But Who's the Tyrant?
Epitaph on a Tyrant Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. (W.H. Auden) My mind automatically wanders to ancient Rome: to Augustus whose pax was really a pacification; to Caligula (but not much a poet); to Nero, who played the part of the poet. Or is it a combination of all of them? A meta-tyrant? It is quite interesting how many dictators are writers: Julius Caesar has his Gallic Wars ; Augustus has the Res Gestae ; Mand arcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations --that actually would be a good fit for the description. Of course, looking to Auden's own context, Hitler had Mein Kampf ; and, for those who didn't know, evidently Saddam Hussein wrote pseudonymous novels, such as Zabibah and the King . Literature ...