The Politics of Obedience, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, by Etienne de la Boétie, Part 2
Liberty is the natural condition of the people. Servitude, however, is fostered when people are raised in subjection.
People are trained to adore rulers. While freedom is forgotten by many, there are always some who will never submit.
Doctors are no doubt correct in warning us not to touch incurable wounds, and I am presumably taking chances in preaching as I do to a people which has long lost all sensitivity and no longer conscience of its infirmity, is plainly suffering from mortal illness.
Let us therefore understand by logic, if we can, how it happens that this obstinate willingness
to submit has become so deeply rooted in a nation that the very love of liberty now seems
no longer natural.
In the first place, all would agree that if we led our lives according to the ways intended
by Nature and the Lessons Taught by Her, we should be intuitively obedient to our parents.
Later, we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody. Concerning the
obedience given instinctively to one's father and mother, we are in agreement, each one
admitting himself to be a model. As to whether reason is born with us or not, that is a question
is being loudly discussed by academicians and treated by all schools of philosophers, for the present I think I do not err in stating that there is in our souls some native seed of reason which if nourished by good counsel and training flowers into virtue, but which on the other hand if unable to resist the vices surrounding it is stifled and blighted.
Surely, if there is anything in this world clear and obvious to which one cannot close one's eyes, it is the fact that Nature, handmaiden of God, governess of men, has cast us all in the same mold, in order that we may behold in one another companions, or rather brothers.
If in distributing her gifts nature has favored some more than others with respect to body
or spirit, she has nevertheless not planned to place us within this world as if it were
a field of battle, and is not endowed the stronger or the cleverer in order that they
may act like armed brigands in a forest and attack the weaker.
One should rather conclude that in distributing larger shares to some and smaller shares to
Nature has intended to give occasion for brotherly love to become manifest, some of us having the strength to give help to others who are in need of it.
Hence, since this kind mother has given us the whole world as a dwelling place, has lodged us in the same house, has fashioned us according to the same model, so that in beholding one another we might almost recognize ourselves,
Since she has bestowed upon us all the great gift of voice and speech for fraternal relationship, thus achieving by the common and mutual statement of our thoughts a communion of our wills, and since she has tried in every way to narrow and tighten the bond of our union and kinship, since she has revealed in every possible manner her intention not so much to associate us as to make us one organic whole,
I have no further doubt that we are all naturally free inasmuch as we are all comrades.
Accordingly, it should not enter the mind of anyone that nature has placed some of us in slavery, since she has actually created us all in one likeness.
Therefore, it is fruitless to argue whether or not liberty is natural, since none can be held in slavery without being wronged.
and in a world governed by a nature which is reasonable, there is nothing so contrary as an injustice.
Since freedom is our natural state, we are not only in possession of it, but have the urge to defend it.
Now, if perchance some cast it out on this conclusion and are so corrupted that they are not able to recognize their rights and inborn tendencies,
I shall have to do them the honor that is properly theirs, and place, so to speak, brute
beast in the pulpit to throw light on their nature and condition.
The very beast, God help me, if men are not too deaf, cry out to them, long live liberty!
Many among them die as soon as captured, just as the fish loses life as soon as he leaves
So do these creatures close their eyes upon the light and have no desire to survive the loss of their natural freedom.
If the animals were to constitute their kingdom by rank, their nobility would be chosen from this type.
Others, from the largest to the smallest, when captured, put up such a strong resistance by means of claws, horns, beak, and paws
The Theory of Money and Credit
Manifesting himself to the last ounce of his strength and knowing himself on the point
of being taken, dashes his jaws against the trees and breaks his tusks, thus manifesting
his longing to remain free as he has been and proving his wit and ability to buy off
the huntsman in the hope that through the sacrifice of his tusks he will be permitted
to offer his ivory as a ransom for his liberty.
We feed the horse from birth in order to train him to do our bidding, yet he is tamed with
such difficulty that when we begin to break him in he bites the bit, he rears at the touch
of the spur as if to reveal his instinct and show by his actions that if he obeys he does
so not of his own free will but under constraint. What more can we say? Even the oxen under
With the weight of the yoke complain, and the birds in their cage lament, as I expressed
it some time ago, toying with our French posy.
