Hiero

Once Simonides the poet visited Hiero the “tyrant.” When they both had time to spare, Simonides began this conversation:

“Would you be willing, Hiero, to tell me about certain matters you probably know more about than I do?”

“What might those be?” Hiero answered. “What could I know more about than a man as wise as you?”

“I know,” the poet replied, “that you were once a private individual and are now a monarch. Since you have experienced both conditions, you probably know better than I do how a despot’s life differs from an ordinary person’s in its total share of human joys and sorrows.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler,” Hiero replied, “if you, who are still a private individual, refreshed my memory by recalling the various circumstances of an ordinary person’s life? With those before me, I could better describe the differences between the two lives.”

So Simonides spoke first: “Well then, as far as private individuals go, I observe, or seem to have observed, that we experience various pains and pleasures through sights, sounds, smells, food, and drink. These reach us through particular channels of perception: the eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. There are also other pleasures, those named after Aphrodite, whose channels are well known. As for degrees of heat and cold, hardness and softness, lightness and heaviness, I believe we perceive these through the whole body. Through it we distinguish these opposites and experience sometimes pain, sometimes pleasure.

“As for what we call good and evil, it seems to me that sometimes the mind, or soul, alone registers our pains and pleasures. At other times, we experience them through both soul and body together. There are also pleasures that come to us in sleep, if I can trust my own sensations. But how, by what means, and precisely when they come are matters about which I am even more conscious of my ignorance. Perhaps it is no surprise that the perceptions of waking life should somehow impress themselves more clearly on our senses than those of sleep.”

Hiero answered this statement: “For my part, Simonides, I would find it difficult to name any channels of perception a despot has beyond those you have listed. Up to this point, then, I see no difference at all between a despot’s life and that of ordinary people.”

“But surely it differs in this respect,” Simonides said. “Through all these channels, the tyrant enjoys many times more pleasures and suffers far fewer pains.”

“That isn’t so, Simonides,” Hiero replied. “Take my word for it: a despot’s pleasures are far fewer than those of people in humbler circumstances. His pains are not only far more numerous but more intense.”

“That sounds incredible!” Simonides exclaimed. “If it were really so, how do you explain the passionate desire to wield a tyrant’s scepter, even among men considered exceptionally capable? Why does everyone envy the despot?”

“The reason is simple enough,” Hiero replied. “They reach their conclusions without having experienced both conditions. I will try to prove what I say, beginning with sight, which, unless my memory fails me, was where you began.

“When I consider the matter, I find first that the despot is at a disadvantage in the things we experience through our eyes. Every region of the world, every country on this beautiful earth, offers things worth seeing. In search of them, an ordinary citizen may travel as he pleases, now to some city [for the sake of sightseeing], now to the great national gatherings, where sights most likely to enchant the crowds seem to be brought together. But the despot has no share in these great festivals. It is unsafe for him to go where he will be at the mercy of the assembled crowds. Nor are his affairs at home secure enough for him to leave them in someone else’s care while he travels abroad. Two fears haunt him: that he will be robbed of his throne and that he will be powerless to take revenge on the person who wrongs him.

“Perhaps you will object: ‘Why should he bother going abroad to seek these things? They are sure to come to him even if he stays home.’ Yes, Simonides, that is true up to a point. A small proportion of them will certainly come. But even that small share will cost the despot so much that someone displaying the merest trifle expects to collect, in the shortest possible time, ten times more from the royal pocket than he could hope to earn from everyone else in a lifetime. Then he will be off.”

Simonides replied: “Well, granted that you are worse off when it comes to sights and sightseeing, you must admit that you gain a great deal through hearing. You never lack that sweetest of sounds, the voice of praise. Everyone around you is always praising everything you do and say. On the other hand, your ears are closed to that harshest, most grating of sounds, verbal abuse, since no one cares to speak ill of a monarch to his face.”

“What pleasure do you think there is in the mere absence of abusive words,” Hiero asked, “when everyone knows that those silent people are harboring every kind of ill will toward the tyrant? What enjoyment can you get from glowing praise when you suspect it is nothing but flattery?”

“Yes,” Simonides answered, “I must admit that. I grant you that the sweetest praise comes only from free people who speak in complete freedom. But consider this: you will find it hard to persuade anyone that you despots do not enjoy a much wider range of pleasures in the things that sustain all our bodies, namely food and drink.”

“Yes, Simonides,” Hiero answered, “and I know why people generally think so. Most people have concluded that we monarchs eat and drink with greater pleasure than ordinary people because they imagine they themselves would enjoy the food at our tables more than their own. Certainly a break in everyday routine adds to pleasure. That explains why people in general look forward to holidays and festivals. People in general do, but the despot does not. His well-stocked table groans under its load of food every day, leaving no room for special occasions. So in this first particular pleasure, the pleasure of anticipation, the monarch is at a disadvantage compared with private individuals.

