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576
Then, said I, is not this the character of such men in private life and before they rule the state: to begin with they associate with flatterers, who are ready to do anything to serve them, or, if they themselves want something, they themselves fawn ὑποπεσόντες: cf. on 494 C ὑποκείσονται. and shrink from no contortion σχήματα was often used for the figures of dancing. Cf. Laws 669 D, Aristoph. Peace 323, Xen. Symp. 7. 5, Eurip. Cyclops 221. Isoc. Antid. 183 uses it of gymnastics. or abasement in protest of their friendship, though, once the object gained, they sing another tune.Cf. Phaedr. 241 A ἄλλος γεγονώς, Demosth. xxxiv. 13 ἕτερος ἤδη . . . καὶ οὐχ ὁ αὐτός. Yes indeed, he said. Throughout their lives, then, they never know what it is to be the friends of anybody. They are always either masters or slaves, but the tyrannical nature never tastes freedomCf. Lucian, Nigrinus 15 ἄγευστος μὲν ἐλευθερίας, ἀπείρατος δὲ παρρησίαςAristot. Eth. Nic. 1176 b 19, 1179 b 15. or true friendship. Quite so. May we not rightly call such men faithlessCf. Laws 730 C, 705 A.? Of course. Yes, and unjust to the last degree, if we were right in our previous agreement about the nature of justice. But surely, he said, we were right. Let us sum up,Cf. Phaedr. 239 D ἓν κεφάλαιον then, said I, the most evil type of man. He is, I presume, the man who, in his waking hours, has the qualities we found in his dream state. Quite so. And he is developed from the man who, being by nature most of a tyrant, achieves sole power, and the longer he lives as an actual tyrant the stronger this quality becomes. Inevitably, said Glaucon, taking up the argument. And shall we find, said I, that the man who is shown to be the most evil will also be the most miserable, and the man who is most of a tyrant for the longest time is most and longest miserableCf. Gorgias 473 C-E. in sober truth? Yet the many have many opinions.Cf. the defiance of 473 A and 579 D κἂν εἰ μή τῳ δοκεῖ, Phaedr. 277 E οὐδὲ ἂν ὁ πᾶς ὄχλος αὐτὸ ἐπαινέσῃ, and Phileb. 67 B, also Gorg. 473 E you say what nobody else would say, and perhaps 500 D διαβολὴ δ’ ἐν πᾶσι πολλή. Cf. Schopenhauer’s The public has a great many bees in its bonnet. That much, certainly, he said, must needs be true. Does not the tyrannical man, said I, correspond to the tyrannical state in similitude,Cf. Tim. 75 D, Rep. 555 A, Parmen. 133 A. For the analogy of individual and state cf. on 591 E. the democratic to the democratic and the others likewise? Surely. And may we not infer that the relation of state to state in respect of virtue and happiness is the same as that of the man to the man? Of course. What is, then, in respect of virtue, the relation of a city ruled by a tyrant to a royal city as we first described it? They are direct contraries, he said; the one is the best, the other the worst. I’ll not ask which is which, I said, because that is obvious. But again in respect of happiness and wretchedness, is your estimate the same or different? And let us not be dazzledCf. 577 A, 591 D, 619 A ἀνέκπληκτος, Crat. 394 B, Gorg. 523 D, Protag. 355 B. Cf. also Epictet. iii. 22. 28 ὑπὸ τῆς φαντασίας περιλαμπομένοις, and Shelley, . . . accursed thing to gaze on prosperous tyrants with a dazzled eye. by fixing our eyes on that one man, the tyrant, or a few εἴ τινες: Cf. Gorg. 521 B ἐάν τι ἔχω. of his court, but let us enter into and survey the entire city, as is right, and declare our opinion only after we have so dived to its uttermost recesses and contemplated its life as a whole. That is a fair challenge, he said, and it is clear to everybody that there is no city more wretched than that in which a tyrant rules, and none more happy than that governed by a true king.For the contrast of tyranny and kingdom cf. 587 B, Polit. 276 E. It became a commonplace in later orations on the true king. Cf. Dümmler, Prolegomena, pp. 38-39.