For I shall not hesitate in writing to you, O Langa, to introduce some of my verses, which
I never read to you because of your obvious encouragement, which is quite likely to make
me conceded.
Why now, since all beings, because they feel, suffer misery in subjection and long for liberty?
Since the very beast, although made for the service of man, cannot become accustomed to
control without protest, what evil chance has so denatured man that he, the only creature
really born to be free, lacks the memory of his original condition and the desire to return
There are three kinds of tyrants. Some receive their proud position through elections by the people, others by force of arms, others by inheritance.
Those who have acquired power by means of war act in such wise that it is evident they rule over a conquered country.
Those who are born to kingship are scarcely any better, because they are nourished on the breast of tyranny, suck in with their milk the instincts of the tyrant, and consider the people under them as their inherited serfs.
And according to their individual disposition, miserly or prodigal, they treat their kingdom as their property.
He who has received the state from the people, however, ought to be, it seems to be, more
bearable and would be so, I think, were it not for the fact that as soon as he sees himself
higher than the others, flattered by that quality which we call grandeur, he plans never
to relinquish his position.
Such a man usually determines to pass on to his children the authority that the people
have conferred upon him.
And once his heirs have taken this attitude, strange it is how far they surpass other tyrants
in all sorts of vices, and especially in cruelty, because they find no other means to impose
this new tyranny than by tightening control and removing their subjects so far from any
and the notion of liberty that even if the memory of it is fresh, it will soon be eradicated.
Yet, to speak accurately, I do perceive that there is some difference among these three types of tyranny,
but as for stating a preference, I cannot grant there is any, for although the means of coming into power differ,
Still the method of ruling is practically the same.
Those who are elected act as if they were breaking in bullocks.
Those who are conquerors make the people their prey.
Those who are heirs plan to treat them as if they were their natural slaves.
In connection with this, let us imagine some newborn individuals,
neither acquainted with slavery nor desirous of liberty,
Ignorant indeed of the very words. If they were permitted to choose between being slaves and free men, to which would they give their vote?
There can be no doubt that they would much prefer to be guided by reason itself than to be ordered about by the whims of a single man.
The only possible exception might be the Israelites who, without any compulsion or need, appointed a tyrant.
I can never read their history without becoming angered and even inhuman enough to find satisfaction in the many evils that befell them on this account.
But certainly all men, as long as they remain men, before letting themselves become enslaved, must either be driven by force or led into it by deception,
conquered by foreign armies, as were Sparta and Athens, by the forces of Alexander, or by political factions,
As when, at an earlier period, the control of Athens had passed into the hands of Pisistratus, when they lose their liberty through deceit, they are not so often betrayed by others as misled by themselves.
This was the case when the people of Syracuse, chief city of Sicily, when, in the throes of war and heedlessly planning only for the present danger, they promoted Dennis, their first tyrant, by entrusting to him the command of the army, without realizing that they had given him such power that on his victorious return this worthy man would behave as if he had vanquished not his enemies but his compatriots, transforming them into
It is incredible how, as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, unbeholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty,
has won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under
constraint and by force, but those who come after them obey without regret and
perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to.
This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are
are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.
There is, however, no heir so spendthrift or indifferent that he does not sometimes scan the account books of his father in order to see if he is enjoying all the privileges of his legacy
or whether, perchance, his rights and those of his predecessor have not been encroached upon.
Nevertheless, it is clear enough that the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection.
It is said that Mithridates trained himself to drink poison. Like him, we learn to swallow and not to find bitter the venom of servitude. It cannot be denied that nature is influential in shaping us to her will and making us reveal our rich or meager endowment.
Yet it must be admitted that she has less power over us than custom, for the reason
that native endowment, no matter how good, is dissipated and less encouraged, whereas
environment always shapes us in its own way, whatever that might be in spite of nature's
gifts.
