SelfDefinition.Org
Hiero a.k.a Tyrannicus
by Xenophon
(430-354 BC)
Part 4
(1) "Again, take trust also, who can share least in this and not suffer disadvantage in a great good? For what kind of companionship is sweet without mutual trust? What kind of intimacy is delightful to man and wife without trust? Or what kind of servant is pleasing if he is not trusted?
(2) "Now of this trusting someone, a tyrant has the least share; inasmuch as he not only spends his life without trusting his food and drink, but it is even a practice tyrants have, before they begin sacrifice to the gods, to first bid the attendants taste it, because of their distrust that even in that they may eat or drink something bad.
(3) "Fatherlands in their turn, are worth very much to other human beings. For citizens act as a bodyguard to one another against slaves, and against evil-doers, without pay, so that no citizen will meet a violent death.
(4) "And they have advanced so far in watchfulness that many have made a law that even the accomplice of a slayer is not free from taint. Thus, because of the fatherlands, each of the citizens lives his life in safety.
(5) "But in this too it is the reverse for the tyrants. For instead of avenging them, the cities magnificently honor the tyrannicide; and instead of excluding the killer from sacred rites, as they do the murderers of private men, the cities erect in their temples statues of those who have committed such an act.
(6) "And if you think that because the tyrant has more possessions than private men he gets more pleasure from them, this is not the case either, Simonides. But just as athletes do not enjoy proving stronger than private men, but are annoyed when they prove weaker than their opponents, so the tyrant gets no pleasure when he evidently has more than private men, but suffers pain when he has less than other tyrants. For these he regards as rivals for his own wealth.
(7) "Nor does something of what he desires come more quickly to the tyrant than to the private man. For the private man desires a house, or a field, or a domestic slave; but the tyrant desires cities, extensive territory, harbors, or mightly citadels, which are things much harder and more dangerous to win than the objects desired by private men.
(8) "And, furthermore, you will see but few private men as poor as many tyrants. For what is a large and sufficient amount is not judged by an enumeration, but with a view to its use. Accordingly, an amount which exceeds what is sufficient is large, but what falls short of sufficiency is small.
(9) "Now for the tyrant a multiplicity of possessions is less adequate for his necessary expenditures than for the private man. For private men can cut their daily expenditure in any way they wish, but the tyrants cannot, because their largest and most necessary expenses go to guard their lives. And to curtail these is thought to be ruinous.
(10) "Next, why would someone pity as poor all those who can get what they need by just means? And who would not justly call wretched and poor all those who are compelled by their need to live by contriving something bad and base?
(11) "Now the tyrants are compelled most of the time to plunder unjustly both temples and human beings, because they always need additional money to meet their necessary expenses. For, as if there were a perpetual war on, [tyrants] are compelled to support an army or perish."