What ? those who neglect all right and honorable
things as long as the acquire power, do they not do the same thing as that person
who wished to have as his father-in-law the man by whose boldness he had
obtained power. It seemed useful to him
to be most powerful through the enmity of the other. He did not see how unjust that was to the
fatherland, and how base. And the
father-in-law himself used to quote repeatedly in Greek some lines from the The
Phoenician Women, which I will say as best I can inelegantly perhaps, but
still so the substance can be understood:
for
if justice must be violated for the sake of ruling
then
it must be violated; practice piety in other things.
Worthy of death was Eteocles [the character speaking
the lines] or rather Euripides [who wrote them] because he made an exception of
the one thing that was most wicked of all.
Why then do we bother ourselves with tiny things like
fraudulent inheritances and sales and purchases? Here you have someone who longed to be king
of the Roman people and master of the whole world, and he accomplished it. If there is anyone who says that this longing
was honorable he is crazy, for he approves the death of laws and liberty and
thinks that their foul and hateful oppression is glorious. But as for anyone who admits that it is not
honorable to be king in a state which once was and should be free but still
thinks that doing so is useful to the person who can do it, how I would rebuke
or rather, how I would scream at him to try to pull him away from such a
mistake. For by the immortal gods, can
the most foul and loathsome murder of ones fatherland be useful to anyone,
even if the man who is guilty of the murder is called father
of the fatherland by its oppressed citizens. Utility must be guided by
honor, and in such a way that though the two different in word they resonate as
one in deed.