“Next,” he continued, “I am sure your own experience will confirm this: the more dishes a man is served beyond what he needs, the sooner he has had enough of eating. So even in how long the pleasure lasts, the man with all his dishes has less to boast of than someone who eats moderately.”

“Yes, but good heavens!” Simonides interrupted. “Surely, while the appetite lasts, the pleasure of eating a more expensive meal far exceeds that of eating a cheaper one.”

“But as a matter of simple logic,” Hiero replied, “wouldn’t you say that the more pleasure a man takes in something, the more enthusiastically he pursues it?”

“That is quite true,” Simonides answered.

“Then have you ever noticed,” Hiero asked, “that monarchs show more pleasure in tackling the food before them than private individuals do?”

“No, quite the reverse,” the poet answered. “If anything, they show less enthusiasm, unless the reports about them are grossly unfair.”

“Well,” Hiero continued, “perhaps you have noticed that all those wonderfully elaborate dishes served to the tyrant, or nine-tenths of them, are combinations of things that taste sour, pungent, astringent, or something similar?”

“Certainly,” Simonides answered. “In my opinion, every one of them is unnatural food, utterly foreign to ordinary tastes.”

“In fact,” Hiero said, “these seasonings can only be regarded as the cravings of a stomach weakened by luxurious living. I am quite sure, and I imagine you know it too, that a keen appetite has no need at all for these elaborate delicacies.”

“At any rate,” Simonides observed, “with those expensive perfumes you put on your bodies, it is the people near you who enjoy them more than you do yourselves. It is just as the unpleasant smell of some foods is less noticeable to the person eating them than to the people who come near him.”

“Good,” Hiero said. “And on the same principle, we say that someone who has every kind of food available all the time has no appetite for any of it. The man for whom these things are rare is the one who will eat his fill with pleasure when something unfamiliar is put before him.”

“It looks very much,” Simonides interjected, “as though the only pleasure left to explain the common ambition to wear a crown must be the one named after Aphrodite. In that field you have the privilege of being intimate with anyone whose beauty catches your eye.”

“Now you have named the very thing,” Hiero said, “in which, believe me, we princes are worse off than people of lower rank.

“Take marriage first. I assume that marriage into a great family, superior in wealth and influence, takes first place, since it gives the bridegroom distinction as well as pleasure. Next comes marriage between equals. Last comes marriage to someone of lower rank, which tends to be considered degrading and disadvantageous.

“Now apply that to a despot. Unless he marries a foreign bride, he must choose a wife from among those below him. So the greatest satisfaction is denied him. How supremely delightful it is when a woman of the proudest spirit tenderly cares for her husband as his wife! By contrast, how little welcome such care receives when the wife is merely a slave. When she provides it, it is scarcely noticed; when she fails to, what fierce pain and anger it can provoke!

“And in attachments to males, even more than in relationships aimed at having children, the poor tyrant is cheated of much enjoyment. We all know, I imagine, that sexual acts give the greatest satisfaction when accompanied by passionate love.

“But true passion is least likely to settle in a monarch’s heart. Love takes no delight in swooping down on prey already within reach; it needs the lure of anticipation.

“Just as a man who has never been thirsty can hardly be said to know the joy of drinking, so someone who has never felt passion knows nothing of Aphrodite’s sweetest pleasures.”

So Hiero ended.

Simonides answered with a laugh: “What are you saying, Hiero? What’s that? Passionate love for his soul’s beloved cannot spring up in any monarch’s heart? What about your own passion for Daïlochus, whom people call ‘most beautiful’?”

“That is easily explained, Simonides,” Hiero said. “What I most desire from him is no easy prize, as people might imagine. It is precisely what a tyrant has the least privilege of obtaining.

“I tell you truly, this is the kind of love I have for Daïlochus. Everything that the nature of our souls and bodies might drive a man to ask of someone beautiful, my desire asks of him. But what I desire, I want most earnestly to receive willingly, as an expression of true affection. Taking it by force is as far from my wishes as doing myself some fatal injury.

“If he were my enemy, I would find it exquisitely satisfying to wrest some prize from his unwilling hands. But of all sweet favors, the sweetest, to my mind, is a beloved’s willing gift. How sweet, for example, is the glance that answers love with love; how sweet the questions and answers; and sweetest of all, most likely to kindle love, are the battles and quarrels of faithful lovers.

“But forcing yourself on the one you love,” he added, “seems to me more like robbery than lovemaking. A robber does at least get some satisfaction from his spoils and the pain he causes someone he hates. But to seek pleasure in the pain of someone we deeply love, to kiss and be hated, to touch and be loathed: can you imagine anything more hateful or pitiful?

“An ordinary person can readily accept every service from his beloved as a sign of kindness inspired by affection, because he knows it is free from compulsion. The tyrant, however, is denied the confidence that he is loved. On the contrary, we know for certain that service prompted by terror will imitate the attentions of affection as closely as possible. And in fact, plots and conspiracies against despots are most often hatched by those who make the greatest show of loving them.”

