They lived in an era when most other people are gulible and barbaric. I doubt without public manipulation their ideas or themselves would have survived. Also i

They lived in an era when most other people are gulible and barbaric. I doubt without public manipulation their ideas or themselves would have survived. Also if you take the saying "power corrrupts" a little less literally then superior intellect also corrupts, if there are no counter-weight to them such as opposing intellects, which were rarer at the time.