Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the self appointed leader (not the president he says) should find some time in his sleepless hours in his remote ivory tower in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, to read Coriolanus, William Shakespeare’s play. The play explores subsequent events when a leader shows no respect for his people.
Following his military training in Britain, Gadaffi, aged 27, organised a military coup in 1969 against the Libyan monarchy and he retained power ever since.
Following Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere, the people of Libya have taken to the streets to put an end to 41 years of authoritarian rule.
Gadaffi should sit up in bed at night and read Coriolanus for some insight into the possible fate of leaders out of touch with the populace.
In ancient Rome, the people demand the right to set their own price for the city’s grain supply. In response to their protests, powerful leader, Caius Martius Coriolanus showed nothing but contempt for the people.
At this time, war broke out and upon his return to Rome, the senate gave Coriolanus a hero’s welcome. The Senate offers to make him consul but that requires the votes of the people.
Later Coriolanus ends up speaking out against rule by the masses. Brutus and Sicinius declare Coriolanus a traitor to the Roman state and drive him into exile.
Coriolanus returns to the edge of Rome with an army but drops the invasion due to the pleas of his mother, Volumnia. Aufidius of Antium who provided the army condemns Coriolanus for capitulation and his men assassinate Coriolanus.
The pride of Gadaffi makes Gadaffi think he is a hero to the people of Libya but the widespread protests throughout Libya indicate foolishness of such a self-obsessed ego.
Here are extracts from William Shakespeare’s play, Coriolanus. It starts with a citizen stating that their rulers live with abundance while they suffer.
First Citizen
You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?
All
Resolved. resolved.
First Citizen
First, you know Caius Marcius (Coriolanus) is chief enemy to the people.
All
We know’t, we know’t.
First Citizen
We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good.
What authority surfeits on would relieve us: if they
would yield us but the superfluity, while it were
wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely;
but they think we are too dear: the leanness that
afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an
inventory to particularise their abundance; our
sufferance is a gain to them Let us revenge this with
our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know I
speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.
Second Citizen
Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius (Coriolanus)?
All
Against him first: he’s a very dog to the commonalty.
Second Citizen
Consider you what services he has done for his country?
First Citizen
Very well; and could be content to give him good
report fort, but that he pays himself with being proud.
MARCIUS
Thanks. What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourselves scabs?
He that will give good words to thee will flatter
Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,
That like nor peace nor war? the one affrights you,
The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,
Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;
Where foxes, geese: you are no surer, no,
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,
Or hailstone in the sun.
Who deserves greatness
Deserves your hate; and your affections are
A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil. He that depends
Upon your favours swims with fins of lead
And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust Ye?
Hang ’em! They say!
They’ll sit by the fire, and presume to know
What’s done i’ the Capitol.
And let me use my sword, I’ll make a quarry
With thousands of these quarter’d slaves, as high
As I could pick my lance.
They are dissolved: hang ’em!
And make bold power look pale–they threw their caps
As they would hang them on the horns o’ the moon,
Shouting their emulation.
Go, get you home, you fragments!
Here are extracts from Col. Gadaffi’s speeches in response to the protests against him and his regime throughout Libya. It has a similar ring to Coriolanus who rubbishes the street protests of Roman citizens.
This is my country, the country of my great-grandfathers. We deserve Libya from those rats and agents
We cannot hinder the process of this revolution from these greasy rats and cats. I am paying the price for staying here. I will not leave the country and I will die as a martyr at the end,
I am talking to you from the house which was bombarded by a 170 planes, by America and Britain. You can’t poison him or lead demonstrations against him. When bombs were falling on my house, and killing my children, where were you, you rats?
Now, group few people, of youth, who were given tablets, hallucination pills, raiding police stations here and there like rats, they raided barracks.
They used this security and this safety that Libya was enjoying, and they raided some barracks and they also banned their previous criminal records. I don’t blame them these youths. They are young people, sixteen, seventeen.
To be at the top, who wants victory, must remember when the American, the Italian, and the British left, and when oil came back into the ownership of the people. Now 90% of it belong to the people, only 10% of it to the American companies. Get out of your homes, to the streets, secure the streets, take the rats, the greasy rats out of the streets.
If we have to use the force then we’ll use it.
If they’re not following Qaddafi, who would they follow?
Somebody with a beard? Impossible. The people are with us, supporting us, these are our people. I’ve brought them up.
Everywhere they are shouting slogans in support of Moammar Qaddafi.
————–
Watch your back, Col. Gadaffi.
Remember the supporters of Coriolanus became his assassins.