Crimes often return to their teacher.
—Seneca, Thyestes, 311
It’s ironic that Seneca would have one of his characters utter this line. As we know, for many years Seneca served as the tutor and mentor to the emperor Nero. There is a lot of evidence that Seneca was, in fact, a positive moral influence on the deranged young man, but even at the time, Seneca’s contemporaries found it strange that a philosopher would serve as the right hand to such an evil person. They even used to Greek word tyrannodidaskalos—tyrant teacher—to describe him. And just as Shakespeare observed in Macbeth, “Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return / To plague th’inventor,” Seneca’s collaboration with Nero ultimately ended with the student murdering the teacher.
It’s something to think about when you consider whom to work with and whom to do business with in life. If you show a client how to do something unethical or illegal, might they return the favor to an unsuspecting you later on? If you provide a bad example to your employees, to your associates, to your children, might they betray you or hurt you down the road? What goes around comes around, is the saying. Karma is a notion we have imported from the East, along similar lines.
Seneca paid a price for his instructions to Nero. As has been true throughout the ages, his hypocrisy—avoidable or not—was costly. So too will be yours.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman