon the soul of a man is to force a square peg into a round hole.

If your job brings no joy beyond watching the savings rise in your bank account, you will never lead a content life, since the soul is fed yet going malnourished. Likewise, what good is placing your hopes in future happiness, if you endure a lifetime of ‘grind’ only to drop dead the day before your retirement? Is that really a gamble worth taking?

“Nothing deflects you from riches, not scorching heat, fire

Winter, sword or sea, while there’s a man richer than you.

Yet what good is all that mass of silver and gold to you,

If, fearful, you bury it secretly in some hole in the ground?

‘If I broke into it,’ you say, ‘ it would all be gone, to the last

Brass farthing.’ Yet if you don’t what’s the point of your pile?”

Horace, Satires, I.1

‘What is the point of your pile’ indeed? What are you actually saving for? If you know that the activity or possession you covet will improve your life, what is stopping you from claiming it now? Or more pressingly, if you do not possess it now, how can you be sure that it will improve your life at all?

The content man, after all, understands the most sincere sources of satisfaction are to be found in the everyday, not the rare occasion:

“Tell me then, what difference is there to the man

Who lives within Nature’s bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred

Acres or a thousand? ‘But it’s sweet to take from a big heap.’

Even so why praise your granaries more than our bins,

So long as we’re able to draw as much from the smaller?”

Horace, Satires, I.1

In order to be content, after all, we do not need anything like as much as we think. We spend exorbitantly in order to chase either thrill or peace. But thrill, as a temporary stimulation, by definition cannot be permanent. Peace however can, but can be achieved as readily in a comfortable chair in the garden or on a blanket in the park as on a distant beach.

What matters is that your source of peace is readily accessible in time and place, such that it can form a part of your daily life rather than an annual treat.

What Horace has to say next, however, is vital for identifying that peace. All it takes is two things….

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“A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children’s affection than the need they have of his assistance”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

Fatherhood is, if nothing else, the highest stakes balancing act a man will face in his life.

When to step in, and when to step back, is the near daily judgement call of a father. Should he get it right, both father and child will grow. Should he get it wrong, the child will slip, and it is the father’s curse to live long enough to witness the fall.

Likewise with affection. How can a father express paternal love in a manner which fortifies his child instead of spoiling him?

It is a timeless question which has troubled men of all stations throughout history, and in the late 16th century, one French nobleman sought to answer it, in an aptly named essay titled Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children.

Here is what Michel de Montaigne can teach you about becoming a better father, and ensuring your family legacy lies in safe hands…

The Truth of Paternal Love

Fully a product of the French Renaissance, Michel Eyquem, Lord of Montaigne, received a classical education so rigorous that when he became a teenager, Latin was the only language he knew.

As a respected courtier of Kings Charles IX and Henry IV, Montaigne was also intimately familiar with the customs of aristocratic France, and he would draw upon all of this when he began to compose his grand inquiry into human nature — the Essays — in the 1570’s. Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, which forms Chapter VIII of the second book of the Essays, is indeed intended for an aristocratic audience.

Addressing his work to a certain Madame D’Estissac, the widow of a nobleman, he praises her lavishly for the devotion with which she has raised her son, the future Monsieur D’Estissac. The ‘cause’ of the essay is that son, and Montaigne hoped by his words to leave a record for him of the sacrifices which raised him. It is with a harsh truth that he thus begins:

“If there be any law truly natural, that is to say, any instinct that is seen universally and perpetually imprinted in both beasts and men (which is not without controversy), I can say, that in my opinion, next to the care every animal has of its own preservation, and to avoid that which may hurt him, the affection that the begetter bears to his offspring holds the second place in this rank”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

In other words, our most basic instinct is self-preservation, followed by the love of a parent for their child. Yet Montaigne observes, citing Aristotle, that it is the fate of a creator to love his creation more than that creation will ever love him in return:

“He who confers a benefit on any one, loves him better than he is beloved by him again: that he to whom is owing, loves better than he who owes; and that every artificer is fonder of his work, than, if that work had sense, it would be of him…

He who confers a benefit exercises a fine and honest action; he who receives it exercises the useful only”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

It is the natural order of things, therefore, for paternal love to be selfless, and it is futile for a father to expect his son to reciprocate that love equally. A father’s love, therefore, should serve to foster that same paternal love in his child, so that it will in turn be shown to his grandchild.

Montaigne develops this with a surprisingly cutting and bold observation. That a father should not confuse being taken in by the ‘cute’ stage of fatherhood, when the child is an infant, with actual paternal love:

“Tis oft-times quite otherwise; and, most commonly, we find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterwards, with their most complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men; and some there are, who are very liberal in buying them balls to play withal, who are very close-handed for the least necessary expense when they come to age.”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

By all means, we should play with our children. Montaigne’s point, however, is that we should not lose sight of the fact that the person they grow up to become afterwards is what everything hinges on. While maternal love is essential for infancy, paternal love grows in importance as the child departs it, and as he approaches autonomy.