Simonides replied to these arguments: “Yes, but to my mind the things you have mentioned are trifles, drops in a vast ocean. How many men have I myself seen, men in the fullest sense, true men, who choose to live poorly when it comes to food, drink, and delicacies! More than that, they willingly abstain from sexual pleasures. No, it is in an entirely different sphere, which I will name at once, that you so far surpass us private citizens.

“It is in your vast plans and your swift achievements; your overflowing wealth; your horses, excellent in breeding and spirit; the exceptional beauty of your weapons and armor; the exquisite finery of your wives; and the magnificent palaces you live in, furnished with the costliest works of art. Add to these your crowds of attendants, courtiers, and followers, a truly princely retinue in accomplishments as well as numbers. And last, but certainly not least, there is your supreme ability both to harm your enemies and to benefit your friends.”

Hiero answered all this: “It does not surprise me at all, Simonides, that most people should be deceived by the glamour of despotic rule. Unless I am mistaken, it is characteristic of the crowd to rush headlong into guesses about people’s happiness or misery on the strength of first impressions.

“Such is the nature of tyranny: it displays, indeed flaunts, its costliest possessions before the public gaze, capturing everyone’s attention. But the real troubles in monarchs’ souls it keeps concealed in those hidden chambers where human happiness and unhappiness are stored away.

“I repeat, then, that I am hardly surprised that the multitude should be blind about this. But I am astonished that people like you should share their ignorance, when you are thought to see circumstances more clearly with the mind’s eye than with the physical eye. I know it all too clearly from my own experience, Simonides, and I assure you that the tyrant has the smallest share of life’s greatest blessings and the largest share of its greater miseries.

“For example, if peace is considered a great blessing to humanity, despotic monarchs have little share in it. Or is war a curse? If so, the monarch has the largest share of that particular scourge. Unless his city-state happens to be involved in a war, a private citizen can travel wherever he chooses without fear of being killed. But the tyrant cannot take a step without entering hostile territory. At any rate, he insists on going through life armed, always dragging armed attendants along with him.

“Next, even when a private citizen is on an expedition into hostile territory, he can comfort himself with the thought that once he gets home he will be safe from further danger. The tyrant knows precisely the reverse: as soon as he reaches his own city, he will be in the very center of hostility.

“Or suppose a superior invading army is marching against a city. However much danger the weaker population may feel while still outside its walls, once within its fortifications everyone expects to be completely safe. But the tyrant is not out of danger even after he has passed through the gates of his palace. Indeed, that is where he feels he must keep the strictest watch.

“Again, a private citizen will eventually gain relief from war through a truce or peace terms. But for the tyrant, the day of peace will never dawn. What peace can he have with those over whom he exercises despotic power? No terms of truce have yet been devised that a despot can confidently rely on.

“There are wars, certainly: wars waged by states, and wars waged by autocratic monarchs against those they have forcibly enslaved. In these wars there is no hardship that anyone from the warring states can suffer that the tyrant will not suffer too. Both must be armed, keep watch, and run risks. Whatever the suffering of defeat, both endure it equally. Up to this point there is no difference. The bitterness is the same.

“But when we consider the sweetness that warfare between states can bring, the comparison ends. Though the tyrant shared the pains, he does not share these pleasures. What happens when one state defeats another in battle? It would be hard, I think, to describe the joy: joy in routing the enemy, joy in the pursuit, joy in slaughtering them. What words could describe these warriors’ exultation in their feats of arms? How proudly they bind the glittering wreath of glory around their brows! With what laughter and delight they congratulate themselves on raising their city to new heights of fame!

“Every citizen claims a share in planning the campaign and claims to have killed the most enemies. Indeed, it would be hard to find an account into which false embellishment does not creep, with the reported number of dead exceeding the number who actually died. So glorious does winning a great victory seem to them.

“But when a tyrant fears that opposition is brewing, or actually detects it, and puts the suspects to the sword, he knows he will not thereby advance the welfare of the state as a whole. The cold, clear fact is that he will have fewer subjects to rule. How can he look cheerful? How can he glorify his achievement? On the contrary, he wants to minimize what has happened as much as possible. Even as he acts, he makes excuses for what he does, trying at least to make it appear innocent. So little does his conduct seem noble even to himself.

“And when those he feared are safely in their graves, he feels no more secure. He is even more on his guard than before. That, as I have shown, is the kind of war that besets the tyrant continually, day after day.”

Now consider the kind of friendship tyrants get to enjoy. First, let’s ask ourselves whether friendship really is a great blessing to human beings.

What is life like for someone his friends love? Look how gladly his friends and lovers greet his arrival! How they delight in doing him favors! How they miss him when he is away and welcome him joyfully when he returns! They rejoice together at any good fortune that comes his way. If they see misfortune overtake him, they rush as one to help.

