A possible sketch of Boétie, source here.

Étienne de La Boétie is one of those hidden founts whose name remains obscure but whose ideas percolate nearly universally in the imagination of those who live downstream from his time. His name can be found in as far a field as Leo Tolstoy, Giorgio Agamben, Gustav Landauer, and Murray Rothbard.

Though his literary output is not as considerably voluminous as his contemporary and friend Michel Montaigne, this one short essay "Discours de la servitude volontaire" drives home one singular idea that is somehow both frustatingly banal and yet refreshingly inspirational: one cannot govern without the consent of the governed.

De La Boétie lived in the sixteenth century (1530-1563) where such ideas were not only uncommon but downright bizarre. This is not to say that medieval writers and thinkers did not have ideas on resistance to governmental authority. John of Salisbury and to a lesser extent Dante even voiced support for tyrannicide under extraordinary circumstances. Marsilius of Padua gestures toward a political body removing its sovereign when necessary.

The generation of Huguenots after de La Boétie also began to germinate notions of popular sovereignty through a historical-juridical lens (e.g. François Hotman and Théodore de Bèze), but even then what they describe is a more aristocratic driven exchange between nobility and monarchical sovereigns to depose ruling authorities.

The "Discours de la servitude volontaire" is markedly different in that not only are the nobility entirely dismissed as accomplices and agents of tyranny, rather than as a counterbalance, but in that the individual, common man so to speak, is designated a quite distinct autonomies of power and natural liberties. Quite simply, any one who lives and breathes has an innate right to be free and not to be subject to some perverse, external force that would certainly devolve into tyranny.

Based on this abstract principle, de La Boétie then considers how the far surpassing norm of history is quite the opposite. People submit themselves to tyranny with little exception. And to a hyperredundant degree, de La Boétie repeats over and over again how silly this is because no sovereign could functionally operate unless the individuals beneath them chose to submit to their orders. There would quite simply be no logistical or operational apparatus for government to function if each and every individual took up the Bartleby refrain, "I would prefer not to."

With this, de La Boétie innovates and systematizes a new form of resistance to government. Not an assassination or tyrannicide, not a coup or usurpation of the throne, but mass civil disobedience. That ordinary people themselves can make the choice not to submit, even if it comes at the cost of life and livelihood.

In his introduction to Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben acknowledges his deep indebtedness to the teachings of Michel Foucault by drawing attention to the concept of biopower which had dominated so much of Foucault's life and thought. To put it perhaps with blasé brevity, the idea that there are "public" systems which regulate the very way of life of ordinary people far beyond what premodern cultures had established. Prisons, schools, hospitals, etc. The assembly line of human life.

This analytic approach was a very deliberate move by Foucault to supplant what he deemed as the overly limited traditional models of legal and juridicial analyses of power (e.g. Enlightnment thinkers and our humanist friends above) who are unable to grasp the very concrete mechanisms in which our lives are minutely regulated by this apparatus that may or may not be called the State but is certainly a murky squid-like beast of biopower whose tendrils leave nothing unturned. The ways in which we are made subject to this quasi-cosmic entity out there named Power. In their book on Foucault, Dreyfus and Rabinow also comment on this ambivalent notion of power/biopower as something that is sometimes ontological and at other times functional and yet in other places merely a heuristic. It never becomes clear, arguably even to Foucault himself, what this concept actually is.

But what is common is to read Foucault's concoction of biopower as some universal, inchoate, menacing force that we are always under.*

Many decry how we are subjects to these systems of power, whatever those may be. And even when they have names for their targets, what solutions they offer remain vague and unactionable. Alternatively, others of them say they say there is no solution and we have no choice. These evils are unstoppable, and they request a cash transfer to make up for it. But at least they have an abundant verbal Rolodex of high-branded theory to back such claims.

Yet, Agamben notes, despite all these finely detailed and conceptually elaborate paradigms that Foucault has pulled together in his ongoing wrestling through this question, de La Boétie remains a startingly vivid and blunt crow of the rooster against the soporific cynicism that Foucauldianism can engender. A call to wake with the dawn.

One can imagine that after a long lecture on biopower, de La Boétie would laugh and say yet again for the hundredth time, "Yes that may all be true, but you cannot deny that your biopower would disappear if its 'subjects' would simply stop following its commands." The State or whatever governmental or corporate apparatus you like does not have its own objective self-sustaining power, no matter how omnipotent they may seem in "systems" discourse. The fact of the matter will remain that as soon as the will of the people rescinds support from any system, it will simply collapse upon itself.

Can such a rickety, haphazard system of governance truly be called power?

De La Boétie writing as he did nearly five hundred years ago offers a stark reminder and admonition, that there is always a choice.

Two centuries later, France was spiraling deep into debt (half of the crown budget was spent on interest), food prices skyrocketing with inflation, and detached elites more interested in their global empire investments than the state of the nation at home. Under such circumstances, one of the most ancient monarchies of Europe would be toppled, not by a chain of assassinations (though this would come), but initially from such concerted effort for the people to simply revoke their voluntary servitude.

Though it may be rare, we can point to many instances across history at a scale both small and large, on topics racial or economic, how an action as simply as making a choice not to submit to tyrannical laws through civil disobedience has defied local and global powers to an unstoppable degree, so long as the will is there.

Is is in this clarion call from de La Boétie that humanism offers its riposte to post-humanism. Yes, there always remains the choice.

Below is my translation of this essay. It has been translated elsewhere into English though not without errors. My translation is certainly not error-free, but I do hope it an improvement upon those that have come before.

For more background, consider this article or even reading the Mises Institute's version of this essay, including an introduction by Murray Rothbard.

• At least for many who invoke the name of Foucault. Disciples can often vulgarize the thinking of their teacher, and it seems that few who cite Foucault pay attention to the countervailing thoughts of his final years. These are broad brush strokes of course, but this does seem to be a pattern among those who may not read Foucault but have listened to podcasts about him.

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Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

“It is not good to have many masters; let us have one alone;

Let there be one master, let there be one king.”

“οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη: εἷς κοίρανος ἔστω,

εἷς βασιλεύς” (Iliad II.204-205)

This is what Odysseus declares in public according to Homer.

If he had alone said: “It is not good to have many masters”, that would suffice. But instead of deducing from this that the domination of many cannot be good, since the power of one is harsh and reasonable, as soon as he assumes the title of master, he adds to the contrary “Let us have but one master…”.

It is necessary perhaps to excused Odysseus for having used this language, which served him to appease the revolt of the army: I believe that he was adapting his discourse rather to the circumstances rather than to the truth. But on reflection, it is an extreme misfortune to be subjected to a master whose goodness you can never be sure of, and who always has the power to be nasty whenever he would like. As to obeying several master, it would be multiplied extreme misfortune.

