‘Until philosophers are Kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, . . . cities will never have rest from their evils . . .’

Plato’s Republic depicts an ideal system of government; this sounds perfect, but it is obviously not very practical. A philosopher-king would be the greatest possibility but is probably just a philosopher’s dream. My teacher was not thinking about the conflicts that arise every day. His so-called ideal state will really contain two states that may very well be hostile to each other. There will be the guardians/warriors and then everyone else. He thinks that if the citizens have the right education, they will not need many laws. But then he seems to only educate the guardians.

Instead, I have studied the different governments in the various city-states and the constitutions that have been put into effect. My aim is to consider not only what form of government is best, but what form of government is possible. Some constitutions are true and some are defective. Governments constituted in accordance with the common interest and strict principles of justice are which I call true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are defective, for they are tyrannical. ‘True’ constitutions serve the common interests of all citizens. ‘Despotic’ constitutions serve only the selfish interests of a certain person or group.

Tyranny perverts monarchy, because it only cares about the interest of the ruler, the arbitrary power of an individual who is responsible to no one else, only caring about his own advantage. He may pretend to care for his subjects, and they may believe that he does, but whether they know it or not, they are being ruled against their will.

By appealing to the people’s emotions, and very often their desire to hate, a demagogue can take over and rule without law. Law is preferable to the will of any individual. Individuals are flawed and subjective; the rule of law is objective.

I talk about the supremacy of Law, and that government should be subservient to it (Politics II 8). But I am very aware that laws themselves must be changeable. In treating the sick, if we follow one procedure, but learn a new, better way of treatment, should we not discard the old and use the new? I shudder to think of some superstitious and barbaric methods that have been used to try to heal the sick. And I am sure that many years hence, our treatments will seem barbaric.

There is a law in Cyme that allows an accuser to produce several of his own relatives as witnesses to prove that a defendant is guilty of murder. Of course, they will side with the accuser. What kind of evidence is that?

At the same time, we have to change laws in a careful and deliberative manner. Laws are dependent on the obedience of the people to follow them. If we discard laws right and left, if we do not set up the right safeguards, if the right people, who have great respect for the law, are not in charge of such changes, we will do more harm than good.

We must take a middle course. We should not be slaves to traditional laws, but we should not be too quick and eager to change them. Does this seem ambiguous? Fine; let us rephrase: we must discuss every change with great deliberation, considering the past, present, and potential futures.

And then if a tyrant emerges who wants to change the law to suit his advantage, people will be able to stop him, because they have firm laws and know how to apply them.

We cannot wait until philosophers are kings. This may never happen, yet we can be sure that a new would-be tyrant is born every day.

So let the law be king!

The poor see the rich plotting, or they think they see the rich plotting, or they are resentful because the rich are rich and they are not, and they seek protection. And this is when a tyrant may arise. He takes all their grievances, all of their jealousy and resentment and bitterness, and rides grievance like a wave.

Here are my teacher’s words, and for all my criticisms of his idealism, this strikes me like a lightning bolt:

‘The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. … This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector. … having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; ... at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands. … After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown.’ (The Republic Book VIII)

He deemed tyranny the worst disorder of a state. Tyrants are the opposite of his philosopher kings, who rule by reason which is the instrument of judgment. The tyrannical man, who seems to be turning everyone else into his subjects who live by his whim, is himself enslaved, because he has no reason but only the prison of his ambition. The state ruled by the tyrant is enslaved, because it too lacks reason and order.

In a tyranny, there is no rule of law. External laws become arbitrary. There is no governing order. There is only the whim of the tyrant. There is only his inordinate desire to have more than his fair share of everything.

The people submit to and even cheer the tyrant, and their desire for limitless liberty causes disorder, because they chafe impatiently at authority, unless, ironically, it is the tyrant’s absolute authority. In the process, they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them, except their chosen master.

It appears that Aristotle wrote these words soon after leaving Alexander, while having a break in his mother’s estate before reaching Athens, perhaps in 340 BCE or a little later.

I plan to write extensively about government, politics, and society, and I also want to write extensively about friendship. I am trying to pull all of this together in my mind by focusing on my student in a way that I will not be able to write for anyone else to read. It is not hard to predict that the young man has a limitless future.

But, somehow, I am thinking deeply about friendship by my observations about Alexander and his friends. They love and adore him, and he loves them, but they all know that they are not peers or equals. For now, this is not that complex, and the relationships are smooth and easy.

But what happens someday when Philip dies, probably suddenly in battle, and just as suddenly, Alexander will have all the power and the dynamics of the friendships will change?

My own teacher spoke of ideals; I try to speak to the world as it is. I am afraid for Alexander because friends get into fights and friendships dissolve.

I want to discuss friendships when one, like Alexander, is in a position of superiority, but I also mean relationships such as those between parents and children, rich and poor, rulers and subjects.

Friendships should be based on the virtuous character of both people. Those who live lives of moral virtue have friendships that will make the lives of both more fulfilled and make each friend more generous and selfless. I am not so concerned about that kind of friendship, because such people are philosophical souls who do not need to be told what to do.

There are virtuous friendships, the friendship of pure companionship, and the friendship of utility when one uses the other. A relationship based on pleasure is one in which one cherishes the other simply for what he is in himself. Pleasure as a basis of such friendship is the pleasure friends take in being together. Then a third category is friendship based on transaction and practical benefits. These lesser types can nevertheless be genuine friendships.

