The Rise of the Tyrant

Then come impeachments and trials of one another. The people always have some champion whom they nurse into greatness. This is the only root from which a tyrant springs.

When he first appears, he is a protector.

There is a tale of a man in the Arcadian temple of Lycaean Zeus. He tasted the entrails of a human victim minced up with those of other victims and became a wolf.

Likewise, a protector changes into a tyrant when he tastes the blood of his human victims.

The protector has a mob at his disposal. He is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen.

His favourite method is false accusation. He uses this to bring his kinsmen to court to be murdered or banished.

At the same time, he hints at the abolition of debts and partition of lands. After this, he will either perish at the hands of his enemies or become a wolf–a tyrant.

This is the same as the drone who begins to make a party against the rich. After a while, he is driven out, but comes back as a full-grown tyrant.

If they are unable to expel him, or to get him condemned to death by a public accusation, they conspire to assassinate him. Then comes the famous request for a body-guard.

All successful tyrants have this device. But when the wealthy man is also accused of being an enemy of the people, he flees and is not ashamed to be a coward.

The protector is the overthrower of many. He stands up in the chariot of State with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute.

What is the happiness of the man, and the State under Tyranny?

In the early days of his power, he is full of smiles and salutes everyone he meets. He makes promises in public and in private! He liberates debtors and distributes land to the people and his followers, wanting to be so kind and good to everyone!

After the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, he starts stirring up some war so that the people may require a leader.

He impoverishes the people with taxes so that they would focus on their daily needs and would be less likely to conspire against him.

If he suspects them of resistance, he will destroy them by placing them at the mercy of the enemy. Because of these, the tyrant must always be getting up a war.

Now he begins to grow unpopular. Then some of his supporters who are in power, speak their minds to him and to each other. The tyrant then gets rid of them.

He purges the State of the valiant, high-minded, wise, and wealthy. It is a purgation that removes the better part and leaves the worse, opposite from the one done by physicians. It would be better for the tyrant’s supporters to support him than to be purged!

The citizens will only flock to him if he pays them. And so drones of every sort come from every land.

But he will desire to get them on the spot. He will rob the citizens of their slaves. He will then set them free and enroll them in his body-guard.

He has killed the others and has these for his trusted friends. These are the new citizens who admire him and are his companions, while the good hate and avoid him.

Euripides was a tragedian who said: ‘Tyrants are wise by living with the wise.’ He meant that the tyrant’s companions are wise. Thus, tragedy is a wise thing.

The tragic poets are wise men who will forgive us if we do not receive them into our State, because they are the eulogists of tyranny.

But they will continue to go to other cities to:

• attract mobs,
• hire fair, loud, and persuasive voices, and
• draw the cities over to tyrannies and democracies.

Tyrants pay the most for such poets and give them the most honour. Democracies pay them a bit less.

But the higher those poets ascend our constitution hill, the more their reputation fails. From shortness of breath, they are unable to proceed further.

How will the tyrant maintain his numerous ever-changing army?

But what if the people declare that a grown-up son should not be supported by his father, but that the father should be supported by the son?

The father raised his son to protect him and be free from the government of the rich and aristocratic.

He did not raise his son to be the servant of his own servants, nor to remain dependent on him. And so he tells his son and his companions to leave.

Then he is a parricide, and a cruel guardian of an aged parent.

This is real tyranny.

The people who escaped the smoke of the slavery of freemen then fall into the fire of the tyranny of slaves.

Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery.