Section 576 · The Republic

Then, said I, is not this the character of such men in private life and before they rule the state: to begin with they associate with flatterers, who are ready to do anything to serve them, or, if they themselves want something, they themselves fawn and shrink from no contortion or abasement in protest of their friendship, though, once the object gained, they sing another tune. Yes indeed, he said. Throughout their lives, then, they never know what it is to be the friends of anybody. They are always either masters or slaves, but the tyrannical nature never tastes freedom or true friendship. Quite so. May we not rightly call such men faithless ? Of course. Yes, and unjust to the last degree, if we were right in our previous agreement about the nature of justice. But surely, he said, we were right. Let us sum up, then, said I, the most evil type of man. He is, I presume, the man who, in his waking hours, has the qualities we found in his dream state. Quite so. And he is developed from the man who, being by nature most of a tyrant, achieves sole power, and the longer he lives as an actual tyrant the stronger this quality becomes. Inevitably, said Glaucon, taking up the argument. And shall we find, said I, that the man who is shown to be the most evil will also be the most miserable, and the man who is most of a tyrant for the longest time is most and longest miserable in sober truth? Yet the many have many opinions. That much, certainly, he said, must needs be true. Does not the tyrannical man, said I, correspond to the tyrannical state in similitude, the democratic to the democratic and the others likewise? Surely. And may we not infer that the relation of state to state in respect of virtue and happiness is the same as that of the man to the man? Of course. What is, then, in respect of virtue, the relation of a city ruled by a tyrant to a royal city as we first described it? They are direct contraries, he said; the one is the best, the other the worst. I’ll not ask which is which, I said, because that is obvious. But again in respect of happiness and wretchedness, is your estimate the same or different? And let us not be dazzled by fixing our eyes on that one man, the tyrant, or a few of his court, but let us enter into and survey the entire city, as is right, and declare our opinion only after we have so dived to its uttermost recesses and contemplated its life as a whole. That is a fair challenge, he said, and it is clear to everybody that there is no city more wretched than that in which a tyrant rules, and none more happy than that governed by a true king.