Indeed, states and governments have recognized that friendship is the greatest blessing, the sweetest happiness people can enjoy. At any rate, in many states the custom is “to slay the adulterer” alone among all men “with impunity,” clearly because such wrongdoers are considered destroyers of the friendship that binds a wife to her husband. When a woman suffers sexual violation through some misfortune, her husband does not respect her any less on that account, provided her true affection for him remains untainted.

For my part, I consider being loved so great a good that I truly believe gods and human beings freely shower blessings on anyone so favored.

This is the precious possession which, beyond all others, the monarch is deprived of.

But if you need further evidence that what I say is true, consider this: surely no friendship is stronger than the bond between parents and children, children and parents, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, or comrades.

If you think it through, you will find that ordinary people enjoy the greatest blessings in these relationships. Among tyrants, by contrast, many have murdered their own children, and many have been murdered by them. Many brothers have murdered one another in a struggle for the throne. Many a monarch has been killed by his own wife, or even by a close friend whose affection he prized above all others.

How, then, can you suppose that a tyrant is loved by anyone else at all, when he is so hated by those whom nature inclines and law requires to love him?

Again, without some measure of faith and trust, how can anyone help feeling deprived of a great blessing? We might well ask: what companionship, conversation, or company would be pleasant without confidence in others? What intimacy between husband and wife would be sweet without trust? How could a “faithful attendant” remain dear to someone who mistrusted his loyalty?

Yet the tyrant has the smallest share of this open confidence in others. His life is such that he cannot even trust his food and drink. Before the feast begins, before the offering of wine is poured to the gods, he must order his servants to taste the dishes, simply because he suspects danger may be lurking in the cup or on the plate.

Then again, other people find in their homeland a treasure worth everything else. The citizens act as one another’s bodyguards, without wages or payment for their service, against slaves and wrongdoers. They see to it that none of their fellow citizens dies a violent death. They have gone so far in providing this protection that in many cases they have made a law declaring that “not even the associate of one who is guilty of bloodshed shall be accounted pure.” Thus, thanks to his homeland, each citizen can live in peace and safety.

For the tyrant, the situation is exactly the reverse. Instead of helping or avenging their despotic ruler, cities bestow great honors on anyone who kills a tyrant. And instead of barring the tyrant’s killer from sacred shrines, as they do those who murder private citizens, they erect statues in temples to the people who commit such deeds.

But if you imagine that a tyrant gets greater pleasure from his possessions because he has more than a private person, that is not true either, Simonides. Tyrants are like athletes in this respect. An athlete takes no satisfaction in declaring his superiority to amateurs, but he is annoyed when a genuine competitor defeats him. In the same way, the tyrant takes little comfort in being visibly richer than a private citizen. What pains him is the thought that he has less than other monarchs. He considers them his true competitors, his rivals in the race for wealth.

Nor does the tyrant get what he longs for any sooner than humbler people get what they want. Consider their ambitions. A private citizen may have his heart set on a house, a farm, or a servant. The tyrant longs for cities, vast territory, harbors, or powerful fortresses. These are far more difficult and dangerous to acquire than the smaller things ordinary people want.

That is also why you will find few private people who are paupers compared with the many tyrants who deserve that name. Whether someone has enough or too much cannot be settled simply by counting. It depends on the individual’s needs. In other words, whatever exceeds what is sufficient is much, and whatever falls short of it is little.

By this measure, the tyrant, with all his possessions, is less able to meet his necessary expenses than a private person. A private person can cut his spending to suit his daily needs in whatever way he chooses. The tyrant cannot, because a monarch’s greatest expenses are also his most necessary: they pay for the various ways he protects his life. Cutting any of them would be little short of suicide.

Or to put it another way, why should anyone pity a man as though he were a beggar when he can meet every need by just and honest means? Surely the name of wretched, starving beggar belongs more properly to someone whose lack of money drives him to live by shameful schemes and disgraceful devices.

It is the tyrant who is constantly driven to rob temples and human beings unjustly, because he is always short of money to meet unavoidable expenses. Even in peacetime, he must feed and maintain an army just as he would in an actual war. Otherwise, he signs his own death warrant.

But there is another painful affliction that tyrants suffer, Simonides, and I will tell you what it is. Tyrants can recognize merit just as well as ordinary people. They readily recognize those who are orderly, wise, just, and upright. But instead of admiring them, they fear them: the courageous, because they might dare to act for freedom; the wise, because they might devise some ingenious mischief; and the just and upright, because the people might take a liking to them as leaders.

Once fear has led the tyrant to dispose of all such people quietly and secretly, who is left for him to rely on for help except the unjust, those without self-control, and those with a slavish nature? The unjust can be trusted because they share the tyrant’s fear that the cities may one day gain their freedom and seize them. Those without self-control are satisfied with the freedom to indulge themselves for the moment. Those with a slavish nature have no desire for freedom themselves.