I want to apply these types of friendship to the relationship between leaders and their subjects and between different states and peoples. I’ll write about the first and think about the other, because I still am trying to articulate in my mind whether there can be an analogy to friendship between unequal polities.

I have known many leaders and studied the careers of many more, as I have studied different kinds of government.

Without ambition and drive, no one would ever seek high office and responsibility. Human existence is essentially spent in activity, and a powerful life is formed by intense activity.

If we think of that leader as being a noble friend to his subjects or citizens, then he must think like a friend who does not only see his activity from his own point of view.

I return to my relationship with Alexander: a teacher and a student. I cannot just teach what I am interested in. I must teach a young mind, like Alexander, the things that will benefit him on the road before him. I engaged him so that he will know how to engage the men who will follow him. I balanced what I care about with what he needs to care about. I listened to my own words so that he will speak words that others will listen to.

The friendship between Alexander and his subjects, and especially among his close friends who will be his generals and counselors, will always be unequal. How can an unequal relationship ever be equal? Alexander will be loved more than he loves. Inequality cannot be equalized. The inferior must reciprocate by loving more than he is loved and in proportion to the superiority of his friend.

Yet this is the problem, because all that love from inferiors makes the leader feel like a god.

Instead, the leader must resist such feelings, and his friends must play an important part in keeping him centered on the earth. They, his kindred spirits, who have always been so central to his existence, are the origin of his goodwill. His generosity of spirit to them must expand to a generosity for all his subjects.

For when a human feels like a god, rather than a friend, then all his friends find themselves in danger, and all of us with them.

Someday, I will read these words, again. Will I then think that I was seeing into the future?

I asked Alexander to imagine himself as the captain of a ship. Sailors join him for the voyage to seek the profits of seafaring in the way of trade or the like, as comrades in arms for the gains of warfare, their aim being either plunder, or victory over the enemy.

Alexander listened and smiled and said that he would prefer to be the admiral of a fleet. I admired this response as it actually fit my lesson better. He said that as admiral, he would place his trusted friends as captains of the ships. He said that the sailors would join his fleet not just for profit but also to discover new lands and conquer the sea.

Thinking again of his relationships, I asked him to remember my three types of friendship, but now to use them as analogies:

Virtuous – a high-minded relationship where two good people bring out the best in each other;

Utility – two people do not have strong emotions for each other but each gains from the purely transactional relationship;

Pleasure – A relationship that is enjoyable.

Alexander said that he has great pleasure with his friends, and they all bring out the best in each other, while they all gain power and strength from their bonds.

Now I made analogies for the three relationships in the political sphere, speaking about a leader and his people,

The sailors are the citizens of a state, or the states that become part of an empire. They subordinate their wills to the leader or the king to pursue their goals. If that leader or king will have a successful and profitable voyage, everyone on the ships will readily agree to stay on in the future.

But now I look ahead to when Alexander will rule states and peoples: conquest will not be the difficult part; maintaining the empire will be exceedingly hard.

Alexander has the charisma, youth, looks, and personality to be a great inspiration, and so many peoples might not just fear him and subject themselves to him but perhaps adore him. In my terms, they might find pleasure in being his subjects if they feel loved and respected in their identities. If they give Alexander what he demands, but they gain by being part of his economic sphere, and they are protected from other forces, then this is a friendship of utility.

But if he can go even further, and elevate them into the realm of ideas, of bringing civilization and culture and education to all the peoples, then they will gain in virtue.

Perhaps my student’s life will teach us all many things about the possibilities of the human voyage.

After Aristotle had left Macedon, he received many letters from his former student Alexander, some expressing gratitude, some showing care for the teacher’s wellbeing, some asking for advice. Most of these letters are lost, but one was of a different nature, showing Aristotle how his student had matured. Although it was about a dispute, it made Aristotle most proud of his alumnus.

To my dear teacher:

I hope that this letter will make its long way to Athens and that it will find you in good health. I think of you every day. There are many around me chronicling every battle I fight and every march to the next destination. You do not need to hear of my adventures.

My letter to you is different.

You taught me everything I know.

You opened my mind to knowledge, science, philosophy, government, ethics, and a host of other subjects.

On most things, I carry out your purpose.

But on one major topic, I have grown to question your wisdom.

You said that it is fitting for Greeks to rule ‘barbarians’. I believe that you wanted me to think about the basis of true excellence and what its attainment requires. You saw Greeks as those who could attain your highest goals for humanity.

The ‘Barbarians’, my dear teacher, are not the Cyclopes in the way you cited Homer, as those only concerned with their own well-being.

You taught how Herodotus told us in his Histories about the permanent conflict between Greeks and barbarians as that between civilization, liberty, democracy and savagery, slavery and tyranny.

You saw the so-called barbarians as the converse of Greek culture, representing everything Greece and you despise and reject.

You said that communities of civil nature had natural leaders.

You believed the barbarians had no natural leader and were therefore uncivilized. The lack of an established barbarian state further separated them from your ideals. You said: “He who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the ‘tribeless, lawless, hearthless one.” In the Greek culture, citizens had virtues they were to live by if they were to keep the wheels of society turning. You said: “One that can foresee with his mind is naturally ruler and naturally master” in accordance with the natural order. There should be an elite who do the ruling.

You see Greece, between Europe and Asia geographically, as superior and capable of “ruling all mankind in its combination of the regions’ intelligence (Greece) and dynamic spirit (Asia).”

But I have come to disregard this superiority of Greek pride, and I think I am the better ruler for it.

