Ancient & modern
It is fascinating watching the ancient patrimonial system of appointment at work, and there are few better opportunities to see it in action than when a man like David Cameron, without power and therefore without accountability or responsibility, gathers about him the team that he hopes will propel him into high office. As in the Roman world, the team will enjoy no contracts, no rules for promotion, and certainly no pay. Favouritism and absolute obedience will be all. One begins to feel quite sorry for them.
The emperors well understood the power they wielded in this respect. Claudius made it clear (says the millionaire politician and philosopher Seneca) ‘how much more effectively imperial power was protected by beneficia than by arma’. The philosopher Epictetus developed the point: ‘No one loves Caesar: but we love riches, a tribunate, a praetorship, a consulship, and those who have the disposal of them must be our masters.’ The price was a high one, he went on: if you wanted office, ‘you must stay up at night, run back and forth, kiss hands, wait on other people’s doors, and say and do many slavish things’. But even that was no guarantee of success, he continued: you can attach yourself to the emperor, but ‘the emperor might die and what if he became your enemy?’ Marcus Terentius was a close friend of Sejanus, favourite of the emperor Tiberius. Sejanus was executed when word reached Tiberius that he was planning a coup. In a brave speech to the Senate, Terentius did not deny his friendship and won an imperial reprieve for his honesty: ‘It is not for us to judge the man you have elevated above others, and for what reason. The gods gave you supreme power; the only glory left to us is to obey.’ Too true: Seneca reports an old courtier, asked how he lasted so long in imperial service, replying ‘by accepting insults and expressing gratitude for them’. No wonder stoicism, with its emphasis on virtue and duty, was so popular a philosophy: Romans needed all the self-defence mechanisms they could muster against the insecurities of imperial life.
But will things get any better for David Cameron’s team if they actually win? Certainly not, as any Roman, not to mention Blair-Brown, could tell them. With real power in the air, they will, in fact, become considerably worse.
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