I do not want to debate here the question the much discussed question, to know “whether other sorts of republics are better than monarchy”. If I had to debate it, before seeking which ___ monarchy ought to occupy among the diverse modes of governing public affairs, I would ask whether it should even be given any ____, because it is difficult to believe that there is anything public in a government where everything belongs to one alone. But let’s reserve this question for another time which merits as separate treatment and which would provoke all kinds of political disputes.

For the moment, I would only like to understand how it is possible that so many men, so many towns, so many cities, so many nations sometimes support a single tyrant who has no power outside of what they gave him, who has no capability to harm them outside that which they are willing to endure, and who could do them no harm if they did not prefer to suffer everything from him than to contradict him. A truly astonishing thing—and nevertheless so common that we should rather groan than be amazed—to see a million men miserably enslaved, the head under the yoke, not they should be compelled by overwhelming force, but because they are fascinated and so to speak bewitched by the mere name of one, that they shouldn’t dread—since he is alone—nor love—since he is inhumane and cruel to them all. Such however is the weakness of men: compelled to obey, forced to wait for a better time, they can’t always be the strongest. Thus if a nation, compelled by the force of arms, is subjugated to the power of an individual—like the city of Athens was to the dominion of thirty tyrants—we should not be surprised that it serves in such a way, but rather deplore it. Or rather, neither wonder nor complain, but endure misfortune with patience, and save ourselves for a better future.

We are made in such a way that the common duties of friendship absorb a good part of our lives. It reasonable to love virtue, to esteem good deeds, to be grateful for the blessings received, and to often reduce our well-being to increase the honor and the advantage of those we love, and who merit our love. If therefore, the inhabitants of a country find among them one of these rare men who has given them proof of a great foresight to safeguard them, of a great brazenness to defend them, of a great prudence to govern them; if in the long term they become accustomed to obeying and relying on him to the point of according him a certain supremacy, I do not know if it would be wise to remove him from where he used to do good to place him where could do bad; it seems, in effect, natural to have good will for him who procured good for us and to not fear harm.

But, O great God, what is this then? What should we call this misfortune? What is this vice, this horrible vice, to see an infinite number of men, not only obey, but serve, not to be governed, but to be tyrannized, having neither goods, nor parents, nor children, nor their very lives that are their own? To see them suffer the rape, the debauchery, the cruelty, not of an army, not of a barbaric camp against whom everyone ought to defend his blood and his life, but of an individual! Not a Hercules nor a Samson, but a manlet often the most cowardly, the most effeminate of a nation, who has never smelled the gunpowder of battle nor trod the sand of tournaments, who is not only unfit to command men, but even to satisfy the slightest wench! Shall we call it cowardice? Shall we call these submissive men vile and cowardly? If two, if three, if four give into one, it is strange, but nevertheless possible. One could say with reason it is lack of heart. But if a hundred, if a thousand suffer the oppression of an individual, will it be said still that they do not dare to take him on, or they do not want to, and that this is not cowardice, but rather contempt or disdain?

Finally, if we see not a hundred, not a thousand, but a hundred countries, a thousand towns, a million men that do not assail the one who treats them like serfs and slaves, what do we call this? Is this cowardice? But all vices have limits which they cannot exceed. Two men, and even ten, can well fear one; but a thousand, a million, a thousand towns that do not defend themselves against a single man, that is not cowardice: it does not go that far, just as valor does not require a single man to climb a fortress, attack an army, conquer a kingdom. What monstrous vice is this, which doesn’t even deserve the title of cowardice, which finds no name ugly enough, which nature disavows and which language refuses to name?

Put fifty thousand men at arms face to face, line them up in battle and let them come to blows; some freely fight for their liberty, others fight to take it away. To whom would you promise the victory? Who will fight more courageously: those who hope to be rewarded by the preservation of their liberty, or those who expect only for the wages of their shots that they give that they would receive the servitude of the other side? Some have the happiness of their lives pass before their eyes, and the expectation of equal well-being in the future. They think less of what they endure during a battle than of what they, their children, and all their posterity would endure if defeated. The others have no more than a spike of greed that suddenly dulls in the face of danger, and whose ardor is extinguished in the blood of their first wound. In the renowned battles of Miltiades, Leonidas, and Themistocles which date back two thousand years and are still as fresh in the memory of books and men as if they had just been fought yesterday, in Greece, for the good of the Greeks and for the example of the whole world, what gave so few Greeks, not the power, but the courage to withstand such a force of so many ships that the sea itself overflowed, to defeat nations so numerous that all the Greek soldiers, taken together, would not have provided enough captains for the enemy armies? In these glorious days, it was less the battle of the Greeks against the Persians than the victory of freedom over domination, of emancipation over greed.

These are truly extraordinary tales of the valor that puts freedom in the hearts of those who defend it! But what happens, everywhere and every day, is that one man alone oppresses a hundred thousand and deprives them of their freedom, who could believe it, if only heard and did not see it? And if it only happened in foreign countries, far away lands, and someone came to tell us about it, who would not believe this purely invented tale?

There is no need to fight this tyrant alone, nor to bring him down. He is defeated by himself, provided the country does not consent to his servitude. It’s not a question of taking something away from him, but to give him nothing. There is no need for the country to go to the trouble of doing anything for itself, provided it does nothing against itself. So it’s the people themselves who let themselves be abused, or rather to be mistreated, since they would be off the hook if they stopped serving him. It is the people who enslave themselves and who cut their own throats, who, being able to choose between being submissive and being free, reject freedom and take the yoke, who consent to their harm, or rather who seek it… If it cost him anything to regain his freedom, I would urge him to do so; even if what he needs most is to regain his natural rights and, so to speak, to turn beast into man again. But I don’t expect such boldness from him. I admit that he prefers, I do not know, what assurance of miserable life over a doubtful hope of living as he sees fit. But what! If to have freedom is enough to desire it, if all that is needed is a simple will, will there be a nation in the world that believes it is paying too much simply by wishing for it? And who would regret the will to recover a property that should be bought back at the price of blood, and whose loss makes life bitter to every man of honor? Certainly, as the fire of a small spark grows and always reinforces itself, and the more it finds wood to burn, the more it devours, but is consumed and finally extinguishes itself when you stop feeding it, in the same way, the more tyrants plunder, the more they demand; the more they ruin and destroy, the more they are supplied, the more they are served. They are fortified and become more and more ready to annihilate and destroy everything. But if you obey them, without fighting them or hitting back, they remain naked and defeated and are nothing, just as the branch, having no more juice or nourishment at its root, becomes dry and dead.

To acquire what he desires, the bold man fears no danger, the wise man is repelled by no pain. Only the cowardly and the numb know neither how to endure evil, nor how to regain the goods they merely covet. The energy to do so is taken from them by their own cowardice; all that remains is the natural desire to possess those goods. This desire, this will common to both the wise and the unwise, to the courageous and to the cowards, makes them wisher all the things whose possession would make them happy and content. There is only one that men, I don’t know why, do not have the strength to desire: it is freedom, a good so great and so sweet! As soon as it is lost, all the evils follow, and without it all the other goods, corrupted by servitude, entirely lose their taste and flavor. Liberty, men uniquely disdain, it seems, because if they desired it, they would have it; as if they refuse to make this precious acquisition because it is too easy.