The good seed that nature plants in us is so slight and so slippery that it cannot withstand
the least harm from wrong nourishment.
When it flourishes less easily, becomes spoiled, withers and comes to nothing.
Fruit trees retain their own particular quality if permitted to grow undisturbed, but lose
it promptly and bear strange fruit not their own when ingrafted.
Every herb has its peculiar characteristics, its virtues and properties.
Yet frost, weather, soil, or the gardener's hand increase or diminish its strength.
The plant seen one spot cannot be recognized in another.
Whoever could have observed the early Venetians, a handful of people living so freely that the
most wicked among them would not wish to be king over them, so born and trained that they would
not buy with one another, except as to which one could give the best counsel and nurture
their liberty most carefully, so instructed and developed from their cradles that they
would not exchange for all the other delights of the world an iota of their freedom.
Who, I say, familiar with the original nature of such a people, could visit today the territories
of the Man known as the Great Doge, and there contemplate with composure a people unwilling
to live except to serve him, and maintaining his power at the cost of their lives.
Who would believe that these two groups of people had an identical origin? Would one
not rather conclude that upon leaving a city of men he had chanced upon a menagerie of
Beast? Lysergius, the lawgiver of Sparta, is reported to have reared two dogs of the
same litter by fattening one in the kitchen and training the other in the fields to the
sound of the bugle and the horn, thereby to demonstrate to the Lacedaemonians that men
too develop according to their early habits. He set the two dogs in the open market place,
In between them he placed a bowl of soup and a hair. One ran to the bowl of soup, the other
to the hair. Yet they were, as he maintained, born brothers of the same parents. In such
manner did this leader, by his laws and customs, shape and instruct the Spartans so well that
any one of them would sooner have died than acknowledge any sovereign other than law and
reason.
It gives me pleasure to recall a conversation of the olden time between one of the favorites
of Xerxes, the great king of Persia, and two Lacedaemonians. When Xerxes equipped his great
army to conquer Greece, he sent his ambassadors into the Greek cities to ask for water and
earth. That was the procedure the Persians adopted in summoning the cities to surrender.
Neither to Athens nor to Sparta, however, did he dispatch such messengers because those
who had been sent there by Darius his father had been thrown by the Athenians and Spartans
some into ditches and others into wells with the invitation to help themselves freely there
to water and soil to take back to their prince.
Those Greeks could not permit even the slightest suggestion of encroachment upon their liberty.
The Spartans suspected, nevertheless, that they had incurred the wrath of the gods by
their action, and especially the wrath of Talthybios, the god of the heralds.
In order to appease him, they decided to send Xerxes, two of their citizens, in entombment
for the cruel death inflicted upon the ambassadors of his father.
Two Spartans, one named Spurta and the other Bullis, volunteered to offer themselves as
a sacrifice. So they departed, and on the way they came to the palace of the Persian named
Hidarnes, lieutenant of the king, in all the Asiatic cities situated on the seacoast. He
received them with great honor, feasted them, and then, speaking of one thing and another,
He asked them why they refused so obdurately his king's friendship.
Consider well, O Spartans, said he, and realize by my example that the king knows how to honor
those who are worthy and believe that if you were his men he would do the same for you.
If you belonged to him and he had known you, there is not one among you who might not be
be the Lord of some Greek city.
By such words, Hydarnes, you give us no good counsel, replied the Lacedaemonians.
Because you have experienced merely the advantage of which you speak, you do not know the privilege
we enjoy.
You have the honor of the king's favor, but you know nothing about liberty, what relish
it has and how sweet it is, for if you had any knowledge of it, you yourself would advise
as well as us to defend it, not with lance and shield, but with our very teeth and nails.
Only Spartans could give such an answer, and surely both of them spoke as they had been trained.
It was impossible for the Persian to regret liberty not having known it,
nor for the Lacedaemonians to find subjection acceptable after having enjoyed freedom.