This, then, seems to me a painful affliction: we recognize one group as good men, yet are forced to rely on the other.

Moreover, even a tyrant cannot help being something of a patriot, loving the state without which he can hope for neither safety nor prosperity. Yet the demands of his despotic rule force him to act against his own country. He takes no pleasure in training his citizens as soldiers or making them brave and well armed. Instead, he delights in making the foreigners in his service more formidable than the people to whom the state belongs, and he relies on these foreigners as his bodyguards.

Even in years of plenty, when every blessing abounds, the tyrant cannot share in the general joy. For the poorer the community, the more submissive he expects to find its people. That is his theory.

He continued: I want to tell you, Simonides, about the pleasures I enjoyed as a private citizen but have lost since the moment I became a tyrant. In those days I spent time with my friends and companions, and we enjoyed one another’s company. If I wanted peace and quiet, I kept my own company. The hours passed happily at our drinking parties. Often we drank until we had drowned the ordinary cares and troubles of human life in Lethe’s cup. Often we immersed ourselves in song, dance, and revelry. Often passion flared in my companions’ hearts and my own.

But now, alas, I have lost those who delighted in me, because I have slaves for companions instead of friends. I have lost the pleasure I once took in their company, because I see no trace of goodwill toward me in their faces. As for wine and sleep, I guard against them as I would an ambush. Just think: to fear a crowd and fear solitude; to fear having no guard and fear the guards themselves; to shrink from having unarmed people around you, yet hate the sight of armed attendants. Can you imagine a more troubled situation? And that is not all. To trust foreigners more than your fellow citizens, and barbarians more than Greeks; to burn with the desire to keep free people enslaved, yet be forced against your will to set slaves free: aren’t these all signs of a mind bewildered and distracted by terror?

For terror, as you know, does more than cause pain within the heart. It stays close beside us, shadowing our path, and destroys every sweet pleasure.

If you know anything of war and its alarms, Simonides, if you have ever been stationed close to the enemy’s lines, try to remember what your meals were like then, and how you slept when you tried to rest. Be sure that none of the pains or horrors you experienced can compare with those that crowd upon the despot. He sees, or thinks he sees, the fierce eyes of enemies glaring at him, not just from the front but from every side.

At this point Simonides took up the discussion and replied: Well put. I must admit part of what you say, since war is terrible. Yet you forget something, Hiero. When we are on campaign, at least, we have a custom: we station sentinels at the outposts. Once the watch is set, we eat supper and go to bed without fear.

Hiero answered: Yes, I can well believe you. The laws are the true outposts guarding your sentinels, keeping them afraid both for themselves and for you. But the tyrant hires his guards for pay, like harvest workers. Surely no duty or ability is more essential in a guard than loyalty. Yet one loyal man is harder to find than scores of workers for any kind of work you could name. That is especially true when guards will serve only for money, and can get far more in far less time by murdering the despot than they could hope to earn through long service protecting him.

As for what made you envy us, our ability, as you call it, to give our friends the greatest benefits and, above all, to triumph over our enemies, here too things are not as you suppose.

How, for instance, can you hope to benefit your friends when you can be sure that the friend you have done the most for will be happiest to get out of your sight as quickly as possible? No one believes that anything a tyrant gives him is truly his own until he is well beyond the giver’s jurisdiction.

So much for friends. Now consider enemies. How can you speak of “the greatest power to triumph over enemies” when every tyrant knows perfectly well that all those he rules despotically are his enemies, every one of them? He can hardly kill or imprison them all. Who would be left as his subjects? Instead, knowing that they are his enemies, he must perform this delicate feat: keep them at a distance while being forced to depend on them.

Be sure, Simonides, that when a tyrant fears some of his citizens, he is in a difficult position. It is painful to see them alive, and painful to put them to death. It is like owning a splendid horse with something in its nature that makes you fear it may one day do harm beyond repair. Its very excellence makes it hard to kill, yet using it alive is difficult too. You must be so careful that it does not choose the moment of greatest danger to do irreparable harm. The same is surely true of all possessions that are both a burden and a benefit. Painful as they are to their owners to keep, they are no less painful to give up.

After hearing these arguments, Simonides replied: Hiero, honor seems to be a powerful force. It is so attractive that people strain to grasp it, enduring every pain and facing every danger in the effort. Even you tyrants, it seems, rush headlong after it despite the sea of troubles tyranny brings. You must have honor. Everyone must serve you and carry out your every command with unquestioning eagerness. You must be the center of attention wherever you go. People must rise from their seats when you approach and step aside to let you pass in the street. Everyone present must always praise you and pay you homage in word and deed. These, I take it, are the things subjects always do to please a monarch. This is how they treat each hero of the moment whom they seek to honor.

