Serve the city, not the self. Marcus Aurelius 5.22

Marcus Aurelius, as emperor of Rome, embodies and expresses the opposite of the same monarchic ideal that inspired Louis XIV's famous dictum: L'état, c'est moi. The decision to identify oneself entirely with a community, a polis whose personal integrity includes and occludes our own, is one that most humans make instinctively, when we are born into traditional families, with elders whose cooperation and culture we require to survive. In the wake of the Reformation and Enlightenment, the discourse of modern civilization focuses on the integrity of the individual, where ancient discourse tends to speak in terms of communal integrity, with individuals becoming less significant (cf. the speech Livy gives to Gaius Mucius Scaevola in his history, 2.12.8-11, or the apology Plato gives to Socrates, in which the philosopher explains his devotion to city over self). There is always dangerous tension here, in the place where communal and individual interests meet, as readers of the Iliad know.

Ὃ τῇ πόλει οὐκ ἔστι βλαβερόν, οὐδὲ τὸν πολίτην βλάπτει. ἐπὶ πάσης τῆς τοῦ βεβλάφθαι φαντασίας τοῦτον ἔπαγε τὸν κανόνα· εἰ ἡ πόλις ὑπὸ τούτου μὴ βλάπτεται, οὐδὲ ἐγὼ βέβλαμμαι· εἰ δὲ ἡ πόλις βλάπτεται, οὐκ ὀργιστέον, ἀλλὰ δεικτέον τῷ βλάπτοντι τὴν πόλιν τί τὸ παρορώμενον.

Whatever is harmless to the city does no injury to the citizen. Use this insight as a standard for evaluating every observation of harm: if the city isn't injured by something, then I have suffered no damage from it, myself. But if the city is harmed, then I must engage the person responsible: not with anger or outrage, but in order to show him what public damage he has overlooked.