A Today programme presenter used the term imperium (cf. ‘emperor’) with reference to Donald Trump’s desire to annex Greenland. To a Roman, it meant the authority to give orders that must be obeyed, no matter what. Anyone invested with that power by the Roman state was accompanied by lictors, attendants carrying the fasces, an axe bound inside a collection of wooden rods, suggesting what might happen to someone who refused the order.
That was certainly one way to get people to obey you. But what about in normal life? This topic forms the subject of the opening scene in Sophocles’s tragedy Philoctetes. Agonised after being bitten in the foot by a snake, Philoctetes had been disturbing the sacrifices and libations carried out by the Greeks besieging Troy with his ill-omened howling and the stink of his injury. So Odysseus suggested that he be dumped on a nearby island. Unfortunately for the Greeks, he took with him his bow, which never missed its target, and without which it was said that Troy would never be taken. So Odysseus was told to get it back.
He takes with him Neoptolemos, the young son of the great hero Achilles, and explains to him that it is his job to trick Philoctetes into handing over the bow. The young man is appalled. Heroes don’t do trickery! Why not use good, honest force? Impossible, says Odysseus: his arrows never miss. How about persuasion, then? No chance, replies Odysseus. Only force and trickery will do. But that’s not heroic! says Neoptolemos. True, replies Odysseus – but think of the glory you’ll get. You’re on! replies the young man.
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