s; and if any one
does, there is the less chance of its being concealed; and to endeavour
that the whole community should mutually accuse and come to blows with
each other, friend with friend, the commons with the nobles, and the
rich with each other. It is also advantageous for a tyranny that all
those who are under it should be oppressed with poverty, that they may
not be able to compose a guard; and that, being employed in procuring
their daily bread, they may have no leisure to conspire against their
tyrants. The Pyramids of Egypt are a proof of this, and the votive
edifices of the Cyposelidse, and the temple of Jupiter Olympus, built by
the Pisistratidae, and the works of Polycrates at Samos; for all these
produced one end, the keeping the people poor. It is necessary also to
multiply taxes, as at Syracuse; where Dionysius in the space of five
years collected all the private property of his subjects into his own
coffers. A tyrant also should endeavour to engage his subjects in a war,
that they may have employment and continually depend upon their general.
A king is preserved by his friends, but a tyrant is of all persons the
man who can place no confidence in friends, as every one has it in his
desire and these chiefly in their power to destroy him. All these things
also which are done in an extreme democracy should be done in a tyranny,
as permitting great licentiousness to the women in the house, that they
may reveal their husbands' secrets; and showing great indulgence to
slaves also for the same reason; for slaves and women conspire not
against tyrants: but when they are treated with kindness, both of them
are abettors of tyrants, and extreme democracies also; and the people
too in such a state desire to be despotic. For which reason flatterers
are in repute in both these: the demagogue in the democracy, for he is
the proper flatterer of the people; among tyrants, he who will servilely
adapt himself to their humours; for this is the business of [1314a]
flatterers. And for this reason tyrants always love the worst of
wretches, for they rejoice in being flattered, which no man of a liberal
spirit will submit to; for they love the virtuous, but flatter none. Bad
men too are fit for bad purposes; "like to like," as the proverb says. A
tyrant also should show no favour to a man of worth or a freeman; for he
should think, that no one deserved to be thought these but himself; for
he who supports his dignity, and is a fr