Timaeus — Plato

Nay, he said, I should not feel at all comfortable about his parents. But, O heavens!

Adeimantus, on account of some newfangled love of a harlot, who is anything but a necessary connection, can yoii believe that he would strike the mother who is his ancient friend and necessary to his very existence, and would place her under the authority of the other, when she is brought under the same roof with her ; or that, under like circumstances, he would do the same to his withered old father, first and most indispensable of friends, for the sake of some newly-found blooming youth who is the reverse of indispensable?

Yes, indeed, he said ; I believe that he would. Truly, then, I said, a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother. He is indeed, he replied. He first takes their property, and when that fails, and pleasures are beginning to swarm in the hive of his soul, then he breaks into a house, or steals the garments of some nightly wayfarer ; next he proceeds to clear a temple.

Meanwhile the old opinions which he had when a child, and which gave judgment about good and evil, are overthrown by those others which have just been emancipated, and are now the body-guard of love and share his empire. These in his democratic days, when he was still subject to the laws and to his father, were only let loose in the dreams of sleep.

But now that he is under the dominion of Love, he becomes always and in waking reality what he was then very rarely and in a dream only ; he will commit the foulest murder, or eat forbidden food, or be guilty of any other horrid act.

Love is his tyrant, and lives lordly in him and lawlessly, and being himself a king, leads him on, as a tyrant leads a State, to the performance of any reckless deed by which he can maintain himself and the rabble of his associates, whether those whom evil communications have brought in from without, or those whom he himself has allowed to break loose within him by reason of a similar evil nature in himself.

Have we not here a picture of his way of life? Yes, indeed, he said. And if there are only a few of them in the State, and the

The change ivhich comes over him. 285 rest of the people are well disposed, they go away and Republic ix. become the body-guard or mercenary soldiers of some other Socrates, tyrant who may probably want them for a war ; and if there ^deimantus. is no war, they stay at home and do many little pieces of mischief in the city. What sort of mischief?

For example, they are the thieves, burglars, cut-purses, foot-pads, robbers of temples, man-stealers of the community ; or if they are able to speak they turn informers, and bear false witness, and take bribes. A small catalogue of evils, even if the perpetrators of them are few in number.

Yes, I said ; but small and great are comparative terms, a private and all these things, in the misery and evil which they inflict bu^uttirharm upon a State, do not come within a thousand miles of the Jn comparison tyrant ; when this noxious class and their followers grow ° ' ^ tyrant, numerous and become conscious of their strength, assisted by the infatuation of the people, they choose from among themselves the one who has most of the tyrant in his own soul, and him they create their tyrant.

Yes, he said, and he will be the most fit to^be a tyrant. If the people yield, well and good ; but if they resist him, as he began by beating his own father and mother, so now, if he has the power, he beats them, and will keep his dear old fatherland or motherland, as the Cretans say, in subjection to his young retainers whom he has introduced to be their rulers and masters. This is the end of his passions and desires. Exactly.

When such men are only private individuals and before The behathey get power, this is their character ; they associate ^r^ntV ^ entirely with their own flatterers or ready tools ; or if they his early want anything from anybody, they in their turn are equally ^"pp^"'^^''^- ready to bow down before them : they profess every sort of affection for them ; but when they have gained their point they know them no more. Yes, truly.

They are always either the masters or servants and never He is always the friends of anybody ; the tyrant never tastes of true free- "' ^^ dom or friendship.

p. 286

The distance betiveen king and tyrant.

Republic IX. Socrates, Adeimantus, Glaucon. master or servant, always treacherous, unjust, the waking reality of our dream, a tyrant by nature, a tyrant in fact. The wicked are also the most miserable.

Like man, like State.

The opposite of the king.