Plato the eutachan, while still a child under the rod, could come and go in the house of
Silla the despot. Because of the place and family of his origin, and because he and Silla
were close relatives, the door was never closed to him. He always had his teacher with him
when he went there, as was the custom for children of noble birth. He noticed that in
In the house of Silla, in the dictator's presence or at his command, some men were imprisoned
and others sentenced. One was banished, another was strangled. One demanded the goods of another
citizen, another his head. In short, all went there, not as to the house of a city magistrate,
but as to the people's tyrant. And this was therefore not a court of justice, but rather
a resort of tyranny, whereupon the young lad said to his teacher, Why don't you give me
a dagger? I will hide it under my robe. I often go into Silla's room before he is risen
and my arm is strong enough to rid the city of him. There is a speech truly characteristic
of Cato. It was a true beginning of this hero so worthy of his end, and should one not mention
in his name or his country, but state merely the fact as it is, the episode itself would
speak eloquently and anyone would divine that he was a Roman born in Rome at the time when
she was free.
And why all this?
Certainly not because I believe that the land or the region has anything to do with it,
For in any place, and in any climate, subjection is bitter, and to be free is pleasant. But
merely because I am of the opinion that one should pity those who at birth arrive with
the yoke upon their necks. We should exonerate and forgive them, since they have not seen
even the shadow of liberty, and being quite unaware of it, cannot perceive the evil endured
through their own slavery.
If there were actually a country like that of the Sumerians mentioned by Homer, where
the sun shines otherwise than on our own, shedding its radiance steadily for six successive
months and then leaving humanity to drowse in obscurity until it returns at the end of
another half year, should we be surprised to learn that those born during this long
Long Night do grow so accustomed to their native darkness that unless they were told
about the sun, they would have no desire to see the light.
One never pines for what he has never known.
Longing comes only after enjoyment and constitutes amidst the experience of sorrow the memory
of past joy.
It is truly the nature of man to be free and to wish to be so, yet his character is such
that he instinctively follows the tendencies that his training gives him.
Let us therefore admit that all those things to which he is trained and accustomed seem
natural to man, and that only that is truly native to him which he receives with his primitive
untrained individuality.
Thus custom becomes the first reason for voluntary servitude.
Men are like handsome racehorses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing
under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly
beneath their trappings.
Similarly, men will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection,
that their fathers lived in the same way.
They will think they are obliged to suffer this evil and will persuade themselves by
example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary
rights based on the idea that it has always been that way.
There are always a few better endowed than others who feel the weight of the yoke and
cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off.
These are the men who never become tamed under subjection and who always, like Ulysses on
land and sea, constantly seeking the smoke of his chimney, cannot prevent themselves
from peering about for their natural privileges and from remembering their ancestors and their
former ways.
These are in fact the men who, possessed of clear minds and farsighted spirit, are not
Not satisfied, like the brutish mass, to see only what is at their feet, but rather look
about them, behind and before, and even recall the things of the past in order to judge those
of the future and compare both with their present condition.
These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by
study and learning.
Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them,
slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised.
The Grand Turk, the Ottoman Sultan of Constantinople, was well aware that books and teaching, more
than anything else, give men the sense to comprehend their own nature and to detest
I understand that in his territory there are few educated people, for he does not want many.
On account of this restriction, men of strong zeal and devotion, who in spite of the passing of time have preserved their love of freedom,
still remain ineffective because, however numerous they may be, they are not known to one another.
Under the tyrant they have lost freedom of action, of speech, and almost of thought. They are alone in their aspiration. Indeed, Momus, god of mockery, was not merely joking when he found this to criticize in the man fashioned by Vulcan, namely, that the maker had not set a little window in his creature's heart to render his thoughts visible.
It is reported that Brutus, Cassius and Casca, on undertaking to free Rome, and for that matter the whole world, refused to include in their band Cicero, that great enthusiast for the public welfare if ever there was one, because they considered his heart too timid for such a lofty deed. They trusted his willingness, but they were none too sure of his courage.
Yet whoever studies the deeds of earlier days and the annals of antiquity will find practically no instance of heroes who failed to deliver their country from evil hands when they set about their task with a firm, wholehearted and sincere intention.
