Chapter 10. The Tyrant’s Agonized Fears and Unceasing Torment

¹ That beast, the tyrant, cannot even look with pleasure on his wife, nor on his own dearest kin; he suspects even her, and trembles as he lies beside her, and mistrusts sleep itself, lest it hand him over to its brother, Death. And while the table gives pleasure to everyone else, he shudders most of all at that hour, fearing that some poison has been mixed into the food, that his own cup might become a cup of death. Not even his own bodyguards can the accursed man trust. Whom among the rest does he fear the most? Precisely those who carry swords nearest to him. For he is forever imagining that they might use those swords not for him, but against him. He arms them, after all, against everyone else—but against his own bodyguard, he has no one else to arm. Such trembling well suits a tyrannical and faithless mind—so much so that no one could inflict a greater vengeance on the tyrant than the torment he inflicts on himself by placing himself amid such terrors.