Donald Trump takes it as read that any criticism of his words or actions is an assault on the truth. The historian Tacitus, who had served Roman emperors in high office (including as consul), recognised the frame of mind and reflected on how one could maintain one’s honour working for such a monster.
Tacitus saw that absolutism lay at the heart of the imperial system. To maintain it, the emperor surrounded himself with men who owed loyalty to no one but himself, and over whom he could therefore exert total control. The result was a culture of acquiescence in whatever the emperor wanted, well exemplified by the Roman senator Sallustius Crispus, who fawned that ‘the circumstances of imperial rule are such that the accounts will come right only if submitted to the approval of one person’.
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