BOOK IX.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Plato and Benjamin Jowett
And I was right, he said.
Also the tyrannical man is most miserable. Certainly, I said. And when you see the same evils in the tyrannical man, what do you say of him?
I say that he is by far the most miserable of all men.
Yet there is a still more miserable being, the tyrannical man who is a public tyrant. There, I said, I think that you are beginning to go wrong.
What do you mean?
I do not think that he has as yet reached the utmost extreme of misery.
Then who is more miserable?
One of whom I am about to speak.
Who is that?
C He who is of a tyrannical nature, and instead of leading a private life has been cursed with the further misfortune of being a public tyrant.
From what has been said, I gather that you are right. 289
Yes, I replied, but in this high argument you should be a little more certain, and should not conjecture only; for of all questions, this respecting good and evil is the greatest.
Very true, he said.
Let me then offer you an illustration, which may, I think, Dthrow a light upon this subject.
What is your illustration?
In cities there are many great slaveowners, and they help to protect one another. The case of rich individuals in cities who possess many slaves: from them you may form an idea of the tyrant’s condition, for they both have slaves; the only difference is that he has more slaves.
Yes, that is the difference.
You know that they live securely and have nothing to apprehend from their servants?
What should they fear?
Nothing. But do you observe the reason of this?
Yes; the reason is, that the whole city is leagued together for the protection of each individual.
EBut suppose a slaveowner and his slaves carried off into the wilderness, what will happen then? Such is the condition of the tyrant. Very true, I said. But imagine one of these owners, the master say of some fifty slaves, together with his family and property and slaves, carried off by a god into the wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him—will he not be in an agony of fear lest he and his wife and children should be put to death by his slaves?
Yes, he said, he will be in the utmost fear.
579 The time has arrived when he will be compelled to flatter divers of his slaves, and make many promises to them of freedom and other things, much against his will—he will have to cajole his own servants.
Yes, he said, that will be the only way of saving himself.
And suppose the same god, who carried him away, to surround him with neighbours who will not suffer one man to be the master of another, and who, if they could catch the offender, would take his life?
B His case will be still worse, if you suppose him to be everywhere surrounded and watched by enemies.
He is the daintiest of all men and has to endure the hardships of a prison; And is not this the sort of prison in which the tyrant will be bound—he who being by nature such as we have described, is full of all sorts of fears and lusts? His soul is dainty and greedy, and yet alone, of all men in the city, he is never 290 allowed to go on a journey, or to see the things which other freemen desire to see, but he lives in his hole like a woman Chidden in the house, and is jealous of any other citizen who goes into foreign parts and sees anything of interest.
Very true, he said.
Miserable in himself, he is still more miserable if he be in a public station. And amid evils such as these will not he who is ill-governed in his own person—the tyrannical man, I mean—whom you just now decided to be the most miserable of all—will not he be yet more miserable when, instead of leading a private life, he is constrained by fortune to be a public tyrant? He has to be master of others when he is not master of himself: he is like a diseased or paralytic man who is compelled to pass his Dlife, not in retirement, but fighting and combating with other men.
Yes, he said, the similitude is most exact.
He then leads a life worse than the worst, Is not his case utterly miserable? and does not the actual tyrant lead a worse life than he whose life you determined to be the worst?
Certainly.
in unhappiness, He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation Eand servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions, even as the State which he resembles: and surely the resemblance holds?
Very true, he said.
580and in wickedness. Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.
No man of any sense will dispute your words.
The umpire decides that Come then, I said, and as the general umpire in theatrical Bcontests proclaims the result, do you also decide who in your opinion is first in the scale of happiness, and who second, 291 and in what order the others follow: there are five of them in all—they are the royal, timocratical, oligarchical, democratical, tyrannical.
The decision will be easily given, he replied; they shall be choruses coming on the stage, and I must judge them in the order in which they enter, by the criterion of virtue and vice, happiness and misery.
the best is the happiest and the worst is the most miserable. This is the proclamation of the son of Ariston. Need we hire a herald, or shall I announce, that the son of Ariston [the best] has decided that the best and justest Cis also the happiest, and that this is he who is the most royal man and king over himself; and that the worst and most unjust man is also the most miserable, and that this is he who being the greatest tyrant of himself is also the greatest tyrant of his State?