I will bring many peoples under my rule, and I will try to have all my subjects living peacefully together. I see my kingdom as a great banquet. Instead of treating the others as inferior barbarians, I find myself curious and open, and I believe this is a testament to you.

The ‘barbarians’ are worthy of sharing my table and the riches I acquire and possess. I try to know the ‘others’, their way of life, their religious beliefs, to understand them. I try to see the world through the eyes of the ‘others’. My empire will only stay together if everybody has a place at the table, all feasting together for a common good.

My dear teacher, I remain your student. But the Others are not others. And they have a place at my table.

Your student,

Alexander

He was, and still is, my student. He has changed the world. I believe that it was not just his father Philip but even more so I who put the idea in his mind that in every age will come forth to lead, a man who will be above everything, above all others, above his time, even above the laws. He wrote me that he is making plans for a great fleet, numbering a thousand ships of all types, from warships to transports to barges with supplies. I take great pride that he wants to explore the great Ocean that I taught him, and believe, is at the ends of the earth. In my mind, I see my young student’s eyes when I had talked about that great Ocean, so how can I be angry at him, when he is the instrument of my vision?

And yet I am called on to oppose him. The ruckus comes after what seems to have been the horrible torture and execution of Callisthenes. They, the Athenian philosophers, the Peripatetic school, have condemned him as a tyrant. They have said that while the gods and fortune have bestowed so much greatness on him, he has ruined everything. Somehow, they have equated the deaths of Callisthenes and Socrates. I suppose that a connection can be made that they both questioned authority. And Callisthenes was probably right to criticize his master’s life-style and the divine honors for Alexander. And yes, he is intoxicated by power. And yes, he may not be very mature. And yes, he has failed to learn my most important lesson, that self-control is the key element in any great man’s character. I do believe that a man who is able to conquer himself is a greater man than one who conquers others.

And yet he writes me. He respects me. The master of the universe still reveres me as his teacher and as a father, a better father than his father was to him. I cannot bring myself to condemn him, even though I can plainly see what the critics are right, and I have the terrible feeling that he is rushing down the road to self-destruction.

I admit it only here, not to him and not to his critics. It is a contradiction, I know, that I can see that my love and pride blind me. But I love the way my relationship with him feels too much to tell the truth to anyone else.

How astonishing that I, of all people, worship at the altar of the cult of a would-be god.

I have been thinking about who I am.

I have always been affected by my teacher Plato’s description of Socrates. Now, I have never been quite certain whether the Socrates in his writings is the real Socrates or my teacher’s ideal image of a man who was like his father. But that image of a man who questioned everything, who could counter every argument with a counter argument, who professed ignorance so that he would always seek wisdom, who did not care about anyone’s opinion of him, and yet for all his questioning, sought love, is a very powerful one in my life. I have started from ignorance, and tried to build wisdom, step by step, in every aspect of life and knowledge.

So who am I? I am a political philosopher, and I live in my time and place. I study not only the principles of government but the realities of history. I think about the other influences on my thinking.

Like Thucydides, I am deeply concerned with the political ramifications of different economic classes and with the conflict between collective and individual political responsibility.

I am affected by the work of Aristophanes, who worried about the relationship between law and actual practice and about how political culture can be undermined by human nature.

I admire my teacher Plato, who tried to design a just polis that would be an alternative to democracy.

And I have been affected by Isocrates and his vision of a wider panhellenic aristocratic/intellectual community that gives great inspiration for political theory.

I tried to inspire Alexander to be an instrument of that vision.

Beyond Alexander, who have I been writing for? I understand that the audience in my mind has been my students rather than Athenians in general.

We know that one man can inspire and lead his people in noble directions, but we also know that one man can do unlimited damage to everything and everyone.

Since I do live in the real world, I know, from actual events, that one man can destroy a country. We must understand how he can do this and what should be done to prevent it from happening again. I am not naive; I know that no system can prevent the rise of a strong man who captures the imagination of the people or maneuvers the oligarchs or simply uses brute force to seize power.

I understand that I do not see all people as equals. I wish that all people were equals, but my honesty forces me to admit that I have strong aristocratic tendencies. I wish that there could be an ideal democracy, but I worry that democracy can be a bad system because people demand treatment based on numbers, rather than merit. I do seek a system where those who merit it rule. I worry that in a democracy, those who want to rule, rule. I often think that anyone who wants to rule should not be the one to rule, but that people of merit who do not seek power should be the ones to have power.

So I seek a system that combines aristocracy with democracy. I seek a system that protects people from bad individuals but also from the people themselves.

Since Alexander stands astride across the world, it is hard to think about anything or anyone else. I continue to think about what I taught him, and how I gave him both Plato and Homer.

Then again, Plato and Homer may now be the two biggest sources in all of our lives. In a way, Plato’s agon was with Homer. Homer gave us war-loving, violent gods and the glorification of war. Plato fought this literary epic with his philosophical ideas.

But I ask you: For a common Greek reader, which one inspires and moves? Which one stirs the blood?

I think about Plato’s Ideal City. It is a noble attempt to visualize what life could be, how government could serve the people and the people would be at peace.

But then I see that every city, every polis seems intent on war. There do not have to be any reasons or causes. It is war for its own sake, killing for the glory of killing. The Iliad’s battles, its rivalries, its heroes, its description of the glories of armed conflict, its images of strength and prowess, all create a view of manhood. How could Platonic ideals compete with the Trojan War?

