[580a]
“Yes, indeed,” he said.
“And in addition, shall we not further attribute to him all that
we spoke of before, and say that he must needs be, and, by reason of his
rule, come to be still more than he was,1 envious, faithless, unjust, friendless, impious, a
vessel and nurse2 of all iniquity, and so in
consequence be himself most unhappy3 make all about him so?” “No man of
sense will gainsay that,” he said. “Come
then,” said I,
1 Cf. 576 B-C.
2 πανδοκεύς is a host or inn-keeper; Cf. Laws 918 B. Here the word is used figuratively. Cf. Aristoph.Wasps 35φάλαινα πανδοκεύτρια, “an all-receptive grampus” (Rogers).
3 On the wretched lot of the tyrant cf. Xen.Hiero passim, e.g. 4. 11, 6. 4, 8, 15. the Hiero is Xenophon's rendering of the Socratico-Platonic conception of the unhappy tyrant. Cf. 1. 2-3. See too Gerhard Heintzeler, Das Bild des Tyrannen bei Platon, esp. pp. 43 ff. and 76 f.; Cic.De amicit. 15, Isoc.Nic. 4-5, Peace 112, Hel. 32 ff. But in Euag. 40 Isocrates says all men would admit that tyranny “is the greatest and noblest and most coveted of all good things, both human and divine.” In Epist. 6. 11. ff. he agrees with Plato that the life of a private citizen is better than the tyrant's But in 2. 4 he treats this as a thesis which many maintain. Cf. further Gorg. 473 E, Alc. I. 135 B, Phaedr. 248 E, Symp. 182 C, Eurip.Ion 621 ff., Suppl. 429 ff., Medea 119 ff., I.A. 449-450, Herodotus iii. 80, Soph.Ajax 1350 “not easy for a tyrant to be pious”; also Dio Chrys.Or. iii. 58 f., Anon. Iambl.fr. 7. 12, DieIs ii.3 p. 333, J. A. K. Thomson, Greek and Barbarian, pp. 111 ff., Dümmler, Prolegomena, p. 31, Baudrillart, J. Bodin et son temps, p. 292-293 “Bodin semble . . . se souvenir de Platon flétrissant le tyran. . . . ”
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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