4.7
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.
4.8
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.
4.9
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.
4.10
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?
4.11
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.
5.1
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.
