Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/42

 26 HISTORY 01' GREECE. not unstained by guilt, never otherwise than unpopular, and carried on by means of foreign mercenaries, was doubtless practi- cally milder. But cases of this character were rare, and the maxims usual with Grecian despots were personified in Periander, the Kypselid of Corinth, a harsh and brutal person, but not destitute either of vigor or intelligence. The position of a Grecian despot, as depicted by Plato, by Xenophon and by Aristotle, 1 and farther sustained by the indi- cations in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Isokrates, though always coveted by ambitious men, reveals clearly enough " those wounds 1 Consult, especially, the treatise of Xenophon, called Hiero, or Tvpav vi- /coc, in which the interior life and feelings of the Grecian despot are strikingly set forth, in a supposed dialogue with the poet Simonidos. The tenor of Plato's remarks in the eighth and ninth books of the Republic, and those of Aristotle in the fifth hook (ch. 8 and 9) of the Politics, display the same pic- ture, though not with such fulness of detail. The speech of one of the assassins of Euphron (despot of Sikyon) is remarkable, as a specimen of Grecian feeling (Xenoph. Hellcn. vii, 3, 7-12). The expressions both of Plato and Tacitus, in regard to the mental wretchedness of the despot, are the strongest which the language affords : Kal TTEVTJC TTJ uhijdeict ^atverai, kuv rig ohriv ifjvxijv emorr/Tai &uaa6j3ov JEUUV 6iu Travroc rot' 8iov, Ga8aa/j:Uv re Kal bSvvuv 7rA^p7?f 'Avuy/c?? ical elvac. Kal en jiuXKov yiyvecr&ai avru ?j trporepov 6iu TJJV upx?]V, (pdovspij, inriaTu, adiKG), u(pi?i(f>, uvoaiu, Kal iracr/i; /ca/aaf nav6oKel re Kal rpO(j>i, Kal it; UTTUVTUV TOVTUV UEV ai)T(f> 6vaTV%Ei elvai, sireira 6s Kal rofic n^aiov avroii TOIOVTOV( a-dai (Republic, ix, p. 580). And Tacitus, in the well-known passage (Annal. vi, 6) : "Ncque frustra prsestantissim, sapientiee firmare solitus est, si recludantur tyrannorum mentes, posse aspici laniatus et ictus : quando ut corpora verberibus, ita gffiviti, libidine. malis consultis, animus dilaceretur. Quippe Tiberium non fortuna. non solitudines, protegebant, quin tormcnta pectoris suasque ipse pcenas fateretur." . It is not easy to imagine power more completely surrounded with all cir- cumstances calculated to render it repulsive to a man of ordinary benevo- lence: the Grecian despot had large means of doing harm, scarcely any means of doing good. Yet the acquisition of power over others, under any conditions, is a motive so all-absorbing, that even this precarious and anti- social sceptre was always intensely coveted, Tvpavvlf, xpriua aQafepov, Tro/Uot Se avrr/e epaarai dai (Herod, iii, 53). See the striking lines of Solon (Fragment, vii, ed. Schncidewin), and the saying of Jason of Phcrze, who used to declare that he felt incessant hunger until he became despot, itEivrjv, &TS ufj rvpavvol we oiiK iTTiffrufisvof iSiurris dvai (Aristot Polit. iii, a 6)'.