A father who misjudges this crucial dynamic is heading for bitterness in old age, as his warped instinct laments his adult son’s loss of innocence, and sees him as his rival and not his successor:

“Nay, it looks as if the jealousy of seeing them appear in and enjoy the world when we are about to leave it, rendered us more niggardly and stingy towards them; it vexes us that they tread upon our heels, as if to solicit us to go out; if this were to be feared, since the order of things will have it so that they cannot, to speak the truth, be nor live, but at the expense of our being and life, we should never meddle with being fathers at all.”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

So how are we to avoid this trap, and cultivate fatherly affection in a manner constructive to both ourselves and our sons?

How a Father Can Fail

There are many ways in which we could judge the success or failure of fatherhood. An obvious one that many would cite today is the child spiralling into a life of crime and substance abuse.

Montaigne’s assertion however is arguably more helpful, as it establishes a metric for the father himself:

“Tis unjust that an old fellow, broken and half dead, should alone, in a corner of the chimney, enjoy the money that would suffice for the maintenance and advancement of many children, and suffer them, in the meantime, to lose their’ best years for want of means to advance themselves in the public service and the knowledge of men.”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

In other words, if a father feels he cannot trust his matured children to manage the family estate responsibly, and therefore clings onto it to the bitter end, paternal love has corrupted to paternal spite. Your role as father, as we have after all established, is not to ‘enjoy’ your time with your children, but to raise them into responsible heirs to your family legacy. That therefore is the sole benchmark of consequence when it comes to judging a father.

The death of a wholesome and successful father, Montaigne argues, should not be the moment of traumatic transition from one generation to the next. Passing on responsibility for the headship of the family should have occurred well in advance. The benefits, after all, are twofold. On the one hand, the father will be there to advise, and thus be able to steer the direction of the family. On the other, the son will not be thrown into the deep end without preparation, and will benefit from an apprenticeship of responsibility.

Furthermore, Montaigne argues that at the same time, it is particularly repugnant to horde wealth that our children could make better use of than ourselves:

“A man by this course drives them to despair, and to seek out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide for their own support: as I have, in my time, seen several young men of good extraction so addicted to stealing, that no correction could cure them of it”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

If the child is upstanding, well-intentioned and honed with correct morals, yet faced with an arbitrary barrier caused by financial want, the father should then step in if he possesses the means that would otherwise simply languish untouched in the bank.

A father who, conversely, insists on withholding everything until his death when he could have done otherwise, is, Montaigne argues, committing a double evil. Firstly, he is needlessly fostering a temptation to sin in his children. Secondly, and more damaging to himself, he is encouraging his children to view him as valuable only for what he will leave behind, in place of who he is here and now:

“A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children’s affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection; he must render himself worthy to be respected by his virtue and wisdom, and beloved by his kindness and the sweetness of his manners; even the very ashes of a rich matter have their value; and we are wont to have the bones and relics of worthy men in regard and reverence. No old age can be so decrepid in a man who has passed his life in honour, but it must be venerable, especially to his children, whose soul he must have trained up to their duty by reason, not by necessity and the need they have of him, nor by harshness and compulsion”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

A father has failed in his affection, therefore, when he has made his children dependent on him by coercion and the imposition of arbitrary authority. It is quite logical as a result that Montaigne equates this with the use of force against a child, which he viewed as a perversion of paternal love which backfires far too often:

“I condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul that is designed for honour and liberty. There is I know not what of servile in rigour and constraint; and I am of opinion that what is not to be done by reason, prudence, and address, is never to be affected by force… I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more wilfully obstinate”

Michel de Montaigne, Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children, II.8

Montaigne therefore has much wisdom to offer on the ‘youth’ phase of fatherhood. Yet what is arguably more important is the ‘mature’ phase of fatherhood. A father, after all, is the creator of a new generation, and it is a fundamental part of his duty to prepare himself and his family for the transition to that generation.

Crucially, as Montaigne argues, how a father passes the baton on is the difference between a family enduring in strength, and falling apart in acrimony.…

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“We are showing that Englishmen can still die with a bold spirit”

Robert Falcon Scott, Letter To Sir J. M. Barrie, March 1912

To be a leader is to be responsible for others. What could be a more harrowing test for a leader, therefore, than the dread realisation that those he is responsible for are going to die, and there is absolutely nothing he can do to save them?

It is precisely this monstrous scenario which confronted Captain Robert Falcon Scott, leader of the fateful Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole, in the March of 1912.

Crushed by the disappointment of being beaten to the Pole by a rival team, Scott and his four companions would then be crushed by an Antarctic freeze whose fury exceeded all predictions of the time. Over weeks of torturous hardship, the expedition transformed into one of the most tragic last stands of Man against Nature in history.

It was too much for the human body to endure, and one by one, all five would perish in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. But from this tragedy a heroism emerged which would inspire a nation, and from his moving final acts, leave a case study of leadership in the face of doom.

So, 114 years after his heroic end, let us explore what Captain Scott’s extraordinary diaries and moving final letters can teach you about how a true leader faces certain failure…

At INVICTUS, our mission is to explore the practical wisdom you can learn from the greatest leaders, thinkers, and artists of the past, through their own words and deeds.

If this resonates with you then subscribe below to receive an in-depth article every week exploring how influential figures were able to achieve what they did, and how you can start following in their footsteps…

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What is Beyond Control is Beyond Worry

The 17th January 1912 should have been the crowning moment of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s life.

