Livia’s views were ours. She was a little way further on than we were, that’s all. She’d advanced farther. She’d drawn conclusions … that we would have drawn, in time. That’s why she was our leader. That’s why she could lead us on.
Why did we want to be lead?
We wanted to be saved. Pulled up from the waters. Rescued from our disgust.
Only to be delivered unto further disgust.
The real question: what was so wrong, so very wrong with Livia? With our own Leviathan? What had gone wrong in her head?
That she wanted proteges. That she wanted to be a leader. That it wasn’t enough for her to simply retire early.
She wanted to do something. She had a mission. And she needed followers.
What was it: revenge on the university? For her humiliations?
But what humiliations had she suffered? Sure, some of the managers were annoying. They showed small-souledness, that’s what Livia said. The opposite of great-souledness, that Aristotelian virtue. Of magnanimity.
Work in Progress 