Hiero

Besides, when men can have all they need by honest means, why pity them as though they were poor? May not those who through want of money are driven to evil and unseemly expedients in order to live, more justly be accounted wretched and poverty-stricken?

Now, despots are not seldom forced into the crime of robbing temples and their fellow men through chronic want of cash to meet their necessary expenses. Living, as it were, in a perpetual state of war, they are forced to maintain an army, or they perish.

Despots are oppressed by yet another trouble, Simonides, which I will tell you of. They recognize a stout-hearted, a wise or an upright man as easily as private citizens do. But instead of admiring such men, they fear them,—the brave lest they strike a bold stroke for freedom, the wise lest they hatch a plot, the upright lest the people desire them for leaders.

When they get rid of such men through fear, who are left for their use, save only the unrighteous, the vicious and the servile,—the unrighteous being trusted because, like the despots, they fear that the cities may some day shake off the yoke and prove their masters, the vicious on account of the licence they enjoy as things are, the servile because even they themselves have no desire for freedom? This too, then, is a heavy trouble, in my opinion, to see the good in some men, and yet perforce to employ others.

Furthermore, even a despot must needs love his city, for without the city he can enjoy neither safety nor happiness. But despotism forces him to find fault even with his fatherland. For he has no pleasure in seeing that the citizens are stout-hearted and well armed; rather he delights to make the foreigners more formidable than the citizens, and these he employs as a body-guard.

Again, even when favourable seasons yield abundance of good things, the despot is a stranger to the general joy; for the needier the people, the humbler he thinks to find them.

But now, Simonides, he continued, I want to show you all those delights that were mine when I was a private citizen, but which I now find are withheld from me since the day I became a despot.

I communed with my fellows then: they pleased me and I pleased them. I communed with myself whenever I desired rest. I passed the time in carousing, often till I forgot all the troubles of mortal life, often till my soul was absorbed in songs and revels and dances, often till the desire of sleep fell on me and all the company.

But now I am cut off from those who had pleasure in me, since slaves instead of friends are my comrades; I am cut off from my pleasant intercourse with them, since I see in them no sign of good-will towards me. Drink and sleep I avoid as a snare.

To fear a crowd, and yet fear solitude, to fear to go unguarded, and yet fear the very men who guard you, to recoil from attendants unarmed and yet dislike to see them armed—surely that is a cruel predicament!

And then, to trust foreigners more than citizens, strangers more than Greeks, to long to keep free men slaves, and yet be forced to make slaves free—do you not think that all these are sure tokens of a soul that is crushed with fear?[*](Xen. Cyrop. 3.1.27.)

Fear, you know, is not only painful in itself by reason of its presence in the soul, but by haunting us even in our pleasures it spoils them utterly.

If, like me, you are acquainted with war, Simonides, and ever had the enemy’s battle-line close in front of you, call to mind what sort of food you ate at that time, and what sort of sleep you slept.

I tell you, the pains that despots suffer are such as you suffered then. Nay, they are still more terrible; for despots believe that they see enemies not in front alone, but all around them. To this Simonides made answer:

Excellent words in part, I grant! War is indeed a fearsome thing: nevertheless, Hiero, our way, when we are on active service, is this: we post sentries to guard us, and sup and sleep with a good courage. Then Hiero answered:

No doubt you do, Simonides! For your sentries have sentries in front of them—the laws,—and so they fear for their own skins and relieve you of fear. But despots hire their guards like harvesters.

Now the chief qualification required in the guards, I presume, is faithfulness. But it is far harder to find one faithful guard than hundreds of workmen for any kind of work, especially when money supplies the guards, and they have it in their power to get far more in a moment by assassinating the despot than they receive from him for years of service among his guards.

You said that you envy us our unrivalled power to confer benefits on our friends, and our unrivalled success in crushing our enemies. But that is another delusion.