After 13 years of preparation, and 78 days fighting against the elements, himself and the four men of the Terra Nova expedition he had chosen — Henry Robertson Bowers, Edward Adrian Wilson, Edgar Evans and Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates — reached the South Pole. They were the first Englishmen to do so. To their dismay, however, they were not the first men.

On their approach, they had discovered Polheim, a tent crowned with a Norwegian flag, containing a letter which confirmed that a team led by Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the Pole by just five weeks. In his journal — which was recovered alongside his body many months later — Scott recorded his aching disappointment, and the shame he felt at having let down his companions:

“Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority”

Robert Falcon Scott, 17th January 1912

Only one team could ever be the first to the Pole. Finding out they had been denied the chance forever, knowing the pain it had taken to get here, and the thought of returning all the way to Britain as failures, must have been agonising. Regardless, Scott allowed himself only the briefest outburst, before doing all that was in his limited power to raise the men’s spirits:

“Well, it is something to have got here, and the wind may be our friend tomorrow. We have had a fat Polar hoosh [A high-energy stew commonly eaten by polar explorers] in spite of our chagrin, and feel comfortable inside — added a small stick of chocolate and the queer taste of a cigarette brought by Wilson. Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it”

Robert Falcon Scott, 17th January 1912

Hindsight, however, has rendered those last words exceptionally poignant. 862 miles on foot, across the world’s most inhospitable terrain, now stood between Scott’s team and salvation. Little did they know however, that the Antarctic summer of 1912 would be a rare anomaly, and one far worse than the experts who had advised Scott in London had even imagined was possible.

Scott’s foremost quality, however, was his acceptance of what was in his control, and what was not. There was nothing he could do to stop the plunge in temperatures to a crippling -40°C, nor prevent the horrifying consequences of the weather on his men. A week out from the Pole, Edward Wilson was struggling with snow blindness and Titus Oates was having problems walking, while Edgar Evans was suffering from blistered fingers, and his nose was frostbitten.

What he could do, however, was balance morale and progress. The days could be terrible, so Scott at least made sure the nights offered something to look forward to, as his later entry on the 4th March rather sums up:

“Things looking very black indeed. As usual we forgot our trouble last night, got into our bags, slept splendidly on good hoosh, woke and had another, and started marching”

Robert Falcon Scott, 4th March 1912

As long as Scott was keeping the men on track, fed and rested to the best of his ability and the means available, he was doing all he could. The tragedy of Terra Nova, however, was that the uncontrollable overpowered the controllable.

On the 4th February, both Scott and Evans plunged into a crevasse that opened up in front of them. While Scott miraculously avoided serious harm, the already suffering Evans evidently suffered a serious head injury, and would never be his normal self again. “A rather trying position. Evans has nearly broken down in brain, we think”, Scott wrote on the 16th. The next day, seeing Evans lagging behind, Scott went back for him, reaching him just as he collapsed in the snow. But there was nothing he or anyone could do for a man slipping into a coma in deepest Antarctica, except be with him in his most vulnerable moment. The 35 year old Edgar Evans died later that night surrounded by his comrades.

The unseasonable chill was a double curse to the Terra Nova team. Apart from the obvious danger to the men themselves, the friction caused by the ice crystals on the ground made it even harder to pull the sledges. Progress was demoralisingly slow, and every delay threw off the timings of the carefully organised expedition. As a result, when Scott and his men reached the Mount Hooper depot on the 9th March, hoping to meet supplies and salvation from the coast, they met ice and air:

“Yesterday we marched up the depot, Mt. Hooper. Cold comfort. Shortage on our allowance all round. I don’t know that anyone is to blame. The dogs which would have been our salvation have evidently failed. Meares had a bad trip home I suppose.”

Robert Falcon Scott, 10th March 1912

To this day, the conduct of Cecil Meares and the explanation for why he was not there remains debated. To his credit, Scott refused even in his own private diary to blame anybody. In any case, he knew that any reasons were irrelevant in that moment. He was there and the essential supplies were not.

As expedition leader, Scott now had to face the blunt truth that they did not have sufficient food or fuel to leave Antarctica alive. As a leader, his priority now was no longer survival, but legacy…

If You Cannot Save Lives, Save Memories

“No idea there could be temperatures like this at this time of year with such winds. Truly awful outside the tent. Must fight it out to the last biscuit, but can’t reduce rations.”

Robert Falcon Scott, 14th March 1912

The Mount Hooper depot had been among the last of Scott’s hopes, and so too that of the men. Two days later, when it became clear that reaching the next supply base, fifty five miles yonder at One Ton Depot, was all but a mathematical impossibility, Scott was forced to give the very worst of orders.

He commanded Wilson, who was in charge of the medicine, to hand each man 30 opium tablets, as “the means of ending our troubles to us, so that any one of us may know how to do so”. Nobody would be forced to endure a slow death, and a painless way out remained should they choose it. To their credit, when the bodies were later found, nobody had touched them. Time, however, was all but up.

On the 16th March, Oates, by now almost immobilised by frostbite and gangrene, and wracked by guilt at slowing the others down, committed a sacrifice which has since passed into immortality:

He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning—yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time’. He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.”