Poor wretched tribes, foolish peoples, persistent for your ill and blind to your good! You let the best and brightest of your earnings be taken from you before your very eyes, you let your fields be plundered, your homes robbed and stripped of the old furniture of your ancestors! You live in such a way that nothing is yours anymore. It seems that from now on you’ll consider the half of your goods, of your families, of your lives your own. And all this damage, this misfortune, this ruin does not come to you from enemies, but certainly from the one enemy that you yourselves have made, the one for whom you courageously go to war, and for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer yourselves to the death. However this master has only two eyes, two hands, one body, and nothing more than the last inhabitant of the infinite number of our cities. What he has more of are the means you provide him to destroy you. Where does he get all those eyes which spy on you, if it is not from you? How can he have so many hands with which to strike you, if he does not borrow them from you? Are not the feet with which he treads your cities also yours? Has he any power over you that is not of yourselves? how could he dare to attack you, if he did not have access to you? What harm could he do you, if you were not the receives of the thief who plunders you, the accomplices of the murderer who kills you, and traitors to yourselves? You sow your fields for him to devastate, you furnish and fill your homes to supply his plunder, you raise your daughters so that he can indulge his lust, you feed your children so that he can turn them into soldiers in the best of cases, to lead them to war, to butchery, to make them ministers of his lusts and executors of his vengeance. You wear yourselves out with pain so that he can bask in his delights and wallow in his filthy pleasures. You weaken yourselves so that he will be stronger, and that he holds you the more tightly with a shorter bridle. And of so many indignities that the beasts themselves would not endure if they sensed them, you could deliver yourself if you tried, not even to deliver yourself, but only to will to.

Be resolved to serve no more, and voila you are free. I am not asking you to push it, to shake it, but only to no longer support it, and you will see it, like a great colossus whose base has been broken, melt under its own weight and shatter.

The doctors justly advise not to search for the healing of incurable wounds, and am I possibly wrong to want to exhort a people who seem to have lost for a long time all knowledge of their ill—that who shows enough that this malady is mortal. So let’s try to understand, if it is possible, how this voluntary obstinacy to serve is rooted so deeply that one believes that the same love of liberty is not as natural.

It is out of doubt, I believe, that if we live with the rights that we hold from nature and from the precepts she teaches us, we would naturally submit to our parents, subjects of reason, without being slaves of anybody. Any one of us recognizes in himself, totally naturally, the impulse of obedience toward his father and mother. How much to know if the reason is innate in us or not—is a question amply debated by professors and stirred up by all the schools of philosophy, I do not think it error in saying that there is in our spirit a natural germ of reason. Developed by good counsel and good examples, this germ flourishes in virtue, but it is often aborted, suffocated by the vice that arise. It is clear and evident, that no one can ignore, that nature, minister of God, governor of men, created us all and cast us in the same mold, to show us that we are all equal, or rather brothers. And if, in the sharing of her gifts, she has lavished some advantages of body or mind to some more than to others, she has not willed to place us in this world as on a battlefield, and has not sent down here the strongest or most skillful like armed brigands into a forest to harangue the weaker ones. Let’s rather believe that by giving larger shares to some, and smaller to others, she wanted to instill in them a sense of brotherly affection and put them in a position to practice it, since some have the power to help while others need to receive it. So, since this good mother has given us all the earth to abide in, since she has lodged us all in the same house, formed us all on the same model, so that each of us could look at the other and almost recognize ourselves in the other in a mirror, since she has given us all the beautiful gift of voice and speech to better meet and fraternize, and to produce, through communication and the exchange of our thoughts, the communion of our wills, since it has sought in every way to make and tighten the knot of our alliance, of our society, since it has shown in all things that it only wants us united, as such a single being, how can we doubt that we are naturally free, since we are all equal? It cannot enter anyone’s mind that nature has put anyone in bondage, since it has put us all in company.

To speak truly, it is quite useless to ask whether freedom is natural, since no being can be held in servitude without doing it harm: there is nothing in the world more contrary to nature, completely sensibly, than injustice. Freedom is therefore natural; this is why, in my opinion, we are not only born with it, but also with the passion to defend it.

And if there are any who still doubt this—bastardized to the point that they do not recognize their gifts or their native passions—I must give them the honor they deserve and, to put it this way, I must hoist the brute beasts into a chair, to teach them about their nature and condition. The beasts, so help me God, if men will listen to them, shout: “Long live liberty!” Many of them die as soon as they are caught. Like the fish that loses it life as soon as it is pulled out of the water, they let themselves die, so as not to survive their natural liberty. If animals had preeminence among themselves, they would make this freedom their nobility. Other beasts, form the largest to the smallest, when taken, resist so strongly with their nails, horns, beaks, and feet that they show just how much they value what they are losing. Once caught, they give us so many flagrant signs of the knowledge of their misfortune that it is beautiful to see them languish rather than live, and moan about their lost happiness rather than delight in servitude. What else does the elephant mean when, having defended himself to the end, with no hope left on the point of being taken, he sinks his jaws and breaks his teeth against the trees, except that his great desire to remain free gives him the spirit to haggle with the hunters: it remains to be seen whether he can pay the price with his teeth, and if his ivory, left for ransom, will buy back his freedom?

We stroke the horse from birth to get him used to servitude. Our caresses do not prevent him from biting his bridle, and kicking under the spur when we want to tame him. He wants to testify by this, it seems to me, that he does not serve of his own free will but rather under our constraint. What more is there to say?

“Even oxen, under the yoke, whimper, and the birds, encaged, lament.” I have said it elsewhere in verse…

Thus, since all sentient beings feel the misfortune of subjection and seek freedom; since beasts, even those made to serve man, can only submit to him after protesting a desire to the contrary, what misfortune can denature man—the only one truly born to live free—to the point of making him lose all recollection of his first state and the desire to retake it?

There are three kinds of tyrants.

Some reign by election of the people, others by force of arms, the last by racial succession. Those who have power through the law of war behave—as we know and rightly say—as if they were in a conquered land. Those who are born kings are in general hardly better. Born and bred in the bosom of tyranny, they suck with milk the tyrant’s character and they regard the peoples who are their subjects as their hereditary serfs. Depending upon their dominant inclination—stingy or lavish— they use the kingdom as their inheritance. Such is the one who holds his power from the people, it seems that he ought to be more bearable. If he were, I believe, if as soon as he sees himself elevated above the other, flattered by I do not know what but is called greatnness, he decided to stay there. He almost always considers the power bequeathed to him as something to be passed on to his children. But as soon as they have adapted this opinion, it is strange to see how they surpass in all sorts of vices, and even in cruelties, all the other tyrants.They can think of no better way to ensure their new tyranny than by reinforcing servitude and eliminating so well the ideas of liberty from the spirit of their subjects that, however recent the memory may be, it is soon effaced from their memory. For to speak truthfully, I do see some difference between these tyrants, but I do not see any differences in choices: because they arrive on the throne by many ways, their manner of reign is always more or less the same. Those elected by the people treat them like bulls to be tamed, conquerors treat them like their prey, the successors treat them like a troupe of slaves who belong to them by nature.