Sometimes, I think that only a major kingdom or an empire can control all the warring cities. But then I see the cruelties of such kingdoms, and I realize that this is not the answer, either.

I have spent my life teaching and writing, hoping for a better future for this world. But as long as Homer defeats Plato, I do not have much hope.

It is especially in my dark moments that I must find renewed strength to study more, to write more, to think logically in the midst of chaos, to proclaim our greatest ideals in the face of the horrible evils of war.

When I read Homer, I think constantly about the city, for Troy is always there, looming large. What is this city in the Iliad? It is a place to secure human life; it is built by the gods and protected by the gods. The city is stable, it is walled, it is separate from the landscape around it, and it is holy.

My teacher Plato talked and wrote a lot about the polis, the city. Why did the city come into existence? On account of life. It exists so that people will live well. The goal of the city is to free people from the physical necessities of life so that they can become political beings, all working for the good of all. We may be mortal, but the city is immortal. The political realm is on a higher level than the natural realm. The city rises above the earthly into an idea.

The individual and the city are in a mutually defining process; we define the goals of the city, and the city defines who we are as citizens.

And then I combine Homer and Plato and I think about the city besieged. Our historians tell many stories and accounts of great and long sieges but here I mean to say that the city, that is, the reason for the city, the ideal city, the city as ideal, all of this is under siege. We have lived inside these walls with a sense of security. Perhaps, a false sense of security.

For now, it is as if I hear the battering rams banging on the city gates. The external forces, the enemy armies, are encamped around us. This is very frightening.

But it is the Trojan Horse, that which we bring inside the walls by our own free will, that I fear the most.

And right now, I am thinking that the Trojan Horse is brought within our walls through our self-deception.

We deceive ourselves by thinking that we can trust leaders to be who they say they will be if they are given power.

We deceive ourselves by thinking that one form of government fits all situations and does not need to be adjusted and modified as times change.

We deceive ourselves through our complacency,

by our inattention,

by looking away when we should be focused.

The walls of the city must be refurbished and strengthened and renovated all the time.

The city is a remarkable construction, but it is built by people, not by gods.

Its holiness comes from our best aspirations.

Homer would make us think of the city’s magic.

Plato would make us think about the city as ideal.

And all of this is beautiful.

But human beings, being all too human, are too quick to think that a good and safe moment will continue on its own.

In my nightmares, I see men climbing down from the Trojan Horse, and I see the city in flames.

You would think that at this point in my life filled with writing about theory, logic, philosophy, and science, I would not be sitting here reading Thucydides. And yet this is what I have been doing, and I have been reading with two themes in mind: how my theories about economics work in the real lives of people as described in this great historical work, and a more specific subject, sieges. The first subject is complex, and I will have to honestly examine or re-examine my theories about human nature and the economy. The second theme is more straightforward to think about.

A friend of mine claimed that the Peloponnesian War had more sieges and was more brutal and bloodthirsty than anything in history. It was, of course, bloody, and horrific. He talked about what happened at Melos, what he called ‘the Melos affair’. He said that this war was a breakdown in the conventions of war. What I wanted to know was: Was the Peloponnesian War so much worse than what came before, or was it just a concentrated time of horror? As I read Thucydides, I counted, I think, exactly one hundred sieges during the Peloponnesian War. In twenty-seven years, one hundred sieges. But then I went back to other historical works. In between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, in the Pentecontaetia, as I read in other works, there were thirty sieges, and twenty-seven were successful. There were forty-four in the Archidamian War and forty-one in the Ionian War.

The greater number in the Peloponnesian War would seem to substantiate my friend’s claim. But as I have thought about these numbers, I have grasped that the larger number in the Peloponnesian War is the result of a huge and long war between two major coalitions that fought rebellious allies and relentless enemies who often did not want to fight on the battlefield. Many of the sieges in Thucydides were accomplished in a matter of days and were not long sieges as we would think of them. I remember a few in this category: Mytilene taken at the first assault (8.23.2), likwise Amphipolis (4.104-106), Methone (2.25.1-2). There were so many like this that when a city could not be conquered quickly, some sieges were abandoned after just a day or two. I remember in particular Cnidus, where the Athenians tried to storm the unwalled city for one day, and then when they returned on the second day and the city had shored up its defenses and reinforcements had come from the outside, they simply lifted the siege (8.35.3-4). Also, I wonder if the higher number in Thucydides is because he was a more thorough, detailed, and conscientious historian than some of the others I’ve read about other wars. So when my friend claims that the Peloponnesian War was a dramatic departure from previous norms, I am not so sure.

I carefully read for successful sieges because I wanted to know, in all these wars, how the inhabitants of the conquered city fared. I wanted to compare the fate of the defeated in the Peloponnesian War with those in previous wars. Was my friend right that there was a breakdown in the rules of war, in the conventions of warfare in the past? I find a mixed picture in all these wars. Yes, there are cases when captured enemies were sold into slavery or put to death, as at Epidamnus (1.29.5-30.1). I recall how, at the end of the famous siege of Potidaea, the Athenians accepted the proposal that the inhabitants could leave with one garment each. I was not amused that the Athenians blamed their generals for granting lenient terms (2.70.4).

I know that there are reasons for war, and that enemies must be neutralized, and that allies must see examples of what disloyalty will bring, and that cities need military bases for strategic purposes and security, and that they need new lands for farming. But I will never accept the necessity of atrocities and counting them should not minimize them for a moment. In all these wars, not just one, atrocities were committed before, during, and after the outbreaks of war.

