We can test that conclusion, if you like, by applying the principle to certain instances where public opinion is unlikely to see anything wrong. In the present context, then, there is no need to discuss cutthroats, poisoners, forgers of wills, thieves, and embezzlers of state funds: since the coercion which such people merit needs no philosophers’ phrases and arguments but is clearly a matter for shackles and imprisonment. Let us inquire, on the other hand, into the actions of those who are commonly reputed to be good men.
Certain individuals once conveyed from Greece to Rome a forged will purporting to belong to the wealthy Lucius Minucius Basilus. In order to improve its credentials they associated with themselves, as fictitious heirs, two of the most powerful men of the day, Marcus Licinius Crassu1 and Quintus Hortensius2 These dignitaries had their suspicions of the forgery, but, since they did not feel personally implicated in its perpetration, refrained from rejecting this contemptible gift which other people’s, criminal action had placed into their hands. Does the indirect nature of their responsibility suffice to absolve Crassus and Hortensius from guilt? Though I felt affection for one of them while he was alive, and am no enemy to the other now he is dead, I maintain that the answer is no. For Basilus’s own intention had been to confer his name and inheritance upon his sister’s son Marcus Satrius – 1 mean the man who is’ patron’1 of Picenum and the Sabine country (what a sign of the times that regrettable title is!). That the property, therefore, should instead go to two of Rome’s leading men, and that Satrius should succeed to nothing but the name, was an injustice.
In the first part of this treatise I argued that even a man who merely fails to prevent or repel wrongdoing is himself thereby committing a positive wrong. That being so, what must be thought of the man who not only fails to avert wrong but actually promotes its commitment? Indeed I personally do not regard even genuine inheritances as justified, if they have been secured by insincere flatteries, and by services emanating from selfish rather than altruistic motives.
Still, in such cases, it does sometimes happen that one course looks right and another advantageous. Yet this must always be a delusion: because right and advantage are, by definition, identical. Once let a man fail to understand that, and no species of fraudulence or crime will come amiss to him. If he argues’ one course is certainly right, but the other is to my advantage’, he will be tearing asunder two things which nature has joined together. And such misguided audacity leads to every sort of deception, crime, and sin.
Suppose that, by snapping his fingers, a good man could assume the power to insert his name into rich men’s wills. Even if he could be absolutely certain that no one would ever suspect him, he still would not avail himself of a power like that. But imagine Marcus Licinius Crassus, on the other hand, being granted this capacity to snap his fingers and come into an inheritance which had not, in fact, been left him. In such a cause, believe me, Crassus would even have been prepared to dance in the Forum! On the other hand the just man, the good man as we understand the term, will never, for his own profit, take anything away from anybody. Whoever finds this assertion surprising will have to confess his total ignorance of what being a good man means.
For there is an ideal of human goodness: nature itself has stored and wrapped this up inside our minds. Unfold this ideal, and you will straightaway identify the good man as the person who helps everybody he can and, unless wrongfully provoked, harms none. Well, the dispossession of legitimate heirs by some sort of magic spell would surely be doing others harm!
One contrary theory is that a man is entitled to act as his own interests and profit dictate. But that is not a true supposition, for he has to understand that his interests could not be advanced by injustice of any kind whatever. Before anyone can become capable of achieving goodness, this is a lesson which he has to learn.
When I was a boy I used to hear my father tell a story about the exconsul Gaius Flavius Fimbria. Fimbria was judge in a case concerning Marcus Lutatius Pinthia, a leading knight of great integrity. Pinthia had wagered that he would pay a forfeit if he did not prove his own goodness in court. But Fimbria refused under any circumstances to deliver a verdict on this case; since if he did so either he would deprive a respectable man of his reputation – for that would be the effect of an unfavourable decision – or he would seem to be pronouncing someone a good man, whereas true goodness depends on the performance of countless obligations and praiseworthy actions. To this dilemma Fimbria refused to commit himself. So even he – let alone Socrates! – was capable of identifying the good man as the person who can see advantage in nothing except what is right.
Such a man would not be afraid to make a public announcement of all his actions and even all his thoughts. How scandalous, then, that philosophers should entertain doubts – about matters which cause no hesitation even to farm-labourers! For the labourers were the men who originated the timeworn proverbial compliment to a man’s honesty and integrity: ‘he is someone you could play odds and evens1 with in the dark.’ This is clearly the same thing as saying that you can never derive advantage from an improper gain, regardless of whether this has been detected or not.
The proverb leaves no excuse for Gyges, or for the man we imagined to have the power of sweeping in everyone’s legacies by a snap of the fingers. For nature, as well as denying that wrong actions can ever be advantageous, refuses to admit that a disguise can ever help them to become right.
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An objection: When the prize is really splendid, wrong-doing is excusable.