I would pose this question: if by chance a few completely new people were born today, neither accustomed to subjugation, nor enticed by liberty, ignorant even of the names of one and the other, and were offered to be subjects or to live freely, what would their choice be? Without a doubt, they would much rather obey reason alone than serve a man, unless they were like the people of Israel, who without need or constraint, gave themselves to a tyrant. I never read their story without feeling an extreme resentment which carries me nearly to be inhumane, to rejoice in all the evils that befell them. For in order for men, as long as they are men, to let themselves be subjugated, it necessarily is one of two things: either they are forced to do so, or they are deceived. Forced by foreign arms like Sparta or Athens were by Alexander’s, or received by factions like the government of Athens, which had previously fallen into the hands of Pisistratus. They often lose their freedom by being deceived, but they are less often seduced by others than they deceive themselves. Thus the people of Syracuse, capital of Sicily, pressed by wars, thinking only of hte danger of hte moment, elected Dionysius I and gave him command of the army. They did not realize they had made also made him so powerful when this evil one, returning victorious as if he had vanquished his fellow citizens rather than his enemies made himself first captain, then king, and from king, tyrant. It is incredible to see how the people, as soon as they are subjugated, suddenly fall into such a deep oblivion of their freedom that it is impossible for them to wake up and reclaim it: they serve so well, and so willingly, that one could take the view that they not only lost their liberty but won their servitude.

It is true that in the beginning we serve under compulsion and are vanquished by force; but the successors serve without regret and do voluntarily what their predecessors had done under compulsion. Men born under the yoke, then nurtured and raised in servitude, without looking further, are content to live as they were born, and think they have no other goods or rights than those they have found. They take for their state of nature the state of their birth.

However, there is no heir, however profligate or nonchalant, who does not look one day on the records of his father to see whether he enjoys all the rights of his succession and whether nothing has been done against him or against his predecessor. But habit, which exercises in all things such a great power over us, has above all the power to each us to serve, and as the story is told of Mithridates, who eventually became habituated to poison, that of teaching us to swallow the venom of servitude without finding it bitter. There’s not doubt that nature directs us to where she wants us to be, good or bad, but it has less power over us than habit. As good as nature is, it is lost if it is not maintained, and habit always forms us in its own way, in spite of nature. The seeds of goodness that nature puts in us are so small, so frail, that they cannot withstand the slightest shock of a contrary habit. They are less easily maintained that they are bastardized, and even degenerate, like those fruit trees that retain the characteristics of their species as long as they are allowed to grow, but lose them to bear different fruit, depending on the manner in which they are grafted.

Plants, too, have their own properties, their own naturalness, their own singularity; however over time, the weather, the soil or the gardener’s hand greatly augment or diminish their virtues. The plant seen in one country is often no longer recognizable in another. Anyone who sees the Venetians, a handful of people living so freely that the most wretched of them would be king, born and bred in such a way that they know no other ambition than to nurture their liberty, educated and formed from the cradle in such a way that they would not exchange their liberty for all the delights of the Earth… Whoever, I say, sees these people, and who would hten go to the domain of some “great lord”, finding there people who were born only to serve him, and who give up their own lives to maintain his power, would he think that these two peoples were of the same nature? Or would he not rather believe that in leaving a city of men, he has entered a park of beasts?

It is said that Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator, had fed two dogs, both brothers, both fed on the same milk. One was fattened up in the kitchen, the other habituated to run the fields to the sound of the horn and cornet. Wanting to show the Lacedemonians that men are such as culture has made them, he exhibited the two dogs in the public square and put enter them a soup and a hare. One ran to the dish, the other to the hair. “And yet”, he said, “they’re brothers!”

This man, with his laws and his art of politics, educated and formed the Lacedemonians so well that each of them would rather suffer a thousand deaths than submit to any master other than law and reason.

I take pleasure in recalling here an anecdote concerning one of the favorites of Xerxes, the great king of Persia, and two Spartans. When Xerxes was making his war preparations to conquer the whole of Greece, he sent his ambassadors to several cities in that country to ask for water and land—this was the manner in which the Persians summoned cities to surrender. He was careful not to send any to Sparta or Athens because the Spartans and Athenians, to whom his father Darius had previous sent some, had thrown them, some into ditches, others into wells, saying to them: “Go then, take some water and land, and bear them to your prince.” These people could not bear to have their freedom infringed, even by the slightest word. The Spartans recognized that in doing so, they had offended the gods, especially Talthybius, the god of heralds. So, to appease them, they resolved to send Xerxes two of their fellow citizens so that, disposing of them at his discretion, he could take revenge on them for the murder of his father’s ambassadors.

Two Spartans, one named Sperthie and the other Bulis, offered themselves as willing victims. They departed. When they arrived at the palace of a Persian named Hydarnes, the king’s lieutenant for all the cities of Asia who were on the coast of the sea, he welcomed them highly honorably, gave them great food and, one thing leading to another, asked them why they so strongly rejected the king’s friendship.

“Spartans,” he said, “see by my example how the King knows how to honor those who deserve it. Believe that if you were in his service he had known you, you would both be governors of some Greek city.”

The Lacedemonians replied: “In this, Hydarnes, you could not give us good counsel; for if you have tried the happiness you promise us, you are entirely ignorant of that which WE enjoy. You have experienced the favor of the king, but you do not know what a delicious taste liberty has. Now if you had only tasted it, you would advise us to defend it, not only with spear and shield, but with teeth and nails.”

Only the Spartans spoke the truth, but everyone spoke according to their own upbringing. For it was as impossible for the Persian to regret the freedom he had never enjoyed as it was for the Lacedemonians, who had savored it, to endure slavery.

Cato of Utica, still a child and under the paddle of his master, often went to see the dictator Sulla who he had access to, both because of his family’s rank and because of his parental lineage. On these visits, he was always accompanied by his tutor, as was the custom in Rome for the children of nobles. One day, he saw that in Sulla’s own household, in his presence or by his command, some were imprisoned, others condemned; one was banished, another strangled. One demanded the confiscation of a citizen’s property, the other his head. In short, everything happened not only as if at the home of a city magistrate, but as if at the home of a tyrant of the people. It was less the sanctuary of justice than a cavern of tyranny.

This young boy said to his tutor “What you don’t give me a dagger? I will hit it under my robe. I often enter Sulla’s room before he gets up. My arm is strong enough to liberate the city”.