To be continued …

Let me get back to my friend’s prompt and investigate if the Peloponnesian War truly was worse than others, just because many more cities are reported to have been besieged or captured in it. Early in his Histories, Thucydides elaborates at length in describing the siege at Plataea. I read, with real comfort, how the Plataeans expected a siege and gathered all their movable property from the surrounding areas and evacuated the women, children, and older men to Athens. Why didn’t more cities do this? Men can be brutes who savagely kill each other, but why wouldn’t more cities save the lives of their innocents?

I also asked in every case: If one is planning to spend so much time and blood and money on a siege, what is the end goal? So, I asked myself: What happened at the end of all these successful sieges? The result of my inquiry only made me feel worse about what happened in all these wars.

While I would never compare treasure to blood, the economic waste of war is appalling. The Athenians spent over two thousand talents on the siege of Potidaea (Thucydides 2.70.2). What could have been accomplished with all that money?

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about leaders and people and best systems of government. I fear the demos and I think they are easily swayed. But I sometimes think that people are more sensitive to the loss of life than their leaders. And they are more sensitive to the squandering of wealth. I can think of two cases where the people were more human than their leaders. Sometimes, the people are right. Pericles would not hold a public meeting because the Athenians would have made him stop the war following its outbreak (2.22.1). Nicias would not hold a meeting because he refused to raise the siege of Syracuse (7.48.4).

So, my friend may not have had it right. One war is not better than another. Some must be fought in self-defense. Some must be fought to protect allies. But to think that one war is worse than another is to ignore the facts.

The Greeks are a great people. They are a model, in some ways, for the world. But in other ways, they are just savages, like all the people we call barbarians. For all the philosophy and culture, we are failing as human beings.

We have besieged our better natures, torn down the walls, and massacred everything good and innocent that was inside.

I do not write historical accounts, and sometimes I wonder how anyone does.

I am thinking about an event in my own time, Alexander’s siege of Gaza. It was a battle that caught the attention of the world. After the long siege of Tyre, during which Alexander had successes and failures, during which he used all the fortitude, adaptability, and innovation that any general could have, Gaza became his next major battle.

There is no question about Alexander’s victory. What I am focused on is a report that I have seen that Alexander had the enemy general Betis dragged behind his chariot. Betis was still alive, according to this account. The story is that Alexander was so filled with fury and his head was so filled with a mixture of success and frustration, that he had thongs passed through Betis’s ankles and had him tied to his chariot. Alexander watched and gloated, it is said.

Since I am the one who taught Alexander Homer, it is clear that if this is true, he wanted to emulate how Achilles, in his emotional victory over Hector of Troy, dragged that noble hero’s body around the walls of the city.

The alternative is that the story developed that Alexander, like Achilles, did this violent act, though it never really happened. I say this because other accounts I have seen about the Battle of Gaza have nothing at all about this. Alexander may not have done this. Were these accounts omitting this act, to protect Alexander’s reputation? Or did the story develop to make Alexander a second Achilles? That is, the account might have been made up to glorify Alexander, or it may have been hidden to present him as less of a savage victor.

I know Alexander as well as anyone. And yet the truth-seeker in me will not allow me to make my judgement based on the answer that I personally would prefer. I will wait to know what the truth is. This is not an easy task.

And this is why I do not envy historians. This is a case in my own time with a main character who I know well. How can a historian, with no such personal knowledge, removed at a distance in time and place, be sure of his accounts, and thus of their moral judgements?

I will wait to learn what the truth is. Only then will I be a judge of Alexander, or anyone else.

Since I always have to be careful about how I speak about the gods, and, for that matter, how I speak about certain human beings, I can use this private space to say what I am really thinking about.

Everyone seems to have a view of the world in which gods act in the affairs of men. I think of this view as a continuum: gods taking the form of humans; some heroes are part god and part human; other humans can become gods. If I take such notions as myths and stories, I can find them charming, or instructive, or entertaining.

The danger I see is when humans start to venerate other humans as gods, but worse, the real danger is when any human believes that he is a god. A leader can start out with the great desire to help his people, and then when he does, the adoration of the people can bring him honors and glory. They believe in him, and he increasingly believes in himself. And since it is the secret ambition of many of us to become immortal, all that adoration and glory can overwhelm the leader’s heart and mind to the point that he believes that he was destined for this role and that he can do no wrong. Those who oppose him, he thinks, oppose the will of the gods. The preservation of his power becomes his only goal. No law should constrain him. There are no other values except those that he expresses at a given moment.

Such a leader can lead his people to utter destruction.

I fear pure democracy because it can turn into the will of the mob. But I fear any absolute rule, because the ruler can lose sight of everything and everyone else.

This is why I have struggled to find the best form of government. I know that whatever the ideals of a system of governance and law, the system is only as good as the people in it. I know that every form of government is fragile.

And this is why, the older I get, the more fearful I become for all of us.

The best religion is one that teaches that there are absolute values higher than the supposed continuum of gods and men. The best religion says that humans can never become gods.

States, my teacher wrote in the Republic, are not made out of rock and oak; they are made of human beings, and they resemble the human beings who made it. Even if there were ideal states for moments, they would be bound to degenerate, sooner or later and probably sooner. The process would probably go from ideal state to aristocracy to tyranny to oligarchy to democracy.