Yes, Hiero, this striving for honor is precisely what distinguishes a man from other animals. All living creatures, it seems, take pleasure in food and drink, sleep and sex. But the love of honor is found neither in unreasoning beasts nor in all human beings. Those in whose hearts the desire for honor and a good name has taken root are unmistakably the furthest removed from beasts. They deserve to be called men, not merely human beings. So, in my humble judgment, it is only reasonable for you to accept the pains and burdens of kingship, since you are honored far beyond all other mortals. Indeed, no human pleasure seems closer to that of the gods than the delight in the distinctions that give you such pride.

Hiero replied to these arguments: But Simonides, the honors and proud distinctions bestowed on tyrants have much in common with the lovemaking I described. The honors and the love are of the same kind.

Just as attentions from loveless hearts have no charm, and embraces obtained by force are no longer sweet, so fearful groveling can hardly count as honor. How can we say that people forced to rise from their seats are truly rising to honor those they consider wrongdoers? Or that people who step aside in the street to let their superiors pass are showing respect to those they consider villains? As for gifts, everyone knows that people often give generously to those they hate, especially when they are most afraid, hoping to avert some impending evil. These are simply acts of slavery, and that is what they deserve to be called.

Honor has a very different origin, as different, to my mind, as the feelings it expresses. Consider how ordinary people single out someone they feel is a true man, capable of benefiting them, from whom they hope to receive great blessings. His name is always on their lips in praise. Each sees him as a treasure of his own. They freely make way for him in the streets. They rise from their seats to honor him out of love, not fear. They crown him for his public virtue and the benefits he has conferred. They shower him with gifts of their own free will.

If my definition is right, these people may truly be said to honor their hero through such acts, and the man they consider worthy of them is truly honored. For my part, I can only congratulate him. “God bless him,” I say, seeing that, far from being the target of a wicked conspiracy, he is someone everyone worries about, lest any harm come to him. He goes peacefully through his days in happiness, free from fear, jealousy, and danger. The tyrant’s life runs a different course. Day and night, I assure you, Simonides, he lives like someone condemned by the common verdict of humanity to die for his wrongdoing.

When Simonides had heard these arguments to the end, he answered: If being a tyrant is so wicked, Hiero, and that is your final judgment, why don’t you free yourself from so monstrous an evil? Neither you nor any other monarch I have ever heard of has willingly given up sovereignty once he possessed it. Why is that, Hiero?

For one simple reason, the tyrant answered, and this is the greatest misery of despotic power: you cannot even give it up. How could any tyrant live long enough to settle his account? How could he repay every last bit of money to everyone he has robbed? What chains could he wear to make amends to all those he has thrown into prison? How could he offer enough lives to compensate for all the men he has killed? How could he die a thousand deaths?

No, Simonides, he added. If hanging oneself is ever a benefit to any wretched mortal, then, take my word for it, that is the tyrant’s remedy. None is better suited to his case, since he alone faces this dilemma: neither keeping his troubles nor laying them aside does him any good.

Here Simonides picked up the thread of the discussion: Hiero, I’m not surprised that you feel discouraged about tyranny just now. You have a strong desire to be loved by other people, and you’re convinced that your position prevents that desire from being fulfilled.

Yet I’m equally certain I can show you that ruling presents no obstacle to being loved. In that respect, it actually has an advantage over private life. As we investigate whether this is really so, let’s avoid complicating the question by asking whether a ruler’s greater power enables him to do kindness on a grander scale. Instead, put it this way: two people, one in humble circumstances and the other an absolute ruler, perform the same act. Under otherwise equal conditions, which will receive more gratitude? I’ll begin with the smallest examples. First, a simple friendly greeting, “Good morning” or “Good evening,” spoken on seeing someone, in one case by a ruler and in the other by a private citizen. Whose greeting will sound more pleasant to the person addressed?

Or suppose both have occasion to praise someone. Whose compliments do you think will give greater pleasure? Or suppose they each honor a friend with an invitation to a solemn sacrifice. Either invitation is an honor, but which will inspire greater gratitude, the monarch’s or the humbler man’s?

Or suppose both care for a sick man with equal concern. Clearly, the powerful ruler’s kind attention gives the patient immense delight.

Or say they give two gifts alike in every respect. Here too, plainly, even half of his royal highness’s “gracious favor” would more than outweigh the full value of the ordinary citizen’s “donation.”

Indeed, it seems to me that an honor from the gods, a divine grace, surrounds the heroic ruler. Command itself lends dignity to a man. We also look at him differently: the attractive qualities of someone who is a prince today but was a private citizen yesterday seem even more attractive. And surely it gives us greater pride and satisfaction to converse with people held in higher honor than ourselves than with our equals.

Why, even a ruler’s beloved, the very person whose treatment gave you your strongest objection to tyranny, is less inclined to object to gray hair. In their intimate relations, even a prince’s physical flaws soon stop counting against him.

