Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  Yet that’s exactly his condition.

  And won’t he need a larger and more loyal bodyguard, the more his actions make the citizens hate him?

  Of course.

  And who will these trustworthy people be? And where will he get them from?

  They’ll come swarming of their own accord, if he pays them.

  Drones, by the dog! All manner of foreign drones! That’s what I think [e] you’re talking about.

  You’re right.

  But what about in the city itself? Wouldn’t he be willing …

  Willing to what?

  To deprive citizens of their slaves by freeing them and enlisting them in his bodyguard?

  He certainly would, since they’d be likely to prove most loyal to him.

  What a blessedly happy sort of fellow you make the tyrant out to be, if these are the sort of people he employs as friends and loyal followers [568] after he’s done away with the earlier ones.

  Nonetheless, they’re the sort he employs.

  And these companions and new citizens admire and associate with him, while the decent people hate and avoid him.

  Of course.

  It isn’t for nothing, then, that tragedy in general has the reputation of being wise and that Euripides is thought to be outstandingly so.

  Why’s that?

  Because among other shrewd things he said that “tyrants are wise who associate with the wise.” And by “the wise” he clearly means the sort of [b] people that we’ve seen to be the tyrant’s associates.

  Yes. And he and the other poets eulogize tyranny as godlike and say lots of other such things about it.

  Then, surely, since the tragic poets are wise, they’ll forgive us and those whose constitutions resemble ours, if we don’t admit them into our city, since they praise tyranny.

  [c] I suppose that the more sophisticated among them will.

  And so I suppose that they go around to other cities, draw crowds, hire people with fine, big, persuasive voices, and lead their constitutions to tyranny and democracy.

  They do indeed.

  And besides this, they receive wages and honors, especially—as one might expect—from the tyrants and, in second place, from the democracies, but the higher they go on the ascending scale of constitutions, the more their honor falls off, as if unable to keep up with them for lack of [d] breath.

  Absolutely.

  But we digress. So let’s return to that fine, numerous, diverse, and ever-changing bodyguard of the tyrant and explain how he’ll pay for it.

  Clearly, if there are sacred treasuries in the city, he’ll use them for as long as they last, as well as the property of the people he has destroyed, thus requiring smaller taxes from the people.

  What about when these give out? [e]

  Clearly, both he and his fellow revellers—his companions, male or female—will have to feed off his father’s estate.

  I understand. You mean that the people, who fathered the tyrant, will have to feed him and his companions.

  They’ll be forced to do so.

  And what would you have to say about this? What if the people get angry and say, first, that it isn’t just for a grown-up son to be fed by his father but, on the contrary, for the father to be fed by his son; second, that they didn’t father him and establish him in power so that, when he’d become strong, they’d be enslaved to their own slave and have to feed [569] both him and his slaves, along with other assorted rabble, but because they hoped that, with him as their leader, they’d be free from the rich and the so-called fine and good people in the city; third, that they therefore order him and his companions to leave the city, just as a father might drive a son and his troublesome fellow revellers from his house?

  Then, by god, the people will come to know what kind of creature they have fathered, welcomed, and made strong and that they are the weaker trying to drive out the stronger. [b]

  What do you mean? Will the tyrant dare to use violence against his father or to hit him if he doesn’t obey?

  Yes—once he’s taken away his father’s weapons.

  You mean that the tyrant is a parricide and a harsh nurse of old age, that his rule has become an acknowledged tyranny at last, and that—as the saying goes—by trying to avoid the frying pan of enslavement to free men, the people have fallen into the fire of having slaves as their masters, and that in the place of the great but inappropriate freedom they enjoyed [c] under democracy, they have put upon themselves the harshest and most bitter slavery to slaves.

  That’s exactly what I mean.

  Well, then, aren’t we justified in saying that we have adequately described how tyranny evolves from democracy and what it’s like when it has come into being?

  We certainly are, he said.

  1. See 414d–20b.

  2. See 445c–e.

  3. See 449b ff.

  4. I.e., the Spartan constitution.

  5. See e.g. Odyssey xix.163.

  6. An adaptation of Iliad xvi.112–13.

  7. The reference is to the fertility and gestation periods of different species of plants and animals and their (supposedly related) life spans.

  8. The human geometrical number is the product of 3, 4, and 5 “thrice increased,” multiplied by itself three times, i.e., (3.4.5)4 or 12,960,000. This can be represented geometrically as a square whose sides are 3600 or as an oblong or rectangle whose sides are 4800 and 2700. The first is “so many times a hundred,” viz. 36 times. The latter is obtained as follows. The “rational diameter” of 5 is the nearest rational number to the real diagonal of a square whose sides are 5, i.e., to . This number is 7. Since the square of 7 is 49, we get the longer side of the rectangle by diminishing 49 by 1 and multiplying the result by 100. This gives 4800. The “irrational diameter” of 5 is . When squared, diminished by 2, and multiplied by 100 this, too, is 4800. The short side, “a hundred cubes of three,” is 2700.