This is truly the word of a Cato. This beginning of a life was worthy of his death. Withhold the name and the county, just tell the fact as it is: it speaks for itself. We immediately say: “This child was Roman, born in Rome, when it was free.”

Why so I say this? I certainly do not pretend that the county and the soil have nothing to do with it, because everywhere and in all places slavery is bitter for men and liberty is dear to them. But it seems to me that we should pity on those who, at birth, already find themselves under the yoke, that we should excuse or forgive them if, not having even seen the shadow of freedom, and not having heard it spoken of, they do not resent the misfortune of being slaves. If there are countries, as Homer says of that of the Cimerians, where the sun shows itself completely different from ours, where after having illuminated them for six consecutive months, it leaves them in darkness for the other six months, is it any wonder that those who are born during this long night, if they have not heard of brightness nor ever seen the day, become accustomed to the darkness in which they were born without desiring the light?

We can never regret that which we never have had. Grief comes only after pleasure, and always, with the knowledge of misfortune, comes the memory of some past joy. The nature of man is to be free and to want to be free, but he easily takes another bent when education gives it to him.

Let us therefore say that, while all things become natural to man when he becomes accustomed to them, alone remains in his nature the desire only for simple and unaltered things. So the first reason for voluntary servitude is habit. This is what happens to the bravest horses who first bite their reins and then play with them, who, once bucking under the saddle, now present themselves under the harness and, all proud, gloat under the armor.

They say they have always been subjects, that their fathers lived that way. They think that they are obliged to endure evil, persuade themselves of this by example, and cement themselves to, over time, the possession of those who tyrannize them.

But in truth, years, never give the right to do wrong. They only increase the insult. There are always some, better born than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from shaking it, who never are tamed to subjection and who, like Odysseus who sought by land and sea to see the smoke of his home again, never forget their natural rights, their origins, their first state, and hasten to assert them at every opportunity. These, having acute understanding and astute sense, are not content, like the ignorant, to see what is at their feet without looking back or ahead. They remember the past in order to judge the present and foresee the future. They are the ones who, having a well-shaped head, have further refined it through study and learning. These, when freedom would be entirely lost and banished from the world, image it and feel it in their minds, and savor it. And servitude disgusts them, so much so that they dress it up.

The great Turk is well aware that books and thought give men, more than anything else, a sense of dignity and a hatred of tyranny. I understand that in his country, there are hardly scholars, nor does he ask for any. The zeal and the passion of those who remained, the devotees of liberty, in spite of the circumstances, remain because they cannot agree. Tyrants deprive them of all liberty to do, to speak and almost to think, and they remain isolated in their dreams. Momus was not joking enough when he found fault with the man forged by Vulcan, in that he didn’t have a small window in his heart so that his thoughts could be seen.

It is said that Brutus and Cassius, when they set out to liberate Rome (that is to say the whole world), they did not want Cicero, that great zealot of the public good, did not want to be part of the party, judging his heart too weak for such an exploit. They believed in his will, but not in his courage. Those who look back to past time and consult ancient annals will be convinced that almost all those who, seeing their country battered and in the wrong hands, form the design to deliver it, in good intentions, entirely and rightly, easily succeeded; for to manifest itself, liberty always came to their aide. Harmodius, Aristogiton, Thrasybulus, Brutus the Elder, Valerius, and Dion, who conceived such a virtuous project, exected it with pleasure. In such cases, a firm resolve almost always guarantees success. Brutus the Younger and Cassius succeeded in servitude; they perished when they tried to bring back freedom, not miserably—for who would dare find anything miserable in their lives or their deaths? —but to great damage, for the perpetual unhappiness and for the entire ruin of the republic, which, it seems to me, was buried with them. The other attempts made since then against the Roman emperors have been only the conspiracies of a few ambitious men, whose unsuccessfulness and bad end are not to be regretted, since they did not wish to overthrow the throne, but only to shake the crown, seeking to drive out the tyrant to better keep the tyranny. As for those, I would be very angry if they had succeeded, and I am content that they showed by their example that we must not abuse the holy name of liberty to carry out a bad deed.

But to return to my subject, which I had almost lost sight of, the first reason for which men voluntarily serve is that they are born serfs and raised as such. From this first reason follows another: that, under tyrants, people easily become cowardly and effeminates. I am grateful to the great Hippocrates, father of medicine, for having so well remarked on this in his book Concerning Diseases. This man had a good heart, and he showed it when the king of Persia wanted to lure him to his side with offers and great gifts. He responded frankly that it would be a matter of conscience for him to heal the Barbarians who wanted to kill the Greeks, and to use his art to serve those who wanted to enslave his country. The letter he wrote him can still be found in his other works; it will always bear witness to his courage and nobility.

It is certain that with freedom one also loses valor. Submissive people have neither ardor nor pugnacity in combat. They go into battle tied and completely numb, they acquit themselves with the pain of an obligation. They do not feel in their hearts the ardor of liberty who makes them despise peril and gives them desire to win honor and glory, by a glorious death among comrades. Among free men to the contrary, it’s a rivalry, each trying to outdo the other, everyone for all and each for himself: they know that hey will share equally a part of the bad effects of defeat or the goods of victory. But submissive people, lacking courage and vivacity, have a low, soft heart and are incapable of any great action. Tyrants know this well. That is why they do everything possible to them to weaken them further.

The historian Xenophon, one of the most serious and esteemed among the Greeks, has written a short book in which he has Simonides converse with Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, about the miseries of tyranny. This book is full of good and serious lessons that also have, in my opinion, an infinite grace. May to God that all the tyrant who have ever lived had placed it before themselves as a mirror. They would certainly have recognized their warts and been ashamed of their blemishes. This treatise speaks of the pain experienced by tyrants who, doing harm to all, are obliged to fear the whole world. He says, among other things, that bad kings take mercenary foreigners into their service because they no longer dare give arms to their ill-treated subjects. In France itself, even more in the past than today, a few good kings did indeed have foreign troops in their pay, but this was only to safeguard their proper subjects; they spared no expense to exempt the men. This was also, I believe, the opinion of the great Scipio Africanus, who preferred to have saved the life of one citizen than to have defeated a hundred enemies. But what is certain is that the tyrant never believes his power secure unless he has reached the point of having only worthless men as subjects. He could rightly be told what, according to Terence, Thraso said to the master of the elephants: “So brave then are you, that you have charge of the beasts?”

This ruse of tyrants to dumb down their subjects was never more evident than in the conduct of Cyrus toward the Lydians, after he had capture their capital and taken Croesus captive, that rich king. The news was brought to him that the inhabitants of Sardis had revolted. He soon reduced them to obedience. But he didn’t want to sack such a beautiful city, nor be forced to have an army subdue it, he came up with an admirable expedient to secure its possession. He set up brothels, taverns, and public games, and published an ordinance which obliged citizens to take part. He was so pleased with this garrison that, afterwards, he did not have to draw his sword against the Lydians. These wretches amused themselves by inventing all sorts of games so much so that, from their very names, the Latins formed the word for which we designate pastimes, which they called Ludi, by corruption of Lydi.

