Chapter 9. The Wretchedness of a People Subject to Tyranny

¹ When such a tyrant rules, even the farmer reaps only tears—worn down day after day by toil, he watches his own field swept up in the tyrant’s storm, and instead of grapes he harvests the thorn-bush of sorrow, which pricks his innermost being with its sharp thorns; and worse still, he becomes plunder for enemy and countryman alike. The seafarer curses the winds and the sea because they have not yet drowned him—so much bitterer a sea and so much more tyrannical a wind has he experienced. And those who bear the name of citizens suffer the very extreme of misfortune, dwelling as they do beside the Minotaur[1] and lying nearest to hand for its devouring. This man’s wealth is carried off in an instant, that man’s daughter—kept in the modest seclusion of her chamber until now—is dragged off to be violated; and the man who hoped to raise applause for her wedding at the bridal chamber instead raises cries of mourning as he weeps over the outrage, and pours out tears of grief where tears of joy should have flowed. Another man’s wife, dragged off to a hateful bed, drives, as it were, an arrow into his heart. And should any of them so much as murmur a free word, the sword is plunged at once into their vitals. The one sweet and welcome thing left to the wretched is that they are led away from such sights by the sword.