  9. See Works and Days 109–202.

  10. See e.g. Iliad vi.211.

  11. Perhaps an adaptation of Seven Against Thebes 451.

  12. Plutus, the god of wealth, is represented as being blind.

  13. Zeus the wolf-god.

  14. See Iliad xvi.776.

  Book IX

  [571] It remains, I said, to consider the tyrannical man himself, how he evolves from a democrat, what he is like when he has come into being, and whether he is wretched or blessedly happy.

  Yes, he said, he is the one who is still missing.

  And do you know what else I think is still missing?

  What?

  I don’t think we have adequately distinguished the kinds and numbers of our desires, and, if that subject isn’t adequately dealt with, our entire [b] investigation will be less clear.

  Well, isn’t now as fine a time as any to discuss the matter?

  It certainly is. Consider, then, what I want to know about our desires. It’s this: Some of our unnecessary pleasures and desires seem to me to be lawless. They are probably present in everyone, but they are held in check by the laws and by the better desires in alliance with reason. In a few people, they have been eliminated entirely or only a few weak ones remain, [c] while in others they are stronger and more numerous.

  What desires do you mean?

  Those that are awakened in sleep, when the rest of the soul—the rational, gentle, and ruling part—slumbers. Then the beastly and savage part, full of food and drink, casts off sleep and seeks to find a way to gratify itself. You know that there is nothing it won’t dare to do at such a time, free of all control by shame or reason. It doesn’t shrink from trying to have sex [d] with a mother, as it supposes, or with anyone else at all, whether man, god, or beast. It will commit any foul murder, and there is no food it refuses to eat. In a word, it omits no act of folly or shamelessness.

  That’s completely true.

  On the other hand, I suppose that someone who is healthy and moderate with himself goes to sleep only after having done the following: First, he rouses hi
s rational part and feasts it on fine arguments and speculations; [e] second, he neither starves nor feasts his appetites, so that they will slumber and not disturb his best part with either their pleasure or their pain, but [572] they’ll leave it alone, pure and by itself, to get on with its investigations, to yearn after and perceive something, it knows not what,1 whether it is past, present, or future; third, he soothes his spirited part in the same way, for example, by not falling asleep with his spirit still aroused after an outburst of anger. And when he has quieted these two parts and aroused the third, in which reason resides, and so takes his rest, you know that it is then that he best grasps the truth and that the visions that appear in [b] his dreams are least lawless.

  Entirely so.

  However, we’ve been carried away from what we wanted to establish, which is this: Our dreams make it clear that there is a dangerous, wild, and lawless form of desire in everyone, even in those of us who seem to be entirely moderate or measured. See whether you think I’m talking sense and whether or not you agree with me.

  I do agree.

  Recall, then, what we said a democratic man is like. He was produced by being brought up from youth by a thrifty father who valued only those desires that make money and who despised the unnecessary ones that aim [c] at frivolity and display. Isn’t that right?

  Yes.

  And by associating with more sophisticated men, who are full of the latter desires, he starts to indulge in every kind of insolence and to adopt their form of behavior, because of his hatred of his father’s thrift. But, because he has a better nature than his corrupters, he is pulled in both directions and settles down in the middle between his father’s way of life and theirs. And enjoying each in moderation, as he supposes, he leads a life that is neither slavish nor lawless and from having been oligarchic he [d] becomes democratic.

  That was and is our opinion about this type of man.

  Suppose now that this man has in turn become older and that he has a son who is brought up in his father’s ethos.

  All right.

  And further suppose that the same things that happened to his father now happen to him. First, he is led to all the kinds of lawlessness that those who are leading him call freedom. Then his father and the rest of [e] the household come to the aid of the middle desires, while the others help the other ones. Then, when those clever enchanters and tyrant-makers have no hope of keeping hold of the young man in any other way, they contrive to plant in him a powerful erotic love, like a great winged drone, to be the leader of those idle desires that spend whatever is at hand. Or do you think that erotic love is anything other than an enormous drone [573] in such people?

  I don’t think that it could be anything else.

  And when the other desires—filled with incense, myrrh, wreaths, wine, and the other pleasures found in their company—buzz around the drone, nurturing it and making it grow as large as possible, they plant the sting of longing in it. Then this leader of the soul adopts madness as its bodyguard and becomes frenzied. If it finds any beliefs or desires in the man [b] that are thought to be good or that still have some shame, it destroys them and throws them out, until it’s purged him of moderation and filled him with imported madness.

  You’ve perfectly described the evolution of a tyrannical man.

  Is this the reason that erotic love has long been called a tyrant?

  It looks that way.

  Then doesn’t a drunken man have something of a tyrannical mind? [c]

  Yes, he has.

  And a man who is mad and deranged attempts to rule not just human beings, but gods as well, and expects that he will be able to succeed.

  He certainly does.

  Then a man becomes tyrannical in the precise sense of the term when either his nature or his way of life or both of them together make him drunk, filled with erotic desire, and mad.

  Absolutely.

  This, then, it seems, is how a tyrannical man comes to be. But what way does he live?

