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Excerpts from book VIII
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse
into greatness.
Yes, that is their way.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first
appears above ground he is a protector.
Yes, that is quite clear...
... At first, in the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he
salutes every one whom he meets; -- he to be called a tyrant, who is
making promises in public and also in private! liberating debtors, and
distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so
kind and good to every one!
Of course, he said.
But when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and
there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some
war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
To be sure.
Has he not also another object, which is that they may be impoverished
by payment of taxes, and thus compelled to devote themselves to their
daily wants and therefore less likely to conspire against him?
Clearly.
And if any of them are suspected by him of having notions of freedom,
and of resistance to his authority, he will have a good pretext for
destroying them by placing them at the mercy of the enemy; and for all
these reasons the tyrant must be always getting up a war.
He must.
Now he begins to grow unpopular.
A necessary result.
Then some of those who joined in setting him up, and who are in power,
speak their minds to him and to one another, and the more courageous of
them cast in his teeth what is being done.
Yes, that may be expected.
And the tyrant, if he means to rule, must get rid of them; he cannot
stop while he has a friend or an enemy who is good for anything.
He cannot.
And therefore he must look about him and see who is valiant, who is
high-minded, who is wise, who is wealthy; happy man, he is the enemy of
them all, and must seek occasion against them whether he will or no,
until he has made a purgation of the State.
Yes, he said, and a rare purgation.
Yes, I said, not the sort of purgation which the physicians make of the
body; for they take away the worse and leave the better part, but he
does the reverse.
If he is to rule, I suppose that he cannot help himself.
What a blessed alternative, I said: -- to be compelled to dwell only
with the many bad, and to be by them hated, or not to live at all!
Yes, that is the alternative.
And the more detestable his actions are to the citizens the more
satellites and the greater devotion in them will he require?
Certainly.
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