Take the case of Gaius Marius.1 More than six years after being praetor he was still languishing in the background. A consulship seemed out of the question; indeed it looked as if he would never even stand for one. But then Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the eminent personage on whose staff he was serving, sent him to Rome. There, addressing the national Assembly, Marius attacked Metellus himself -his own commanding officer – and charged him with deliberately prolonging the war. He himself however (continued Marius), if they made him consul, would rapidly deliver up the enemy king Jugurtha, dead or alive, into the hands of the Roman people. Accordingly, he was elected consul. But his action had been totally at variance with good faith and fair dealing. For he had brought public disfavour upon a noble and greatly respected Roman who was his commander and was responsible for his mission; and he had achieved this by a false accusation.
Even my relative Marcus Marius Gratidianus2 once failed to act as a good man should. While he was praetor, the tribunes of the people invited the board of praetors to meet them in order to decide jointly upon a standard for the currency; for at that time the value of money was so unstable that no one knew how much he was worth. So they drafted a joint declaration, including provision for penalties and judicial procedures in case of infringement. They then agreed to reassemble in the afternoon of the same day, when they would appear together on the official platform. And so the meeting dispersed. Gratidianus, however, went straight from the tribunes’ beaches to the official platform and published their jointly drafted statement as if he were solely responsible. And I have to add that his action made him a very famous man! His statues were in every street, with incense and candles burning before them. No one has ever been so popular.
This is the sort of case which can sometimes be perplexing: when the lapse from integrity does not appear to be particularly serious, whereas the favourable consequences of the action look extremely significant. For Gratidianus’s theft of popularity from his fellow-praetors and the tribunes did not appear to him to be so terribly wrong; on the other hand his election to the consulship – which was what he was aiming at – seemed greatly to his advantage. But that was a mere delusion: for there are no exceptions to our rule. I hope this rule is now completely familiar to you: what appears advantageous can only be so if no wrong action is involved – if the contrary is the case, the action cannot be advantageous after all.
To conclude then – can we regard either the great Marius or Marios Gratidianus as a good man? Work the problem out! Examine your conclusions, and note the ideal of a good man that emerges from them. Will a good man lie for his own profit, will he slander, will he grab, will be deceive? He will do nothing of the kind.
Surely the reputation and the glory of being a good man are too precious to be sacrificed in favour of anything at all, however valuable and desirable in appearance. No so-called advantage can possibly compensate for the elimination of your good faith and decency and the consequent destruction of your good name. For if a human exterior conceals the savage heart of a wild beast, their possessor might as well be beast instead of man.
Again: assume that someone is prepared, for the sake of power, to ignore all that is right and good. That, surely, is a perfect description1 of the man who wanted to marry a certain person’s daughter, and then proposed to exploit his father-in-law’s ruthlessness in order to achieve dominance for himself. As he saw the matter, there was advantage in gaining immense power in such a way as to arrange for its unpopularity to fall upon someone else. What he failed to see was that this damaged his country – and was therefore utterly wrong.
As for the father-in-law, he was fond of a quotation from the Phoenician Women of Euripides. Here is the best translation I can manage, crude perhaps but intelligible: If right may ever be infringed, this can he done for the sake of kingship: in all else be god-fearing. The man who allowed himself a single exception of such a kind deserved his death! Criminality could go no further. “Why trouble to list minor crimes – forged legacies, business deals, fraudulent sales? For here you have someone who actually aspired to be absolute monarch of Rome, indeed master of the whole world – and that purpose he achieved! No one but a lunatic could describe such an ambition as honourable. For its approval is tantamount to applauding the annihilation of law and freedom and glorying in the loathsome and dreadful act of their suppression.
Consider the paradox of a person who admits the wickedness of tyrannizing a country which was once free, and ought to be free still, but who nevertheless sees advantage in himself becoming its tyrant if he can. In the attempt to rescue him from that delusion there must be no limit to our reproaches and appeals. Who, in God’s name, could possibly derive advantage from murdering his country? Of all murders that is the most hideous and repulsive: even when its perpetrator is hailed, by the citizens he has trodden underfoot, as ‘Father of his Country’.1
The only yardstick of advantage, then, is moral right. Indeed the sole discoverable difference between the two terms, advantage and right, is a matter of sound. In meaning they are one. True enough, if we follow the standards of public opinion, no greater advantage can be imagined than to be an absolute ruler. But when we apply the standard of truth instead, the man who has achieved this position by wrongful means proves to have acted entirely at variance with his own interests. Agonies of anxiety, terrors day and night, a life of incessant plots and dangers, cannot possibly bring any advantage. ‘To the throne many are hostile, many disloyal, and few friendly,’2 wrote Accius. But the monarchy to which he was referring had been legitimately handed down from Tantalus and Pelops. Whereas our own autocrat was hated on a far, far, wider scale. For he had actually used the armies of Rome to crush the people of Rome; he had converted our nation – a land which had been not only free in itself but the ruler of other nations – into servitude to his own person.
Think of the corruptions and sores which must scar that man’s conscience and his heart! How can anyone derive benefit from his own life, if unheard-of popularity and glory can be won by its destruction? Power on this scale looks extremely advantageous. But the loads of shame and sin weighing it down deny that this is so, and afford a further proof that nothing which is not right can be of advantage.