[
1313b]
[1]
in fact the close
watch upon all things that usually engender the two emotions of pride and
confidence, and the prevention of the formation of study-circles and other
conferences for debate,
1 and the employment of every means that will
make people as much as possible unknown to one another (for familiarity
increases mutual confidence); and for the people in the city to be always visible and to
hang about the palace-gates (for thus there would be least concealment
about what they are doing, and they would get into a habit of being humble from
always acting in a servile way); and all the other similar devices of
Persian and barbarian tyranny (for all have the same effect);
and to try not to be uninformed about any chance utterances or actions of any of
the subjects, but to have spies like the women called
‘provocatrices’ at
Syracuse and the ‘sharp-ears’ that used to
be sent out by Hiero wherever there was any gathering or conference
(for when men are afraid of spies of this sort they keep a check on
their tongues, and if they do speak freely are less likely not to be found
out); and to set men at
variance with one another and cause quarrels between friend and friend and
between the people and the notables and among the rich. And it is a device of
tyranny to make the subjects poor, so that a guard
2
[20]
may not be kept, and also that the people
being busy with their daily affairs may not have leisure to plot against their
ruler. Instances of this are the pyramids in
Egypt and the votive offerings of the Cypselids,
3 and
the building of the temple of Olympian Zeus by the Pisistratidae
4 and of the temples at
Samos, works of Polycrates
5 (for all these
undertakings produce the same effect, constant occupation and poverty among the
subject people); and the
levying of taxes, as at
Syracuse
(for in the reign of Dionysius
6 the result of taxation used to be that in five years men
had contributed the whole of their substance). Also the tyrant is a
stirrer-up of war, with the deliberate purpose of keeping the people busy and
also of making them constantly in need of a leader. Also whereas friends are a
means of security to royalty, it is a mark of a tyrant to be extremely
distrustful of his friends, on the ground that, while all have the wish, these
chiefly have the power. Also the
things that occur in connection with the final form of democracy
7 are all favorable to
tyranny—dominance of women in the homes, in order that they may carry
abroad reports against the men, and lack of discipline among the slaves, for the
same reason; for slaves and women do not plot against tyrants, and also, if they
prosper under tyrannies, must feel well-disposed to them, and to democracies as
well (for the common people also wishes to be sole ruler).
Hence also the flatterer is in honor with both—with democracies the
demagogue (for the demagogue is a flatterer of the people),
and with the tyrants those who associate with them humbly, which is the task of
flattery.