3.9
Seeing, then, that they are so hated by those who are bound by natural ties and constrained by custom to love them most, how are we to suppose that they are loved by any other being?
4.1
Next take confidence. Surely he who has very little of that is stinted in a great blessing? What companionship is pleasant without mutual trust? What intercourse between husband and wife is delightful without confidence? What squire is pleasant if he is not trusted?
4.2
Now of this confidence in others despots enjoy the smallest share. They go in constant suspicion even of their meat and drink; they bid their servitors taste them first, before the libation is offered to the gods, because of their misgiving that they may sup poison in the dish or the bowl.
4.3
Again, to all other men their fatherland is very precious. For citizens ward one another without pay from their slaves and from evildoers, to the end that none of the citizens may perish by a violent death.
4.4
They have gone so far in measures of precaution that many have made a law whereby even the companion of the bloodguilty is deemed impure; and so—thanks to the fatherland—every citizen lives in security.
4.5
But for despots the position is the reverse in this case too. Instead of avenging them, the cities heap honours on the slayer of the despot; and, whereas they exclude the murderers of private persons from the temples, the cities, so far from treating assassins in the same manner, actually put up statues of them in the holy places.
4.6
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.