Democracy often rises from the revolt of the poor against an oligarchy. Everyone, in a sense, wants to be an oligarch, to live in full freedom and in any way they please. Democracy could have its own charm, its own messiness, its own variety, and its own disorder that go along with the attempt to create equality between people who are clearly unequal. But democracy will be filled with people who are overcome by so many unnecessary desires that they will spend and spend and not produce. The state will be filled by people who are not fit to rule.

What should we fear more than anything? I am thinking now about what Plato talked about in his Phaedo. He talked about ants and bees and wasps. It is not the queen bee or the worker bees who we should be afraid of but the pests of the hive who are armed with terrible stings. These pests may even come to power, turning a messy democracy into a cruel tyranny. We need the insects that live in colonies where individuals devote themselves to the survival and prosperity of the colony as a whole.

We need more people, true citizens, who can think on the level of these social insects who see their lives as part of something more important than their own lives. When I think of Socrates as a hoplite, I am reminded of worker bees who are ready to die for their country, I see that the truly greatest of humans see the greatness of the whole. Socrates thought that the best of us would be reincarnated as bees and ants; not the pests of the hive but the best of the hive.

I keep thinking about something I wrote in one of these letters to myself, when I drew a kind of agon between the ideal, peaceful city portrayed by my teacher Plato as opposed to the city in Homer, and in reality, the scene and cause of war and conflict. But I wonder now if I’ve been fair to Homer. I’m thinking about two scenes, one from the Odyssey, and the other one, in a sense, the whole Iliad.

In the Odyssey, first the narrator and then Nausikaa portray the polis of Scheria as a beautiful, idyllic city, far from conflict and strife. It has walls, towers, shrines, a beautiful harbor, and a teeming agora. Odysseus sees it and finds it “a marvel to behold.”

And now I think about Troy with its impregnable walls. I understand that this was before there was the siege equipment Alexander has used against Thebes, Tyre, and Gaza. I can only think of a couple of times Homer even alludes to the possibility of attacking those walls. I only remember wondering twice if one of the Greeks might breach the walls of Troy, when Patroclus attacks and then when Achilles in his rage and vengeance seems like he will take a superhuman leap to the top of the wall. Other than those two moments, and I am not sure that I am not imagining those as well, the walls seem divinely made and massively protective.

What do Scheria and Troy have in common? One is the picture of peace, the other is the very symbol of war. Yet what they have in common, in Homer’s vision, is not so far from Plato’s ideal of the city. Inside their walls there is safety and security. Plato said that the city could elevate our lives so that we did not need to spend our days working and sweating.

Nausicaa loved Odysseus and would have married him, but her love was unrequited. Is our love for the ideal city unrequited, too? Is Scheria, our ideal of virtue in human beings, just a dream? Will reality sail away from Nausicaa and Scheria, like Odysseus? For it had been the same Odysseus who had found the way through the walls and destroyed Troy from the inside. The city-destroyer had no place in Scheria. Do we?

Is my Alexander the one who will end the cycle of violence between all the warring poleis, and create an empire of Scherias that will elevate lives? Or will he use all his engineering to engineer the destruction of the cities, so that they are all reduced to ruins like the once-mighty Troy?

The works of Homer are basic to our Greek culture. Every schoolboy knows the Iliad and the Odyssey. Right now, Alexander and his men are off fighting battles as if they are the Greeks besieging Troy. I am inside a soldier’s mind, and he is now feeling energy and ferocity, as if he were still a child fighting his friends in their countless play-matches, marching and running into battle. The only real question is whether he is Achilles or Hector or Ajax, or perhaps he is wily Odysseus, using strategy.

But I often wonder if what a schoolboy takes from the Iliad is what Homer intended as the meaning of his work. Is this book that has inspired countless wars an attempt to glorify war? I admit that the heroes are strong and valiant and that one cannot help but be drawn in by their courage and prowess. The poetry elevates the actions. And indeed, for the schoolboy and for the adult reader, it is close to impossible not to be swept up in the passionate glory of it all.

But perhaps Homer is trying to show us where this glorious war led, to utter destruction. After those ten years, when the best and the brightest men were away from building and developing cities and cultures, away from growing their families, when Greece could have been flourishing with all the contributions they would have been making, what was the result? Leave aside the destruction of Troy, a different but great city and culture. What about all those Greek soldiers? Many did not survive. Odysseus had grand adventures for ten more years but hardly came home to a hero’s welcome. Agamemnon reached home only to be murdered in the bath that very day by his own wife.

I suppose, if you count literary glory as the highest goal, then yes, it was all worthwhile. And I do not write this for others to see, because they would think I am a traitor in saying this while Alexander is out conquering the world. But are his soldiers not like the Greek soldiers at Troy, far away from Greece, with a high chance of never coming home?

Is Greece really better off, even if Alexander succeeds beyond our wildest dreams, is Greece really better off being for years without many of its best and brightest who could be building a better Greece?

When I see all the bloodshed on the shores of Troy, in the destroyed city itself, and even on the victors’ ways home, I wonder what reason did all those Greeks have for shedding their blood on the plain before Troy?

I do understand Hector, whom we see somewhat torn between family and duty, but quickly enough he goes to do his glorious duty. He was defending his family and all the families of Troy.

And the Greeks? Because some adulterous queen had run off with her lover? Who cares? I am sorry that Helen ran off with Paris. But she is not the first or the last to give in to her passion and bring doom over many others. And from what I read about her, she was not such a magnificent personage.

As silly as it seems that all the Greek nations would wage the greatest invasion in history over the trivial incident of Helen and Paris, I wonder: How many wars have been fought over such minor infractions?