Robert Falcon Scott on Lawrence Oates, 16th March 1912

Scott, unwilling to anchor a man to life who had already made his peace with death, did not stop him. What he did do, however, was turn his thoughts back to what little power did remain to him. He could no longer save his men’s lives. But he could save the memories their loved ones — and the world — would have of them. Trusting a search party would find their bodies one day, Scott began to write messages for the families of the men. In his diary entry for the 16th March, he wrote the following for Oates, who had been a veteran of the Boer War:

“Should this be found I want these facts recorded. Oates’ last thoughts were of his Mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his death. We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not — would not — give up hope to the very end”

Robert Falcon Scott on Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates, 16th March 1912

What a comfort it would surely have been to Oates’ mother, to know her son had not died alone, and that he died a dutiful son and soldier.

Only a few more days passed before Scott, now suffering from debilitating frostbite himself, would need to write the others. Inching on through the blizzard, the last three of the Terra Nova got within just eleven miles of the next depot, before the storms grew too much. Immobilised in their tent, their life force drained over the last ten days of March. It would appear that Bowers was the next to go, and Scott wrote the following letter to his mother:

My Dear Mrs. Bowers,

I am afraid this will reach you after one of the heaviest blows of your life. I write when we are very near the end of our journey, and I am finishing it in company with two gallant, noble gentlemen. One of these is your son. He had come to be one of my closest and soundest friends, and I appreciate his wonderful upright nature, his ability and energy. As the troubles have thickened his dauntless spirit ever shone brighter and he has remained cheerful, hopeful, and indomitable to the end. The ways of Providence are inscrutable, but there must be some reason why such a young, vigorous and promising life is taken.

My whole heart goes out in pity for you.

Yours,

R. Scott

To the end he has talked of you and his sisters. One sees what a happy home he must have had and perhaps it is well to look back on nothing but happiness.

He remains unselfish, self-reliant and splendidly hopeful to the end, believing in God’s mercy to you

Robert Falcon Scott, Letter to Mrs Bowers, March 1912

It was as brief as the deep chill would allow, as the dying Scott raced to write to as many as he could. By the last days of the month, he found himself alone in the tent, as Wilson too succumbed at his side. To his comrade’s now widow, the Captain extolled his bravery at the end:

My Dear Mrs. Wilson,

If this letter reaches you Bill and I will have gone out together. We are very near it now and I should like you to know how splendid he was at the end — everlastingly cheerful and ready to sacrifice himself for others, never a word of blame to me for leading him into this mess. He is not suffering, luckily, at least only minor discomforts.

His eyes have a comfortable blue look of hope and his mind is peaceful with the satisfaction of his faith in regarding himself as part of the great scheme of the Almighty. I can do no more to comfort you than to tell you that he died as he lived, a brave, true man — the best of comrades and staunchest of friends.

My whole heart goes out to you in pity,

Yours,

R. Scott

Robert Falcon Scott, Letter to Mrs Wilson, March 1912

So little had remained to Scott, but at the same time, everything. By a few words, he had ensured his men would be remembered, and remembered as heroes. His duty to them fulfilled with admirable humility, the Captain then turned to his own family…

Remember Your Family

One cannot imagine the feeling, or perhaps by then that total absence of feeling which comes with the accepting embrace of certain death, that accompanied Robert Falcon Scott as he commenced his last letter to his wife Kathleen with the words “To my Widow”.

Certainly, he harboured great foresight, thinking of almost everything. First of course, a reminder that he was with her in all ways except in body:

“Dearest darling — we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through — In our short lunch hours I take advantage of a very small measure of warmth to write letters preparatory to a possible end — the first is naturally to you on whom my thoughts mostly dwell waking or sleeping — If anything happens to me I shall like you to know how much you have meant to me and that pleasant recollections are with me as I depart…

…Well dear heart I want you to take the whole thing very sensibly as I’m sure you will – The boy will be your comfort. I had looked forward to helping you to bring him up but it is a satisfaction to feel that he is safe with you”

Robert Falcon Scott, Letter to My Widow

He proceeds to reassure her that he will bear no ill will at all should she choose to remarry, and indeed encourages her to do just that if honourable circumstances permit it, and it will make her happy. Moreover, no man can remain unmoved by the brief paragraphs Scott was then able to write about his son. Wisdom he had doubtless hoped to impart over many long years, compressed now into mere lines on a page:

“I must write a little letter for the boy if time can be found, to be read when he grows up. The inherited vice from my side of the family is indolence - above all he must guard, and you must guard him, against that. Make him a strenuous man. I had to force myself into being strenuous, as you know – had always an inclination to be idle. My father was idle and it brought much trouble…

You see I am anxious for you and the boy’s future – make the boy interested in natural history if you can, it is better than games – they encourage it at some schools – I know you will keep him out in the open air – try and make him believe in a God, it is comforting. Oh my dear my dear what dreams I have had of his future and yet oh my girl I know you will face it stoically…”

Robert Falcon Scott, Letter to My Widow

It is notable that Scott, of the last Terra Nova men, had been perhaps the most sceptical when it came to faith. Yet one has the distinct impression that his last days had a powerful effect on him indeed — as of course they would — and that sharing the company of devout men rekindled that faith. Certainly Wilson’s own last letter to his parents reveals the immense spiritual fortitude with which he had faced his own death:

“Looking forward to the day when we shall all meet together in the hereafter. I have had a very happy life and I look forward to a very happy life hereafter when we shall all be together again. God knows I have no fear of meeting Him–for He will be merciful to all of us”

Dr Edward Wilson to his Parents, March 1912

In any case, at least one of Scott’s last wishes was handsomely fulfilled. Kathleen ensured that his son, then three and half years old, would develop more than a mere ‘interest' in natural history. Forty nine years later, Peter Scott would help to found the World Wide Fund for Nature, and would receive a knighthood for services to animal conservation.

