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What shall I tell you first, Micyllus? The terrors, the frights, the suspicions, the hatred of your associates, the plots, and as a result of all this the seanty sleep, and that not sound, the dreams full of tumult, the intricate plans and the perpetual expectations of something bad? Or shall I tell you of the press of business, negotiations, lawsuits, campaigns, orders, countersigns, and calculations? These things prevent a ruler from enjoying any pleasure even in his sleep; he alone must think about everything and have a thousand worries. Even in the case of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, Sweet sleep came to him not as he weighed in his mind many projects, Iliad10, 3-4 though all the Achaeans were snoring! The king of LydiaCroesus. is worried because his son is mute, the king of PersiaArtaxerxes. because Clearchus is enlisting troops for Cyrus, anotherDionysius the Younger. because Dion is holding whispered conversations with a few Syracusans, anotherAlexander. because Parmenio is praised, Perdiccas because of Ptolemy, and Ptolemy because of Seleucus. And there are other grounds for worry too, when your favourite will have nothing to do with you except by constraint, when your mistress fancies someone else, when one or another is said to be on the point of revolting, and when two or three of your guardsmen are whispering to one another. What is more, you must be particularly suspicious of your dearest friends and always be expecting some harm to come from them. For example, I was poisoned by my son, he himself by his favourite, and the latter no doubt met some other death of a similar sort.
