Iqra’i

So Aristotle is supposed to have said, fleeing Athens before he could be tried for the same crime as Socrates.

My greatest question, over the last few days, has been one about honor. Last night, the Conservative Party debated “Resolved: Brutus was an honorable man.” Since I love Shakespeare only slightly less than I love Roman history, this was terribly exciting, but the more I thought about it the less certain I became.

On the one hand, Brutus killed the man who was quite nearly his father, and a patricide can never be considered honorable. On the other hand, he did what he did for the sake of the Roman republic and Roman virtue, and doing something difficult and unpleasant or unpopular because it’s right seems like the very basis of honor.

I wavered quite a lot on the question, and I still do. Republican virtue and filial piety form two incompatible claims on honor: is there an honorable choice? If you can uphold a principle at the expense of a man’s life, should you? What role does your relationship with the man play? Does it matter if you are a statesman or a private citizen?

• Case One: Socrates; or, When Athens Gives You Hemlock, Make Hemlockade

Socrates is accused and convicted of corrupting the youth and spreading disbelief in the gods. When offered an escape from prison before his execution, he refuses:

“Then the laws will say: ‘Consider, Socrates, if this is true, that in your present attempt you are going to do us wrong. For, after having brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good that we had to give, we further proclaim and give the right to every Athenian, that if he does not like us when he has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him; and none of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him. …you pretended that you preferred death to exile, and that you were not grieved at death. And now you have forgotten these fine sentiments, and pay no respect to us, the laws, of whom you are the destroyer; and are doing what only a miserable slave would do, running away and turning your back upon the compacts and agreements which you made as a citizen. And first of all answer this very question: Are we right in saying that you agreed to be governed according to us in deed, and not in word only? Is that true or not?’” (Plato, Crito.)

Because Socrates loves his city, he tries to make it better; because he loves his city, he takes his punishment though he knows it to be unjust. He makes himself a martyr to philosophy and truth.

VERDICT: Honorable.

• Case Two: Lucius Junius Brutus; or, Spare the Fasces and Spoil the Child

L. Junius Brutus (not to be confused with M. Junius Brutus, with whom this post began) is the first consul of Rome. He drives out the Tarquin kings and sets up the Republic in their stead. His sons are caught conspiring with the exiled Tarquins to bring about their return.

“Their punishment created a great sensation owing to the fact that the consular office imposed upon a father the duty of inflicting punishment on his own children; he who ought not to have witnessed it was destined to be the one to see it duly carried out. Youths belonging to the noblest families were standing tied to the post, but all eyes were turned to the consul’s children, the others were unnoticed. Men did not grieve more for their punishment than for the crime which had incurred it - that they should have conceived the idea, in that year above all, of betraying to one, who had been a ruthless tyrant and was now an exile and an enemy, a newly liberated country, their father who had liberated it, the consulship which had originated in the Junian house, the senate, the plebs, all that Rome possessed of human or divine. The consuls took their seats, the lictors were told off to inflict the penalty; they scourged their bared backs with rods and then beheaded them. During the whole time, the father’s countenance betrayed his feelings, but the father’s stern resolution was still more apparent as he superintended the public execution.” (Livy, History.)

Brutus’ duty to the state he has founded requires him to kill his sons. They are clearly guilty, and justice (as well as example to posterity) requires their execution. Every natural instinct in a father’s heart cries out against this, but duty overcomes them.

VERDICT: Honorable.

• Case Three: Gaius Marcius Coriolanus; or, A People That Knows What It Wants Deserves to Get It Good and Hard

Young patrician G. Marcius, hero of the conquest of the Volscian town of Corioli (hence the cognomen), angers the plebeians by condemning their demands for increased political power.

“…the anger of the plebeians was so thoroughly roused that the patricians could only save themselves by the punishment of one of their order. …[Coriolanus] was condemned in his absence. He went into exile amongst the Volscians, uttering threats against his country, and even then entertaining hostile designs against it. The Volscians welcomed his arrival, and he became more popular as his resentment against his countrymen became more bitter, and his complaints and threats were more frequently heard.” (Livy, History.)

