[579b]
“that his plight would be still more desperate, encompassed by
nothing but enemies.” “And is not that the sort of
prison-house in which the tyrant is pent, being of a nature such as we have
described and filled with multitudinous and manifold terrors and appetites?
Yet greedy1 and avid of spirit as he is,
he only of the citizens may not travel abroad or view any of the sacred
festivals2 that other freemen yearn to see, but he must
live for the most part cowering in the recesses of his house like a
woman,3
1 Cf. p. 360, note a. For the tyrant's terrors cf. Menander,Ἀσπίς（fr. 74, Kock iii p. 24), Tacitus, Ann. vi. 6, 579 E and Xen.Hiero 6.8. The tyrant sees enemies everywhere.
2 Cf. Xen.Hiero 1. 12 οἱ δὲ τύραννοι οὐ μάλα ἀμφὶ θεωρίας ἔχουσιν: οὔτε γὰρ ἰέναι αὐτοῖς ἀσφαλές. Cf. Crito 52 Bἐπὶ θεωρίαν.
3 Cf. Laws 781 C, Gorg. 485 D.
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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