Timaeus — Plato

allowed to go on a journey, or to see the things which other freemen desire to see, but he lives in his hole like a woman hidden in the house, and is jealous of any other citizen who goes into foreign parts and sees anything of interest. Very true, he said.

And amid evils such as these will not he who is ill- governed in his own person — the tyrannical man, I mean — whom you just now decided to be the most miserable of all — will not he be yet more miserable when, instead of leading a private life, he is constrained by fortune to be a public tyrant?

He has to be master of others when he is not master of himself : he is like a diseased or paralytic man who is compelled to pass his life, not in retirement, but fighting and combating with other men. Yes, he said, the similitude is most exact. Is not his case utterly miserable? and does not the actual tyrant lead a worse life than he whose Hfe you determined to be the worst? Certainly.

He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind.

He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him : all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions, even as the State which he resembles : and surely the resemblance holds? Very true, he said.

Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse 580 from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first ; he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself. No man of any sense will dispute your words.

Come then, I said, and as the general umpire in theatrical contests proclaims the result, do you also decide who in your opinion is first in the scale of happiness, and who second, 2and in what order the others follow : there are five of them in all — they are the royal, timocratical, oligarchical, democratical, tyrannical. The decision will be easily given, he replied ; they shall be choruses coming on the stage, and I must judge them in the order in which they enter, by the criterion of virtue and vice, happiness and misery.

Need we hire a herald, or shall I announce, that the son of Ariston [the best] has decided that the best and justest is also the happiest, and that this is he who is the most royal man and king over himself; and that the worst and most unjust man is also the most miserable, and that this is he who being the greatest tyrant of himself is also the greatest tyrant of his State? Make the proclamation yourself, he said.

And shall I add, ' whether seen or unseen by gods and men ' ? Let the words be added. Then this, I said, will be our first proof ; and there is another, which may also have some weight. What is that? The second proof is derived from the nature of the soul : seeing that the individual soul, hke the State, has been divided by us into three principles, the division may, I think, furnish a new demonstration. Of what nature?

It seems to me that to these three principles three pleasures correspond ; also three desires and governing powers. How do you mean? he said.

There is one principle with which, as we were saying, a man learns, another with which he is angry ; the third, having many forms, has no special name, but is denoted by the general term appetitive, from the, extra ordinary strength and vehemence of the desires of eating and drinking and the other sensual appetites which are the main elements of it ; also money-loving, because such desires are generally satisfied by the help of money.

That is true, he said. If we were to say that the loves and pleasures of this third part were concerned with gain, we should then be