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OP-ED

The Emperor Who Married a Man and the Albania of Our Days.

Politiko 2026-03-29 18:28:35
The Emperor Who Married a Man and the Albania of Our Days.

Akil Pano

The history of civilizations does not begin with great catastrophes. It begins with silence. It begins with a moment when wise people fall silent.
When the elites do not speak. When the crowd adapts.
One of the most symbolic moments of this phenomenon occurred in ancient Rome. The event invites us to see the court of Emperor Nero, who in history is known as the most savage persecutor of Christians. The Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius tell an unusual episode. The Roman Emperor Nero had lost his wife, Poppaea Sabina. One day, a young boy who resembled her appeared in the emperor's court.
The boy was named Sporus.
When Nero saw him, he ordered the boy to be castrated. Then he dressed him in the clothes of the empress and organized a public wedding ceremony.
Sporus was introduced as the emperor's wife.
But what is most shocking in this story is not the action of a tyrant! It is the reaction of society. The Roman Senate did not protest. Philosophers and elites were silent.
Here, history teaches us a frightening truth:
Society can be taught any absurdity if the power demands it.
Plato warned about this process in his work The Republic! He wrote that democracies can degrade when people begin to lose the difference between right and wrong. At this moment, tyranny arises.
Not because the tyrant is strong. But society has become morally corrupt.
Aristotle, in his work The Politics, writes something important.
“Tyranny does not rely on force alone. It relies on the corruption of the elites.” When political, economic, and intellectual elites begin to defend power instead of controlling it, institutions become a facade. And the state begins to rot from within.
In the 20th century, philosopher Hannah Arendt analyzed this phenomenon. She called it “The banality of evil.”
Evil does not triumph just because there are bad people. It triumphs because normal people adapt to the system.
Because they say: “It’s none of my business, I don’t want trouble, everyone is doing the same thing.”
Thus, tyrannies are not only built by dictators. Tyrannies are built by the silence, fear, indifference, and conformity of society.
George Orwell described this process in the novel 1984. He warned that modern power does not rule through force alone. It rules through the manipulation of reality.
When people begin to believe that black is white, weakness is strength, and lies are truth, then society enters a dangerous era.
The historian Edward Gibbon wrote in his famous work on the fall of Rome that civilizations do not collapse only because of enemies. They collapse when institutions become corrupt, the law loses its authority, and public trust disappears.
Rome did not fall in a day. It fell gradually.
Today, Albanian society faces the same dangers. When citizens see corruption scandals, abuse of power, and capture of institutions, public trust begins to disintegrate. This is the challenge for Albania today. Albania, like many other countries in transition, faces constant criticism for high-level corruption,
problems with the rule of law,
and the weakness of institutions.
In this context, an important question arises:
Will citizens and institutions react to strengthen democracy? Or will they adapt further and deeper to the system?
The story of Nero and Sporus is a metaphor for the process of deep decadence of a society that does not react.
When a society stops telling the truth, the absurd becomes normal. When elites are silent, power becomes arrogant. When citizens surrender, institutions weaken. History is a mirror for the present. The question is very simple:
Do we have the courage to defend the truth? Do we have the courage to defend institutions? Do we have the courage to say “no” when power demands silence?
The story of Nero and Sporus is not a strange story from ancient Rome. It is a warning. Civilizations are not destroyed by barbarians outside the walls.
They are often destroyed by corruption and silence within them.
And in the end, history asks every generation the same question:
When the crowd says, “Shut up, it’s none of your business, don’t bother… will you have the courage to stand up for the truth?”

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