Opuscula Kingship
Chapter 7
That worldly honor and glory are not an adequate reward for a king
Since, according to what has been said thus far, it is the king’s duty to seek the good of the multitude, the task of a king may seem too burdensome unless some advantage to himself should result from it. Therefore, we must consider what a suitable reward for a good king is.
Some men considered this reward to be nothing other than honor and glory. Hence Cicero says in the book On the Republic: The prince of the city should be nourished by glory, and Aristotle seems to assign the reason for this in the Ethics: Because the prince for whom honor and glory is not sufficient consequently turns into a tyrant. For it is in the hearts of all men to seek their proper good. Therefore, if the prince is not content with glory and honor, he will seek pleasures and riches, and so will resort to plundering and injuring his subjects.
However, if we accept this opinion, a great many incongruous results follow. In the first place, it would be costly to kings if so many labors and anxieties were to be endured for a reward so perishable: for nothing, it seems, is more perishable among human things than the glory and honor of men’s favor, since it depends upon the report of men and their opinions, which nothing in human life is more fickle than. And this is why the Prophet Isaiah calls such glory the flower of grass (Isa 40:6). Moreover, the desire for human glory takes away greatness of soul. For he who seeks the favor of men must serve their will in all he says and does, and thus, while striving to please all, he becomes a slave to each one. Therefore, the same Cicero says in his book On Duties that the inordinate desire for glory is to be guarded against: It takes away freedom of soul, for the sake of which high-minded men should put forth all their efforts. Indeed, there is nothing more becoming to a prince who has been set up for the doing of good works than greatness of soul. Thus, the reward of human glory is not enough for the services of a king.
At the same time it also hurts the multitude if such a reward be set up for princes, for it is the duty of a good man to take no account of glory, just as he should take no account of other temporal goods. It is the mark of a virtuous and brave soul to despise glory as he despises life, for justice’s sake. From this comes a wonder: glory ensues from virtuous acts, and out of virtue glory itself is despised. And therefore, through his very contempt for glory, a man is made glorious—according to the sentence of Fabius: He who scorns glory shall have true glory, and as Sallust says of Cato: The less he sought glory the more he achieved it. Even the disciples of Christ exhibited themselves as the ministers of God in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute (2 Cor 6:8). Therefore, it is not fitting for glory, spurned by good men, to be the reward of a good man. And, if it alone be set up as the reward for princes, it will follow that good men will not take upon themselves the chief office of the city, or if they take it, they will go unrewarded.
Furthermore, dangerous evils come from the desire for glory. Many have been led unrestrainedly to seek glory in warfare, and have sent their armies and themselves to destruction, while the freedom of their country was turned into servitude under an enemy. Consider Torquatus, the Roman chief: in order to impress upon the people how imperative it is to avoid such danger, he slew his own son who had acted against his orders (he had been challenged by an enemy whom he had fought and vanquished). Torquatus acted thus lest more harm should accrue from the example of his son’s presumption than advantage from the glory of slaying the enemy.
Moreover, the desire for glory has another vice akin to it: namely, hypocrisy. Since it is difficult to acquire true virtues, to which alone honor and glory are due, and it is therefore the lot of but a few to attain them, many who desire glory become simulators of virtue. On this account, as Sallust says: Ambition drives many mortals to become false. They keep one thing shut up in their heart, another ready on the tongue, and they have more countenance than character. But our Savior also calls those persons ‘hypocrites,’ or simulators, who do good works to be seen by men. Therefore, just as there is danger for the multitude that the prince may become abusive and a plunderer if he seeks pleasures and riches as his reward, so there is danger that he may become presumptuous and a hypocrite if glory is assigned to him as reward.
Looking at what the above-mentioned wise men intended to say, they do not seem to have decided upon honor and glory as the reward of a prince because they judged that the king’s intention should be principally directed to that object, but because it is more tolerable for him to seek glory than to desire money or pursue pleasure. For this vice is akin to virtue inasmuch as the glory which men desire, as Augustine says, is nothing else than the judgment of men who think well of men. So the desire for glory has some trace of virtue in it, at least so long as it seeks the approval of good men and is reluctant to displease them. Therefore, since few men reach true virtue, it seems more tolerable if one be set up to rule who, fearing the judgment of men, is restrained from manifest evils. For the man who desires glory either endeavors to win the approval of men in the true way, by deeds of virtue, or at least strives for this by fraud and deceit. But if the one who desires to domineer lacks the desire for glory, he will have no fear of offending men of good judgment and will commonly strive to obtain what he chooses by the most open crimes. Thus he will surpass the beasts in the vices of cruelty and lust, as is evidenced in the case of the Emperor Nero, of whom Augustine says: He was so lustful that he despised everything virile, and yet so cruel that nobody would have thought him to be effeminate. Indeed all this is quite clearly contained in what Aristotle says in his Ethics regarding the magnanimous man: true, he does seek honor and glory, but not as something great which could be a sufficient reward of virtue. And beyond this he demands nothing more of men, for among all earthly goods the chief good, it seems, is this, that men bear testimony to the virtue of a man.