Hiero

If you suppose that just because he has more possessions than the private citizen, the despot gets more enjoyment out of them, this is not so either, Simonides. Trained athletes feel no pleasure when they prove superior to amateurs, but they are cut to the quick when they are beaten by a rival athlete; in like manner the despot feels no pleasure when he is seen to possess more than private citizens, but is vexed when he has less than other despots; for he regards them as his rivals in wealth.

Nor even does the despot gain the object of his desire any quicker than the private citizen. For the private citizen desires a house or a farm or a servant; but the despot covets cities or wide territory or harbours or strong citadels, and these are far more difficult and perilous to acquire than the objects that attract the citizen.

And, moreover, you will find that even poverty is rarer among private citizens than among despots. For much and little are to be measured not by number, but in relation to the owner’s needs; so that what is more than enough is much, and what is less than enough is little.

Therefore, the despot with his abundance of wealth has less to meet his necessary expenses than the private citizen. For while private citizens can cut down the daily expenditure as they please, despots cannot, since the largest items in their expenses and the most essential are the sums they spend on the life-guards, and to curtail any of these means ruin.

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.