Coriolanus and the Volscians march on Rome; his mother, wife, and children go to meet the army and beg him not to destroy the city. Their pleas fall on deaf ears, and at last his mother cries out:

“This fellow had a Volscian to his mother;
His wife is in Corioli, and his child
Like him by chance.” (Shakespeare, Coriolanus.)

Coriolanus realizes at last that his honor, which drove him to Rome’s enemies, is nevertheless Roman honor. If he destroys Rome, his honor will be both satisfied and destroyed. He is faced with a tragic choice: either he destroys the city that made him to revenge his affronted honor, or he betrays his new home to save the old.

Coriolanus left Rome still a Roman, and that is his hamartia. Only his pride was at stake: if he stands for Rome as Rome should be, he must stay and suffer the punishment of the mob. If Rome’s betrayal is too great — if Rome-as-it-is can never again be Rome-as-he-loves-it — his loyalty belongs to the Volscians entirely.

VERDICT: Dishonorable.

• Case Four: Émile Zola; or, The Truth is On the March? You Can’t Handle the Truth!

Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jewish military officer, is wrongly accused of betraying France to her enemies and convicted by court martial. A second court martial, made necessary by public outcry, confirms the decision of the first. French intellectuals are outraged: Zola, one of the greatest literary figures of his age, writes an open letter to the President of the Third Republic. He specifically accuses the men responsible for the miscarriage of justice, and concludes:

“While carrying these charges, I am not unaware of only I put myself under the blow of articles 30 and 31 of the law on the press of July 29, 1881, which punishes the offenses of slandering. And it is voluntarily that I expose myself.

As for people whom I accuse, I do not know them, I never saw them, I have against them neither resentment nor hatred. They are for me only entities, spirits of social maleficence. And the act that I accomplished here is only a one average revolutionist to hasten the explosion of the truth and justice.

I have only one passion, that of the light, in the name of the humanity which suffered so much and which is entitled to happiness. My ignited protest is only the cry of my heart. That one thus dares to translate for me into court bases and that the investigation takes place at the great day!” (Zola, J’accuse.)

Zola is convicted of libel and sentenced to jail-time. He is faced with a decision: he can serve his time, a martyr to his ideal of France, or he can flee to England and draw out the proceedings in the hope that the affair will remain before the public and that Dreyfus will be exonerated.

In the end, Zola flees, and spending eleven months in exile in a country whose language he does not speak. Dreyfus is granted amnesty and becomes the first man ever released from the penal colony on Devil’s Island.

Zola is forever haunted by his flight. He loved France enough to put himself in danger to protect her truth and justice, but then he fled. It is as though Socrates had gone with Crito — and yet there is a vital difference. Zola could proudly have martyred himself to the glory of France, but to serve his prison sentence would be to martyr Dreyfus as well.

Zola’s choice is the hardest of all: where Brutus has the stern responsibility of a ruler for his state, Zola has only the loyalty of a citizen; where Socrates gives only his own life, Zola is responsible for another; where Coriolanus may act according to pride, Zola must balance a desire to preserve his own integrity with the life of another man.

Like Coriolanus, Zola’s homeland has betrayed the things he loved it for. Like Coriolanus, too, he still loves it. Coriolanus left, and this was wrong: but Zola left, and it was right, because Zola was responsible for another’s life

VERDICT: Honorable.

• Case Five: Marcus Junius Brutus; or, Assassins Shouldn’t Be Seen or Heard
  

This brings me, at last, back to the original Brutus. He does not have Socrates’ easy answer: the death in question is not his own. In ironic echo of his famous ancestor, he must kill to protect the Republic. Duty to one’s father, though, is qualitatively different from duty to one’s children. L. Junius Brutus killed his sons to save Rome, and this is clearly the honorable choice; M. Junius Brutus killed his father, and this is much less clear.

Like Zola, Brutus sacrifices his integrity for something greater, but he would have no choice but to do so either way. If he joins the conspiracy against Caesar, he betrays his father; if he does not, he betrays his fatherland.

Brutus has no honorable choice. In the end he chooses the one which is best for everyone else: he tries to leave his countrymen a Rome that is, if not his ideal, then better for his action.

Perhaps the best eulogy is Antony’s. He served for Caesar; he can, too, for a greater man.

“This was the noblest Roman of all
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought,
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man!” (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.)

VERDICT: Tragic.