How to Be a Leader

I love this series of books from Princeton, which provide an accessible translation of passages from key works by Ancient Greek and Roman thinkers. In this case, there are three selections from Plutarch’s “Lives” and other writings: “To an Uneducated Leader” “How to Be a Good Leader” and “Should an Old Man Engage in Politics?”, along with an excellent introduction to each.

I have not yet read Plutarch’s Lives, but it is glaring at me in all its glory from the shelf. His profile of prolific individuals before him, from the Greek leaders to Alexander the Great, was written during the height of the Roman Empire. That is often not appreciated well enough by those who read Plutarch, and I didn’t fully understand its implications until after reading Mary Beard’s SPQR. Roman life during this time period was in some cases analogous to American life in the present (and I have to be careful about making too many comparisons, as Smil’s “Why America is Not the New Rome” correctly points out). It was, however, similar in that significant questions about the role of leadership in an empire at its peak of power began to take a more nuanced and critical lens. It was also a time in which it was beneficial to fabricate, positively or negatively, past events to fill a political agenda of the present. We see this with Nero, who was certainly not without his critical and vulgar faults, but we now know was in many ways over- exaggerated to score political points by his successors, compounded by generations and generations.

So when reading this, take it that into account. Plutach certainty did not intend to be biased, but he wrote in the context of his age, and that matters.