To be free, one must be a slave to the law - the meaning of this well-known statement by Marcus Tullius Cicero is suggested to be revealed not only to generations of high school graduates in literature exams. It is expected that by the time they reach adulthood, students should understand that only the society that follows the rules and respects the common laws will survive and flourish. According to the school program, the only and unconditional alternative to the “dictatorship of the law” is chaos, in which society inevitably degrades and collapses.
It sounds logical, but not everything is so straightforward. Let’s think about it, and two interesting facts will help us:
Firstly, in the first century BC in the Roman Empire, slavery was legalized. Marcus Tullius, according to Wikipedia, being “one of the most prominent and consistent supporters of maintaining the republican system,” had personal slaves whom he disposed of strictly as his property in accordance with the laws he so respected. Moreover, the slave uprising led by Spartacus was completely suppressed just a few years before Cicero uttered his famous phrase during a court defense.
Secondly, two decades later, as soon as the troops of the Second Triumvirate occupied Rome, Cicero’s name was included in the “enemies of the people” proscription lists, he was caught not far from his Greek villa, and beheaded. This was done strictly in accordance with the very law that Marcus Tullius so respected and urged us to be slaves to.
In both cases, we see that becoming a slave, even to such a respected “master” as the law, is not the most rational way to manage one’s life. Like the slave Spartacus and the worthy Roman Cicero, they both perished at the hands of those who acted within the framework of the law. The only difference being that Spartacus resisted.
What prompted me to write this article was the recent story of Vladimir Olentsevich, who attempted to stab Anna Turchynova - the wife of Alexander Turchynov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, with a knife. The attempt failed, and Vladimir will spend the next eight years of his life in prison.
What did this man achieve? What did he want to achieve? He is a lawyer, he came from Donetsk, where he had previously sought justice legally. Apparently, he did not succeed, so he took a knife in his hand.
Most of us do not act this way, preferring to remain slaves to the law until the end, like Cicero, who “stretched out his neck to meet the sword,” according to Plutarch.
We do not take a knife in our hands and do not go to settle scores with those who, in the name of the law and under its cover, turn us into slaves.
Should Cicero have learned something from Spartacus? Maybe we can learn something from Vladimir Olentsevich? Maybe it’s worth being slaves of the law only to a certain extent? Or maybe instead of being slaves of the law, we should become slaves of common sense? Or maybe we should forget about slavery altogether and learn to be masters of our own lives, who can and want to defend their freedom, even from the law?
Translated by ChatGPT gpt-3.5-turbo/42 on 2024-04-20 at 17:43