Is the taking of Helen so much greater than the taking of Briseis? Achilles is a petulant child, but perhaps he represents all Greeks, and all men for that matter, willing to spend years or lose life itself for … what, exactly?

Aren’t most wars fought on pretexts? It is as if there is going to be a war and then someone finds a reason to start it.

While I like to think that Alexander is fighting to end wars and to bring civilization and unity to the world, am I so sure, in the privacy of these thoughts, that he is not fighting for his pride and his ambition and the pride and ambition of Macedonians and Greeks? Is that enough of a reason for us to slaughter our way across the world?

We really have no reason at all, as much as I’ve tried to convince myself that this is for the betterment of the world. Hector had a reason to fight. We have no excuse. I am no longer so sure that I taught Alexander the right lessons from Homer …

I often muse how the Trojan War lasted ten years, but the Iliad only covers, if I remember correctly, around seven weeks in the last year. When I speak about drama as having unity of action, time, and place, this is my model. This narrow focus is not on the long war or the siege but, as Homer says at the outset, about Achilles and his wrath that brought so much violence and destruction to both sides.

Is this just the genius choice of a great dramaturg or does Homer have another lesson to tell us, besides the destructiveness of war and the endless supply of pretexts for it? For all of my writings about the best forms of government, ultimately, the question will always be how leaders act within those systems. Homer’s subject was how horribly the actions of a leader can affect a large common undertaking, whether it is leading a war or governing in peace.

Imagine you are one of the Greek soldiers on the plains of Troy, watching your leaders act in the way Homer describes. Their leaders, Agamemnon and Achilles only care about themselves. They are fighting over girls who are prisoners of war. Achilles considers his dishonor so important that it renders everything, the good of the many, what is right and good, courage, the fact that he had been given special abilities that could change a war, all less important than his petulant feelings about the slight offense against him. While the great military alliance survives, continues fighting, and will be victorious, the soldiers — and we with them — lose our illusions about any excellence or special quality of those leaders.

Homer’s warning is: Leaders are as fraught with flaws as any men. But they are worse because they have so much power and their actions have so many implications and consequences.

Why does this happen, not just in Homer but throughout history? Sometimes I think that the hubris of all these arrogant, destructive leaders begins with our myths. These stories reflect a belief system that portrays a continuum between the human and the divine. Gods fall in love with, or rape, human women, or Divine women couple with human men, and we have demi-gods like Achilles. Gods fight on both sides of the war. The pride of the gods leads, in some ways, to the Trojan War, because Paris is granted the most beautiful human woman by the goddess that he judges to be the most beautiful. This blurring of the divine and the human is one of the great dangers of religion.

And there is my Alexander, I hear, going to Siwah in Egypt, to inquire if he is a god. I fear this will not end well.

When I think about the Iliad, I think about Achilles and Odysseus and Agamemnon. I have rarely, if ever, thought about Ajax, the son of Telamon. If I did, I saw him as a kind of strongman or brute, heroic and formidable in battle, but not worthy of further consideration. But watching the play about him by Sophocles has made me focus on him, and I have been thinking about the way he has been presented in different epic poetic works. I started to wonder why he has even been a hero of certain cults that presented and characterized Ajax in ways I would not have imagined.

Pindar and Sophocles both have the myth of the struggle over who would win the arms of Achilles after his death, with the outcome that that they are given to Odysseus and Ajax takes his own life. Pindar sees only the good in Ajax but Sophocles who understands not just tragedy but humanity, sees both positive and negative aspects of the hero. There is something about heroic cult ritual that celebrates and honors some aspects over others, whereas tragedy sees the complexity.

Since Ajax commits suicide in the middle of the play, I heard the people behind me say that the rest of the play was boring. I can’t expect everyone to be interested in the politics of a debate over whether the body of Ajax should receive a proper burial. But it made me think about Ajax. In the Iliad, he certainly does not say much, and when he does, he says things in a few words, as opposed to a verbose Odysseus or Nestor. But what he says is always honorable. When he does speak, one can feel the responsibility he feels for his brothers-in-arms.

He tells Achilles to be loyal to his friends. He can call on his men to redeem their honor. Perhaps because he says relatively little, we should pay more attention to his concise words, and above all, to his actions. He never abandons his comrades in battle but always rushes to rescue them. He stands in the breach when his fellows are being routed. He fights Hector at every point. When things go badly, his resolution is constant. In a battle in the Iliad, he mightily rescues the fallen and endangered Odysseus. Odysseus might defeat Ajax in a wrestling match through strategy and trickery, but Ajax knows no devices or stealth.

And so, if there are cults that are loyal to him, how fitting this is, for he is the model of loyalty itself. To demonstrate loyalty is to inspire it.

I think about Athens or any society. Sometimes, we need to be like Ajax, not always asking so many questions and stirring doubts, not, and this will be strange for me above all people to say, not always thinking so much at every moment. Sometimes, we should just do the right thing for our city, our comrades, our allies. Odysseus is the ultimate survivor who does what he needs to do in the moment. But in the struggle between the two, between expedience and constancy, we need to be Ajax, too.

He wore his hair in a long and flowing fashion. He adorned himself with expensive ornaments that contrasted with a cheap garment no matter the season.

I had pictured a man who was strange and eccentric. Now I see that he wanted to be perceived as completely different. He knew what he was doing; he intentionally wanted to distinguish himself from everyone else. He did not want to be forgotten. And I, for one, have always kept him in mind.

