Even Great Men Have Trouble at Home
Sitting in hospital recently, waiting for my son’s arm to be mended (to restore a profile of one elbow rather than two) after him being injured playing football, I began reading about the life of Julius Caesar.
The bones in my son’s forearm were in a number of pieces and so I needed a distraction from the trauma (mine) as much as something to fill in the time while the surgeons put him back together again.
I favoured science over the humanities in school and so my interest in history, as usual, slants towards human nature and emotional intelligence. While reading I also couldn’t help be grateful; if my son had lived in Caesar’s times, his injury would most likely have crippled him for the rest of his life.
Today I want to share some of my thoughts on what I learned reading about one of the most venerated rulers in history . . .
Always a fan of the virtues, I was impressed by Julius Caesar’s policy of clemency (forgiveness), but seeing where it got him in the end, I couldn’t help wonder if this king, so popular with the common people, might have benefited from a bit of Steve and my advice that would have helped him fair better at the hands of those close to him.
Brutus, Caesar’s step son, was one of the leaders in his murder and so to me this was clearly a dysfunctional family.
As a commander, Caesar was loved for the real care and concern he showed his soldiers, not only in times of war but also as veterans in times of peace. Apportioning land and pensions to his veterans, however, did not make him popular with the wealthy land owners who felt, by rights, that all the land in Rome certainly should be theirs.
Caesar’s Clementia Caesaris was ‘Let this be the new policy of victory that we arm ourselves with mercifulness and liberality.’
Caesar was ever keen to demonstrate these virtues. In a letter to his friend Atticus, Cicero discusses Caesar’s clementia: “You will say they are frightened. I dare say they are, but I’ll be bound they’re more frightened of Pompey than of Caesar. They are delighted with his artful clemency and fear the other’s wrath.”[1]
Caesar had saved his own followers from being massacred by the enemy, while also sparing the defeated and protecting them from falling victim to blind wrath or revenge. He defended them personally and even physically. Indeed, he even saved them politically by restoring them to their positions and ranks.[2]
Brutus however, a defender of the rich, choose to fight on the side of his uncle Cato in the civil war against Caesar, but when defeated at Pharsalos, Caesar pardoned Brutus, took him into his circle of friends and assisted him in a further career. Despite this first betrayal, Caesar favoured and protected Brutus, apparently for his mother Servilia’s sake. Indeed when Caesar was being stabbed by his enemies in the senate and saw that Brutus was one of them, Caesar gave up the fight and exclaimed pitifully, “You too, my son?”
Caesar’s clemency along with his political position of caring for his veterans earned him love and veneration (even today more than 2000 years later, there are fresh flowers placed daily on the place of Caesar’s pyre in Rome) and saw him become the first king to be personally deified. I wonder however . . . could he have earned that same love without leaving himself open to personal attack?
This is an age old dilemma and one the world now faces more starkly than ever. Do we forgive our enemies and how? And if not are we doomed to live forever in fear and hate?
In my members post today I will attempt to answer these questions and share the advice I would have given Julius Caesar regarding his step son Brutus if I had been given the chance:
This is an important article for anyone that struggles with the issue of forgiveness verses personal protection. I am not an advocate of martyrdom but neither am I an advocate of hate.
My son is fine now and his arm straightened out with a plate and pin inside that he will need further surgery to remove in 6 months. As for the boy who tackled him (when my son didn’t even have the ball), how could we stay angry? . . . after seeing what he had done to my son, the poor kid was crying his eyes out when he walked off the field.
Kim Cooper
[1] Wikipedia
Kim, great history lesson! Unfortunately, we cannot rewrite history, but we can certainly learn from our mistakes (and those of rulers such as Caesar and Brutus).
I have a question about developmental gaps. What if both you and your spouse share some of the same gaps? What do you suggest?
Hope you’re doing well and glad to hear that your son is on the mend.
🙂
Thanks Mari 🙂 That is actually when it can be the easiest to show leadership!!! If you start working on an area that your partner knows you were once weak in (and they are too) this can really create a sense of healthy competition.
I know this happened with Steve and I in regard to organization in our home. I would make a bit of an effort but then he would resist putting things back where I had asked him to. For years it was very difficult for us to accomplish much because we could not find the things we needed and this made even small jobs become a big task. Then one day I took it on in a much bigger way and I labelled every shelf and drawer in the house and got all of my stuff organized too. That obviously made our life easier and he stopped resisting. Today that is still an area that we enjoy challenging each other with as we have come to realize that time spent getting our house better organized makes us feel happier than just about anything else we do.