Hiero Part 3

So sovereign a good do I, for my part, esteem it to be loved, that I do verily believe spontaneous blessings are outpoured from G.o.ds and men on one so favoured.

This is that choice possession which, beyond all others, the monarch is deprived of.

But if you require further evidence that what I say is true, look at the matter thus: No friends.h.i.+p, I presume, is sounder than that which binds parents to their children and children to their parents, brothers and sisters to each other, (9) wives to husbands, comrade to comrade.

(9) Or, "brothers to brothers."

If, then, you will but thoughtfully consider it, you will discover it is the ordinary person who is chiefly blest in these relations. (10) While of tyrants, many have been murderers of their own children, many by their children murdered. Many brothers have been murderers of one another in contest for the crown; (11) many a monarch has been done to death by the wife of his bosom, (12) or even by his own familiar friend, by him of whose affection he was proudest. (13)

(10) Or, "that these more obvious affections are the sanct.i.ties of private life."

(11) Or, "have caught at the throats of brothers"; lit. "been slain with mutually-murderous hand." Cf. Pind. Fr. 137; Aesch. "Sept. c.

Theb." 931; "Ag." 1575, concerning Eteocles and Polynices.

(12) See Grote, "H. G." xi. 288, xii. 6; "h.e.l.l." VI. iv. 36; Isocr.

"On the Peace," 182; Plut. "Dem. Pol." iii. (Clough, v. p. 98); Tac. "Hist." v. 8, about the family feuds of the kings of Judaea.

(13) "It was his own familiar friend who dealt the blow, the nearest and dearest to his heart."

How can you suppose, then, that being so hated by those whom nature predisposes and law compels to love him, the tyrant should be loved by any living soul beside?

IV

Again, without some moiety of faith and trust, (1) how can a man not feel to be defrauded of a mighty blessing? One may well ask: What fellows.h.i.+p, what converse, what society would be agreeable without confidence? What intercourse between man and wife be sweet apart from trustfulness? How should the "faithful esquire" whose faith is mistrusted still be lief and dear? (2)

(1) "How can he, whose faith's discredited, the moral bankrupt..."

(2) Or, "the trusty knight and serving-man." Cf. "Morte d'Arthur,"

xxi. 5, King Arthur and Sir Bedivere.

Well, then, of this frank confidence in others the tyrant has the scantiest share. (3) Seeing his life is such, he cannot even trust his meats and drinks, but he must bid his serving-men before the feast begins, or ever the libation to the G.o.ds is poured, (4) to taste the viands, out of sheer mistrust there may be mischief lurking in the cup or platter. (5)

(3) Or, "from this... is almost absolutely debarred."

(4) "Or ever grace is said."

(5) Cf. "Cyrop." I. iii. 4.

Once more, the rest of mankind find in their fatherland a treasure worth all else beside. The citizens form their own body-guard (6) without pay or service-money against slaves and against evil-doers. It is theirs to see that none of themselves, no citizen, shall perish by a violent death. And they have advanced so far along the path of guardians.h.i.+p (7) that in many cases they have framed a law to the effect that "not the a.s.sociate even of one who is blood-guilty shall be accounted pure." So that, by reason of their fatherland, (8) each several citizen can live at quiet and secure.

(6) "Are their own 'satellites,' spear-bearers." Cf. Thuc. i. 130; Herod. ii. 168; vii. 127.

(7) "Pushed so far the principle of mutual self-aid."

(8) "Thanks to the blessing of a fatherland each citizen may spend his days in peace and safety."

But for the tyrant it is again exactly the reverse. (9) Instead of aiding or avenging their despotic lord, cities bestow large honours on the slayer of a tyrant; ay, and in lieu of excommunicating the tyrannicide from sacred shrines, (10) as is the case with murderers of private citizens, they set up statues of the doers of such deeds (11) in temples.

(9) "Matters are once more reversed precisely," "it is all 'topsy-turvy.'"

(10) "And sacrifices." Cf. Dem. "c. Lept." 137, {en toinun tois peri touton nomois o Drakon... katharon diorisen einai}. "Now in the laws upon this subject, Draco, although he strove to make it fearful and dreadful for a man to slay another, and ordained that the homicide should be excluded from l.u.s.trations, cups, and drink-offerings, from the temples and the market-place, specifying everything by which he thought most effectually to restrain people from such a practice, still did not abolish the rule of justice, but laid down the cases in which it should be lawful to kill, and declared that the killer under such circ.u.mstances should be deemed pure" (C. R. Kennedy).