Liberty, as if to reveal her nature, seems to have given them new strength.
Hermodius and Aristegitten, Thrasybalus, Brutus the Elder, Valerianus and Dion achieved successfully what they planned virtuously, for hardly ever does good fortune fail a strong will.
Brutus the Younger and Cassius were successful in eliminating servitude, and although they perished in their attempt to restore liberty, they did not die miserably.
What blasphemy it would be to say there was anything miserable about these men, either in their death or in their living.
Their loss worked great harm, everlasting misfortune and complete destruction of the Republic, which appears to have been buried with them.
Other and later undertakings against the Roman emperors were merely plottings of ambitious people, who deserved no pity for the misfortunes that overtook them.
For it is evident that they sought not to destroy, but merely to usurp the crown, scheming to drive away the tyrant, but to retain tyranny.
For myself I could not wish such men to prosper, and I am glad they have shown by their example that the sacred name of liberty must never be used to cover a false enterprise.
But to come back to the threat of our discourse, which I have practically lost, the essential reason why men take orders willingly is that they are born serfs and are reared as such.
From this cause there follows another result, namely that people easily become cowardly and submissive under tyrants.
For this observation, I am deeply grateful to Hippocrates, the renowned father of medicine, who noted and reported it in a treatise of his entitled Concerning Diseases.
This famous man was certainly endowed with a great heart and proved it clearly by his reply to the great king, who wanted to attach him to his person by means of special privileges and large gifts.
Hippocrates answered frankly that it would be a weight on his conscience to make use of his science for the cure of barbarians who wished to slay his fellow Greeks, or to serve faithfully by his skill anyone who undertook to enslave Greece.
The letter he sent the king can still be read among his other works and will forever testify to his great heart and noble character.
By this time it should be evident that liberty once lost, valor also perishes. A subject people shows neither gladness nor eagerness in combat. Its men march sullenly to danger, almost as if in bonds and stultified. They do not feel throbbing within them that eagerness for liberty which engenders scorn of peril and imparts readiness to acquire honor,
and Glory by a Brave Death Amidst One's Comrades. Among free men there is competition as to
who will do most, each for the common good, each by himself, all expecting to share in
the misfortunes of defeat or in the benefits of victory. But an enslaved people loses in
addition to this warlike courage all signs of enthusiasm, for their hearts are degraded,
Submissive and incapable of any great deed. Tyrants are well aware of this, and in order
to degrade their subjects further, encourage them to assume this attitude and make it instinctive.
Xenophon, grave historian of first rank among the Greeks, wrote a book in which he makes
amenities speak with Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, concerning the anxieties of the tyrant. This
This book is full of fine and serious remonstrances, which in my opinion are as persuasive as words
can be.
Would to God that all despots who had ever lived might have kept it before their eyes
and used it as a mirror.
I cannot believe they would have failed to recognize their warts and to have conceived
some shame for their blotches.
In this treatise is explained the torment in which tyrants find themselves when obliged
To Fear Everyone Because They Do Evil Unto Every Man
Among other things, we find the statement that bad kings employ foreigners in their
wars and pay them, not daring to entrust weapons in the hands of their own people whom they
have wronged.
There have been good kings who have used mercenaries from foreign nations, even among the French,
Although more so formerly than today, but with the quite different purpose of preserving
their own people, considering as nothing the loss of money in the effort to spare French
lives.
That is, I believe, what Scipio the Great African meant when he said he would rather
save one citizen than defeat a hundred enemies, for it is plainly evident that the dictator
does not consider his power firmly established until he has reached the point where there
There is no man under him who is of any worth. Therefore, there may be justly applied to
him the reproach to the master of the elephants made by Thrasen and reported by Terence. Are
you indeed so proud because you command wild beasts? This method Tyrant's use of stultifying
When news was brought to him that the people of Sardis had rebelled, it would have been
easy for him to reduce them by force.
But being unwilling either to sack such a fine city or to maintain an army there to
police it, he thought of an unusual expedient for reducing it. He established in it brothels,
taverns and public games, and issued the proclamation that the inhabitants were to enjoy them. He
found this type of garrison so effective that he never again had to draw the sword against
the Lydians. These wretched people enjoyed themselves inventing all kinds of games so
that the Latins have derived the word from them and what we call pastimes they called
ludi, as if they meant to say lidi. Not all tyrants have manifested so clearly their intention
to effeminize their victims, but in fact what the aforementioned despot publicly proclaimed
It is indeed the nature of the populace, whose density is always greater in the cities, to be suspicious toward one who has their welfare at heart, and gullible toward one who fools them.
Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner
fixed on the hook by wormy bait than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude
by the slightest feather past, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly, it is a marvelous
thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their
are fancy. Plays, verses, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures and other
such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait towards slavery, the price of their
liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators
so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke that the stupefied people, fascinated
by the pastimes and vain pleasures, flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as
naively but not so creditably as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture
books. Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feast
to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by
anything else.
The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to
recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato.
Tyrants would distribute largesse, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a cisterci,
and then everybody would shamelessly cry, Long live the King!
The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property
and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having
first taken it from them.
A man might one day be presented with a cisterci and gorge himself at the public feast lauding
Tiberius and Nero for handsome liberality, who on the morrow would be forced to abandon
In his property to their avarice, his children to their lust, his very blood to the cruelty
of these magnificent emperors, without offering any more resistance than a stone or a tree
stump, the mob has always behaved in this way, eagerly open to bribes that cannot be
honorably accepted, and dissolute callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably
Nowadays I do not meet anyone who, on hearing the mention of Nero, does not shudder at the
very name of that hideous monster, that disgusting and vile pestilence. Yet when he died, when
this incendiary, this executioner, this savage beast died as vilely as he had lived, the
The noble Roman people, mindful of his games and his festivals, were saddened to the point of wearing mourning for him.
Thus wrote Cornelius Tacitus, a competent and serious author and one of the most reliable.
This will not be considered peculiar in view of what this same people had previously done at the death of Julius Caesar
who had swept away their laws and their liberty, in whose character, it seems to me, there was nothing worthwhile, for his very liberality, which is so highly praised, was more baneful than the cruelest tyrant who ever existed, because it was actually this poisonous immubility of his that sweetened servitude for the Roman people.
After his death, that people, still preserving on their palates the flavor of his banquets and in their minds the memory of his prodigality, vied with one another to pay him homage.
They piled up the seats of the forum for the great fire that reduced his body to ashes and later raised a column to him as to the father of his people.
Such was the inscription on the capital.
Capital. They did him more honor, dead as he was, than they had any right to confer
upon any man in the world except perhaps on those who had killed him. They didn't even
neglect these Roman emperors to assume generally the title of tribune of the people, partly
because this office was held sacred and inviolable and also because it had been founded for the
in the defense and protection of the people and enjoyed the favor of the state.
By this means they made sure that the populace would trust them completely, as if they merely
used the title and did not abuse it.
Today there are some who do not behave very differently.
They never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing
and it with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good.
You well know, O Lange, this formula which they use quite cleverly in certain places,
although for the most part to be sure there cannot be cleverness where there is so much
impudence.
The kings of the Assyrians and even after them those of the Medes showed themselves
is in public as seldom as possible in order to set up a doubt in the minds of the rabble
as to whether they were not in some way more than man and thereby to encourage people to
use their imagination for those things which they cannot judge by sight. Thus a great many
nations who for a long time dwelt under the control of the Assyrians became accustomed
with all this mystery to their own subjection, and submitted them more readily for not knowing
what sort of master they had, or scarcely even if they had one, all of them fearing
by reports someone they had never seen.
The earliest kings of Egypt rarely showed themselves without carrying a cat, or sometimes
a branch, or appearing with fire on their heads, masking themselves with these objects
and Parading Like Workers of Magic. By doing this, they inspired their subjects with reverence
and admiration, whereas with people neither too stupid nor too slavish, they would merely
have aroused, it seems to me, amusement and laughter. It is pitiful to review the list
of devices that early despots used to establish their tyranny, to discover how many little
What comment can I make concerning another fine counterfeit that ancient peoples accepted
as true money?
