Oderint dum metuant: an ancient warning.
Oderint dum metuant: an ancient warning.
One of the most oft-repeated proverbs in both the ancient and modern era is “oderint dum metuant”–let them hate, as long as they fear. This saying found its origin in Roman theater, and aspiring strongmen and political hacks have been misunderstanding it ever since. The careless and ignorant take this proverb as a license to justify cruel and authoritarian governance while claiming the veneer of ancient respectability, as if the Romans themselves would countenance such foolish political attitudes. They would not because they knew better. They understood this maxim was not sound policy but a potent warning to all those who took up power in their hands.
The most skilled politicians of both the Roman Republic and Empire viewed this attitude toward governance with horror. The leaders who ruled by this method were rightfully called out as both shameful and, quite frankly, out of their damn minds. Suetonius claims this phrase was always on the lips of Emperor Caligula1, and historians are still arguing over whether it was a childhood fever or a love potion gone wrong that gave him the permanent brain damage. The fate of Caligula proves the point. Murdered by his own praetorian guard. During the classical era, it was widely believed that assassination, murder, and revolution were the natural consequences for engaging in tyrannical behavior. It cannot be overstated how ardently the Romans hated monarchy, which was synonymous with tyrannical rule. They founded an entire government system to guard against it, and their communal hatred sustained their republic for five long centuries.
But oh, what a potent storyteller must have crafted this line, for even Cicero, who disagrees with the sentiment vehemently, describes the spell it cast over audiences and worked to dispel it with reason. Similar to the way parents warn their children not to participate in TikTok challenges unless they want to end up dead. Lucius Accius is the playwright who takes the credit for bringing this phrase to the Roman imagination. The greatest inspiration for his plays were Greek stories and themes. Thus, the play Atreus was born and then performed around 140 BC. Cicero writes in De Officium 1:28 “When Atreus speaks those lines, they call forth applause; for the sentiment is in keeping with the character…the poets will observe, therefore, amid a great variety of characters, what is suitable and proper for all—even for the bad. But to us Nature has assigned the roles of steadfastness, temperance, self-control, and considerateness of others; Nature also teaches us not to be careless in our behaviour towards our fellow-men.”
To clarify Cicero’s position further, later in De Officium 2:7 he writes, “But, of all motives, none is better adapted to secure influence and hold it fast than love; nothing is more foreign to that end than fear.” Then we discover Accius was not the first to play with this turn of phrase, for Ennius, one of the earliest Roman poets, wrote a similar verse that goes: Quem metuunt oderunt; quem quisque odit, perisse expetit (Whom they fear they hate. And whom one hates, one hopes to see dead). Interesting, that added warning about how being hated makes people wish you were dead. Showing that it was a common belief that tyrannical rule would eventually lead to the ruler’s untimely death. Indeed, Cicero takes this maxim as proof of events seen in his own life: the assassination of Julius Caesar. “And we recently discovered, if it was not known before, that no amount of power can withstand the hatred of the many. The death of this tyrant, whose yoke the state endured under the constraint of armed force and whom it still obeys more humbly than ever, though he is dead, illustrates the deadly effects of popular hatred; and the same lesson is taught by the similar fate of all other despots, of whom practically no one has ever escaped such a death. For fear is but a poor safeguard of lasting power; while affection, on the other hand, may be trusted to keep it safe forever.”
The other instance of Cicero quoting Accius occurs in the Second Philippic, a famous collection of orations delivered to attack the character of Marcus Antonius, one of Julius Caesar’s generals who took command after his assassination. The same general, in fact, who historians should probably hold more accountable for Caesar’s murder. For it was Antonius who enacted the farce that inflamed the enemies of Caesar by placing a crown on his head during a festival. Though Caesar denied the crown, the political damage was done. Cicero tells Antonius, “Because we see even in the play that the man who said, ‘let them hate, so long as they fear’ was a danger to his very self.” Making it plain that Cicero did not see this pithy quote as sound political advice at all. Indeed, it could be argued that he viewed it more as a path to suicide than as a path to leadership.
Even political advisors during Imperial Rome found this quote obscene. Seneca, court advisor and political tutor to the emperor Nero, calls this maxim “accursed” (exsecrabili) and “terrible and abominable” (dira et abominanda). Seneca’s blunt disapproval of this maxim is rather potent because as a writer he made avoiding bluntness his number one career skill. He goes on to further castigate the saying in De Ira 1:20, “I would not even be loved upon such terms. Do you imagine this was the saying of a great soul? You are wrong: this is not greatness, but monstrosity (immanitas).” Again in De Clementia 1:12:4 he explains this attitude “has cast so many headlong from their thrones…not knowing how frantic men become when their hatred becomes excessive: for a moderate amount of fear restrains men, but a constant and keen apprehension of the worst tortures rouses up even the most grovelling spirits to deeds of reckless courage, and causes them to hesitate at nothing.” Even the political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, who famously wrote in his work The Prince2 “that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved” agrees that one must avoid being hated at all costs. Explaining that, “Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred.”
Where Cicero, Seneca, and Machiavelli all agree, one would be wise to follow. While reveling in the hatred of your countrymen may be a fun fantasy to enact on stage, in the real world such an attitude creates real consequences. In a world where hatred is monetized, we must not forget exactly how dangerous it is. St. Augustine wrote, “Ira festuca est, odium trabes est.”3 (anger is the branch, hatred the trunk). Hatred is an infestation that will destroy the entire orchard. So, it is time to prune our branches. A sane populace should stand united in renouncing propagators of hatred as madmen who have lost touch with reason and are a danger to themselves.
Seutonius, Lives Caligula, 30
Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, Chapter XVII
St. Augustine, Sermones, 58:8