Chapter 8. The Second Mark of Tyranny: An Inhuman and Insolent Assault Upon His Subjects’ Property and Freedom

¹ Once he has made his way into the palace, what rites does he perform there? He devotes himself wholly to every bodily pleasure, while devising every kind of grief for his subjects—trusting no one, holding no one dear, treating and regarding everyone as an enemy: the good, because he supposes they hate him (and truly, the good will hate one so unlike themselves); the wicked, precisely because they are wicked and desire the same things he does, so that he is in constant dread that someone more wicked than himself might seize the throne from him. He is forever, then, cutting down the tallest of the standing grain, and makes everyone poor, and forces everyone to mourn and to grieve—so that—as he says—no one, living at ease, may have leisure, and having leisure, may busy himself in others’ affairs, and busying himself, may think new thoughts. He shuffles and reshuffles the laws as he pleases, whether serving his soul’s greed or its licentiousness, or in any case indulging some passion or other. He does not know how to maintain a proper army for the sake of the state, nor does he raise one; but gathering bodyguards around himself as guardians of his own person, these he feeds and fattens, supporting the whole of them at the state’s expense, and grants them all free rein to slaughter, to humiliate, and to rob men of their children.