They believed firmly that the great Toe of Pyrrhus, king of the Pyrrhus, performed miracles
and cured diseases of the spleen. They even enhanced the tale further with the legend
that this toe, after the corpse had been burned, was found among the ashes untouched by the
fire. In this wise a foolish people itself invents lies and then believes them. Many
Many men have recounted such things, but in such a way that it is easy to see that the
parts were pieced together from idle gossip of the city and silly reports from the rabble.
When Vespation, returning from Assyria, passes through Alexandria on his way to Rome to take
possession of the empire, he performs wonders.
He makes the crippled straight, restores sight to the blind, and does many other fine things
Concerning which the credulous and undiscriminating were in my opinion more blind than those cured.
Tyrants themselves have wondered that men could endure the persecution of a single man.
They have insisted on using religion for their own protection and where possible have borrowed
a stray bit of divinity to bolster up their evil ways.
If we are to believe the Sybil of Virgil, Salmonius, in torment for having paraded as Jupiter in order to deceive the populace, now atones in nethermost hell.
He suffered endless torment for having dared to imitate the thunderbolts of heaven and the flames of Jupiter.
Upon a chariot drawn by four chargers he went,
Unsteadily riding loft, in his fist a great shining torch,
Among the Greeks and into the marketplace, In the heart of the city of Ellis,
He had ridden boldly, and displaying thus his vainglory,
He assumed an honor which undeniably belongs to the gods alone.
This fool who imitated storm and the inimitable thunderbolt by clash of brass,
and with his dizzying charge on horn-hoofed steeds, the all-powerful father beheld, hurled
not a torch nor the feeble light from a waxen taper with its smoky fumes, but by the furious
blast of thunder and lightning he brought him low, his heels above his head.
If such a one, who in his time acted merrily through the folly of insolence, is so well
I think that those who have used religion as a cloak to hide their vileness will be even more deservedly lodged in the same place.
Our own leaders have employed in France certain similar devices such as toads, fleur-de-lis, sacred vessels, and standards with flames of gold.
However that may be, I do not wish for my part to be incredulous since neither we nor our ancestors have had any occasion up to now for skepticism.
Our kings have always been so generous in times of peace and so valiant in time of war that from birth they seem not to have been created by nature like many others,
but even before birth to have been designated by Almighty God for the government and preservation of this kingdom.
Even if this were not so, yet should I not enter the tilting ground to call in question the truth of our traditions or to examine them so strictly as to take away their fine conceits?
Here is such a field for our French poetry, now not merely honored, but, it seems to me, reborn through our rosnard, our baif, our belay.
These poets are defending our language so well that I dare to believe that very soon neither the Greeks nor the Latins will, in this respect, have any advantage over us, except possibly that of seniority.
And I should assuredly do wrong to our posy. I like to use that word despite the fact that several have rhymed mechanically, for I still discern a number of men today capable of ennobling poetry and restoring it to its first luster.
But, as I say, I should do the muse great injury if I deprived her now of those fine
tales about King Clovis, amongst which, it seems to me, I can already see how agreeably
and how happily the inspiration of our Ronsard in his Franciade will play.
I appreciate his loftiness.
I am aware of his king spirit, and I know the charm of the man.
He will appropriate the aura flame to his use much as did the Romans, their sacred bucklers
and the Shields Cast from Heaven to Earth according to Virgil. He will use our vial
of holy oil much as the Athenians used the basket of Eric Thonius. He will win applause
for our deeds of valor as they did for their olive wreath, which they insist can still
be found in Minerva's Tower. Certainly I should be presumptuous if I tried to cast slurs on
on our records and thus invade the realm of our poets, but to return to our subject, the
thread of which I have unwittingly lost in this discussion, it has always happened that
tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people
not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.
Therefore, all that I have said up to the present concerning the means by which a more willing submission has been obtained applies to the dictators in their relationship with the inferior and common classes.