The fact is that reaching the height of distinction is itself an adornment. It lends a radiance that effaces what is harsh, plain, or rough and makes true beauty more splendid still.

Since the same attentions allow you to win far greater gratitude than other people, consider how much wider your opportunities to help are as rulers, and how much more generously you can give. Surely it follows that you should be loved far more than ordinary people. If not, why not?

Hiero took up the challenge and answered without hesitation: For this very good reason, finest of poets: necessity forces us to interfere in other people’s affairs far more than ordinary people do. We have to involve ourselves in matters that are the very source of half the hatred in the world.

We have to collect money to meet our necessary expenses. Guards must be pressed into service and sentries posted wherever a watch is needed. We have to punish wrongdoers and restrain those who would become insolent. And when swift action is needed, when we urgently have to dispatch a force by land or sea, we can’t leave the task to people who take things easy.

Besides, a tyrant must have mercenaries. Of all the burdens citizens have to bear, none weighs more heavily than this. Nothing will persuade them that the tyrant maintains these troops to enhance both his standing and theirs. They believe he keeps them for his own selfishness and greed.

Simonides answered these arguments in turn: No, Hiero, I’m certainly not saying that you don’t have all these different matters to attend to. They are serious duties, I admit. Still, it strikes me that although half of these weighty responsibilities undoubtedly provoke hatred, the other half are entirely welcome. Teaching people the highest virtues, and praising and honoring every excellent example of them, is a duty whose performance can only win goodwill. Scolding people for neglecting their duties, on the other hand, driving them to work, fining them, and punishing them naturally go hand in hand with hatred and resentment.

My advice to the heroic ruler, then, is this: wherever force is needed, assign the duty of punishment to others, but keep the distribution of rewards and prizes in your own hands.

Everyday experience shows how well this system works. When we want to hold a competition between choruses, the presiding magistrate offers the prizes. The chorus organizers assemble the members, while others teach them and compel those who fall behind in their duties. There you have the principle: the pleasant, welcome part falls to the person in authority, the magistrate, and the unwelcome part to others. What prevents us from applying the same principle to public affairs in general?

Every state is divided into tribes, regiments, or companies, with officers appointed to command each division.

Now suppose someone offered these divisions prizes on the model of the choral prizes just described: prizes for excellence in arms, skill in tactics, discipline, and so on; for skill in horsemanship; for prowess on the battlefield and bravery in war; and for honesty in fulfilling commitments, contracts, and agreements. We could expect rivalry for distinction to encourage vigorous effort in every one of these areas. Vigorous! Yes, by my soul, what a rush there would be! How they would race wherever duty called in pursuit of honor! How promptly their financial contributions would pour in during a crisis!

Even agriculture, the most profitable of all occupations, though until now the least accustomed to competition, would make enormous progress if someone offered prizes in the same way, “by farms and villages,” to those who cultivated the land best. Citizens who devoted themselves wholeheartedly to this work would enjoy countless benefits. Revenues would increase, and self-restraint would accompany industrious habits far more than it does now. What’s more, crime and wrongdoing take root and grow less readily among people busy at work.

Again, if commerce has any value to the state, let the merchant who trades on the largest scale receive some high distinction. His honors will draw other traders after him.

Or make it clear that the state will honor anyone ingenious enough to discover a new source of revenue that imposes no hardship. That will immediately open a field of inquiry that won’t remain unproductive for long.

To put it briefly, if it were clear in every area that anyone introducing a beneficial measure would receive recognition, that alone would inspire a host of people to make it their business to discover something good for the state. Wherever people take a keen interest in what benefits the state, discoveries necessarily come more readily and are perfected more quickly.

But if you’re afraid, mighty prince, that offering so many prizes in so many areas must greatly increase expenses, consider this: nothing that money buys can be obtained more cheaply than what people secure by offering prizes. Look at the public competitions in choral performance, horsemanship, or athletics. How small the prizes are, yet what enormous spending, effort, and painstaking supervision they inspire!

Hiero replied: Your reasoning sounds very fine so far, Simonides. But have you anything to say about these mercenary troops? Can you suggest a way to avoid the hatred they cause? Or will you tell me that a ruler who has won his subjects’ affection no longer needs bodyguards?

Certainly not, Simonides replied. He will need them just as much. I know that some people are like horses: they have something in their blood, some inborn tendency, that makes them more unruly the more their wants are satisfied. Nothing brings wild spirits to their senses and restrains them like fear of your armed troops. As for gentler people, I don’t know how you could give them so many benefits by any other means as you could through mercenaries.

Let me explain. You maintain them primarily, I assume, as your own bodyguards. But it’s not unheard of for masters, landowners and others, to be violently killed by their own slaves. Now suppose the first and foremost duty assigned to the mercenaries were to serve as bodyguards for the whole public, bound to help every member of the state alike whenever they detected trouble brewing. Wrongdoers do spring up within states, as we all know. If these mercenaries were ordered to protect the citizens, the citizens would recognize whom they had to thank.

