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  • For argument's sake, draw your own analogies

    Ottawa Citizen
    July 2, 2004 Friday Final Edition

    For argument's sake, draw your own analogies

    by John Robson


    When the Athenian statesman Phocion gave a speech that the public
    applauded, Plutarch claims, he turned to some friends and asked, "Have
    I inadvertently said something foolish?" How many politicians would
    ever have such a reaction today? Yet how many should? I sure missed
    Plutarch during this election.

    For one thing, I treasure his anecdote of Cato the Elder who, told it
    was odd that there was no monument to him in Rome, said he would far
    rather have people ask why he didn't have a statue than why he did.
    What a useful standard by which to judge the personal qualities of
    politicians. When Bill Clinton claims in his memoirs that "in politics,
    if you don't toot your own horn, it usually stays untooted" you might
    reasonably conclude that, in Cato's situation, he would have put one up
    himself.

    Some readers may be puzzled by my periodic tendency to enthuse about
    some author who wrote long before Jennifer Lopez's first marriage; if
    so I reply that it is not a boast to find nothing interesting in books.
    (Or quote American commentator Florence King that in high school "the
    girls who recited Mickey Rooney's wives in the cafeteria made fun of me
    for reciting Henry VIII's wives in history class ...")

    All argument is in some sense argument by analogy: This thing is like
    that thing, it is not like that other thing, it is more like this thing
    than like that, and so on. But if we do not carry around with us a
    supply of material suitable for the drawing of analogies, what sort of
    reasoning is likely to result? That's why Plutarch wrote The Lives of
    the Noble Grecians and Romans.

    A person without knowledge of the past is liable to react to a promise
    of free money the same way Homer Simpson reacts to the word "doughnut."
    Would it not be better instead to flinch as George Washington would
    have at any political program reminiscent of Rome's "bread and
    circuses" for the urban mob? Or recall another Plutarch story about
    Cato the Elder: "Being once desirous to dissuade the common people of
    Rome from their unseasonable and impetuous clamour for largesses and
    distributions of corn, he began thus to harangue them: 'It is a
    difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no
    ears.'"

    Paul Martin would have been well-advised a year ago to ponder
    Plutarch's report that Pompey the Great once had the chance "to lead
    Tigranes, King of Armenia, in triumph," but "chose rather to make him a
    confederate of the Romans, saying that a single day was worth less than
    all future time."

    My admiration for Plutarch is not uncritical. He likes the Spartans too
    much, and unfairly casts Marc Antony as too besotted with Cleopatra to
    attend to affairs of the state. But it's interesting to see him praise
    Cleopatra's personality and intellect over her raw physical beauty, and
    slam Julius Caesar, who "looking upon all changes and commotions in the
    state as materials useful for his own purposes, desired rather to
    increase than extinguish them ..."

    Perhaps his correspondingly high opinion of Caesar's assassin Brutus is
    overdone. But it would be nice to have some sort of opinion on Brutus
    that doesn't also involve Popeye the sailor man. Lest you smell dust
    here, I promise that Plutarch is also full of intrigue, illicit sex and
    gruesome violence. For instance, the orator Cicero, who backed Brutus,
    was assassinated and, on the orders of Marc Antony, his head and hands
    were severed, brought to Rome, and "fastened up over the rostra, where
    the orators spoke; a sight which the Roman people shuddered to behold,
    and they believed they saw there, not the face of Cicero, but the image
    of Antony's own soul." A useful anecdote to have whenever someone
    triumphantly waves an enemy's head in public.

    Plutarch also records that Phocion once "answered King Antipater, who
    sought his approbation of some unworthy action, 'I cannot be your
    flatterer, and your friend.'" And he advises the politically ambitious
    likewise to "answer the people, 'I cannot govern and obey you.'" Of
    course anyone who did so might not win, but hey, most candidates lose
    anyway. (Besides, Cato the Younger once lost an election for consul,
    declined to run again because the people obviously didn't want him, and
    happily went on with his life.) And it would surely raise the level of
    debate to go about dismissing people as "another Lepidus" or hailing
    them as "a second Brutus" instead of wracking our brains trying to
    remember who was in Joe Clark's cabinet. Speaking of people who should
    certainly have spent more time asking friends if they'd inadvertently
    said something foolish.

    John Robson's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Listen to him
    weeknights from 8 to 10 on CFRA 580 AM.
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