Not all tyrants have so expressed declared their desire to feminize their subjects. In fact, when this one formally ordered it, most of them did so in secret. Such is the natural inclination of ignorant people who are usually more numerous in cities: they are suspicious of those who love them, and trustful of those who deceive them. Do not think that there’s any bird that is better taken by the lure, nor any fish which, for the delicacy of the worm, bites earlier than all those peoples who are so quick to be lured into servitude for the slightest taste of sweetness. It is a marvelous thing that they let themselves go so quickly, as soon as you tickle them. Theater, games, farces, spectacles, gladiators, curious beasts, medals, paintings and other drugs of this kind were, for the ancient peoples the bait of servitude, this price of their ravished liberty, the tools of tyranny. This means, this practice, these allurements were those employed by the ancient tyrant for sedating their subjects under the yoke. Thus, the dazed peoples, finding all these pastimes beautiful, amused by a vain pleasure that dazzled them, became accustomed to serving, as foolishly but more poorly than little children learn to read with shiny pictures.

The Roman tyrants further improved on these methods by often throwing feasts for the officers, by gorging the scoundrels, who indulge in the pleasures of the mouth more than anything else. In this way, the most alert of them would never have left his bowl of soup to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants were generous with the quarter of wheat, the bottle of wine, of coins, and it was pitiful to hear the cry of “Long live the king! These simpleton did not realize that they were only recovering a share of their property, and that that very share the tyrant could not have given to them if had not first taken it away. Today, some collected a coin, others engorged themselves at a public feat, blessing Tiberius and Nero for their generosity, who the next day, forced to abandon his possessions to greed, his children to lust even his blood to the cruelty of these magnificent emperors, said no more than a stone, nor stirred like a stump. Ignorant people have always been like this: to pleasures that they cannot honorable receive, they are entirely disposed and dissolute; to wrongs and suffering that they could honorably endure, they are insensible.

I see no person today who, on hearing the name of Nero, does not tremble at the sole name of this villainous monster, of this filthy plague of the world. It must be said however though that after his death, as disgusting as his life, of this drunkard, of this torturer, of this savage beast, the famed Roman people felt such displeasure over it, recalling their games and feasts, that they were on the verge of mourning his death. At least that is what Tacitus writes, excellent author, and of the most reliable historians. And one would not find this strange if you consider what the same people had already done when Julius Caesar died, who had dismissed the laws and liberty of Rome. It seems to me that this character was praised above all for his “humanity” but this was more damaging to his country than the greatest cruelty of the most savage tyrant who ever lived, for in truth it was this venomous gentleness that sweetened the cup of servitude for the Roman people. After his death, these people, who still had in their mouths the taste of his banquets and in the mind the memory of his extravagance, piled up the benches of the public square to make a great pyre of honor for him; then they erected a column for him as if to the Father of the People (the capital bore this inscription); finally, he paid more homage to this dead man than he should have done to a living person, and first of all to those who had killed him.

Roman emperors never forgot to take the title of the Tribune of the people, because this office was held to be holy and sacred; established for the defense and protection of the people, it was highly esteemed in the State. By this means, they ensured that the people would trust them as if it were enough for them to hear the name, without needing to feel its effects. But they don’t do much better than those of today who, before committing their most seroius crimes, always precede them with a few pretty speeches about the public good and relief of the poor. We know the formula that they use so finely; but can we speak of finesse where there is so much impudence?

The kings of Assyria, and after them the Medes, appeared in public as rarely as possible, to make the people suppose that there was something superhuman in them, which stirred the imagination of those who dream about what they cannot see with their own eyes. Thus so many nations who had long been under the empire of these mysterious kings became accustomed to serving them, and served them all the more willingly because they did not know who their master was, or even if they had one, so that they lived in fear of a being whom no one had ever seen.

The first kings of Egypt hardly ever appeared without carrying, at times, a branch, at other times, fire on their heads: they work masks and acted like jugglers, inspiring respect and admiration from their subjects who, had they not been so stupid or submissive, would have mocked and laughed at them. It is truly pitiful to discover all the things that tyrants of the past did to establish their tranny, to see what little means they made use of, always finding the populace so well disposed towards them that all they had to do was spread a net to catch them; they never had an easier time deceiving her, and never enslaved her better than when they didn’t care.

What can I say about another sort of nonsense that ancient peoples took at face value? They firmly believed that the toe of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, worked miracles and cured spleen ailments. They further embellished the tale by saying that, when the king’s corpse was burned, the toe was found in the ashes, untouched by the fire. People have always made up their own lies, and then added their own stupid faith to them. A number of authors have these lies; it’s easy to see that they have picked them up in the gossip of towns and the fables of the ignorant. Such were the wonders of Vespasian, returning from Assyria and passing through Alexandria on his way to Rome to seize the Empire: he straightened the lame, made the blind see clearly, and a thousand other things that could only be believed, in my opinion, by those more blind than those he healed.

Tyrants themselves found it strange that men should suffer mistreatment at the hands of others, so they readily wrapped themselves in the mantle of religion and donned the garments of divinity as much as they could to support their wicked lives. So Salmonius, for having mocked the people in making his Jupiter, now finds himself in the depths of hell, according to Virgil’s Sibyl, who saw him there:

"vidi et crudelis dantem Salmonea poenas, dum flammas Iovis et sonitus imitatur Olympi. quadrigae incultae, iugis feriatus equis, per Graium populos mediaeque per Elidis urbem ibat ovans, divumque sibi poscebat honorem; demens, qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen aere et cornipedum pulsu simularet equorum. at pater omnipotens densa inter nubila telum contorsit, non ille faces nec fumea taedis lumina, praecipitemque immani turbine adegit." - Aeneid VI.585-594

I saw cruel punishment inflicted on Salmoneous, for he had dared to mimic the fire of Jupiter and the thunder of Olympus. Driving a crude four-horse chariot, he paraded triumphantly through the Greek peoples and the heart of hte city of Elis, demanding divine honors for himself. Yet the all-powerful father hurled his lightning bolt from thick clouds—not firebrands or smoky torches—and struck him down headfirst in a savage whirlwind.

If those who simply wanted to play the fool find themselves treated so well there, I think that those who have abused religion for ill will find themselves even better off.