But beyond his men, and his kin, Captain Scott was well aware that there was a third party waiting for news…

Let Death Mean Something

As one of the last great wildernesses on Earth, the South Pole remained the last Holy Grail of the Heroic Age of Exploration. Tremendous prestige was guaranteed to whoever conquered it. The Terra Nova expedition had hoped to do so in the name of Britain, and Scott was acutely aware of this burden of expectation.

Concluding the letter to his widow, Scott made plain his duty to his King and Country:

“There is a piece of the Union flag I put up at the South Pole in my private kit bag together with Amundsen’s black flag and other trifles – give a small piece of the Union flag to the King and a small piece to Queen Alexandra and keep the rest a poor trophy for you!”

Robert Falcon Scott, Letter to My Widow

At the same time, the question of what kind of example he was setting evidently troubled Scott greatly in his last days. Among the twelve letters he was able to author before the end, there are frequent urgings to his friends to look beyond the material failure of the expedition:

“After all we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. We could have come through had we neglected the sick”

Robert Falcon Scott to Sir Francis Charles Bridgeman, March 1912

Captain Scott would rather have died than ‘succeeded’ if the price of victory meant leaving a man behind. Indeed, as a true Edwardian gentleman he was proud to die with this principle unstained:

“I think this makes an example for Englishmen of the future, and that the country ought to help those who are left behind to mourn us”

Robert Falcon Scott to Sir James Barrie, March 1912

To this end, Scott wrote one final, extraordinary appeal, this time to the British people themselves. The Message to the Public would soon become famous, and read across every corner of the Empire. It is a straightforward piece, which achieved three things. Firstly, Scott succinctly explained the reasons for his failure. Secondly, and more crucially, he emphasised that this failure should not deter future attempts in better conditions:

“The Beardmore Glacier is not difficult in fine weather, but on our return we did not get a single completely fine day; this with a sick companion enormously increased our anxieties…

…But all the facts above enumerated were as nothing to the surprise which awaited us on the Barrier. I maintain that our arrangements for returning were quite adequate, and that no one in the world would have expected the temperatures and surfaces which we encountered at this time of the year. On the summit in lat. 85° 86° we had -20°, -30°. On the Barrier in lat. 82°, 10,000 feet lower, we had -30° in the day, -47° at night pretty regularly, with continuous head wind during our day marches”

Robert Falcon Scott, Message to the Public, March 1912

Scott was adamant that the Terra Nova should be taken as something to be learned from, that men should continue to seek to do extraordinary things, and that unforeseen disasters are simply the price of discovery.

In that vein, he concluded his letter with a stirring call to Britannia, to not give up on heroism:

“We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last. But if we have been willing to give our lives to this enterprise, which is for the honour of our country, I appeal to our countrymen to see that those who depend on us are properly cared for.

Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.

R. SCOTT

Robert Falcon Scott, Message to the Public, March 1912

To his final appeal, the nation responded extravagantly. Over £75,000 (At least £10 million in today’s money) was raised in public donations to support the dependents of the dead men. By order of the Educational Council, the story of Scott’s expedition was read to over 750,000 schoolchildren, as the men of the Terra Nova became the last great heroes of ‘old’ Britain, before the First World War mounted its near fatal challenge to the notion of heroism mere months later…

The Noblest End

His last tasks as leader performed, on the 29th March 1912, the last man of the Terra Nova’s polar conquerors left his last diary entry:

“Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.

It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.

R. Scott.

For God’s sake look after our people”

Robert Falcon Scott, 29th March 1912

It is a mark of Scott’s determination that the Terra Nova should mean something that along with their dwindling provisions, the men had hauled thirty-five pounds of Arctic rock samples to the very end. Upon their recovery, the data retrieved from those very samples would be used to help scientists calculate the age of Antartica itself.

The scientific contribution of the Terra Nova was grand therefore, yet its heroic legacy is grander still.

Seven months later, when a recovery team at last found the lonely tent of the Terra Nova, the bodies revealed something that the letters alongside them could not. Scott, it transpired, had died last, and his final act was to throw his arm over the body of Wilson, in one final brotherly embrace. As Royal Naval surgeon Dr Edward Atkinson would go on to state in his subsequent report:

Thus can nobility of spirit transform earthly defeat into everlasting triumph...

Do you ever wake up in the morning to find yourself more drained than you were the night before? As if the debt of stress is somehow never paid off, no matter how many hours of sleep you get?

‘That’s just how life is now’, the contemporary man may retort with quiet resignation, as he braces for another day of ‘the grind’. After all, the only apparent ‘solutions’ offered are questionable therapy and prescription medicines, for a problem which should not even exist in the first place. What, you may wonder, can our ancestors possibly have to say about this most stereotypically modern of struggles?

