As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)
The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. My hope is that they will prompt you to dig deeper.
The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.
In the coming weeks, the entries are in Part I. They are About Leadership.
Today we turn to Plutarch, to Lives. Plutarch. a Greek, who lived circa 100 CE, can be considered the first biographer. He understood that life histories are perhaps the most compelling of all narrative forms, so he composed fifty short studies of Greek and Roman statesmen, soldiers, and patriots for the express purpose of comparing them. Contrasting them so they might serve not just as examples but as instructions. Examples of good leaders and instructions on good leadership. On what constitutes leadership that is not just smart but wise, leadership that is not just effective but good-hearted.
The selections that follow are from his comparison between Dion, a Greek, and Brutus, that great but flawed Roman drawn so brilliantly by William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. As I wrote in the above-mentioned text, “”The Comparison of Dian and Brutus’ is Plutarch at his best. In the writer’s equivalent of just a few short strokes, we learn what we need to know about the two men, and we learn what we need to know about what Plutarch considered important.”
What emerges most vividly from this text is how well Plutarch understood the intricacies, the inconsistencies, of a man like Brutus. Plutarch understood that humans are not widgets – rather they are complex beings who have mixed motives and yield mixed results.
- The greatest thing charged on Brutus is that he, being saved by Caesar’s kindness… did yet lay violent hands on his preserver. [Brutus was among those who murdered Caesar, stabbed him until he died.] Nothing like this could be objected against Dion; quite the contrary.
- Does not, however, the matter turn the other way? For the chief glory of both was their hatred of tyranny, and abhorrence of wickedness. This was unmixed and sincere in Brutus, for he had no private quarrel with Caesar, but went into the risk simply for the liberty of his country.
- But the very enemies of Brutus would say that he had no other end or aim, from first to last, save only to restore to the Roman people their ancient government.