(11) e.g. Harmodius and Aristogeiton. See Dem. loc. cit. 138: "The same rewards that you gave to Harmodius and Aristogiton,"

concerning whom Simonides himself wrote a votive couplet:

{'E meg' 'Athenaioisi phoos geneth' enik' 'Aristogeiton 'Ipparkhon kteine kai 'Armodios.}

But if you imagine that the tyrant, because he has more possessions than the private person, does for that reason derive greater pleasure from them, this is not so either, Simonides, but it is with tyrants as with athletes. Just as the athlete feels no glow of satisfaction in a.s.serting his superiority over amateurs, (12) but annoyance rather when he sustains defeat at the hands of any real antagonist; so, too, the tyrant finds little consolation in the fact (13) that he is evidently richer than the private citizen. What he feels is pain, when he reflects that he has less himself than other monarchs. These he holds to be his true antagonists; these are his rivals in the race for wealth.

(12) Or, "It gives no pleasure to the athlete to win victories over amateurs." See "Mem." III. viii. 7.

(13) Or, "each time it is brought home to him that," etc.

Nor does the tyrant attain the object of his heart's desire more quickly than do humbler mortals theirs. For consider, what are their objects of ambition? The private citizen has set his heart, it may be, on a house, a farm, a servant. The tyrant hankers after cities, or wide territory, or harbours, or formidable citadels, things far more troublesome and more perilous to achieve than are the pettier ambitions of lesser men.

And hence it is, moreover, that you will find but few (14) private persons paupers by comparison with the large number of tyrants who deserve the t.i.tle; (15) since the criterion of enough, or too much, is not fixed by mere arithmetic, but relatively to the needs of the individual. (16) In other words, whatever exceeds sufficiency is much, and what falls short of that is little. (17)

(14) Reading as vulg. {alla mentoi kai penetas opsei oukh outos oligous ton idioton os pollous ton turannon}. Lit. "however that may be, you will see not so few private persons in a state of penury as many despots." Breitenbach del. {oukh}, and transl., "Daher weist du auch in dem Ma.s.se wenige Arme unter den Privat-leuten finden, als viele unter den Tyrannen." Stob., {penetas opsei oligous ton idioton, pollous de ton turannon}. Stob. MS. Par., {alla mentoi kai plousious opsei oukh outos oligous ton idioton os penetas pollous ton turannon}. See Holden ad loc. and crit. n.

(15) Cf. "Mem." IV. ii. 37.

(16) Or, "not by the number of things we have, but in reference to the use we make of them." Cf. "Anab." VII. vii. 36.

(17) Dr. Holden aptly cf. Addison, "The Spectator," No. 574, on the text "Non possidentem multa vocaveris recte beatum..."

And on this principle the tyrant, with his multiplicity of goods, is less well provided to meet necessary expenses than the private person; since the latter can always cut down his expenditure to suit his daily needs in any way he chooses; but the tyrant cannot do so, seeing that the largest expenses of a monarch are also the most necessary, being devoted to various methods of safeguarding his life, and to cut down any of them would be little less than suicidal. (18)

(18) Or, "and to curtail these would seem to be self-slaughter."

Or, to put it differently, why should any one expend compa.s.sion on a man, as if he were a beggar, who has it in his power to satisfy by just and honest means his every need? (19) Surely it would be more appropriate to call that man a wretched starveling beggar rather, who through lack of means is driven to live by ugly s.h.i.+fts and base contrivances.

(19) i.e. "to expend compa.s.sion on a man who, etc., were surely a pathetic fallacy." Al. "Is not the man who has it in his power, etc., far above being pitied?"

Now it is your tyrant who is perpetually driven to iniquitous spoilation of temples and human beings, through chronic need of money wherewith to meet inevitable expenses, since he is forced to feed and support an army (even in times of peace) no less than if there were actual war, or else he signs his own death-warrant. (20)

(20) "A daily, hourly constraint is laid upon him to support an army as in war time, or--write his epitaph!"

V

But there is yet another sore affliction to which the tyrant is liable, Sinmonides, which I will name to you. It is this. Tyrants no less than ordinary mortals can distinguish merit. The orderly, (1) the wise, the just and upright, they freely recognise; but instead of admiring them, they are afraid of them--the courageous, lest they should venture something for the sake of freedom; the wise, lest they invent some subtle mischief; (2) the just and upright, lest the mult.i.tude should take a fancy to be led by them.

(1) The same epithets occur in Aristoph. "Plut." 89:

{ego gar on meirakion epeiles' oti os tous dikaious kai sophous kai kosmious monous badioimen.}