Our tyrants in France also sowed I do not know what sort: toads, fleurs-de-lys, the Hole Ampoule and the Oriflamme. All things which, for my part and whatever the case may be, I do not want to believe are anything but poppycock, since our ancestors believed them and in our time we have had no occasion to suspect them to be such. For we have had some kings at peace, so valiant in war that, although they were born kings, it seems that nature did not make them like others and that the almighty God chose htem before their birth to entrust them with the government and guardianship of this kingdom. And when that is not the case, I would not want to enter the fray to debate the truth of our histories, nor would I want to peel them back too liberally, so as not to rob us of that beautiful theme on which our French poetry may so skillfully exercise itself—this poetry is not only enriched, so to speak, remade anew by Ronsard, Baif, and du Bellay: they are making such progress with our language that soon, I dare to hope, we will have nothing to envy the Greeks or the Latins, apart from the birthright.

Certainly, I would be doing our rhyme a great disservice (I like to use this word, because although many have made it purely mechanical, I can see enough of others capable of ennobling it and restoring it to its former lustre). I would say I would be doing it a great wrong if I were to take away from it those lovely tales of King Clovis, in which the vivaciousness of our own Ronsard in his Franciade is so pleasantly and easily enlivened. I understand his range, I know his fine spirit and I know the grace of the man. He will make his business with the Oriflamme, as well as the Romans did with their anchors and those “shields of heaven cast down” of which Virgil speaks. He will make as good use of our Holy Bulb as the Athenians made of their basket of Erichthonius. He will speak of our coat of arms as well as they do of their olive tree, which they claim still exists in Minerva’s tower. Certainly, I would be foolhardy to want to contradict our literature, and thus run over the lands of our poets.

But to return to my subject, from which I’ve strayed I do now know much, is it not clear that tyrants, in order to establish themselves, have endeavored to accustom the people, not only to obedience and servitude, but also to their devotion? Everything that I have said so far by the methods employed by tyrants to enslave is exercised only on the ignorant little people.

I now come to a point which I believe to be the spring and secret of domination, the support and foundation of all tyranny. Anyone who thinks that halberds, guards, and the watch secure tyrants would be strongly mistaken. They use them, I believe, as a formality and as a scarecrow, more than they rely on them. Archers bar the entrance to palaces to the unskillful who have no means of doing them harm, but not to the bold and well-armed. It is easy to see that, among the Roman emperors, fewer escaped danger thanks to the help of their archers than were killed by the archers themselves. It is not the bands of cavaliers, it is not companies of infantry, it is not weapons that defend a tyrant, but always (it is hard to believe at first, although it is the exact truth) four or five men who support him and subdue the whole country to him. It has always been like this: five or six have the ear of the tyrant and have approached him themselves, or they have been called by him to be the accomplices of his cruelties, the companions of his pleasures, the pimps of his lust, and the beneficiaries of his ravishments. These six erect their leader so well that he becomes unkind to society, not only from his own unkindness but also from theirs. These six have under them six hundred, whom they corrupt as much as they corrupted the tyrant. These six hundred hold six thousand their dependents, whom they elevate to dignity. They give them the government of the provinces or the handling of money in order to hold them by their greed or their cruelty, so that they exercise them to the point named and moreover do so much harm that they can only maintain themselves under their shadow, that they can only exempt themselves from laws and punishments thanks to their protectoin. Great is the series of those who follow them. And those who wish to unravel the thread will see that, not six thousand, but a hundred thousand and millions hold on to the tyrant by this unbroken chain that welds and binds them to him, as Homer has Jupiter say, who boasts that, by pulling such a chain, he can bring all the gods to himself. From this comes the increase in the power of the senate under Julius Caesar, the establishment of new duties, the institution of new offices, not so much to reorganize justice, but to give new support to tyranny. In sum, the gains and favors received from tyrants have reached the point where those to whom tyranny benefits are almost as numerous as those to whom freedom would please.

Doctors say that although nothing seems to have changed in our bodies, as soon as some tumor appears in one place, all the humors go to that wormy part. From even as soon as a king has declared himself tyrant, all the bad, all the dregs of the kingdom, I do not mean a heap of little rascals and cowards who cannot do either bad or good in a country, but those who are possessed of ardent ambition and notable greed gather around him and support him to share in the spoils and to be, under the great tyrant, so many little tyrants.

Such are the great thieves and the famous privateers; some scour the country, others chase travelers; some lie in ambush, others on the lookout; some massacre, others rob, and although there is pre-eminence between them, some are only valets and others gang leaders, in the end there is not one who does not profit, if not from the main spoils, at least from its remains. It is said that the Cilician pirates gathered in such great numbers that the great Pompey had to be sent against them, and that they attracted to their alliance several beautiful and large cities in whose harbors, returning from their runs, they placed themselves in safety.

This is the tyrant enslaves his subjects one by one. He is guarded by those he should guard, if they were worth anything. But it has been well said: to split wood, he uses the corners of the wood itself; such are his archers, his guards, his halberdiers. Not that they do not often suffer themselves; but these wretches, abandoned by God and man, are content to endure evil and to do it, not to the one who does it to them, but to those who, like them, endure it and cannot help it. When I think of these people who flatter the tyrant in order to exploit his tyranny and the servitude of the people, I am almost as often astounded by their wickedness as I am pitied by their foolishness.

For in truth, is approaching the tyrant anything other than distancing oneself from one’s freedom and, to put it another way, embracing and clasping one’s servitude with both hands? Let them put aside for a moment their ambition, let them free themselves a little from their greed, and then let them look at themselves; they should themselves consider: they will see clearly that these villagers, these peasants whom they trample underfoot and whom they treat like convicts or slaves, they will see, I would say, that these people, so ill-treated, are happier than they are and in a way freer. The ploughman and the craftsman, however enslaved they may be, are free by obeying; but the tyrant sees those around him scheming and begging for his favor. Not only must they do what he orders, but they must also think what he wants, and often, to satisfy him, they must even prevent their own desires. It is not enough to obey him, they must also please him; they must break, torment, and kill themselves to handle the tyrant’s affairs, and since then they are only pleased by his pleasure, let them sacrifice their taste to his, let them sacrifice their taste to his, let them force their temperament and strip off their nature. They must be attentive to his words, his voice, his looks, his gestures: their eyes, their feet, their hands must be continually occupied with spying on his wishes and divining his thoughts.

Is this living happily? Is it even living? Is there anything in the world more unbearable than this state, not only for all men of heart, but still for one who only have good sense, or even the figure of a man? What condition is more miserable than living like this, having nothing of one’s own and from another taking one’s comfort, liberty, body, and life?

But they want to serve in order to amass goods: as if they could gain anything that was theirs, since they cannot even say they are their own. And as if anyone could have anything of his own under a tyrant, they want to make themselves possessors of goods, forgetting that it is these that give the tyrant the force to take everything from everyone, and to leave nothing that can be said to be one’s own. Yet they see that it is possessions that make men dependent on his cruelty; that there is no crime more worthy of death, according to him, than the advantage of others; that he loves only riches and and attacks only the rich; yet these come before him like sheep before the butcher, full and well-fed as if to make him envious.

