Whatever you think of him, it’s hard to deny that Napoleon achieved a historic level of greatness. Born, paradoxically, into both poverty and nobility on an island called Corsica, he managed, by the time he was only 34 years old to be the emperor of territories and client states stretching across much of continental Europe, Asia, South America and the Caribbean Sea. He won the battles of Austerlitz, Friedland, and Rivoli. He wrote laws and instituted reforms that, in some cases, stand even to this day.
How did he do it? What propelled him to achieve this level of glory and touch this kind of greatness—even if only for a moment? According to Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Napoleon’s childhood friend and long-time aide, he rarely saw the first emperor of France not either pouring over books on strategy or planning the construction of statues. “Monuments pleased his imagination,” Bourrienne wrote in his famous Memoirs. To Napoleon, they were glory embodied. “Bonaparte well knew that the fine arts entail lasting glory on great actions, and consecrate the memory of princes who protect and encourage them.”
You can disagree—as the Stoics certainly would have—with Napoleon’s endless ambition and thirst for fame. What you cannot dispute is the power of the motivation that got him there, how he was spurred toward achievement through inspiration and conversation with the dead heroes of history.
In 1799, when Napoleon took up residence at the Tuileries, the royal palace, Bourrienne tells us of Napoleon’s first order of business.
He selected the statues of great men to adorn the gallery of the Tuileries. Among the Greeks he made choice of Demosthenes and Alexander, thus rendering homage at once to the genius of eloquence and the genius of victory. The statue of Hannibal was intended to recall the memory of Rome’s most formidable enemy; and Rome herself was represented in the Consular Palace by the statues of Scipio, Cicero, Cato, Brutus and Caesar—the victor and the immolator being placed side by side. Among the great men of modern times he gave the first place to Gustavus Adolphus, and the next to Turenne and the great Condé, to Turenne in honour of his military talent, and to Condé to prove that there was nothing fearful in the recollection of a Bourbon. The remembrance of the glorious days of the French navy was revived by the statue of Duguai Trouin. Marlborough and Prince Eugène had also their places in the gallery, as if to attest the disasters which marked the close of the great reign; and Marshal Sage, to show that Louis XV.’s reign was not without its glory. The statues of Frederick and Washington were emblematic of false philosophy on a throne and true wisdom founding a free state. Finally, the names of Dugommier, Dampierre, and Joubert were intended to bear evidence of the high esteem which Bonaparte cherished for his old comrades,—those illustrious victims to a cause which had now ceased to be his.
Marcus said we should surround ourselves with great people so we can be showered in their virtues. Seneca said to “set as a guard over yourself the authority of some man,” someone “we regard as beyond the sphere of imitation.” Epictetus’s line was that we are constantly brushing shoulders with people covered in dirt—whose stench and stain do you want to wear?
We need heroes in our lives. We can see how effectively this worked in Napoleon’s life and still try to moderate it by selecting heroes that inspire us to be more just, less vain, less bloodthirsty. We look at a bust of a great leader like Marcus Aurelius on our shelf and remember that he was just a boy who read a lot of philosophy, and who ended up changing the world as a result. We can put up a bust of Seneca and use it as a reminder of the tension in that great man, use him as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale.
It’s up to you to decide who sits in your hall of heroes. It could be Abraham Lincoln or it could be Florence Nightingale. It could be Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, Simon Bolivar or Charles De Gaulle. But you have to put them up and create reminders of them. In your mind. In your life. In your home.
Feel their presence. So you can live up to their example.
P.S. Two of the examples we try to live up to are Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. Which is why we created our Marcus Aurelius and Seneca statues—so that we could put them on display and let their presence call forth our best. We teamed up with the sculptor E.S. Schubert and made these hand-sculpted pewter portrait busts to stand the test of time. For more information on the crafting process, read this interview with E.S. Schubert. And click here to purchase our Marcus Aurelius bust or here to purchase our Seneca bust for yourself or to give as a gift this Holiday season!