  [d] No doubt you’re going to tell me, just as posers of riddles usually do.

  I am. I think that someone in whom the tyrant of erotic love dwells and in whom it directs everything next goes in for feasts, revelries, luxuries, girlfriends, and all that sort of thing.

  Necessarily.

  And don’t many terrible desires grow up day and night beside the tyrannical one, needing many things to satisfy them?

  Indeed they do.

  Hence any income someone like that has is soon spent.

  Of course.

  [e] Then borrowing follows, and expenditure of capital.

  What else?

  And when everything is gone, won’t the violent crowd of desires that has nested within him inevitably shout in protest? And driven by the stings of the other desires and especially by erotic love itself (which leads all of them as its bodyguard), won’t he become frenzied and look to see [574] who possesses anything that he could take, by either deceit or force?

  He certainly will.

  Consequently, he must acquire wealth from every source or live in great pain and suffering.

  He must.

  And just as the pleasures that are latecomers outdo the older ones and steal away their satisfactions, won’t the man himself think that he deserves to outdo his father and mother, even though he is younger than they are—to take and spend his father’s wealth when he’s spent his own share?

  Of course.

  And if they won’t give it to him, won’t he first try to steal it from them [b] by deceitful means?

  Certainly.

  And if that doesn’t work, wouldn’t he seize it by force?

  I suppose so.

  And if the old man and woman put up a fight, would he be careful to refrain from acting like a tyrant?

  I’m not very optimistic about their fate, if they do.

  But, good god, Adeimantus, do you think he’d sacrifice his long-loved and irreplaceable mother for a recently acquired girlfriend whom he can do without? Or that for the sake of a newfound and replaceable boyfriend in the bloom of youth, he’d strike his aged and irreplaceable father, his [c] oldest friend? Or that he’d make his parents the slaves of these others, if he brought them under the same roof?

  Yes, indeed he would.

  It seems to be a very great blessing to produce a tyrannical son!

  It certainly does!

  What about when the possessions of his father and mother give out? With that great swarm of pleasures inside him, won’t he first try to break [d] into someone’s house or snatch someone’s coat late at night? Then won’t he try to loot a temple? And in all this, the old traditional opinions that he had held from childhood about what is fine or shameful—opinions that are accounted just—are overcome by the opinions, newly released from slavery, that are now the bodyguard of erotic love and hold sway along with it. When he himself was subject to the laws and his father and had [e] a democratic constitution within him, these opinions used only to be freed in sleep. Now, however, under the tyranny of erotic love, he has permanently become while awake what he used to become occasionally while asleep, and he won’t hold back from any terrible murder or from any kind of food or act. But, rather, erotic love lives like a tyrant within him, in complete anarchy and lawlessness as his sole ruler, and drives him, as if [575] he were a city, to dare anything that will provide sustenance for itself and the unruly mob around it (some of whose members have come in from the outside as a result of his keeping bad company, while others have come from within, freed and let loose by his own bad habits). Isn’t this the life that a tyrannical man leads?

  It is indeed.

  Now, if there are only a few such men in a city, and the rest of the people are moderate, this mob will leave the city in order to act as a bodyguard to some other tyrant or to serve as mercenaries if there happens [b] to be a war going on somewhere. But if they chance to live in a time of peace and quiet, they’ll remain in the city and bring about lots of little evils.

&nb
sp; What sort of evils do you mean?

  They steal, break into houses, snatch purses, steal clothes, rob temples, and sell people into slavery. Sometimes, if they are good speakers, they become sycophants and bear false witness and accept bribes.

  These evils are small, provided that there happen to be only a few such people. [c]

  Yes, for small things are small by comparison to big ones. And when it comes to producing wickedness and misery in a city, all these evils together don’t, as the saying goes, come within a mile of the rule of a tyrant. But when such people become numerous and conscious of their numbers, it is they—aided by the foolishness of the people—who create a tyrant. And he, more than any of them, has in his soul the greatest and strongest tyrant of all. [d]

  Naturally, for he’d be the most tyrannical.

  That’s if the city happens to yield willingly, but if it resists him, then, just as he once chastised his mother and father, he’ll now chastise his fatherland, if he can, by bringing in new friends and making his fatherland and his dear old motherland (as the Cretans call it) their slaves and keeping them that way, for this is surely the end at which such a man’s desires are directed.

  [e] It most certainly is.

  Now, in private life, before a tyrannical man attains power, isn’t he this sort of person—one who associates primarily with flatterers who are ready to obey him in everything? Or if he himself happens to need anything from other people, isn’t he willing to fawn on them and make every gesture of friendship, as if he were dealing with his own family? But once he gets [576] what he wants, don’t they become strangers again?

  Yes, they certainly do.

  So someone with a tyrannical nature lives his whole life without being friends with anyone, always a master to one man or a slave to another and never getting a taste of either freedom or true friendship.

  That’s right.

  Wouldn’t we be right to call someone like that untrustworthy?

  Of course.

  And isn’t he as unjust as anyone can be? If indeed what we earlier [b] agreed about justice was right.