These favorites should remember less those who gained much from tyrants than those who, having gorged themselves for a time, soon afterwards lost their possessions and their lives. They should think less of the large number of those who acquired wealth than of the small number of those who kept it. If we go through all the ancient histories and recall those we remember, we will see how many people, having reached the ears of princes by the wrong means, either by flattering their evil inclinations, or by abusing their naivete, ended up being crushed by these same princes, who had put as much ease into raising them as fickleness into defending them. Among the great number of those who have found themselves among evil kings, there are few, if any, who have not themselves experienced the cruelty of the tyrant, which they had previously stirred up against others. Often enriched in the shadow of his favor by the spoils of others, in the end they enriched him with their own spoils.

And even good people—sometimes it happens that the tyrant loves them—however advanced they may be in his good grace, however brilliant their virtue and integrity (which, even to the wicked, inspire some respect when seen up close); these good people, I say, cannot maintain themselves with the tyrant; they must also feel the common evil and experience tyranny at their expense. Like a Seneca, a Burrus, a Thrasea: this trinity of good men of whom the first two had the misfortune to approach a tyrant who entrusted them with the management of his affairs, both of them cherished by him, and although one of them had raised him, having as a token of his friendship the care he had given to him in his childhood, are not these three, whose death was so cruel, sufficient examples of the little confidence one should have in the favor of a wicked master? In truth, what friendship can we expect from one whose heart is hard enough to hate an entire kingdom that does nothing but obey him, and from a being who, not knowing how to love, impoverishes himself and destroys his own empire?

Now if you want to say that Seneca, Burrus, and Thrasea suffered this misfortune only because they were too good people, look carefully around Nero himself: you’ll see that all those who were in his graces and remained there through their wickedness did not have a better end. Who has ever heard of a love so unbridled, an affection so obstinate, who has ever seen a man so obstinately attached to a woman as this one was to Poppaea? But he poisoned her himself. His mother, Agrippina, in order to place him on the throne, had killed her own husband Claudius; she had undertaken and suffered everything to promote him. And yet her son, the one she nurtured, whom she had made emperor with her own hand, took her life after having often mistreated her. No one denied that she thoroughly deserved such punishment, had it been dealt by anyone else.

Who was ever easier to handle, simpler and, to put it another way, dumber than the emperor Claudius? Who ever wore a woman’s headdress more than he Messalina’s? Yet he delivered her to the execution. Foolish tyrants remain foolish to the point of never knowing how to do good, but I do not know how, in the end, the little spirit they have awakens in them to use cruelty even towards their loved ones. We know enough of the word of one who, seeing his wife’s throat uncovered, the one he loved the most, without whom it seemed he could not live, addressed her this lovely compliment: “This beautiful neck will be cut in a moment, if I command it.” This is why most of the ancient tyrants were almost all killed by their favorites: knowing the nature of tyranny, the latter had little confidence in the tyrant’s will and distrusted his power. This is how Domitian was killed by Stephanus, Commodus by one of his mistresses, Caracalla by the centurion Martial incited by Macrin, and likewise almost all the others.

Certainly the tyrant never loves, and is never loved. Friendship is a sacred name, a holy thing. It exists only between good people. It is born from mutual esteem and is maintained less by kindness than by honesty. What makes a friend sure of another is the knowledge of his integrity. This is guaranteed by his good nature, his fidelity and his constancy. There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, disloyalty or injustice. When villains assemble, it is a conspiracy and not a society. They do not love each other but fear each other. They are not friends, but accomplices.

Even if this were not the case, it would be difficult to find in a tyrant a secure love, because being above all and having no peers, he is already beyond the bounds of friendship. Friendship flourishes in equality, whose march is always equal and can never stumble. That is why there is, as they say, a kind of good faith among thieves when they share the spoils, because then they are all peers and companions. If they do not like each other, they at least fear each other. They do not want to diminish their strength in disunity.

But a tyrant’s favorites can never count on him, because they themselves have taught him that he can do anything, that no right or duty obliges him, that he is accustomed to having only his will as his reason, that he has no equal and that he is the master of all. Is it not deplorable that, despite so many shining examples, knowing the danger so present, no one wants to learn from the miseries of others, and that so many people still so willingly draw near to tyrants? Let there not be one who has the prudence and courage to say to them, like the fox in the fable to the lion who was making the sick man: “I would gladly visit you in your den; but I see enough traces of beasts that enter there; as for those that leave, I see none.”

These wretches see the tyrant’s treasures gleaming; they admire, all amazed, the glitter of his magnificence; enticed by this glow, they approach without realizing that the yare throwing themselves into a flame that cannot fail to devour them. Thus the imprudent satyr in the fable, seeing the fire Prometheus had stolen, found it so beautiful that he went to kiss it and burned himself. So it is with the butterfly who, hoping to enjoy some pleasure, throws himself into the fire because he sees it shining, and soon finds, as Lucian says, that he too has the power to burn.

But even if they escape from the hands of the one they serve, they will never escape from those of the king who succeeds him. If he is good, then they must give account and submit to reason; if he is bad like their former master, he cannot fail to have also his favorites who, usually, not content with taking their place, also snatch from them most often their goods and their lives. Can it be, that there is anyone who, faced with such a peril and with so few guarantees, is willing to take such an unfortunate position and serve such a dangerous master with so much suffering?

What pain, what martyrdom, great God! To be busy night and day pleasing a man, and to distrust him more than anyone else in the world. To be always on the lookout, always listening, to spy on where the blow will come from, to discover the pitfalls, to feel the faces of your competitors, to guess the traitor. Smiling at everyone and distrusting them all, having neither an open enemy nor an assured friend, always showing a laughing face when the heart is cold; not being able to be cheerful, nor daring to be sad!

It is truly pleasing to consider what is due to them from this great torment, and to see the good they can expect from their pain and their miserable life: it is not the tyrant that the people accuse of the evil they suffer, but rather those who govern them.

The people, the nations, everyone down to the peasants and ploughmen, know their names, count their vices; they heap upon them a thousand insults, a thousand slurs, a thousand curses. All the prayers, all the curses are against them. All misfortunes, all plagues, all famines are counted against them; if we sometimes pretend to pay them homage, at the same time we curse them from the bottom of our hearts and hold them in greater abhorrence than wild beasts. This is the glory, this is the honor they receive for services from people who, if they could each have a piece of their body, would not yet consider themselves satisfied, or even half-consoled by their suffering. Even after their death, their survivors never cease so that the name of these people-devourers is blackened with the ink of a thousand pens, and their reputation torn up in a thousand books. Even their bones are, so to speak, dragged through the mud by posterity, as if to punish them ever after their death for their wicked lives.

So let us then learn; let us learn to do the right thing. Let us raise our eyes to heaven for our honor for the love of virtue, better still for those of Almighty God, faithful witness to our deeds and judge of our faults. For me, I think—and I do not believe I am wrong—since nothing is more contrary to a good and liberal God than tyranny, he reserves some special punishment for tyrants and their accomplices.