There is the old fable about the emperor who had no clothes and the sycophants who didn’t want to tell him. In real life, the emperor Hadrian lorded over a court filled with such people. It was why he saw so much potential in a young boy named Marcus Aurelius, who was drawn early to philosophy and who always seemed to say what he thought, even to the powerful. Hadrian nicknamed him Verissimus, which meant the “the truest one.” Marcus Aurelius, later emperor himself, came to despise those who could not be honest as a policy.