Rather a lot actually. Two thousand years ago, the Stoic philosopher Seneca considered how ‘preoccupied’ living gives the false impression that ‘life is too short’. Between his time and ours, however, the problem of ‘sleep not working’ was explored in further detail by none other than the man who largely sparked the Italian Renaissance.

In the 1360’s, the Tuscan poet and scholar Petrarch drew upon libraries of ancient wisdom to author one of the Western world’s most criminally overlooked treasures — De remediis utriusque fortunae, or Remedies for Good or Ill Fortunes. One of the 254 essays of practical wisdom contained within, simply titled Leisure and Rest, was written for anybody who feels crushed by routine and cheated by leisure.

Today therefore, we explore what Petrarch can teach you about what is really causing your tiredness, and how you can start waking up actually feeling refreshed…

To Enjoy Leisure, or To Use It?

Petrarch, who survived the Black Death to witness the hellscape it left in its wake, was a man determined to revive not only the glories of Antiquity, but the ways of thinking which enabled them.

The way he writes De remediis utriusque fortunae is typical of this. Instead of being a solid text of dry and continuous thought, he adopts the ancient Greek model of presenting each essay as if it were a natural conversation. Leisure and Rest, indeed, is a ‘dialogue’ between the allegorical figures of Joy and Reason, who both represent the two sides of human nature — the emotional, and the rational — and so begins the verbal duel:

JOY: Leisure and rest from exertion have come to me.

REASON: Two of the most welcome goods in human life, provided that immoderate use does not turn them into the gravest of ills, which has happened to many, inflicting harm to the body as well as to the mind, swelling the one and corroding the other.

JOY: I enjoy the most delightful leisure.

REASON: You should say “I use the most delightful leisure.” Here on this earth nothing can be enjoyed, but many things can be used — thus says the salutary doctrine.’

Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortunae, 21

‘Hurrah!’, our emotional side celebrates, ‘I have time for a bit of leisure!’. Petrarch, however, wastes no time before ensuring our rational counterpart hits us with a warning. That having ‘time for leisure’ is not by itself any guarantee that this will translate into actual ‘leisure time’.

On the contrary, if misused, what you are calling leisure could well be the exact opposite, “inflicting harm to the body as well as to the mind”. But Joy, unable to see past impulse, gets a little defensive:

JOY: I have delightful leisure.

REASON: It matters much what kind of leisure this is, because there are two kinds of leisure. One which is active, full of work even when at ease, and concerned with honest efforts. Nothing is sweeter than this. The other kind is sluggish and dull, wholly given to repose. Nothing is more detestable, nothing more similar to the grave. And thus the first kind produces often great attainments, useful to the world and bringing glory to its authors; but the second brings nothing, save inglorious torpor and numb stupefaction. The first is fit for the philosophically minded, the second for dullards given to their bellies and snoring, who seek to eat and sleep without interruption.

Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortunae, 21

‘It must be leisure because I enjoy it’, we might be tempted to say, dismissing Reason as a bore intent on overcomplicating it. But Reason sees beyond short-term sensory stimulation, and considers the consequence which follows.

Petrarch here revives Aristotle’s argument, that in order for a man to actually be be happy, his body, intellect and soul must each be satisfied. This is what he means by “full of work even when at ease” — that work and leisure ought to both involve facing a task and overcoming it. The difference is that at ‘work’, the achievement is likely for somebody else. In ‘leisure’, it should be for you.

If your leisure activities produce nothing that outlasts the ‘buzz’ you feel in the moment, therefore, they are simply a fleeting distraction. Hence why, when they are over, you feel guilt and further tiredness.

Worst of all however, as Petrarch warns, is the man who considers leisure as ‘just doing nothing’, for such a man already has one foot in the grave…

Beware the Brother of Death

In response to Reason’s pressing, Joy reframes leisure as “welcome repose”. Yet Reason is unconvinced:

REASON: This repose is not the one to be enjoyed without end. Think, therefore, in what sort of repose you take delight.

JOY: I have found welcome repose.

REASON: You say repose. Do you wish to say reclining, or sleep, which certain poets call the brother, and others the image, of death — and very properly so?

Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortunae, 21

While Reason may initially appear somewhat pedantic, Petrarch is underscoring once again an important distinction. That of ‘rest’ for its own sake compared to ‘rest’ which serves as an opportunity to pursue something else. ‘Rest’, after all, does not actually have a straightforward meaning. If understood as the absence of exertion, then many activities could constitute ‘rest’, from reading to painting. If understood as a synonym for ‘relaxation’, then even physical activities could be classified as ‘rest’, from walking in the countryside to a Sunday drive.

The problem arises, Reason is arguing, when ‘rest’ is taken too literally and understood to mean ‘inactivity’, and therefore when people assume you are ‘resting’ only when you are actually sleeping. Or, approached differently, when the man who has survived an arduous day believes that sleep is the only possible remedy.

Petrarch reminds us that our ancestors considered Sleep to be the brother of Death. Likely he is referring to the poet Virgil, whose Aeneid said precisely this:

“There at the Gate, in the very throat of Hell,

Vengeful care and sullen Grief make their bed,

and pallid Sickness dwells, with sad Old Age,

and Fear, and evil Hunger and vile Need,

forms dread to look upon, with Toil and Death:

then Death’s brother Sleep, and cruel Pleasure of the mind corrupt”

Virgil, Aeneid, VI.384-390

The imagery is clear, and logic too. What unites Sleep and Death is a common withdrawal from the world, what separates them is permanence. Sleep therefore is ‘imperfect’ Death, and the man who treats sleep as a refuge from waking life, rather than a complement to it, is a man who has largely given up on life.

