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41. On not sharing one’s fame

[A series of exempla showing rare examples of selflessness over fame and amusing examples of casuistry.]

[A] Of all the lunacies in this world the most accepted and the most universal is concern for reputation and glory, which we espouse even to the extent of abandoning wealth, rest, life and repose (which are goods of substance and consequence) in order to follow after that image of vanity and that mere word which had no body, nothing, to hold on to.

a fama, ch’ invaghisce a un dolce dolce suono Gli superbi mortali, & par si bella, E un echo, un sogno, anzi d’un sogno un ombra Ch’ ad ogni vento si dilegua et sgombra.

[That fame, which enchants proud mortals with its fair words and which seems so beautiful, is but an echo, a dream, nay, the shadows of a dream, dissolved and scattered by each breath of wind.]

And among all the irrational humours of men, it seems that even philosophers free themselves from this one later and more reluctantly than from all others. [B] It is the most tetchy and stubborn lunacy of them all: [C] ‘Quia etiam bene proficientes animos tentare non cessat’ [since it never ceases to tempt even those souls who are advancing in virtue].1 [B] None of the others is more clearly accused of vanity by reason, but its roots are so active within us that I doubt if anyone has managed to cast it clean off. When you have said everything to disavow it, and believed all of it, it still marshals such an inner persuasion against your arguments that you have scant means of holding out against it.

[A] For, as Cicero says, even those who fight it still want their books against it to bear their name in the title and hope to become famous for despising fame.2 Everything else is subject to barter: we will let our friends have our goods and our lives if needs be: but a case of sharing our fame and making someone else the gift of our reputation is hardly to be found.

In the war against the Cimbrians, Catulus Luctatius made every effort to stop his soldiers who were fleeing before their enemies: he then joined the rout and pretended to be a coward himself so that they might appear to be following their commander rather than fleeing from the enemy.

When the Emperor Charles V invaded Provence in 1537, it is believed that Antonio de Leyva, seeing that his monarch was quite determined on this expedition and believing that it would wonderfully add to his fame, spoke against it and counselled him not to do it; his sole aim was that all the fame and honour of the decision should be attributed to his monarch, with everyone saying that his judgement and his foresight had been such as to carry through so fair an enterprise against everybody’s opinion. That was to honour his master to his own detriment.

When the Thracian ambassadors were consoling Argelionidis over the death of her son Brasidas and praising him so highly as to lament that there was no one like him left, she rejected such private praise of one individual and rendered it general: ‘Do not say that to me,’ she replied. ‘I know that the city of Sparta has many a citizen greater and more valiant than my son was.’

In the battle of Crécy the Prince of Wales, a youngster still, was leading the vanguard; the main thrust of the battle was concentrated against it. The lords who accompanied him, finding the fighting tough, sent a dispatch asking King Edward to come to their aid: he inquired how his son was doing: when he was told that he was alive and in the saddle, he said, ‘I would do him wrong to come and rob him now of the honour of the victory in this battle where he has held out so well; whatever the risk, that honour will be his alone.’ And he would not go himself nor would he send help, well aware that if he did so men would say that without his succour all had been lost, and that the credit for this exploit would have been attributed to himself: [C] ‘semper enim quod postremum adjectum est, id remtotam videtur traxisse’ [the last forces to be thrown in always seem to have done it all themselves].3

[B] Several people in Rome thought, as was commonly said, that the chief of Scipio’s fine achievements were [C] partly [B] due to Laelius who nevertheless was ever moving and seconding the honour and greatness of Scipio, taking no care of his own.

To the man who told Theopompus King of Sparta that the citizens were at his feet because he was so good at giving orders he replied, ‘It is rather because they are so good at obeying them.’4

[C] Just as, despite their sex, women who succeeded to peerages had the right to attend and give their opinion in cases falling within the jurisdiction of the peers of the realm, so too the lords spiritual, despite their calling, were required to assist our kings in their wars not only with their allies and retainers but also in person. The Bishop of Beauvais was with Philip Augustus at the battle of Bouvines and fought very bravely in that encounter; but it did not seem right to him to win gain or glory from such a violent and bloody action. He personally took several of his enemies that day, but gave them to the first gentleman he came across, who was allowed to do what he liked with them, either cut their throats or keep them prisoner; in this way he handed Count William of Salisbury over to Messire Jean de Nesle. By a refinement of conscience similar to the above he was prepared to knock a man senseless but not to slash at him: that is why he fought only with a club.5 Somebody in my own time was criticized by the King for ‘laying hands on a clergyman’; he strongly and firmly denied it: all he had done was to thrash him and to trample on him.