Great IdeasLiving together
Power and rulers
How rulers gain power and keep it, and what makes power legitimate.
The question
How do rulers gain and keep power? What makes power rightful, and how can it be kept in check?
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
after 431 BC; unfinished
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides says the deepest cause of the great war between Athens and Sparta was the growth of Athenian power and the fear it caused in Sparta. Again and again he shows how power, fear and honor push states to act. He hoped his history would help later readers understand such times.
c. AD 100–117
Tacitus, The Annals and The Histories
Tacitus writes the history of the early Roman emperors. He shows how one-man rule bred flattery, fear and spying, and how even histories were bent by those in power. He promises to write without anger or favor.
“The histories of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred.”
written 1513; published 1532
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Machiavelli writes a guide for a new prince. He asks whether it is better to be loved or feared and answers that it is safer to be feared, if one cannot be both, though a prince must avoid being hated. Some readers see a cold handbook for tyrants, others a warning or a plain report of how politics works.
“Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?”
1599–1608
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus
In Julius Caesar, Brutus joins the plot against Caesar out of fear that Caesar will become a king. Then Mark Antony turns the crowd with one speech. Shakespeare shows the power of words, and how quickly power slips from those who think they hold it.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;”
Go to the rung: Shakespeare: Julius Caesar and the Roman Plays
1651
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Hobbes argues that without a power over everyone, life would be a war of each against all. People agree to give up their right to rule themselves to a sovereign who keeps the peace. He thought that power should be very great and undivided, since a divided power leads to civil war.
1748
Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws
Montesquieu argues that anyone with power tends to abuse it. So liberty needs power to be divided: one body makes the laws, another carries them out and another judges. Each can then check the others.
“To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.”
1787–1788
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, The Federalist
Writing to defend the new Constitution, James Madison accepts that people are not angels. So government must be given enough power to govern, and then be made to control itself. Separate branches, each with ways to resist the others, set ambition against ambition.
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
1945
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Orwell's animal fable shows a revolution in which the new leaders become as bad as the old ones. The pigs use fear, lies and changed slogans to keep their power. Orwell meant it as a warning about how power can corrupt any cause.
For young readers
Power is being able to make things happen or make people do things. A team captain, a teacher and a president all have some power.
Power can help people, like a lifeguard keeping swimmers safe. But it can also be misused, like a bully on the playground. That's why many writers say power should have limits: the captain must follow the rules of the game too.
Talk about it
- Is it better for a leader to be loved or feared? Why?
- Why do you think the U.S. government has three branches?
- Who has power over you? Who do you have power over, like a younger sibling or a pet?
- Mark Antony changed a crowd's mind with a speech. Can words be a kind of power?
- What stops a leader from becoming a bully?
Where else on the site
- Separation of Powers
- Checks and Balances
- The Federalist and the Anti-Federalists
- Forms of Government
- Pathos: The Audience’s Emotions
- Who Rules
Every rung tagged with this idea:
- Aristophanes: The Comedies
- Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War
- Plutarch: Lives of the Greeks
- Plutarch: Lives of the Romans
- Tacitus: The Annals and The Histories
- Machiavelli: The Prince
- Shakespeare: The History Plays
- Shakespeare: Julius Caesar and the Roman Plays
- Shakespeare: Macbeth
- Hobbes: Leviathan
- The Federalist
- Gibbon: The Decline and Fall, I
- Weber: Essays in Sociology
- Conrad: Heart of Darkness
- Shaw: Saint Joan
- D. H. Lawrence: The Prussian Officer
- Orwell: Animal Farm
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.