If you feel fed up with how things are, you’re sharing an emotion people have long felt, regardless of politics.
You might feel helpless or like the character in Terence’s play The Brothers (160 BCE), who laments being “enclosed by so many things from which there’s no escape: violence, poverty, injustice, loneliness, disgrace.” What should one do? Ancient thinkers and figures offered different responses: withdraw from public life, try to fix things alone, or take other paths.
Heraclitus’ escape
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.540–480 BCE) grew disillusioned with civic life. He despised the arrogance and folly of politicians and the poor defense of laws by the people, saying the populace “must fight for the law as for city-walls.” When his friend Hermodorus was exiled, Heraclitus condemned Ephesus for elevating fools and driving away the worthy, even telling the leaders they might as well end their lives and leave the city to youths.
Asked why he ignored politics and instead played knuckle-bones with children, he replied that public life was not worth an intelligent man’s time. Eventually, he came to hate his kind, retreated to the mountains, and lived on grass and herbs. When illness struck, he sought a cure in strange ways—burying himself in manure in a cowshed—and died around age 60.
Sertorius’ dream of escape
Quintus Sertorius (123–72 BCE) was a Roman statesman and commander who, during Rome’s unrest in the 90s BCE, went to govern Spain. Falling out with Rome’s dominant faction, he effectively ruled parts of Spain independently for eight years, even forming his own senate of Romans and local chiefs and cultivating a reputation by parading a white fawn as a divine sign.
Weary of endless threats and conflict, Sertorius heard sailors’ tales of warm, fertile Atlantic islands off Africa—places free of Rome’s turmoil. The idea seized him: to live in quiet away from wars and tyranny. The islands might have been Madeira, Porto Santo, or the Canaries, but Sertorius never escaped; he continued to struggle and was murdered by conspirators in 72 BCE.
Can happiness come from disengagement?
Many Greeks and Romans believed withdrawing from worldly affairs could bring contentment. Epicurus (c.341–270 BCE) advised seeking obscurity with his two-word maxim: “live unknown.” Critics like Plutarch saw this as defeat and a renunciation of life’s potential, arguing that burying oneself in obscurity suggests bitterness at birth and a refusal to strive.
Others endorsed quiet, simple living. Horace (65–8 BCE) praised the happy man who, far from public life, tills his ancestral land with oxen, free of debt and alarmed neither by military bugles nor the sea, avoiding city bustle and powerful doors. For Horace, happiness came from rural simplicity, work, family, and freedom from obligation.
Taking matters into your own hands
Not everyone chose withdrawal. Some tried to address problems directly. Aristophanes (450–388 BCE) offered a satirical take in his play Acharnians (425 BCE). The protagonist Dicaeopolis, fed up with lying politicians and self-interested voters, decides to make a private peace: he will negotiate a treaty with Sparta just for his household so he can live in peace. He succeeds and enjoys privileges others lack—farming, trading, drinking—though the premise is comic and unrealistic. The play, however, captures genuine popular frustration with politics and the temptation of personal solutions when collective ones fail.
So what can someone do when fed up with politics? Ancient advice boils down to three options still familiar today: withdraw, endure, or find humor in the situation. Laughter, it seems, has the best chance of helping people survive.
Konstantine Panegyres is lecturer in classics and ancient history, The University of Western Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
