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<\/a>Even Great Men Have Trouble at Home<\/h2>\nSitting in hospital recently, waiting for\u00a0my son’s arm to be mended (to restore a profile of\u00a0one elbow rather than two) after him being injured playing\u00a0football, I began\u00a0reading about the life of Julius Caesar.<\/p>\n
The bones in my son’s forearm were in a number of pieces and so I needed a distraction from the trauma (mine) as much as something to fill in the time while the surgeons put him back together again.<\/p>\n
I favoured\u00a0science over the humanities in school and so my interest in history, as usual, slants towards \u00a0human nature and emotional intelligence. While reading I also couldn’t help be grateful; if my son had lived in Caesar’s times, his injury would most likely have crippled him for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
Today I want to share some of my thoughts on what I learned reading about one of the most venerated rulers in history . . .<\/p>\n
Always a fan of the virtues, I was impressed by Julius Caesar’s policy of\u00a0clemency (<\/span>forgiveness), but seeing where it got him\u00a0in the end, I couldn’t help\u00a0wonder if this king, so popular with the common people, might have benefited from a bit of Steve and my advice that would have helped him\u00a0fair\u00a0better at the hands of those close to him.<\/p>\n Brutus, Caesar’s step son, was one of the leaders in his murder and so to me this was\u00a0clearly a dysfunctional family.<\/p>\n As a commander,\u00a0Caesar was loved for the real care and concern he showed his soldiers, not only in times of war but also as\u00a0veterans in times of peace. Apportioning land and pensions to his veterans, however, did not make him popular with the wealthy land owners who felt, \u00a0by rights, that all the land in Rome certainly should be theirs.<\/p>\n Caesar’s Clementia Caesaris <\/i>was \u00a0<\/i>\u2018Let this be the new policy of victory that we arm ourselves with mercifulness and liberality.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Caesar was ever keen to demonstrate these virtues. In a letter to his friend\u00a0Atticus<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0Cicero<\/span><\/a>\u00a0discusses Caesar’s\u00a0clementia<\/i>: “You will say they are frightened. I dare say they are, but I’ll be bound they’re more frightened of Pompey than of Caesar. They are delighted with his artful clemency and fear the other’s wrath.”[1]\n Caesar\u00a0had saved his own followers from being massacred by the enemy, while also sparing the defeated and protecting them from falling victim to blind wrath or revenge. He defended them personally and even physically. Indeed, he even saved them politically by restoring them to their positions and ranks.[2]\n Brutus however, a defender of the rich, choose to fight on the side of his uncle Cato in the civil war against Caesar, but when\u00a0defeated at Pharsalos, Caesar pardoned Brutus, took him into his\u00a0circle of friends and assisted him in a further career.\u00a0Despite this first betrayal, Caesar favoured and protected Brutus, apparently for his mother Servilia\u2019s sake.\u00a0Indeed\u00a0when Caesar was being stabbed by his enemies in the senate and saw that Brutus was\u00a0one\u00a0of them,\u00a0Caesar gave up the fight and exclaimed pitifully, “You too, my son?”<\/em><\/p>\n Caesar’s clemency along with his political position of caring for his veterans earned him love and veneration (even today more than 2000 years later, there are fresh flowers placed daily on the place of Caesar\u2019s pyre in Rome) and saw him become the first king to be personally deified. I wonder however . . . \u00a0could he have earned that same love without leaving himself open to personal attack?<\/p>\n This is an age old dilemma and one the world now faces more starkly than ever.\u00a0Do we forgive our enemies and how? And if not are we doomed to live forever in fear and hate?<\/p>\n In my members post today I will attempt to answer these questions and share the advice I would have given\u00a0Julius Caesar regarding his step son Brutus if I had been given the chance:<\/p>\n \u00a0The Smart Way to Forgive<\/a><\/p>\n This is an important article for anyone that struggles with the issue of forgiveness verses personal protection. I am not an advocate of martyrdom but neither am I an advocate of hate.<\/p>\n My son is fine now and his arm straightened out with a plate and pin inside that he will need further surgery to remove in 6 months. As for the boy who tackled him (when my son didn’t even have the ball), how could we stay angry? . . . \u00a0after seeing what he had done to my son,\u00a0the\u00a0poor kid was crying his eyes out when he walked off the field.<\/p>\n Kim Cooper<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n