make many promises to them of freedom and other things,
much against his will--he will have to cajole his own servants.

Yes, he said, that will be the only way of saving himself.

And suppose the same god, who carried him away, to surround him with
neighbours who will not suffer one man to be the master of another, and
who, if they could catch the offender, would take his life?

His case will be still worse, if you suppose him to be everywhere
surrounded and watched by enemies.

And is not this the sort of prison in which the tyrant will be
bound--he who being by nature such as we have described, is full of all
sorts of fears and lusts? His soul is dainty and greedy, and yet
alone, of all men in the city, he is never allowed to go on a journey,
or to see the things which other freemen desire to see, but he lives in
his hole like a woman hidden in the house, and is jealous of any other
citizen who goes into foreign parts and sees anything of interest.

Very true, he said.

And amid evils such as these will not he who is ill-governed in his own
person--the tyrannical man, I mean--whom you just now decided to be the
most miserable of all--will not he be yet more miserable when, instead
of leading a private life, he is constrained by fortune to be a public
tyrant? He has to be master of others when he is not master of
himself: he is like a diseased or paralytic man who is compelled to
pass his life, not in retirement, but fighting and combating with other
men.

Yes, he said, the similitude is most exact.

Is not his case utterly miserable? and does not the actual tyrant lead
a worse life than he whose life you determined to be the worst?

Certainly.

He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave,
and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to
be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is
utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is
truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his
life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and
distractions, even as the State which he resembles: and surely the
resemblance holds?

Very true, he said.

Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse from having power:
he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more
unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the
purveyor and cherisher of every sort of