Atticus

"Yes, that’s one of its virtues; it doesn’t try your patience at all. It’s maybe a little too brief: it’s written for an audience who knows the history of the time and the individuals involved, so it can be a little hard to read when things are just mentioned and alluded to. The reason I think it’s interesting to read is because it’s written by a contemporary of Atticus. There’s a point in about chapter 19 where he writes, ‘I’d written up to this point while Atticus was alive. Now he’s dead and I’m going to put this little epilogue onto it.’ So it’s written by someone who was there to witness the events that were unfolding. In terms of people who study political history, this is one of the most interesting times in the history of Rome, because it’s right at the transition from Republic to Empire. It’s when the mechanism that allowed the Romans to run their government through a power-sharing system falls apart. It was an aristocratic elite, but they were sharing power among themselves. Atticus is famous because he doesn’t choose sides. He’s incredibly wealthy and he could easily—and perhaps should—have picked a side and stuck with it. He’s an example of someone who’s able to navigate these difficult times. He doesn’t end up proscribed and in exile. He doesn’t end up dead, like Cicero, one of his best friends, did. He doesn’t choose the wrong side. We talk a lot about polarization now: either you’re on one side or the other, and there’s no room for compromise in the middle. Atticus is an example—and again, not to say things are exactly the same—of someone who was living in a similarly polarized time and who found a way to navigate that middle. That’s right, and that could be a lesson as well, about how to get along in these times. Another lesson is that some Romans had a hard time learning that you need to stop at some point. Going back to Joe Biden, is the last big thing he is going to do is get rejected by his party? Is that going to be the end of his career? Or should he have stepped back, and said, ‘I was vice president under one of the most popular presidents we’ve ever had’ and let that be enough. Atticus is extreme in that he doesn’t want anything, or if he takes an office, he sets conditions on it such that it won’t involve him in politics in any larger way. A friend of his, Asinius Pollio, who has a family connection with Atticus and is mentioned in the book, seems to do a similar thing. He’s with Caesar during the first round of civil wars. He works his way up and goes on to become consul, which is the highest office in the state. He has a military triumph and then retires. I suspect that he looked around him and thought, ‘If I keep going, it can only end badly.’ Pompey, Caesar’s opponent, had three triumphs and he ended up beheaded in Egypt. So I think people who were savvy looked around and saw what happened to others. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . This is where we can make a connection back to Plutarch. Atticus is called Atticus because Attica is the region around Athens and he went to Athens to study. He has that philosophical background that allows him to see what’s really important. He avoids the stature, the glory and the wealth that he might have acquired by a political career and stays above and separate from it. Asinius Pollio sets a similar example. He goes to a certain point and stops. He becomes an intellectual figure. He writes a history. He creates the first public library in Rome. He is probably also someone who is educated and able to make an intellectual choice and not just be driven by the emotion and the excitement of politics. It could be. I don’t know the background for that claim, but it could go either way, because one of the principles of Epicureans was to be politically uninvolved. Plutarch criticizes the Epicureans for this. So it may be that people assume Atticus was an Epicurean because he was politically uninvolved. Or maybe there’s more to it, but it’s not something that the biography stresses for sure."