The Roman historian Sallust, in his Conspiracy of Catiline, reminds us that

In the opinion of the kings, good men were more suspect than bad; the virtue of others was, for the kings, always something to be feared. 

[Cat. VII]

This should not surprise us in the least; for the first fruits of virtue and character are to displease the corrupt and the ignorant.  Debased, narcissistic leaders do not maintain their power through good works or their services to their people; they maintain their control through manipulation, force, lies, and deceit.  The very presence of a good man, and the very existence of those values we call virtues, is an existential threat to the corrupt leader, because the unjust ruler is faced with a constant reminder of his inadequacy, his inferiority, and his malignity. As the plague bacillus shrinks and dies upon exposure to light, so do the maleficent wither in the presence of virtue.

But why is it that the seats of power seem so often to be occupied by such individuals?  Why is it that we so rarely find the virtuous in positions of authority?  Or is this only a feature of our current era? There are many answers to this question, and all of them must involve an understanding of human nature.  The nature of evil has been pondered and discussed for a great many centuries; we have advanced in our ability to explain it, perhaps, but not in our ability to confine and control it.  It can only be understood when it has been observed in action.  Comfort promotes laziness, conformity, and a desire for entertainment; the lack of education destroys analytical power and respect for the nation’s history; the neglect of moral training encourages destructively antisocial behavior; and the decline of social cohesion fosters greed, individualism, and mistrust. As Dante says, in Longfellow’s idiom,

The new inhabitants and the sudden gains,

Pride and extravagance have in thee engendered,

Florence, so that thou weep’st thereat already! 

[Inferno XVI.73-75]

In such environments, venomous characters thrive and flourish, promising instant solutions to complex problems; and, while the populace is distracted with lies and nonsense, the corrupt leader and his depraved acolytes find their opportunity to plunder the nation and destroy its institutions.  Evil feeds upon itself and, in the absence of external deterrents, glows with a rising and fearful incandescence.  It is as Tacitus says, with his incomparable terseness,

The violence then grew in severity, and more leaders of the mutiny appeared. [Annals I.22]

[Flagrantior inde vis, plures seditioni duces]

But while such “leaders” may appear to be successful, at least in the short term, they nevertheless stand on feet of clay.  They remain hollow men, bereft of any principle than their own aggrandizement.  Their apparent success is an illusion, because it springs from the mouth of Dante’s loathsome Geryon, that monster of fraud crawling about the recesses of Hell.  It is as Poggio Bracciolini says in his Defense of Scipio and Caesar [91], “In fact I say that nothing is great, nothing noble, nothing worthy of praise, and nothing glorious, which is not also connected to rectitude, integrity, and virtue.” 

What shocks the sincere observer is the willingness of certain individuals to betray the principles of their office, to trample on the traditions of their nation, and to view with contempt any semblance of decency, humanity, or goodness.  Their palms are open for bribes, and their greedy fingers stretch out to seize whatever coin may be offered.  They see their office only as an opportunity for personal enrichment, and openly mock anyone who might raise an objection.  Compare this to the example of Themistocles the Athenian, who, according to Plutarch [Them. 31], preferred to commit suicide rather than help a foreign nation wage war against his country, even after his own country had previously betrayed and exiled him.  Or consider the example of Quintus Sertorius who, according to Plutarch [Sert. 22], said that he would rather live as the lowliest Roman citizen than to remain in exile and rule the known world. 

Where is this strict adherence to principle today?  Or have our elite classes become nothing more than a country club of charlatans, frauds, and hypocrites, all waiting for their turn to feed at the public trough?  Can anyone doubt that the truly wise man in politics has become rarer than the deep-watered coelacanth?  Can anyone doubt the essential truth of Cicero’s words in On Divination [II.28] when he said, with forgivable exaggeration, “For if that which happens rarely must be considered a portent, then the wise man is a portent.  In fact I believe a mule has more often given birth than a wise man has actually lived.”    

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Read more on this and related topics in the new, annotated translations of Cicero’s On Moral Ends and On The Nature Of The Gods.