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I’ve been reading Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, and have noticed a pattern.
The noble leaders in the ancient world tend to meet ignoble, violent ends.
Let’s take a small sample from Plutarch’s book, just the lives I’ve read in the past couple months.
Julius Caesar. We all know the story well — the Roman senators conspired to do in the emergent tyrant to protect the republic. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that — soap opera levels of complexity. Has anyone narrated Caesar’s assassination as vividly as Plutarch? Caesar arrives at the senate, takes his seat. The senators pretend to petition him, until one of them “laying hold of his robe with both of his hands, pulled it down from his neck, which was the signal for the assault.” Casca cut him first in the neck and Caesar cried out “Vile Casca, what does this mean?” The others surrounded him and set their daggers to work. It was a slash and gore fest. Brutus too stabbed him in the groin for good measure. Caesar suffered 23 wounds in all, and several senators were wounded in the melee.
Phocion. Another sad end of life story. Phocion is seized, brought to Athens for a show trial and a death sentence by poison.