Business wisdom from the greats of the Roman Empire: Flavius Claudius Julianus Caesar

Flavius Claudius Julianus Caesar, often referred to as "the Apostate", was a member of the Constantinian enclave of Bisantium, the "second Rome", where he was born in year 331 A.D., as a orphaned child. Having miraculously survived the intestine wars among male heirs to Constantine's succession, Julianus enjoyed a relatively obscure childhood in Bythinia (today Turkey), where he lived with his grandmother, under the protective wing of Archbishop Eusebius of Nicomedia and under the teachings of pagan scholar Mardonius, a slave of Gothic descent, whom Julianus himself presents us as a remarkable philosopher and educator, and the very man most responsible for his way of life as a Caesar.

Mardonius is the most responsible of all for my way of life... Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus. They convinced this old man, in his folly, and later, when he found me, since I was young and a lover of literature, he convinced me in turn that if I should strive to imitate these men in every respect, I would become better, perhaps not than other men, for the contest was not with them, but better than with my former self." (emphasis added)

And, indeed, it is in recalling his master Mardonius that Julianus gives us a first, outstanding, piece of business wisdom: competition among men, a behavioral trait that Darwinism would later relegate as part of our biological heritage as primates, is unproductive at best, inasmuch as the emotions of jealousy end envy driving it bring solely turmoil and weakness in our spirit, therefore increasing, inter alia, the risk of occasioning the disruption of that necessary camaraderie, which is key in a team longing for a common goal. In the final analysis, the only productive competition we should thus endorse is the one with ourselves, in constantly bettering our characters as men and women, each in our own role, in a society of people.

Nonetheless, in my own interpretation of the words of Julianus and the teachings of Mardonius, this does not mean that we should become entirely oblivious to the qualities and successes of others, and thereby stop being inspired by them in the daily strife of bettering our own character and selves. Fascinated by the works of Homer (Ὅμηρος), the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Julianus, in fact, worked hard to imitate the cunning genius of Ulysses and the heroic feats of Achilles, the latter regrettably to the extent of even exposing himself to unnecessary risk in battle, for which he would in the end perish, after only twenty months of reign as Rome's last true pagan Caesar.

It is on his deathbed that Julianus would give us his definitive lesson in business wisdom. Dying thirty-two years old, fatally wounded by a Persian spear during the Battle of Samarra, in which Julianus bravely, but recklessly, fought without wearing his protective coat of mail, the Caesar greets his death discussing the meaning of life at the presence of his closest companions; among these, soldier and historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who would later recall the last words of the dying Emperor, in the XXV book of his Res Gestae:

"[The gift of life], I know well, was given to me, that I might not yield to great difficulties, nor ever bow down and humiliate myself; for experience teaches me that all sorrows overcome only weaklings, but yield to the steadfast.[...] And yet success and well-laid plans do not always go hand in hand, since higher powers claim for themselves the outcome of all enterprises" 

In conclusion, anticipating of a few centuries Nietzsche's famous quote, found both in his Twilights of Idols (1888) and Ecce Homo (1908), "was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker" ("What does not kill me makes me stronger."), Julianus reminds us that the strength in our character lies upon the fears we face on the path of our lives, which nevertheless quickly vanish before a strong will and determination, on our part, to dominate and conquer them. Moreover, success, as Julianus recognises, does not rest entirely in our hands, but it does not fall entirely out of our hands either: surely, we must carefully plan for success; however, at the same time, we shall accept that all of our enterprises come with an imponderable degree of uncertainty, which only a firm and resolute character will enable us to manage and overcome, in the end.