This of course is not to say that you should not sleep. The body obviously needs it, but sleep is rejuvenating the body alone, while keeping the intellect and soul — the elements that actually elevate you from the beasts — in stasis. Unless all three are nourished in life, sleep alone will result in a net loss.

Besides, as Petrarch continues, the physical activity of the body is neither here nor there, as a man can just as easily be crippled by anxiety while laying flat on the ground as when he is running:

REASON: The minds of many are at rest although they walk around, yet some who sit or lie down are troubled. Sleep itself, which is called animalium quies — the rest of all living creatures — brings hidden pains and visions, and the wild fury of horrible phantasms — about which that saintly man who was afflicted complained when he addressed God in familiar terms.

JOY: I recline restfully in my bedroom.

REASON: Who, I ask you, do you think rested more sweetly — Vatia in his country seat, or Scipio fighting the enemy in Africa, Cato fighting the snakes, or Regulus fighting both? There is no repose without joy, nor can there be true joy without virtue.

Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortunae, 21

Reason offers the intriguing counter that a man who is more physically active is actually more likely to experience wholesome rest than his idle counterpart. The first example Petrarch cites, Servilius Vatia, was a man who on paper had it all. But withdrawn on his estate on Capri, cut off from the world, he was “famous for his wasted opportunity, buried rather than living within the walls of his country house” (Petrarch, De Vita Solitaria, I.376). Unable to find meaningful purpose during his days, ‘leisure’ was empty and achieved nothing beyond hurrying him towards Death.

Scipio, Cato and Regulus, however, who each served their country actively, could go to bed at night satisfied that they had achieved something. Sleep was a genuine ‘time out’ from something worthwhile. “There is no repose without joy, nor can there be true joy without virtue”.

So what does Petrarch propose we do? How can we start making our leisure and rest work for us, instead of against us?

His answer is surprisingly straightforward, and one that ironically many university students today will surely have realised when faced with an imminent deadline…

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2,070 years ago last Sunday, on the 15th March 44 BC, the most famous political murder in history took place, killing the most famous Roman in history.

The ultimate ‘event’ in history, the assassination of Julius Caesar forms the dramatic turning point of the great epic of history — the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. It is also a highly personal story, of how carelessness can ruin even the greatest of men.

Both Julius Caesar and his great nephew Augustus, after all, won spectacular victories. How both men responded to those victories, however, was the difference between losing an empire and founding one.

So to mark this extraordinary anniversary, let us explore a simple yet important question — what are the lessons of the Ides of March?

What did Julius Caesar get wrong, what did Augustus get right and what can we learn from their opposing examples?

Misusing a Victory

One of the great ironies that surrounds Julius Caesar is that his enemies were far more ruthless than he was.

Indeed a theme which appears again and again in accounts of Caesar is his readiness to forgive his enemies — his clemency. A temple to Clementia was indeed raised in his honour1, while Mark Antony whipped up the mob at Caesar’s funeral by declaring the fallen dictator’s titles to be “a testimonial of his clemency”2. In an often forgotten letter, written just weeks after crossing the Rubicon, Caesar himself even outlined that clemency was the cornerstone of his strategy:

“Let us see if by moderation we can win all hearts and secure a lasting victory, since by cruelty others have been unable to escape from hatred and to maintain their victory for any length of time except L. Sulla, whose example I do not intend to follow. This is a new way of conquering, to strengthen one's position by kindness and generosity”

Julius Caesar, Letter to Oppius and Cornelius, March 49 BC

Throughout the civil war which followed, Caesar pardoned so many of his foes that he even pardoned several individuals multiple times. After his opening victory of the war at Corfinium in February 49 BC, Caesar captured as many as fifty senators, all of whom he pardoned, including the commander Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Many of these men did not share Caesar’s sense of martial honour, and immediately rejoined Pompey and the war, rendering the victory rather pointless. Ahenobarbus himself would fight against Caesar twice more, before falling in the decisive Battle of Pharsalus.

Perhaps the most damning indictment of his clemency, however, is the simple fact that Julius Caesar was assassinated by men he had pardoned. Both of the key ringleaders — Brutus and Cassius — had not only been pardoned by Caesar after Pharsalus, but would go on to enjoy his patronage. Immediately after the battle, Caesar granted Cassius a military command, and would later promise him the consulship. Just one year before his assassination, Caesar appointed Brutus to the prestigious role of praetor urbanus. As Napoleon Bonaparte himself remarked:

“It was not difficult for the plotters to succeed, as Caesar trusted them”

Napoleon Bonaparte, On the Wars of Julius Caesar, 16.III

Caesar’s naive belief that publicly pardoning his foes would entirely and immediately win them over reached such an absurd extreme that he dismissed any and all evidence to the contrary, even when it was brought to him by his actual friends:

“They came very near being detected for two reasons. One was the number of those who were privy to the plot, although Caesar would not receive any information about anything of the sort and punished very severely those who brought any news of the kind”

Cassius Dio, Roman History, XLIV.15

Herein lies the problem of clemency. Unless the forgiveness of the injured party is mirrored by sincere repentance on the part of the injurer, clemency can be counterproductive. In the case of Caesar, it was fatal.