I have written so extensively over the years that much is now a blur, but there are certain figures that emerge in my memory with the appreciation of long reflection. In my intensive studies of government, I reviewed the ideas of Hippodamus of Miletus. There is much to criticize in his system of government, but then, there is something to criticize in every system of government. I regret that at one point I was somewhat dismissive of his contribution. I wrote: “These are the most striking points in the constitution of Hippodamus. There is not much else.” (Pol. 1267b22-1268a4) While I focused on his calculated personal appearance, I should have understood that the fact that he was not a statesman or a political philosopher himself enabled him to create a metaphor that I find breathtaking.

Long before Plato, he saw ideal forms. He planned what he saw as the perfect city laid out in a well-designed grid. I did understand this aspect of his contribution and wrote: “Even the disposition of private houses is more pleasing and more useful if it is well laid out in the newer, that is, Hippodameian fashion” (Pol. 1330b21-24). His perfect city would be composed of 10,000 citizens divided into three parts: artisans, farmers, and armed defenders of the state. He also divided the land into three parts: sacred to maintain the worship of the gods, public to support the warriors, and private, the property of the farmers. He divided laws into three classes: insult, injury, and homicide. He instituted a single final court of appeal made up of chosen elders. The magistrates, he would have them all elected by the people, that is, by the three classes already mentioned, and those who were elected were to watch over the interests of everyone in the public, including children of warriors who died in battle, strangers, and orphans.

The point that I did not fully appreciate, and that I struggle even now to articulate well, is that, literally from the ground up, this great mind envisioned a great society that, from the top down, created the ideal society. He saw citizens walking and working on his well-designed grid of streets, living by just laws, governed by wise leaders.

I can think of no greater image.

Perhaps of all the subjects I have studied and written about, nothing is more important than my examination of different types of governments. I have paid close attention to democracies. The more I have studied the concept and realities of democracy, the more I realize its complexities. I have come around to seeing that its weakness is its vulnerability.

Plato (in Republic 8.557aff., 562aff.) said that democracy often induces tyranny through the efforts of demagogues. A demagogue may rise by accusing the wealthy and rousing the other classes to his banner. Or he may attack the wealthy by saying that land should be divided differently or by demanding free public services (leitourgiai: Aristot. Politics 5.1304bl9-1305a7) for everyone. This is what Plato says. I have followed this line (in Politics 5.1305a7-27; 1310bl2-1311a8) to speak of a demagogue who becomes a tyrant by attacking the rich.

There is another way that demagogues become tyrants, by provoking a reaction from an oligarchic or tyrannical conspiracy (5.1304b19-1305a7, cf. 1310b9). I think back to the famous obviously fictional debate created by Herodotus, where three Persians discuss the relative merits of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. The last speaker argues that democracies produce mischief (kakotes) through conspiracies by the kakoi against the common interest, until one man becomes the leader of the people and puts an end to these conspiracies by becoming a monarch (Hdt. 3.82.4).

I know that the monarchic leader in Herodotus is now what I am saying about a popular champion who opposes a monarchic or oligarchic conspiracy. But he performs a similar function in relation to the original leaders of the people.

I assume that Herodotus was thinking of the Sicilian tyranny of Gelon, who overthrew a democratic movement when he seized Syracuse in 486 (Hdt. 7.155-6). When Hippocrates was killed in battle, his sons kept the throne, but the people were tired of this family and revolted. Gelon stopped the revolt by saying that he was helping Hippocrates’s sons keep their power. Instead, he used the army and took power for himself. Herodotus says that he forced half the citizens of Gela to move to Syracuse and removed all the aristocracy from Camarina.

I understand that there are different paths that demagogues take to become tyrants, but all of them show how fragile and manipulable democracy is. But perhaps I have all this wrong. Perhaps no system is impervious to the schemes of would-be tyrants. Perhaps every kind of government is vulnerable to the schemes of evil men.

Only one thing can stop them: An educated populace that sees a demagogue for the would-be tyrant that he is and stop him before he begins to rise. Later, it will be too late.

As I near the end and reflect about all my writings, I still think that my study of happiness in my Nicomachean Ethics is an important contribution. It is a search for the meaning of being human. What is it that makes human beings different from the rest of nature? It is our ability to reason. Only humans act according to principles and take responsibility for our actions.

I wrote about the hierarchy of existence, moving up from mineral to vegetative to animal to human. I could not blame a mouse for stealing my food; it does not know it is stealing; it is gathering food. If a thief steals my food, however, I can blame that thief for doing something that is wrong. Human uniqueness is in our ability to reason things out to attain our ends, solve our problems, and live a life that is therefore qualitatively different from animals.

We have a rational capacity and when we exercise this capacity, we come closer to perfecting of our natures as human beings. Pleasure and physical fulfillment is what animals, but pleasure and physical fulfillment alone cannot bring humans happiness. I would never say that we should suppress our physical needs but rather that we should channel them in ways that are appropriate to our higher nature.

Complete virtue is when we achieve happiness by acting out of a good moral character. Being virtuous is not a passive state: one must act in accordance with virtue. And one cannot just have a few virtues; we must strive to possess all of them. A person cannot just say: “I am virtuous,” and then do nothing to justify that designation.

Now let me link all this to my studies of government. A state cannot be a virtuous state by acting like an animal, mindlessly doing everything for its political or economic power. A state cannot be virtuous if it merely endorses the realities and inequalities of the present. A state cannot be virtuous if it constantly engages in violence and war. A state, and a human being, is only as good as the goodness it brings to the world.