flaws he possesses every vice; filled full with pride, he commits many reckless acts, and the envy in him has the same result. ... He is jealous of the best men, his contemporaries, while they survive, and rejoices in the worst of the citizens.[1] He hears slander with the utmost delight. He is of all men the most inconsistent; for if you praise him but moderately, he is angry with you for not making more of him, while if you adore him to the utmost he hates you as a fawner. And now I shall sum up with the worst of all his wickednesses: he disturbs the traditions of his State, he violates women, and slays men without trial." To this graphic picture we may add the concise definition of Aristotle: "Tyranny is monarchy used for the advantage of the monarch."[2]
These two passages may suffice to show us what the thinking Greek understood by the word, and how he regarded the thing. The typical Tyrant did not represent the State and its needs; he represented his own interests only.[3] Tyranny in this aspect was therefore a thing utterly alien to that true and fruitful Greek life which was inseparable from the State both in thought and fact. Even the best of tyrants, as Herodotus puts it in his own inimitable yay, must leave the circle of ideas in which he has hitherto lived. He lives no longer
- ↑ Herodotus is here intentionally using the language of the Greek oligarch. See p. 119. It is not clear that he is here stating his own view of tyranny; but his description represents one view which was current in Greece in his day.
- ↑ Pol. iii. 7, 5. More fully in vi. (iv.) 10 (1295 A).
- ↑ Thuc. i. 17.
