Lord Acton famously wrote in a letter to an Anglican bishop, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” That generalization proves to be true of about every person who finds themselves in politics, except for perhaps Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius, as a ruler of the Roman Empire, had absolute power. Unlike for all the other Roman emperors, who lived scandalous lives and disgraced themselves, absolute power did not corrupt Aurelius, but rather showed us the depth and complexity of this poor soul who was reluctantly thrust into such power.
Imagine a man for whom all the constraints of the laws and mores, and even practical constraints, were taken away. If a man under these circumstances manages to behave well, you know it is his character driving this behavior because there are no external constraints making him do what he is doing. Marcus Aurelius is an example of an absolute ruler which power did not corrupt.
Put yourself in your shoes. Imagine what it must be like to be able to have all the money in the world, to have sex with whoever you fancied, or to have anything at all that the desiring, emotional part of your soul wants. Imagine having this power at your disposal for two decades of your life as Aurelius had. What sort of man would it take to bear those circumstances and not disgrace himself?
I hardly know a single person who doesn’t lie to themselves when this question is posed to them. We all consider ourselves to be particularly wise and upright and we condemn politicians for having such moral failings when they occur. Quite a few of us get a rise out of criticizing politicians for embezzling millions of dollars and having affairs with hookers. I guarantee that if you're the kind of person who can't resist the temptation of a second piece of cake, then you're also one to embezzle millions of dollars and sleep with hookers. The only thing that appears to be stopping you is your lack of power to do so.
We fail and give in to such tiny temptations – to eat an extra slice of cake, to cheat on our taxes for a thousand extra bucks, and so on. Such tiny, pathetic little temptations we give ourselves to compared to those Aurelius faced daily.
Marcus Aurelius had these temptations magnified by a thousandfold, and he consistently does good. This is no common man like the rest of us. His principal aim was to live a life in which he would not have to be burdened by guilt for anything. And fortunately for us, a bookkeeper who went against his wishes after his death and published a private journal we now know as his Meditations.
Marcus Aurelius was the loneliest man in the world, so much so that he wrote this book to himself – never intended to be seen by anyone else – and he ordered that it be burned after his death. He was so lonely because everyone he talked to wanted something from him. He had no equals – not because he was better than everybody by convention, but because no one he knew had a love for wisdom and a longing for virtue on the level he did. Everyone around him wanted something material for themselves.
All Marcus ever wanted was to live a genuinely philosophical life, but he happens to have had the terrible misfortune of being born the emperor of the world as we know it. So pitiful. The weariness of it all grinds down on him after a while.
His Meditations is a little over 100 pages of him telling himself the same basic advice over and over again. He says to himself, look, Marcus, I know the people around you are corrupt and cattle-like, and they care more about money and wealth than they do seeking wisdom and living virtuously, but you have to excuse them for that. It’s your job to teach them and morally improve them, but if they cannot grasp what true virtue is, you must put up with them. That’s life, Marcus, get over it.
To Aurelius, there are two sorts of circumstances in life: those you can’t control and those you can. If you can’t control them, then it is a waste of your energy to complain about them and get upset. But if you can control them, say factors of your mood and your intentions and what is within the realm of your capability, then it is entirely your responsibility to do something about them, and not anyone else’s – either way, there is nothing you get to complain about and Marcus doesn’t want to hear you complain. If only you knew how bad you could have had it by being born in his position.
After all, Marcus doesn’t really want any of that wealth and power he has, but he knows that if he stepped down, as Plato warned, only a worse ruler would step in and take control. And they would be motivated by their own desire for comfort and satisfaction. They would be more motivated by making a living than they would by pursuing wisdom and virtue and leading others to more virtuous lives. If he had a choice, he would go home and read his books, but against what he really wants to do, he, unfortunately, has to take up his responsibility of being the wealthiest and most powerful man in the world. We can all learn something from the somber wisdom of this great man.
Isn't it strange that this wise man, and wise he was, could not bring up his son to a decent man? Perhaps one should not expect the son to resemble the father, but Commodus (Marcus' son) was by all standards one of the most monstrous rulers in human history. He was not even moderately decent.