the happiness or wretchedness of
people at first sight.

Now the nature of a tyrrany is such: it presents, nay flaunts, a show
of costliest possessions unfolded to the general gaze, which rivets the
attention; (3) but the real troubles in the souls of monarchs it keeps
concealed in those hid chambers where lie stowed away the happiness and
the unhappiness of mankind.

(3) There is some redundancy in the phraseology.

I repeat then, I little marvel that the multitude should be blinded in
this matter. But that you others also, you who are held to see with
the mind's eye more clearly than with the eye of sense the mass of
circumstances, (4) should share its ignorance, does indeed excite my
wonderment. Now, I know it all too plainly from my own experience,
Simonides, and I assure you, the tyrant is one who has the smallest
share of life's blessings, whilst of its greater miseries he possesses
most.

(4) Lit. "the majority of things"; al. "the thousand details of a
thing."

For instance, if peace is held to be a mighty blessing to mankind, then
of peace despotic monarchs are scant sharers. Or is war a curse? If so,
of this particular pest your monarch shares the largest moiety. For,
look you, the private citizen, unless his city-state should chance to be
engaged in some common war, (5) is free to travel wheresoe'er he chooses
without fear of being done to death, whereas the tyrant cannot stir
without setting his foot on hostile territory. At any rate, nothing will
persuade him but he must go through life armed, and on all occasions
drag about with him armed satellites. In the next place, the private
citizen, even during an expedition into hostile territory, (6) can
comfort himself in the reflection that as soon as he gets back home he
will be safe from further peril. Whereas the tyrant knows precisely the
reverse; as soon as he arrives in his own city, he will find himself
in the centre of hostility at once. Or let us suppose that an invading
army, superior in force, is marching against a city: however much the
weaker population, whilst they are still outside their walls, may feel
the stress of danger, yet once within their trenches one and all expect
to find themselves in absolute security. But the tyrant is not out of
danger, even when he has passed the portals of his palace. Nay! there
of all places most, he feels, he must maintain the strictist watch. (7)
Again, to the private citizen there will come eventua