Besides performing these duties, such a force could reasonably be expected to create a sense of courage and security. Farmworkers with their flocks and herds would benefit greatly, and that benefit would extend beyond your own estate to every farm in the countryside.

Again, posting these mercenaries at strategic points would give citizens ample leisure to attend to their private affairs.

And here’s another duty: can you imagine any force better able to gather advance intelligence and prevent a sudden, secret attack by an enemy than troops who are always armed and fully organized?

On an actual campaign, too, where would you find a force more useful to the citizens than these paid troops? No one, in all likelihood, would be more determined to shoulder the largest share of hardship or danger, or to serve at outposts, keeping watch while others sleep, than these brave mercenaries.

And what effect would this have on the states bordering yours? Wouldn’t this standing army make them desire peace above everything else? Indeed, a concentrated force organized like this would be extremely effective at protecting its friends’ interests and harming those of its opponents.

Finally, when citizens discover that these mercenaries don’t habitually harm people who do no wrong, but instead make it their duty to prevent wrongdoing, caring for the community and bearing the brunt of danger on its behalf, surely they will gladly pay the force’s expenses. After all, private individuals already maintain guards for things of far less importance.

But, Hiero, you mustn’t begrudge spending some of your private wealth for the common good. I believe the money a monarch spends on the state is a more legitimate expense than what he spends on himself. But let’s examine the question point by point.

First, the palace. Do you imagine that a building lavishly decorated at enormous expense will give you more pride and distinction than an entire city surrounded by walls and battlements and adorned with temples, colonnades, harbors, and marketplaces?

Next, armaments. Will you inspire greater terror in the enemy by appearing personally equipped from head to foot in splendidly decorated, bristling armor, or through the warlike appearance of an entire city fully equipped for battle?

Now consider income. How do you expect your revenues to flow more abundantly: by putting your own private capital to work, or by finding ways to make the resources of the entire state productive?

Next, consider what people regard as the finest of pursuits, noble in itself and especially suited to a great man: breeding chariot horses. Which would bring you greater distinction: personally training and sending more chariots to the great festivals than any other Greek, or having your state boast more breeders of racehorses than any other, with the largest number of entries competing for the prize coming from Syracuse?

Which would you consider the nobler victory: winning a chariot race or achieving happiness for the people of the state you lead? For my part, I think it ill suits a tyrant to compete against private citizens. If he wins, he will earn envy rather than admiration when people think how many private fortunes contribute to his spending. If he loses, he will become a laughingstock to everyone.

No, no, Hiero! Your true battlefield, your arena, is competition with the foremost leaders of rival states. May it be your destiny to raise the state you protect and govern to a height of prosperity never reached before, above all those lesser leaders. If you achieve that, you can be certain of being recognized as the victor in the noblest and greatest contest in the world.

What will follow? First, in one swift stroke you will have achieved the very thing you have set your heart on: winning your subjects’ affection. Second, you won’t need a herald to proclaim your victory. Not just one person but all humanity will sing your praises.

Wherever you go, people will gaze at you, and a hundred states, not merely individual citizens, will welcome you warmly. You will be admired not just in private circles but publicly, in everyone’s sight.

As far as safety is concerned, you will be free to travel wherever you like to see the games or other spectacles. Or you can stay at home and still achieve your purpose.

Every day a great crowd will gather before you, eager to display whatever wisdom, worth, or beauty each person possesses, along with another crowd eager to serve you. When they are present, regard them all as sworn allies. When they are absent, know that they all have one desire: to see you.

In the end, people won’t simply love you; they will adore you passionately. You won’t have to woo the beautiful, but instead endure their insistent courtship.

You will feel no fear for yourself. Instead, others will feel it for you, afraid that some harm might come to you. You will have loyal followers, willing subjects, and quick, attentive servants around you. You will see them caring for you of their own free will. And if danger threatens, you will find them more than fellow soldiers: they will be champions eager to defend you with their lives.

People will consider you worthy of many gifts, and you will never lack a well-wisher to share them with. You will command loyalty throughout the world. A whole people will rejoice in your good fortune, and a whole people will fight for your interests as though they were truly their own. Your treasure houses will extend as far as the accumulated wealth of your friends and lovers.

So take heart, Hiero. Enrich your friends, and you will enrich yourself. Build up your city and make it great. In doing so, you will clothe yourself in power and win allies for it.

Regard your homeland as your estate, the citizens as comrades, your friends as your own children, and your sons as your own soul. Strive to surpass them all in doing good. For if you overcome your friends with kindness, your enemies will never prevail against you.

Do all this, and you can be sure that you will possess the finest and most blessed thing a mortal can have: you will be fortunate, and no one will envy you.