A father may wish he could only ever share moments of peaceful bliss with his children. But children need discipline to thrive, and every time a boundary is crossed without rebuke, the authority of the father weakens, and the child tips further into imbalance.

It is telling that after the assassination, when Brutus found himself in command against Caesar’s avengers, and was tempted to follow Caesar’s precedent, Cicero warned him of the consequences:

“I strongly differ from you, Brutus, and I do not admit your clemency doctrine. A salutary sternness is superior to the empty show of clemency. But if we choose the role of clemency we shall never have any lack of civil wars.”

Cicero to Brutus, 17th April 43 BC

Julius Caesar was a military genius, of that there is no question. His critical flaw, however, was not realising that his enemies had mobilised for total war, and viewed the battlefield as merely one of many theatres to be contested with all resources at their disposal. He had entered into a war that was existential for the Roman elite, who had demonstrated repeatedly that it did not play fair. It was prepared to kill in order to preserve the oligarchic stranglehold over the Republic, and to kill openly, as the murders of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus had shown.

Thus the idealistic clemency of Caesar was admired by many, but ridiculed by his foes, who lost their fear of consequence and grew emboldened in rebellion. If he had wished to maintain a moral upper hand, taking prisoners and treating them well would have sufficed, and demonstrative punishment did not have to mean execution. By continuously brandishing a blank cheque of forgiveness however, before the total war had been won, Caesar misused his victories, extended the war and handed his enemies fresh opportunity to win.

Worse, it would hand his enemies the opportunity to corrupt him…

Falling For Your Own Propaganda

Caesar’s clemency alone may not have been sufficient to doom him. But the result of it certainly was. No longer able to mobilise armies against him, the enemies of Caesar turned to words. Caesar, however, was not aware that he was still at war.

The danger of flattery is a subject we have indeed covered at INVICTUS. As we explored, flattery is worse than theft because the flatterer seeks to take something from you by dishonest means, but does so by also corrupting you in the process.

What happened to Julius Caesar is perhaps the supreme example of exactly this. Once his enemies realised that praise was the means by which to penetrate the Caesarian armour, they were relentless:

“When they had begun to honour him, it was with the idea, of course, that he would be reasonable; but as they went on and saw that he was delighted with what they voted, — indeed he accepted all but a very few of their decrees, — different men at different times kept proposing various extravagant honours, some in a spirit of exaggerated flattery and others by way of ridicule”

Cassius Dio, Roman History, XLIV.7

Whether Cassius Dio was exaggerating when he continued that “some actually ventured to suggest permitting him to have intercourse with as many women as he pleased” we cannot know. But what is abundantly clear is that the honours and titles showered upon Caesar reached a level at which alarms bells should have begun screaming.

When a person publicly flatters you to the extent that their words or proposals demean themselves, that person in truth almost certainly despises you. The sources are indeed clear that Caesar’s enemies used flattery to lure him into a deadly trap:

“Others, and they were the majority, followed this course because they wished to make him envied and hated as quickly as possible, that he might the sooner perish. And this is precisely what happened, though Caesar was encouraged by these very measures to believe that he should never be plotted against by the men who had voted him such honours, nor, through fear of them, by any one else; and consequently he even dispensed henceforth with a bodyguard”

Cassius Dio, Roman History, XLIV.7

Caesar, convinced that these people were sincere in their praise, and that serious opposition had died at the Battles of Pharsalus and Munda, walked straight into the trap by not only accepting these, but appearing to enjoy it.

This of course would be crowned, so to speak, by the ultimate poisoned chalice, when people, and most famously Mark Antony, began to publicly offer Caesar a crown. Exactly who engineered the spectacle of offering Caesar the kingship of Rome is unclear. Whether Caesar had genuinely orchestrated it to ‘test the waters’, or Antony actually did wish to restore the Roman monarchy, or else the Dictator’s enemies were behind it all does not really matter. What did matter was that it appeared plausible that Caesar mighty secretly be desiring permanent autocratic power.

Caesar’s track record of permitting and accepting outlandish flattery, even if it might well have been out of naivety, had punctured the veil of sincerity and convinced too many that his ambitions were selfish. In order for the Senate to safeguard their own position, destroy Caesar and undo his life’s work, they needed to paint him as a cartoon villain. This they would do, fostering in Caesar the hubris which would ultimately unshield him, and which was epitomised by his infamous boast on the 15th March 44 BC

“Well, the Ides of March are come,” and the seer said to him softly: “Ay, they are come, but they are not gone.”

Plutarch, Life of Caesar, 63

Caesar was defeated, but in truth, he was extraordinarily lucky. Were it not for the incompetence of the conspirators allowing Mark Antony to escape, Rome might well have been condemned to decades more of the Republic’s corruption and misrule, and Caesar henceforth remembered as a mere curiosity of history, rather than a driver of it.

Fortunately, Caesar’s adoptive son was waiting in the wings, and would learn from his mistakes. As a result, he would achieve both lasting power and popularity.

So what did Augustus get right that Caesar got wrong?

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