Kings surround themselves with slaves for the same reason that they surround themselves with eunuchs: because the slaves and criminals have no families or friends, no possibility of other loyalties—or at least, in principle, they shouldn’t. But, in a way, kings should really be like that too. As many an African proverb emphasizes: a proper king has no relatives either, or at least, he acts as if he does not.128 In other words, king and slave are mirror images, in that unlike normal human beings who are defined by their commitments to others, they are defined only by relations of power. They
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